Chapter 57: The Fourth Floor

F*ck! He was trapped inside the elevator.

Bai Yan’s smile was a little stiff. He originally didn’t like the extra’s disappointing acting skills, but he didn’t expect to be slapped in the face this quickly.

The deserving president was a man that had lived through twenty or so ghost stories, each one having different patterns.

All the lights inside the elevator had gone out. Even the lights on the buttons had also gone dim, leaving him in total darkness.

However, even if there wasn’t any light, the reflection from the mirror before the lights went out was deeply engraved in Bai Yan’s heart.

He knew that the elevator was jam-packed with ‘people’ right now, and they were all standing near him, watching him amid the blackness.

The weightless feeling of hovering was still under his feet. Bai Yan was played by the president’s wrong methods, getting a strong feeling that he’d be finished here.

After a long time, the elevator still didn’t reach the third floor, but the feeling of it ascending remained.

He screamed at the top of his lungs, but there was no reply. So, he turned around and confronted the mirror, face to face.

Under the phone’s flashlight, his face was deathly pale, making him look more like a ghost than a real one.

However, Bai Yan knew his own face quite well, so he wasn’t startled when he saw himself. Rather, he was paying more attention to what was surrounding him in the distorted reflection.

In the mirror, the elevator was crowded with people, to the point of bursting.

Comparing the scene to the glimpse he saw before, not one of the ‘people’ inside was missing.

They still used their hungry eyes to stare at him, as if they were starving to eat someone.

Despite seeing this image for a second time, Bai Yan’s pulse still hastened.

He inadvertently swallowed, trying to move a bit inside the elevator.

Contrary to what he expected, he didn’t feel like he stepped on anyone. Thus, his courage flared out as he started to madly wave his arms in the air. It was still the same, he waved his arms around for quite some time, but he still hadn’t slapped someone in the face.

Granted that this type of ghost didn’t have a tangible body, with him passing through them, shouldn’t there still be some sort of reaction?

But other than their expressions getting fiercer, they unexpectedly didn’t react to him, not even one bit.

“So, you’re all inside the mirror…”

After a moment of hesitation, Bai Yan arrived at this conclusion.

Knowing that the ghosts that wanted to eat him were trapped inside the mirror, they couldn’t come out for the time being. Bai Yan eased up, regardless of these sinister ghosts maintaining their hungry stares at him, “It’s no problem. Excuse me, you guys continue.”

Bai Yan lightheartedly waved his hand to the people inside the mirror, adjusting his current position a bit.

He comfortably pressed his back against the wall furthest from the button panel. This way, he could observe both the panel and the mirror at the same time.

After getting in position, he stood there motionlessly with his phone at hand, its flashlight shining up ahead.

For approximately five minutes, the elevator finally stopped, and at this moment, the lights that went out abruptly came back.

With a ding, the elevator doors opened.

“Boom, boom, boom…”

“Boom-boom, boom-boom…”

The sounds of a ball landing on the floor came through the open doors, and a big sweaty male athlete was facing the elevator entrance, dribbling a basketball on the floor tiles.

“Playing basketball inside the elevator?”

Bai Yan’s complexion showed a twinge of confusion as he calmly gazed at the jersey-wearing guy dribbling the ball.

The waiting area for the elevator on the third floor was extremely lonesome, no other person was there.

Since it was the third floor, it wasn’t far from the first floor, so most of the students didn’t feel like taking the elevator. Not a lot of people took the elevator to the third floor, but a guy playing with his basketball in the elevator wasn’t totally unjustifiable.

However, since he was the one that saw the fourth ghost story in the forum, a normal situation would turn into a dangerous and unusual one.

There must be something strange going on here.

Furthermore, during the five minutes he stayed inside the elevator, the lift only went from the second floor to the third. Maybe this wasn’t the third floor of the real world, but an alternate dimension.

The most important point to focus on was that he didn’t push the third-floor button, so how could the elevator doors open by themselves?

Sure enough, he quickly found the mishap waiting to happen.

Under Bai Yan’s watchful eye, without even dribbling it for a couple of times yet, the guy slipped for a moment and lost control of the ball. The basketball bounced and quickly landed inside the elevator.

“Hey, brother! Do me a favor and kick the ball out!” The friendly guy smiled at Bai Yan, “I was practicing basketball. But since I’m still not good at it, I get embarrassed playing outside, so I practice right outside the elevator.

“…”

Bai Yan didn’t say anything.

“Brother, help me out?” Seeing that Bai Yan didn’t react to him, the guy hesitantly asked, “Are you mute?”

Having heard this, Bai Yan finally said, “Are we close?”

“No.” The guy was somewhat dense, not picking up the meaning behind Bai Yan’s question.

“Then, why should I help you?”

The guy forced out a laugh, saying dryly, “So you won’t help me with the ball? Do you have to go this far over something so insignificant?”

After saying his piece, he stared at and waited for Bai Yan, his eyes full of expectation as if he were waiting for something.

Bai Yan didn’t reply, and he also didn’t taunt this able-bodied person to come and pick it up himself.

What if the guy was waiting for him to say this, would he really go in?

Bai Yan didn’t utter a single word while the guy was just courting a rebuff(1), standing by the elevator door staring intently at the basketball inside.

Seeing that the guy only asked for help and did not pick it up himself, Bai Yan confirmed his guess and continued to ignore him.

After a while, a ding came from the elevator as the doors started to slowly come together.

At this moment, the guy suddenly stuck out his hand between the elevator doors, causing the doors to come open, and glared at Bai Yan, saying, “You really won’t give me my ball?”

Bai Yan indifferently shifted his line of sight, pretending to not see him.

“You will regret this!” The guy tore away his gentle facade, exposing a malevolent face.

The guy withdrew his hands from the elevator door, the doors shortly closing after, but before closing, Bai Yan vaguely the color of blood right outside.

The sinister-looking boy wearing a jersey collapsed into a pile of smoke and bones. The smell of burnt bones slightly penetrated the elevator, making it a bit smokey inside.

After the elevator doors were fully closed, Bai Yan lowered his head to look at the ordinary basketball that rolled to his feet.

The basketball motionlessly laid by his feet, nothing strange about it.

Since there wasn’t anything strange about the basketball when he looked at it directly, with Bai Yan’s previous experience, he turned his head to face the mirror. In the mirror, there was also a ball by his feet.

However, the ball wasn’t just an ordinary basketball, rather, it was a grieving head!

Upon closer inspection, this head also seemed familiar. It wasn’t someone else’s… It was his head, clear as day!

“My head’s gone?”

Bai Yan immediately touched the base of his neck, and the person reflected in the mirror also did the same.

Feeling that his head was still on his shoulders, Bai Yan said thoughtfully, “That guy asked me for the basketball, but in reality, he wanted my head. If I had kicked his basketball back to him…” Could it be that my head would also be taken away?

He evaded disaster, but Bai Yan kept his gaze at the basketball on the floor, still feeling that there was something unusual there.

If this basketball represented his head, then when he leaves the elevator, should he bring the ball with him or should he leave it be?

Bai Yan got caught in his thoughts.

The elevator was still going up, and in this narrow space, time wasn’t easily felt.

Bai Yan stared at both the button panel and the mirror. There were times where he couldn’t take care of two things at the same time.

In the second half of the three minutes, Bai Yan sensed the image in the mirror flash as the button with the number ‘5’ suddenly lit up.

A ‘person’ wanted to go to the fifth floor.

Since the button naturally wouldn’t light up by itself, Bai Yan immediately faced the mirror, asking the entities inside, “Who did that?”

The ‘people’ inside the mirror, of course, couldn’t talk.

They stared at him gloomily, their gazes still showing resentment.

Bai Yan counted them one by one, and not one ghost was missing, each ghost standing in their original places, so he couldn’t tell who among them pressed the button.

“In spite of everything, no one came clean?”

“To dare or not to dare, this round’s ghosts can’t take responsibility…”

Bai Yan’s mouth kept repeating this, his heart secretly contemplating if he should leave the elevator on the next floor.

The dorm building had a total of 13 floors, this wasn’t an auspicious number.

When one entered an elevator, one was bound to come out. Bai Yan didn’t want to spend the whole night in the lift.

Moreover, if he reached the thirteenth floor, the ghost story definitely wouldn’t give him the chance to ride it back down.

After undergoing through the events of the two floors, Bai Yan understood the ghost story a bit. In the elevator’s ghost story, each floor had a different situation, and the bottom line was, which floor he should get out of.

A ghost had just pressed the button, so perhaps this wasn’t a good sign.

If the ghosts were indeed trapped in the mirror, no matter how scary they looked or how dreadful their stares were, Bai Yan was still not intimidated.

However, if they could come out, then he would quickly run away. Otherwise, being in an elevator packed full of ghosts, maybe he’d get eaten by them in under a minute.

Bai Yan looked at the button in contemplation. When the gears on his head were turning, the elevator reached the fourth floor.

The elevator doors remained open as Bai Yan took a quick look outside. But to his surprise, this floor was completely empty, there wasn’t anything or anyone outside.

“Could this floor be the way out?”

Bai Yan looked at the fourth floor’s waiting area, deciding if he should depart on this floor.

Ghosts inside a mirror already tended to rush out of their imprisonment. Even if there was only one ghost, it wasn’t a normal human being that he could easily get through.

There was still some time before the elevator doors closed, so Bai Yan didn’t go out in a rush. Instead, he cautiously examined the environment outside the doors.

The fourth floor’s elevator waiting area was clean everywhere, and there wasn’t any unnecessary junk placed anywhere.

Like the other floors, the fourth floor’s wall had a cyan ‘4’ painted on it, which was directly facing the elevator.

Bai Yan didn’t see anything wrong with the fourth floor, but his heart began to waver. He was worried that the president was taking advantage of the ghost stories’ psychological design. If you missed the opportunity to survive, another chance wouldn’t come again.

“I can’t see anything with the naked eye, then what about the mirror?”

Bai Yan turned his head and looked at the mirror, deciding that if there wasn’t anything strange in the mirror, he would get off.

Just like before, the mirror showed him, the ghosts, as well as the scene outside.

In the mirror, there weren’t any hidden ghosts outside, only showing the colored digit on the wall, exactly the same. There wasn’t anything peculiar about it.

With that, he had better get out.

Bai Yan took a step forward, but after taking his first step, he thought of something that made him suddenly stop dead in his tracks.

The digit on the mirror should look reversed from the real one… Why was it exactly the same?

——————————————

T/N: Man, if I were Bai Yan, I wouldn’t be able to figure that out. Welp, good thing I’m not! XD