CH 1

The bus steadily made its way forward, the warm sunlight of an autumn afternoon filtering through the window and onto QiLeren. If it weren’t for the girl tearfully arguing into the phone with her boyfriend beside him, this could almost be a pleasant journey.

Hah, as if. Journeys with broken laptops to fix were scarcely considered pleasant, especially when said laptop had only been subjected to a few games of minimum hardware requirements before dying completely. What absurdity; the laptop was only a few months old!

With that being said, QiLeren’d be lying if he said the game wasn’t scary. It was quite a well-known game, titled «The Nightmare Games», which he downloaded on a whim while browsing a gaming forum. With its simple name and lack of even gameplay screenshots, QiLeren had fully prepared himself for a terrible game only to be shocked by its quality.

As a casual fan of horror games, QiLeren had limited experience but was by no means a beginner with his eye for detail. Aside from the fantastic plot, a feature that made him by far the most satisfied was the large number of save slots, with which he could fully bring into play his skill as a save scummer. There was not a single slot left unused, totalling at around a hundred saves without even overwriting any of them. Upon completing the game with a bad ending typical of the genre, a notification popped up in the upper right corner: “Achievement unlocked: [Save-scumming Maniac]”.

That’s an…interesting achievement, to say the least.

Almost immediately, another notification appeared: “Would you like to restart? Y/N”. It didn’t take much thought for QiLeren to select yes, the soft click of his mouse sending the graphics onscreen tumbling down into pure black. After many unsuccessful reboots, there was nothing left for him to do other than to pack the laptop into a bag and haul it to a hardware store to get fixed, all the way berating himself for pirating games. It probably gave him bad karma.

The girl next to him was still crying. That is, until her boyfriend ran out of patience with a yell of something QiLeren couldn’t make out that finally made the girl snap. “You wanna break up, huh?! Sure thing, buddy, see if I give a shit. I’ll make sure to mail this baby over after I abort it, you hear me? I won’t let you just run off with that bitch and live out the rest of your lives like nothing happened!” Hanging up, she hunched over screamed into her hands.

The atmosphere inside the bus was extremely awkward. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, QiLeren dug out a packet of tissues from his backpack and held it out to the girl, only to be met with a murderous glare. “I don’t want your fake pity,” she hissed.

QiLeren retracted his hand awkwardly and turned to face the window instead. This is what single people got for butting into a couple’s fight.

It was then that the scenery outside flew backwards, white noise overtaking QiLeren’s vision. A truck appeared seemingly out of nowhere, barrelling towards the bus furiously braking to no avail; the two vehicles crashed with a loud clamour, throwing all its passengers forwards. QiLeren’s hands immediately flew out to catch himself, arms buckling under the momentum as his head cracked against the hard back of the seat. Amidst the bloody screams around him, QiLeren could see nothing but black.

It was to the sirens of an ambulance that QiLeren finally stirred. He blearily opened his eyes and was greeted by a face mere centimetres away from his.

Both men let out a yell of “Whoa!” before regaining their composure. QiLeren sat up, head throbbing in beat with his pulse. There was a doctor sitting beside him. Perhaps he was a paramedic brought here by the ambulance. “Are you alright?” the doctor asked.

“I’m okay, just a little dizzy,” QiLeren replied. He gingerly brought a hand to his forehead; it had been bandaged.

“You hit your head when the bus crashed,” said the doctor. “You might have a concussion; it’d be best to double check that at the hospital.”

The idea didn’t seem particularly appealing to QiLeren. Hospital fees weren’t cheap and besides, it was probably just a skin wound. He turned to the doctor, suddenly taken aback at his appearance. “…Since when did they let minors practice medicine? Have you even graduated university?” he scrutinised. This person looked to be a high schooler at most, some might even believe him if he claimed to be in middle school.

The doctor glared at him venomously. “I’m twenty-seven already. Got my PhD. Been working for three years.”

QiLeren’s suspicious scrutinising immediately turned into one of awe at the academic prowess before him. Still a little dizzy, he lied back down and made casual conversation with the doctor. Dr Lu had started school at an earlier age than everybody else in his cohort and skipped a few grades thereafter. He completed his PhD at the tender age of twenty four and obtained employment at the First People’s Hospital at X City, at which he hopped around speciality departments for two years before finally settling in internal medicine. His soft voice and youthful features gained him adoration from almost all nurses, cementing his status as the lucky charm of the hospital.

It was with great empathy that QiLeren listened to Dr Lu’s woes about having been single for his whole life.

Suddenly, a wave of sluggish sleepiness washed over them, prompting yawns from both men. “I’m sleepy,” Dr Lu muttered, slumping into the wall as his eyelids fluttered closed. QiLeren did likewise, closing his eyes to the rhythmic lullaby of ambulance sirens.

Upon waking, QiLeren found himself lying on a chillingly cold metal chair. It was quite possibly the best sleep he’s ever gotten; he hadn’t even dreamed. His head still throbbed though, he discovered as he sat up with a start, and the dizziness hasn’t subsided. It took him a few seconds to notice that he was probably at the hospital.

Hospital. Right.

But the words “Infusion Hall” on the wall opposite him informed him that he was in the infusion hall and not a ward, which made no sense. His surroundings were completely silent, devoid of even mere glimpses of people. QiLeren pushed himself up and stumbled a few steps towards the service counter, taking in the pens, post-it notes and syringes lying haphazardly across it. Wisps of steam rose from the mug as if there had been somebody sitting there just a second before.

How bizarre; QiLeren had never seen such an empty hospital. This was the First People’s Hospital, for goodness sake, they had problems with overcrowding no matter which day of the week it was. Barring the apocalypse, this hospital would never be void of people.

“Is there anyone here? Helloo, where did everyone go?” he called, voice echoing off the walls. He looked around him and made a beeline for the exit, intent on leaving. It was very cold, he noted, a fact that he hadn’t realised among the sea of people that was usually present but now made itself very prominent. It wasn’t just the temperature; the hospital itself gave off a sinister feeling that chilled him to his very bones more than mere temperature could ever do.

Unfortunately, the glass doors that served as an exit were locked. QiLeren peered through the glass into the likewise deserted hallway beyond, feeling slightly claustrophobic at the stark white walls that boxed the empty space. Compact fluorescent lights that stretched into the darkness glowed softly in the absence of natural lighting. It was daytime, yet the hospital felt like the dead of the night.

QiLeren spun on his heels and approached the window, rolling up his sleeves. As he swept his eyes across the room, a reflection in the mirror caught his heart in a vice-like grip — there was a lone, pale figure occupying the metal chair not a step away from him.

His whipped around; the chairs were as empty as they had always been. Rows of them stared back at QiLeren innocently, mockingly littered with rubbish and abandoned luggage with no trace of humans to be seen. An oppressing sense of claustrophobia leapt at him from the eerie emptiness.

Turning around once more at the shiver that ran down his spine, QiLeren hesitantly peeked at the mirror. His own pallid, bandaged face stared back at him. Behind him were rows upon rows of unoccupied seats waiting for their rightful occupants.

There was no one. Only mistaken instincts.

QiLeren forced down his unease, made his way back to the window and opened it as far as he could. Caging over the opening were security grills that denied any form of escape and did not budge in the slightest. Thick fog swirled out in the open and clouded his vision for any potential humans that he could see. Fear crept into the edges of his perception.

He let out a curse. The door was locked, the window was sealed, there was something off about every nook and cranny of this place and not to mention the ghostly figure in the mirror he was trying his best to not think about. Despite his furious insistence on it being non-existent, he couldn’t help the tiny voice that offered its suspicions.

This was just like a horror room escape game! Just as he considered the possibility of being wrapped up in some form of supernatural event, a few lines of notifications popped into his mind:

[Player QiLeren has completed Tutorial Quest 1: The Awakening]

[Card slot unlocked x2]

[Tutorial Quest 2: Leaving the Infusion Hall]

[New Game+: “Save-scumming Maniac” achievement reward, obtained skill card “Law of S/L”]

[Sync Countdown: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Sync Complete]

A sudden pain erupted behind QiLeren’s eyes as if thousands of tiny needles were being pushed into them. Wiping away tears as the pain subsided, he blearily opened his eyes to see the metal chair through his tears. Silently sitting on it was a pale figure-

-looking straight at him.