Volume 3 - CH 54.4

Jiang Shuangjie, not wanting to scold her younger sister outright, is trying her best to explain what she means, but Jiang Shuangmei is having none of it. She stuffs the cards into her pockets and leaves the apartment unit.

She says, without turning back towards her older sister, “I’m not saying another word, sis. I picked it up, so I can deal with it… right?” She sniffles, and with a hint of sadness, says, “don’t you think that these utility cards can be useful? I picked them up!”

She is feeling wronged, even; she presented these utility cards to her older sister like treasure she stumbled upon, but all her older sister would say, is that these are ‘dangerous,’ like she merely picked up some dirty rags off the road.

Yet… they are useful!

She feels really like a kid… a kid cared for and loved by her older sister, but not equally respected and trusted. She really wants to prove herself useful, to show her older sister that, she isn’t the child that needs her protection anymore.

However, she does not realise that the more desperately people want to prove they are no longer a child, the more they look immature, like a child.

In this Nightmare, Jiang Shuangmei almost collapsed because of that death. Now, she gets scolded just for picking up utility cards that came about mysteriously… She suddenly understood that, she could not prove herself. In fact, her older sister is thinking even less of her.

She really did think that her older sister would have praised her.

Disappointed, she asks, “sis, did you think that… what I did was immoral?”

She does not hear a reply.

So she sighs, and just leaves without looking back at her older sister. Outside of the apartment unit, she just quietly says, “I’ll wait for you outside, sis.”

What she does not know, however, is that, behind her back, her older sister has her veins all popped up and her eyes bulging and bloodshot, from being strangled by the curtains in the apartment unit. She is powerlessly stretching her arms towards her younger sister’s silhouette, only to watch her leave the apartment unit in the end.

The door to the apartment unit shuts with a bang that reverberates in both the room and the eighth floor corridor.

Until, she dies.

When Jiang Shuangmei is just waiting grumpily outside, the Nightmare restarted all of a sudden. She is all confused.

What happened?

Xü Beijin, alongside the viewers in the stream who watched the whole debacle play out “…”

… What the hell?!

“oh bollocks! is that the power of the bratty kid?!”

“I feel so sorry, I’m gonna go give my younger sis a good spanking right now”

“the innocent younger sister: ???”

“… her older sister… did she hear nothing?!”

“part of the curtain stuffed itself into her mouth… fuck, this is tragic”

“watching her own younger sister leave her behind…”

“and for such a ridiculous tantrum too…”

Even Xü Beijin is sighing. When the Nightmare restarts and he sees that Jiang Shuangjie is nowhere to be found, his feelings are even more complicated.

It may be thoughts mixed with a helpless exasperation, sympathy, condolence, and even sorry for the many Final Destination-esque events leading up to Jiang Shaungjie’s demise.

If only Jiang Shuangmei turned around once to check on her older sister…

She did not, however.

She could not see behind her. Therefore, she can no longer see her older sister.

When the Nightmare restarted, Jiang Shuangmei, besides bewilderment, also has a strange, ominous feeling that eerily resembles what her older sister felt for her when she met danger back in the first run of the Nightmare.

That ominous feeling is not strong, but it would not let up.

She is restless enough that, as soon as the Nightmare restarted, she immediately tries to leave the apartment unit. She succeeds, and runs for the stairwell, and heads downstairs with blurry steps.

There is a mysterious thought bubbling in her mind, but she… No, no way! I can’t be… How?!

She stops in front of Room 807.

She can see the door is ajar. She stops, murmuring, “… no, that’s not… it’s not possible?”

She pushes the door and enters in disbelief, only to find the apartment unit deserted. She looks around the apartment unit, and finally, sees the few utility cards dropped besides the sofa.

She picks them up. She recognises them. Her older sister brought these cards with her.

She freezes.

Not even she herself knows for sure what she has just realised at that moment.

Shortly after, she chuckles inexplicably.

She is murmuring, “sis… nah, you’re kidding. You should know I would have come looking for you as soon as possible, right?” Then she looks around and says, “you’re playing a trick with me… and went downstairs before I did?”

She squeezes the utility cards in her hand tightly. She continues murmuring and turns around to leave Room 807.

In the apartment unit, the curtain moves a little, but perhaps realising it could do nothing, stops.

Xü Beijin sees it, though, and his gaze turns slightly dimmer. He is wondering, if…

If the curtains are Muscular, perhaps?

Jiang Shuangmei doesn’t know that she has just left her older sister’s murderer behind. She is heading towards the stairs in a daze, when she stops.

Stopping right at the elevators.

The elevator, the elevator that made them argue… She stares at it in a trance, and takes a deep breath, and enters with a poker face.

Finally, something in her mind has clicked.

She recalls… a possibility. A question. A question about whether her older sister has died. A question about what Thin said, about disappearing Missiontakers.

She is thinking that, if her older sister has died, then so should her. They’ve been relying on each other, entrusting each other with their own lives for so many years in the Tower now.

They were born the same year, the same month, the same day. Therefore, so should they die the same year, the same month, the same day.

… She is really looking to kill herself now. Would her older sister ever abandon her? She didn’t… she really… she wants to be by her older sister’s side. She is in deep regret. Why did…

Perhaps the elevator will kill her. Perhaps… the elevator should kill her. Utility cards… No utility card can ever be as important as her older sister.

Sometimes, though, people argue and even fight with their most beloved, their most important person in their hearts because of things far more trivial than them.

Jiang Shuangmei is wallowing in regret.

If…

She pushes ‘1,’ and then drifts to a corner of the elevator, burying her head in her knees, and finally, cries.

The elevator slowly descended for a while before stopping.

Jiang Shuangmei hears a gentle female voice say, “ground floor. Please stand clear of the opening doors.”