Volume 3 - CH 44.1

“The electronics…” Xü Beijin whispers, but then clarifies, “or rather, smart electronics.”

After the Nightmare restarted, Xü Beijin is again sitting inside his bookstore. The scene that just played out in the stream still has him somewhat shaken, and the viewers are still screaming in terror.

A bathtub that killed someone? Who could have guessed that the furniture could turn into sentient killing machines?

Recalling the odd behaviour from all the Missiontakers earlier, Xü Beijin finds himself now able to understand them better.

Jiang Shuangjie and her stand-off with the curtain that wouldn’t be let down;

Shen Yünjü and his stand-off with the peephole he covered with his hands;

The thin Missiontaker and his stand-off with the toilet;

Jiang Shuangmei, and her killers, the Roomba and the bathtub…

Also, the phrase Dai Wu told him, “watch out behind you.”

The Missiontakers are all inside their homes. What could be behind them? The answer is their ‘home.’ The furniture, inside of their homes.

The Missiontakers could likely have never expected that the normal furniture would suddenly come alive and treat them with cold, malicious, hateful or spiteful gazes, staring at their backs.

Even the most ‘positive’ emotions, the one Jiang Shuangjie experienced, amounted to ‘cold disinterest.’

The furniture that have come to life all seems to hold deeply adversarial feelings to the humans. In fact, the furniture in Jiang Shuangmei’s apartment unit even wanted her dead.

Though… it isn’t completely illogical.

Never mind things like curtains, but a toilet… Try putting yourself in its shoes. It would seem inevitable that toilets hate humans.

In the stream, the viewers have all managed to connect the dots with Xü Beijin’s hint, and are now positively terrified.

“uwuwu ima hug my doll tight”

“your doll is also sentient now [cute emoji], it’ll pat on your little face when you’re asleep [cute emoji]”

“… stop scaring me!!!”

“i, uh, um, oh… im sitting on the toilet right now”

“man, raise your toilet brush high! we won’t laugh, promise [doge emoji]”

“youre watching the stream on your phone??? careful now…”

“have u raised today?” (TL: A joke on the Yakult advertisements in the Sinosphere, with the catchphrase ‘have you drunk Yakult today?’)

“raising, raising, thx”

“no but why are these furniture coming to life? can I wish for my bed to turn sentient and be my boyfriend?”

“more likely, ur bed has had enough of u snorting on him, and decides to smother u to death with the blankets and the mattress in the middle of the night”

“… shit, come on”

“oh no, with the detective dalao gone, the only serious person left behind is Beibei now”

Xü Beijin “…”

He sighs.

Once, he thought he could obtain information on the outside world through these viewers, and was even once extremely wary, feeling like he might be a marionette dancing to these viewers’ whims.

He might be some sort of experiment lying in those nutrient pods, and they’re the researchers or whatever.

As for right now…

Ha. Ha.

If researchers these days just amount to jumpy viewers who chat away happily on some streaming platforms, then he, Xü Beijin, must already be some advanced senior researcher!

Xü Beijin is feeling slightly helpless.

Meanwhile, with the Nightmare restarted, the stream shows the Missiontakers trying the door immediately again──And fail just like last time.

This means they may have to wait for a whole hour before they can leave the apartment. This makes all the Missiontakers, who have obtained exactly zero clues the last run, incredibly nervous.

And outside of Jiang Shuangmei herself, and also the host of the stream and the viewers, the Missiontakers have no idea how the Nightmare restarted, or what the danger really was.

They only know for certain, that someone has died.

However, because the death occurred over an hour into the Nightmare, in other words, after the door opens to let them leave the apartment unit, so did that death occur outside of an apartment unit? Was that person even in the apartment complex?

Everything remains unknown. Despite their heightened attention and wariness, though, whether the mystified Missiontakers are able to realise that it is the furniture within the apartment unit that wants them dead… is really up in the air.

Some may be suspecting so, but there is no evidence at all.

It took Xü Beijin watching the whole process of Jiang Shuangmei dying that he could definitively confirm that there is a problem with the furniture in these apartment units. However, how will the Missiontakers trapped within ever discover so?

At least, watching everyone’s actions in the stream at once, it looks like nobody has worked out the problem with the furniture in general yet.

There is even someone──Ok, it’s Thin, that Missiontaker. He’s visiting the loo again.

Xü Beijin wishes him luck.

Not that a toilet can really kill… Can it?

Still, it might be a mutually assured assault if a human really ever goes against a sentient toilet…

The most restless of the Missiontakers here is probably Jiang Shuangjie. In the last run of the Nightmare, she met with the muscular Missiontaker and exchanged information.

The man said he also appeared in the apartment unit right in the beginning and noticed the gazes as well. The commonality sends Jiang Shuangjie into thought.

She also shared her own experience, but soon enough, the Nightmare restarted.

While there was information, but Jiang Shuangjie is more focusing on her younger sister. After that inexplicable gripping feeling in her chest, she can’t help but suspect whether it was her own sister’s death that triggered the restart of the Nightmare.

Desperate, she tries all the ways possible of leaving the door, but fails.

“Damn it!” She cusses, “why did we have to be in different units in the apartment… wait!”

Apartment?

She suddenly turns around to examine the unit again. Just as her sudden spark of inspiration says, this resembles an apartment hotel, more than some residence. It’s furnished lavishly but devoid of personality.

During their short meeting with the muscular man, she caught a glimpse of the apartment unit of the man through the door before it was shut. She is certain they were identical.

And if this is really an apartment hotel…

She murmurs, “there must be security on the ground floor… Maybe management is also there, with records of occupancy…”

It’s a guess, a guess based on common sense back on Earth. She does not know whether this Nightmare does conform to her speculations… Nightmares are illogical, after all.

Even if there are records, whether it would have changed to fit with the Missiontakers appearing is another problem.

She has no better idea either, though. She can’t just go check every single room, now.

She pushed on ‘4’ in the elevator earlier without deliberation. She thought the Nightmare was finally beginning when the door opened, but who could’ve known that soon after leaving, the Nightmare just restarted?

She believes the rest of the Missiontakers would have concluded the same. Therefore, they must also try to work out general information on the apartment while looking for other Missiontakers.

Given how quickly the first run ended, it means the apartment must have some sort of innate danger within. It is a driving force to ensure Missiontakers assemble quickly and exchange information.

If so…

Jiang Shuangjie, after deliberation, decides to immediately head to the ground floor after leaving her apartment unit without stopping anywhere.

One, she could look for occupancy records, and two, to look for Missiontakers who would also head down to look for each other.

Now Jiang Shuangjie can only hope that her younger sister could work out that she should head for the first floor to have the maximum chance of running into others…

She thinks Shuangshuang should be able to do this much, at least, right?

If Jiang Shuangjie knew, though, that in the first run of the Nightmare, Jiang Shuangmei didn’t leave the unit, or even know the entrance opened up after an hour passed… She would surely reconsider her misplaced confidence.

Yet she didn’t know.