After the Evil God Pretends to Be a Player [Infinite] - Chapter 12

Thump, thump, thump!

Thump, thump, thump!

The dull sound of knocking at the door felt exceptionally piercing in the silence of the night.

Outside the door, “Zhou Wen” spoke softly: “I’m here. Hurry up and let me in. If we wait any longer, I’m afraid the Warden will show up.”

Lalai pulled the door open just a crack, revealing only half of her face. She asked nonchalantly, “Are you afraid of her?”

In the dark, narrow corridor, the only light came from the green glow of the “Emergency Exit” sign. The light washed over Zhou Wen’s face, making her look particularly eerie. However, illuminated by that sickly green radiance, Lalai could tell that this was indeed Zhou Wen’s face.

“Of course I am,” Zhou Wen replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

A second later, a strange expression crossed her features. “Wait… aren’t you afraid of her?”

Lalai stared directly into the green-tinted face and said calmly, “But… aren’t you the Warden?”

The moment the words left her mouth, she slammed the door shut. Through the rapidly narrowing gap, she saw “Zhou Wen’s” face twist into a mask of absolute fury.

From behind the door came the sharp, “skritch-scratch” sound of nails clawing against the wood, punctuated by the Warden’s enraged roar: “Let me in! Let me in right now!”

Lalai remained indifferent to the noise and sat back down on her bed. The commotion, however, finally woke Meng Luo.

Rubbing her bleary eyes, Meng Luo let out a yawn and asked, “What happened?”

Lalai gave her a brief summary of the encounter.

Clutching her chest to steady her lingering shock, Meng Luo asked curiously, “But Sister Lalai, how did you know it was the Warden and not the real Zhou Wen?”

Lalai countered with a question: “If you were Zhou Wen, and I opened the door just a crack, what would you have done?”

Meng Luo hesitated. “I’d have been so terrified that, upon finally finding a safe haven, I would have pushed the door right open?”

Approval flickered in Lalai’s eyes. “Exactly. Zhou Wen could have pushed our door open directly, but the Warden cannot. From the moment she handed the keys over to us, she lost the ability to enter these rooms. That is why she only regained the key to the Punk’s room after… after he was gone.”

At some point, the scratching and cursing outside ceased. Everything returned to silence, and Lalai and Meng Luo stopped talking as well.

After a long while, Meng Luo whispered, “Is she gone?”

Before Lalai could answer, they heard the rustle of fabric outside the door again. Then, a familiar thump, thump, thump sounded at the entrance.

Meng Luo’s eyes widened. “Again? Does she think we’re goldfish? Does she think we only have a seven-second memory?”

The person outside spoke again in Zhou Wen’s thin, delicate voice: “Lalai, Meng Luo… something weird is going on in my room. I-I’m a bit scared. Can I squeeze in with you guys for the night?”

Seeing that the two inside didn’t respond, the person outside spoke again. This time, her voice was laced with a sobbing “woo-woo” sound, on the verge of a full breakdown. “I… I’m really scared. I can’t sleep alone. I’m afraid of the dark, and when I think about last night…”

This time, before she could finish, Lalai opened the door a crack. The Zhou Wen at the door pushed it wide open, ran in sobbing, and buried her face directly into Lalai’s bed.

Meng Luo looked astonished. “Wait—this time it’s the real one?”

Zhou Wen pulled her tear-streaked face out from the quilt and asked, “What do you mean, ‘real one’?”

After Lalai explained everything from the voice shouting through the wall to the Warden’s impersonation the usually submissive and fragile Zhou Wen looked ready to curse. She hurriedly explained, “I never shouted through the wall!”

“But the mirror in the bathroom really is scary,” Zhou Wen added. “Once, I even had a hallucination that a pair of pale, skeletal hands were reaching out from the glass.”

Lalai remarked, “That wasn’t a hallucination. That might be how the streamer met her end. Otherwise, how else do you explain her being flayed alive inside a locked room?”

Perhaps the streamer had intended to remove her makeup, or perhaps she had felt a sudden urge to check the mirror during a late-night bathroom trip. Regardless, by the time she realized the mirror was wrong, it was too late.

The “her” in the mirror would have quirked its red lips into a bizarre smile, and countless pale hands would have reached out for her skin, while a low whisper hissed in her ear: I want your face… give it to me… come to hell with me!

Meng Luo suddenly said, “But the mirrors in our room…”

She stopped halfway through her sentence. Thinking back, it was quite strange. When she had first entered the bathroom, she too had felt those numerous mirrors were ominous, but that feeling had since vanished. The mirrors seemed to have become ordinary again.

She remembered that on the first night they moved in, Lalai had stayed in the bathroom for a very long time.

Was it because she did something?

Lalai explained that she wasn’t used to sleeping with others and wasn’t feeling sleepy anyway, so she told Meng Luo and Zhou Wen to sleep first.

Before long, the sound of steady breathing rose behind her.

Lalai sat alone on the windowsill, as still as a carved statue, her silhouette slowly dissolving into the long night outside.

A sliver of a pitch-black tentacle, looking like a blooming ink stain, peeked out from the hem of her school uniform trousers before she deliberately pulled it back.

She exhaled a long breath, gazing at the waxing crescent moon in the sky. For a rare moment, she felt a trace of loneliness.

Suddenly, a series of thump, thump, thumps caught her attention.

This time, the knocking wasn’t on the wall, nor the door—it was on the window right in front of her.

Lalai: “?”

She lowered her gaze slowly and saw Li Zhu’s face. He was clinging to the window railing with one hand and knocking with the other. He winked at her, that familiar, slightly roguish smile playing on his lips. “Mind letting me in?”

A minute later, Li Zhu and Wang Kai entered Room 613.

Wang Kai apologized while explaining, “I thought about it over and over, and I felt it would be safer if we all stayed together on the last night before the masquerade. I just couldn’t stop worrying about you guys, so I begged Brother Li to come along…”

Lalai didn’t bother to point out that the only person he was “worried about” was his girlfriend. She walked into the bedroom, jerked her chin toward the beds, and said, “The beds are full. You two sleep on the floor.”

Though Wang Kai wanted to hold his girlfriend while he slept, he respected that this was Lalai’s bed. Furthermore, he didn’t want to give his girlfriend a heart attack if she woke up in the middle of the night turning a midnight romance into a midnight horror movie. So, he begrudgingly spread a spare sheet on the floor to make do for the night.

Li Zhu’s gaze swept across the room. He raised an eyebrow and asked, “And where are you sleeping?”

He was looking directly at Lalai.

Lalai replied expressionlessly, “I’m not sleeping.”

But if one observed carefully, a sliver of faint displeasure could be glimpsed beneath her calm exterior—like a small animal that had been robbed of its living space.

Li Zhu let out a low laugh, seemingly amused by his own wild imagination.

Lalai didn’t understand what he was laughing at; she thought there was truly something wrong with him.

The night deepened, and Wang Kai fell asleep.

There were only two spare pillows left in the wardrobe. Li Zhu handed one to Lalai and said with a smile, “Don’t be mad. One for you, one for me?”

Lalai was baffled. “Who’s mad?”

She had no intention of entertaining that dusty pillow, but since Li Zhu insisted, she took it and wiped off the invisible dust.

The two of them lay down by the window, their shoulders separated by a half-meter gap.

After a while, Li Zhu asked, “Are you cold?”

As he spoke, he nudged himself a bit closer to Lalai.

It was late spring/early summer, but the nights still carried a chill. If she were human, it would be natural to feel cold without a blanket, but to Lalai, Li Zhu’s question was pure nonsense.

She said blankly, “I’m not cold.”

The next second, the distance between Li Zhu and her shrank to five or six centimeters. After observing Lalai for a long time and seeing no trace of discomfort on her face, he let out a soft sigh and said, “Well, I’m cold.”

Even though they weren’t touching, a radiant warmth traveled from Li Zhu’s arm toward Lalai.

Lalai: Say that again? You’re what?

She didn’t say it out loud. Instead, she decided to give this man one last chance to redeem himself.

Lalai said, “You don’t need to do this…”

Li Zhu played dumb. “Do what?”

Lalai said softly, “You’ve already admitted that you approached me because you wanted to learn the secrets behind the game. Therefore, you don’t need to make these… unnecessary gestures.”

Li Zhu watched her for a moment, then slowly broke into a smile. “True, I believe you are hiding secrets related to the game, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have other motives for approaching you.”

Lalai held her breath slightly. “What motives?”

Li Zhu smiled. “I’m interested in you as a person, too.”

The air seemed to freeze. Lalai scrutinized the expression on Li Zhu’s face. One second… two seconds… Her fingertips twitched slightly, as if she were about to act.

Then, she saw Li Zhu speak again: “Just a joke. Don’t mind me.”

His eyes were full of mischievous mirth, as if he were basking in the triumph of a successful prank.

If it were any other girl, being confessed to by a boy with such superior looks would likely lead to a moment of secret vanity, followed by a sense of loss when told it was a joke.

But in the depths of her heart, where no one could see, Lalai let out a long sigh of relief. Her knuckles, which she had been gripping white, gradually relaxed.

She said solemnly, “Don’t make jokes like that again.”

Li Zhu was silent for a long time. Eventually, he said, “I still don’t know why you dislike me so much.”

Lalai didn’t answer.

Li Zhu shook his head. “Fine.”

His expression finally turned serious. “Tell me… do you think we can really get out of here?”

The night breeze drifted through the half-open window, brushing against their bodies and faces. It was a serene and pleasant scene, yet his words brought a sense of desolation.

Perhaps because the atmosphere was truly peaceful, Lalai rarely opened her heart a sliver, giving an answer that wasn’t entirely dismissive: “Perhaps. If you all can figure out what the Evil God of this instance actually wants.”

Li Zhu paused for a moment and asked, “Are you and I on the same side?”

Lalai replied innocently, “Otherwise? Could I possibly be on the side of the Evil God?”

Li Zhu laughed softly. After a pause, he said, “That’s good then.”

It felt like a long, long time passed before he spoke again: “Earlier, I was wondering if you might be some other kind of… special existence.”

Lalai was lying on her side facing away from him. Upon hearing this, she gently closed her eyes.

Li Zhu waited for a long time but received no response. Finally, he whispered, “Goodnight. Sweet dreams.”

Lalai didn’t know if Li Zhu believed she had fallen asleep and missed his words, or if he had already glimpsed the answer in her silence.

Lalai lay on her side, watching the night sky outside the window, quietly pondering and judging. She did not sleep at all, staying awake until the horizon turned the color of a fish’s belly.