CH 35

Suo Yang sometimes suspected that he had a hidden ‘avoidant personality’. In many cases, when faced with questions that he was unwilling to answer or didn’t know how to answer, he simply chose to ignore them.

In response to Shen Huiming’s sudden hug, he did not refuse, nor did he hug him back.

As for Shen Huiming’s half-joking and half-serious sentence, he also pretended not to hear it.

Shen Huiming also knew how to leave room for each other, he knew that he had said enough, and to continue to pester with an answer, would only make Suo Yang retreat.

He was not that stupid.

The two of them walked out of the cinema, each with their own thoughts, smelling the smell of popcorn, walked to the escalator, and went downstairs like this.

“Just strolling around?” Shen Huiming asked.

“Sure.”

They sat in the movie theatre for almost two hours, and it was good to move around.

The floor below the cinema was full of beverage shops and game centres. When they passed by the arcade, Shen Huiming asked him with a smile, “Want to play?”

Suo Yang smiled and waved his hands, he was really not very interested in these things.

The two were wandering around, originally planning to turn around and go downstairs, but they were stopped by two boys in front of an escape room.

The two boys were very embarrassed to say that they came to play the escape room, but two people had to leave at the last minute, and the number of people was not enough, and they had already paid the money, so they asked if they would like to form a team together.

Shen Huiming and Suo Yang had never encountered such a thing.

Shen Huiming said, “Anyway, the money has been paid, can’t you just go in? The boss even cares about this?”

“It’s not the same thing,” one of the boys explained. “There are rules about the number of people, some of the levels have to be completed by six people.”

Shen Huiming and the others understood, but the problem was…

Shen Huiming turned his head and asked Suo Yang, “Want to play?”

Suo Yang looked at him, and then said to the two boys apologetically, “I’ve never played before, I’m afraid I’ll hold you back.”

“It’s okay!” The boy in front of him was very bold, “It’s the newbies that make it fun!”

Suo Yang looked at Shen Huiming with some embarrassment.

Shen Huiming hadn’t played it before either. He and Suo Yang had never had any contact with games like this one which had only become popular among young students in recent years.

“Come on,” the boy said, “We’ve been looking for someone for a long time, but we can’t get enough. It’s a fate for us to get together. I beg you two brothers, let’s cherish this fate!”

Shen Huiming was amused by him, looked at Suo Yang, and softly asked for his opinion, “Do you want to give them the honour?”

The two boys kept chattering, “Please, please cherish it and give us the honour.”

Suo Yang smiled helplessly and said, “Okay.”

So, the two of them, who were nearly ten years older than the others, were pushed into the escape room store.

Suo Yang asked Shen Huiming in a low voice, “Have you ever played before?”

Shen Huiming said, “No, but it seems quite interesting.”

Suo Yang was the kind of person who had high standards and strict requirements in everything he did. The reason why he hesitated for a long time just now was entirely because he was worried that he wouldn’t do well and affect everyone’s progress.

After they came in, they joined the others. In addition to the two boys who just pulled them into the group outside, there was another boy and a girl, six people in total.

Suo Yang and Shen Huiming followed the clerk’s request, stood in a row with the others, and then put on blindfolds.

The clerk said, “Everyone put your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you, and I will lead you in.”

Someone at the front asked, “Can you put it on your waist?”

Shen Huiming, who was standing at the back, listened, chuckled lightly, and then raised his hands, and put them lightly on Suo Yang’s shoulders.

They moved forward cautiously, their vision obscured by black blindfolds, and their other senses sharpened.

Suo Yang’s attention was all on Shen Huiming’s hand on his shoulder. When they turned the corner, the other man used a slight amount of force.

They walked for a while, finally stopped, and the clerk told them they could take off the blindfold.

The temperature here was lower than outside, and as soon as he came in, Suo Yang felt a chill on Suo his skin through his shirt.

He raised his hand to take off the blindfold and looked back at Shen Huiming for the first time.

Shen Huiming subconsciously took the blindfold from Suo Yang’s hand and handed it back to the shop assistant along with his own.

The two had never played the escape room before, and only now did they realize that each escape room game has its own theme, and the one they had been dragged into was ‘School of Horror’.

The shop assistant briefly explained the precautions, gave them two walkie-talkies, and then left.

This room was not big, the set was a classroom, Suo Yang and Shen Huiming were standing near the door, with rows of desks in front of them, and the teacher’s desk not far away.

The air conditioner in the room was fully turned on, with the spooky paintings on the wall and the dim light, it was much more interesting than the ‘horror movie’ the two of them had just watched.

This place was quite cool, Suo Yang thought in his heart, he should come in summer.

As he was thinking, creepy music suddenly started playing in the room, and one of the boys standing in front of him was so startled that he knocked a desk upside down.

Shen Huiming looked at Suo Yang calmly, and asked softly, “Are you scared?”

Suo Yang smiled, “I’m an atheist.”

As he spoke, a female voice came, and along with that eerie music began to tell the background of this story.

In the setting, several of them were students who had graduated from this class many years. On the tenth anniversary of graduation, they received an invitation letter to come back to the school for a reunion. However, when they arrived there, they found that the school had become an abandoned building. Originally they just wanted to come in to see the classroom they once had, but upon entering they were locked inside.

Just as the female voice introducing the background stopped, the floating red flag on the wall suddenly fell down. The red flag was right behind Suo Yang. When it fell, everyone was shocked.

A few of the boys backed away from the scene and burst into foul language because of the shock.

On the other hand, Suo Yang turned his head and looked down at the floating red flag that fell on the ground. He felt that something was wrong, so he bent down to pick it up.

Shen Huiming went over and watched Suo Yang turn over the flowing red flag, and found that there was writing on the back一A fire left me here, and I will let you be buried with me today.

Suo Yang really couldn’t get into the scene, so he tried his best not to laugh.

He and Shen Huiming looked at each other, then turned over the flowing red flag and showed it to several others.

Those boys were more involved in the drama than Suo Yang. After they saw the words on the flowing red flag, they deliberately acted as if they were scared out of their wits and almost ran away, but the girl said calmly, “Knock it off, already! Hurry up and find clues!”

With the flowing red flag in his hand, Suo Yang looked around and found that there were five people’s names written on the blackboard, but there were six desks.

“What did you find?” Shen Huiming asked.

Suo Yang shook his head.

Shen Huiming looked down at the table in front of him, and then in the direction of the teacher’s desk. He walked over and opened the drawer of the desk.

“There’s something here.” Shen Huiming took out six name tags from the drawer, the kind of plastic name tags that elementary school students in the nineties would put on their school uniforms.

There were six name tags in total. Suo Yang went over to take a look and then looked up at the blackboard.

He took those name tags from Shen Huiming and placed them on the table one by one according to the order on the blackboard. For the last remaining name tag, the owner’s name was not on the blackboard, but there happened to be an empty table.

He stood in front of the table and said, “The student who was burned to death should be him, Zhang Xiaohui.”

“Here is Zhang Xiaohui’s locker!” A boy walked to the locker at the back of the classroom, ‘Password lock.’

Suo Yang handed the nametag in his hand to the other party and asked him to try the last four digits of the student’s number.

Sure enough, the cabinet opened.

When the cabinet was opened, the ‘wall’ under the blackboard suddenly collapsed with a square gap that could pass through people. It seemed that they had passed the first level.

“Here is a piece of paper.” The only girl took out the piece of paper from the cabinet, “It’s only part of it.”

“It looks like we are going to have to go through all the levels and put this paper together.” When the students were talking, Suo Yang had already returned to Shen Huiming’s side.

The two stood by the blackboard, and Shen Huiming asked with a smile, “How was it? Did you find it fun?”

“It’s not bad.” Suo Yang watched the students gather together to read the words on the paper and said, “It’s quite interesting.”

Several people stooped through the gap and entered a small, dusty room.

Before coming over, a boy complained: “It’s not difficult!”

As soon as he finished speaking, he screamed.

“What the hell is this!”

The room was a bit crowded with six people standing, and Suo Yang was almost pressed up against Shen Huiming.

“This is the laboratory.” Suo Yang looked at the table in front of him and the apparatus on it, “What’s in it?”

He leaned over to look, and Shen Huiming said, “It’s a feet.”

Suo Yang hurried back and stood next to Shen Huiming as if nothing had happened.

Shen Huiming was amused by his reaction, “Scared?”

“No,” Suo Yang said, “It’s a bit…abnormal.”

On the table were not only bottles filled with human feet but also various human organs. Although he knew that it was all fake, Suo Yang still felt very uncomfortable looking at them.

Several people observed the room and found a scale balance on the far side.

One of the balance weights was missing, so the box was left open and set aside.

“It should be weighed.” Suo Yang said, “The weight corresponds to the bottle, try it.”

“Which one does it correspond to?” a boy asked.

The girl walked over, picked up the bottle with the ‘heart’ on it and said, “Let’s try them one by one!”

Suo Yang and the girl tried repeatedly there, but after a few times, they found that something was wrong. In fact, the weight of each bottle was the same, but one of the weights was missing.

“Maybe that’s not how it works.” A boy who hadn’t said much had a walkie-talkie in his hand, “I’ll ask for help.”

“Don’t, it’s useless to ask for help!” Another boy stopped him, “Let’s figure it out on our own, the clue must be in this room.”

“A weight is missing?” Shen Huiming suddenly realized something, and walked to Suo Yang’s side, “Put that bottle on.”

Suo Yang obediently took one of the bottles and put it on the tray.

Shen Huiming put away all the weights, and then said, “Wait for me.”

After he finished speaking, he turned around and went back to the classroom where he had just come from.

Soon, Shen Huiming came back with the six name tags in his hand.

He came over and carefully placed the name tag on the tray with weights. At the same time, there was a ‘Dang’ sound from under the table, and a small wooden door opened.

A boy complained, “You still have to crawl through it!”

Suo Yang didn’t care about this, he just looked at Shen Huiming with a smile and said, “How did you come up with the idea of using a name tag?”

“It’s just a sudden idea,” Shen Huiming was a little smug, “Would you like to praise me?”

“Praise you.” Suo Yang smiled as if he was the only one in his eyes, “You’re really thoughtful and attentive.”