Volume 2, Chapter 21 (Chapter 59): Body Temperature

Daydream’s gaze went back and forth.

Pharoah was already nearing the fourth floor, beckoning Daydream to follow him.

Seeing that the two girls didn’t follow, he stopped and leaned against the handrail of the stairs, urging them to follow him.

Daydream stood motionless; two or three metres ahead of the stairs leading to the second floor, they were engulfed in darkness.

‘Brazil’s gone…’

Something lays dormant in the darkness, waiting for its next prey.

At this moment, that familiar, white porcelain plate jumped out from the corner of her vision.

Clang!

The darkness of the corridor became thicker, and the light from her flashlight weakened as if it were being consumed by the ever-growing darkness. All she could see was a radius of less than one metre surrounding her.

Suspecting a hallucination, she blinked vigorously, but the reality was set. Her flashlight had indeed weakened, and her hands trembled as she looked for her companions.

“A-are you still there?” Daydream called out.

“I’m upstairs; hurry up!” Pharoah called out.

“Please don’t,” Bright whispered weakly beyond the darkness.

As soon as they spoke, an evil, ominous voice responded in the darkness.

“What about… me?”

The voice was vaguely human.

“I’ve always been here…”

The voice sounded again, and Daydream could see a treacherous figure outlined in the darkness.

It was an extremely thin black shadow crouched by the corner of the stairwell, and a viscous liquid dripped from its body. Its slender fingers fiddled with the plate.

When Daydream stared at it, it stopped fiddling with the plate and raised its head, staring at her.

In the darkness, Daydream couldn’t see its face clearly, but she could feel its gaze on her and its terrifying, evil smile.

Her face turned pale, and her head started to buzz violently. After swallowing hard, she yelled uncontrollably.

“Pharoah! Bright! Run!”

However, after hearing their responses, Daydream froze in place.

“What? Daydream, did you see something?”

“There’s nothing here.”

“No!” she yelled desperately. “It’s in the corner, l-look!”

Daydream watched as the strange figure stood up, its body almost touching the ceiling of the stairwell.

It walked towards her quickly, with sticky blood on its feet.

A strong scent of death surrounded it, and its appearance became more and more apparent as it approached her.

Dried blood on a striped face…

Exposed white teeth, exposed, stiff muscles…

Rancid. Rotted. Disgusting.

Daydream felt dizzy, as if she couldn’t breathe.

Her lips were slightly parted, but she couldn’t yell.

‘It’s right here! Why can’t you see it?’

In the blink of an eye, the figure approached her side, and its face was less than a centimetre away from her nose.

At this moment, a rush of footsteps came from underneath them, followed by a figure that flashed by Daydream, piercing the figure with a sharp, steep bar.

The figure staggered to the side as it exploded into a large mass of blood. Its blood surged like a bunch of tentacles, constantly expanding and growing.

Daydream immediately backed away from the fallen figure and turned to the figure who saved her.

“B-Brazil?”

He looked like he had just fought a beast; his hair was stained red, and his body was littered with wounds. His ragged jersey was now painted red.

“We need to go upstairs!” Brazil yelled. “It’s infested downstairs!”

“Right,” Pharoah agreed, wiping away his frown. “We should go upstairs and find a place to hide and escape at dawn.”

Daydream didn’t know what to do.

She looked at Bright, who still leaned against the wall weakly.

“Let’s just go,” she sighed. “I just hope…”

‘I just hope that you don’t regret it.’

Shihekou High School, like other high schools, had only three grades, and the entire teaching building was near the gate where the classrooms were located.

According to the arrangement of one grade per floor, the classrooms would only occupy three floors.

Before going up to the fourth floor, the group had a lot of guesses as to what the function of the fourth floor was: activity room, music room, faculty office… but they didn’t expect that the fourth floor was where the psychological counselling room was located.

Why would there be a separate floor for this? Daydream thought as she first entered the school.

The long corridor was divided into three sections by two iron doors: a small area before the stairs, the venting room on the left, and the counselling room on the right.

The door of the counselling room seemed to be slammed by someone violently from the inside, protruding outwards in an amazing arc.

“Which way?” Brazil asked anxiously.

Bright limped behind the crowd as she leaned against the wall and said, “R-right, if we insist on staying here.”

“Shut up!” Pharoah interrupted, turning left instead. The door to the counselling room was obviously hit by something, so he deduced that it was probably unsafe to go there.

He pushed open the iron door, and unexpectedly, he opened it with little effort.

The door lock was broken, and it fell to the ground with a simple clang.

The door to the venting room was pushed open, and dust greeted him.

“Did you guys hear anything?” Daydream asked again.

Everyone shook their heads in silence.

‘Why am I the only one hearing this? Am I the only one who can perceive them?’

Daydream felt like she was going insane. In just ten minutes, her original friendly companions became untrustworthy.

Bright was vague, as if she knew something.

The people in the forum once said that humans are unable to defeat urban legends on their own, but Brazil made it back, claiming that he had beaten whatever claimed him.

Even her own boyfriend was not trustworthy anymore.

She felt as if she had fallen into the labyrinth of the Minotaur, unable to find a way out.

Pharoah’s flashlight shone forward, and he could see many shredded paper scraps scattered in the empty corridor.

Doors made of white upholstered materials were lined up neatly on both sides of the corridor, like spooky Halloween sheet ghosts that watched silently.

His nostrils twitched as a faint stench greeted him. Taking a few steps forward, he seemed to have stepped on something, only to find that within these scraps of paper were mummified, dead cockroaches.

Daydream was the second to last, following Brazil. The moment she entered the range of the venting room, she had a very bad feeling.

Her back felt chilly, as if something was targeting her.

‘If we break into this place, will we free some monsters that have been imprisoned here?’

She noticed a door next to her that wasn’t locked and decided to poke her head inside through the cracks of the door.

Behind the door was a space covered by grey and white walls, and several morbidly obese people were stacked together like corpses, staring straight into her soul.

“Ah-! We can’t stay here! T-there’s somebody here!”

Daydream’s words shocked everyone, and they froze.

Bright took a few steps back vigilantly, as if she were ready to run away at any moment.

Brazil clinched the steel bar tightly in his grasp.

Pharoah gestured Daydream back, then moved towards the room and opened the door slowly.

Shining the beam of the flashlight into the room, he breathed a sigh of relief.

He turned around and hugged Daydream tightly and patted her head, saying, “It’s okay. It’s just sandbag puppets used for venting.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes,” Pharoah replied softly.

“Hah!” Brazil laughed. “I don’t blame her! I’d be scared too!”

But why are they all staring at the door? Daydream thought. ‘As if they are watching us.’

She felt uneasy.

After the brief commotion, everyone became quiet again, and the faint sound of tumbling plates could be heard downstairs.

Clang! Clang!

That strange figure must have returned to its former shape and started to prowl the hallways again.

However, it was wandering in the corridors downstairs as if it were destined to roam the empty third floor forever.

“Could we rest?” Brazil spoke up suddenly. “I-I can hardly walk anymore.”

Pharoah shone his flashlight on Brazil for a moment, and he noticed that his eyes were slack and his pale face was covered in blood. His legs were trembling violently as if the adrenaline had just caught up to him.

“We should find a place to hide and rest,” Pharoah said.

‘Maybe the counselling room. There might be gauze to help Brazil within there, but…’

The monster here might be leading us there, Pharoah thought.

Besides, he had doubts about Brazil’s true identity.

“I’ll be hanging out in the corridor. Go if you want,” Bright said as she walked to the door of the venting room and sat down against the wall.

“We should go take a look at the venting room while we’re here,” Daydream said.

Pharoah nodded wordlessly, supporting Brazil with his arms and pushing open the door of the venting room.

The venting room was small, less than ten square metres, and the surrounding walls were completely sealed. It was wrapped in soft leather to prevent students from being injured when venting.

Daydream felt weird being in such a strange, windowless room. She felt as if she were standing in the maw of some huge creature.

When her eyes fell upon the sandbag puppets, goosebumps appeared all over her body in an instant.

‘T-they moved!’

‘When I looked at them through the crack of the door, they were all staring at me! And now, they’ve turned their backs!’

“W-wait!” Daydream cried out. “Don’t go in! Those puppets moved! Let’s get out of here.”

“Whatever, man,” Brazil scoffed. “I just want to rest! You’re annoying. Do you know that? You don’t even seem concerned that I was dragged away by one of those… ghosts!”

“Yeah, right, it moved,” Brazil laughed as he kicked the puppet beside him. Next, you’re going to tell me it’s going to jump and kill me, right?”

“Hey, quit it,” Pharoah ordered.

Pharoah knelt down and checked the puppets, then walked back to Daydream and hugged her.

“Don’t be scared, baby. You might have seen it wrong in a panic just now. If you’re scared of them, we can just stay by the door.”

She nodded and left the room with Pharoah sitting opposite Bright.

Pharoah sat beside Daydream and held her hand, saying, “We’re safe for now. As long as we camp out here until dawn, everything will be over.”

“I hope,” Daydream responded, leaning on Pharoah’s shoulder.

She felt warm and safe in Pharoah’s arms and glanced at Bright, who sat opposite her.

‘Was she trying to destroy our relationship? Pharoah seems trustworthy now. I find it hard to trust her instead.’

A wave of drowsiness washed over her, and although she forced herself to stay awake, she couldn’t help but fall into her lover’s arms.

“Sleep. I’ll be here.”

“Mmm…” she replied, and soon, her vision went black.

There is no way urban legends could have body temperature, she thought as she fell into the void.