Lonelytree

  Millman97

  “For the sake of the child’s future recovery and your personal safety, please be careful.”


  “I understand.”


  After hanging up the phone, Chen Ge leaned against the toilet’s wall. His mind was a clotted mess. If the killer was not Fan Yu, then it had to be Fan Yu’s aunt. They were the prime suspects but also the victims’ closest family.

  Their closest family turning into their killer, this was a mystery that stumped Chen Ge.

  Chen Ge reopened the livestream. The chat was still lagging, but at least the footage had gotten much clearer. After apologizing quickly to his viewers, Chen Ge walked out of the second-floor toilet with his mallet in hand. He stood at the door and waved his flashlight at the floor—there was not anything like footprints.

  Chen Ge glanced down the stairs. Last he heard, the sets of footsteps did head downstairs.

  Chen Ge was unsure whether the footsteps belonged to the red shadow mentioned in the mission or not, but for the sake of safety, he decided to avoid it for now. Brandishing his flashlight, Chen Ge headed up to the third floor. However, when he was at the landing between second and third floor, the sound of footsteps reverberated in his ears again.

  They seemed to be coming from the first floor. Two ‘people’ standing side by side were heading upstairs.

  Chen Ge immediately switched off his flashlight, stuck his back to the wall, and stared closely at the mouth of the staircase.

  The footsteps did not stop, and they walked onto the second floor.

  Just as this thought crossed Chen Ge’s mind, the sound of cubicle doors being opened appeared beside his ears.

  The cubicle doors were opened one after another, six times. They seemed to be checking the toilet cubicles. Chen Ge leaned closer to the railing and tried to poke his head out to take a closer look at the situation on the second floor.

  After the cubicle doors stopped moving so did the footsteps. It appeared like everything Chen Ge had heard earlier was part of his imagination. He waited for five minutes on the stairs but could not hear any weird sounds coming from the second-floor toilet anymore.

  Chen Ge might have a powerful heart, but it did not mean that he had no fear. A surprise from inside the toilet cubicle would probably scare him quite a bit.

  Chen Ge did not turn on his flashlight. Thanks to the Yin Yang Vision, the reward he had received from completing a Nightmare Mission, even though it was not as magical as described by the black phone, it did greatly improve his sight, enabling him to see better than most at night.

  In the darkened night, thunder flashed occasionally across the sky, giving Chen Ge a temporary glimpse of his surroundings. It created an eerie atmosphere. He feared that one of the lightning flashes might enable him to see things that he did not want to.

  Chen Ge looked left and right several times as he stood at the entrance to the third-floor toilet. There was nothing in sight, so Chen Ge stepped into the toilet.

  The third floor’s toilet was even more curious than the ones on the first and second floors. The window was boarded up, and the walls were unstained. The place seemed to have been abandoned even before the school was closed down.

  All six cubicles were closed, giving Chen Ge a strange feeling that every single of them was hiding a scary surprise. The fifth and sixth cubicles in the first-floor toilet were closed because they were storage rooms for cleaning supplies. Could that be the case again?

  Chen Ge walked to the first cubicle and leaned toward the door. There was no sound coming from within, definitely no crying of babies or giggles of girls like he had anticipated. Then, he did something even braver. He knelt on the floor and peered through the bottom opening.

  There were no random items like mops or brooms, nor was there a pair of legs; it was just a normal cubicle.

  Chen Ge tried pushing the door, and it opened easily. The cubicle was extremely clean. If not for the layer of dust on every surface, he would have believed that this place was cleaned daily.

  This similarity attracted Chen Ge’s attention.

  He pushed open the other cubicles before stopping at the fifth.

  Chen Ge patted the doll inside his shirt pocket and used his mallet to shove the door open.

  The door fell open, and when he saw what was inside the cubicle, Chen Ge took an involuntary step back. Drawings of eyes covered every surface inside the fifth cubicle, their sizes similar to actual human eyes.

  Before opening the door, Chen Ge had tried to envision what could appear behind the door—perhaps it might be pale-faced girl or a scary monster or madman covered with blood—but he definitely did not anticipate this.

  This creepy discovery sent a chill down Chen Ge’s spine. He felt like there were innumerable eyes looking at him. His legs were shaking as he stood outside the cubicle; one could imagine how unsettling it would be inside.

  The pairs of eyes felt like they were peeping on the people inside the cubicle. Shuddering, Chen Ge hurriedly closed the door again. It felt very unsettling being stared at by so many pairs of eyes even though they were mere drawings.

  Chen Ge stared at the cubicle for a long time before moving to the sixth cubicle. He found the same drawing of eyes inside the sixth cubicle.

  However, different from the fifth cubicle, the eyes in the sixth cubicle were only drawn on the wall and partition that was shared with the fifth cubicle; the other walls were completely clean.