Love NPC in Nightmare Game - Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Doll’s House 9

A group of cute little children surrounded a handsome young man. The young man’s clear and melodious voice echoed through the children’s playground.

He seemed to be telling the children a story, his expression serious and focused. The children sat cross-legged on the ground, looking up and listening intently.

This scene looked very warm from a distance.

But as he continued telling the story, the children’s expressions seemed to become a bit off.

At first, only one or two children frowned, as if a bit puzzled, why did this story sound so strange?

By the time Zhou Zhou finished the first story, several children were clinging to their little companions in horror.

Although Zhou Zhou noticed the children’s abnormality, the two children hugging each other also looked very cute, with their chubby baby faces pressed together, doubling the cuteness.

When he finished the second bedtime story, the children were already huddled together, trembling.

“Now I’ll start telling the third story. The third story is more interesting than the first two, so listen carefully,” Zhou Zhou said, noticing the children seemed to have scooted back. He also scooted towards them, wanting to sit closer so they could hear more clearly.

On the first day he came here, although Zhou Zhou felt these were just small stories and had no other feelings about them.

But for Ke Li to be so terrified after just a few glances that he had to call Xue Li over to keep him company, these “selected” horror stories were clearly quite powerful.

Not to mention that the current listeners were a group of children whose imagination for horror stories would be even richer. Although surrounded by their little companions, these stories were really, really scary.

“…Xiao Hai felt that this motel was strange everywhere, so in the middle of the night he secretly called his friend and told him everything he had seen at the motel. But when his friend heard the name of the motel, he was horrified and shouted loudly on the phone for Xiao Hai to leave immediately. He had never sent Xiao Hai any free motel voucher, and the motel had been abandoned a year ago after the innkeeper’s family of four was killed. Xiao Hai was scared and also puzzled, who had put the motel’s free voucher in his house?”

Zhou Zhou paused, seeing the children staring at him wide-eyed, as if also wondering about the answer to this question. He then said slowly, “At that moment, someone suddenly patted him on the back and said in a ghastly voice, ‘It was me who put it there.’ Xiao Hai was startled and turned around to see the innkeeper’s family of four standing behind him…”

“Waaah waaah~” One child finally couldn’t hold it in anymore and started wailing loudly.

The other children also huddled together, burying their faces in each other’s arms and crying loudly.

Zhou Zhou stopped the unfinished story and looked helplessly at the room full of children crying very sadly.

“What’s wrong with you all?” The culprit was even puzzled, the story he told shouldn’t have been the kind to move people to tears, right?

The children didn’t speak, only continuing to cry. It seemed they finally understood why Xiao Jin had cried after returning yesterday.

This adult was so bad, deliberately scaring the children by telling them ghost stories.

“Don’t cry, I’ll tell you other stories, okay?” Zhou Zhou wanted to go hug and comfort the children, but no matter which child he approached, they only cried louder and then crawled away.

In the end, he could only stand dumbly in the middle, watching the children wailing on the ground and lamely telling them not to cry.

Obviously, his feeble reassurances had no effect.

What should he do now? Zhou Zhou had never encountered this situation before. Just yesterday he could console one child just fine, so he thought he could handle consoling a group too. But why had it turned out like this today?

The collective crying of the group of children was like jarring noise echoing through the entire house.

For a while, no matter which player’s location, they either looked grim, as if expecting some anomaly to occur next, or were simply terrified, hearing these sounds in the middle of the night was truly not good for the heart.

Maybe he should find someone else for help.

Out of ideas, Zhou Zhou searched for an exit in the spacious children’s playground, since having the children keep crying wasn’t good, and they wouldn’t let him approach them.

Finally, on a wall painted with clouds, he found a small exit about the same height as the children. Zhou Zhou could only bend over to go through. Outside, there were little steps leading down, and after going through another door, he found himself in the hallway on the fifth floor.

At this moment, Alvia was also walking up the stairs and happened to meet Zhou Zhou, who was standing in the fifth floor hallway looking around as if searching for something.

“Al, help me quickly!” Upon seeing Al, Zhou Zhou hurried over and spoke to him as he pulled on his sleeve, leading him towards the door he had come through.

“What’s wrong?”

“The children suddenly started crying, but no matter how I try to comfort them, it doesn’t work. Can you help me?” Zhou Zhou explained as he brought Al to the previous door.

Al had already heard the children’s cries echoing through the house, it had been just one child yesterday, but today it had become a whole group.

But when they reached the door Zhou Zhou had come through, Zhou Zhou found he couldn’t open it no matter how hard he tried the doorknob, even though it hadn’t been locked when he had come out, and the door hadn’t been closed either. Why couldn’t it open now?

Seeing Zhou Zhou keep trying to turn the doorknob in vain, Al glanced at the door in front of them, which looked the same as the other room doors.

“Let me,” Alvia said.

Zhou Zhou knew he was probably about to kick down the door again, but since the door wouldn’t open now, it seemed they could only use this method. The children’s cries continued, and he also wanted to hurry and take Al to find those children so they would stop crying.

“Boom!”

The door was kicked down again. Zhou Zhou quickly peeked inside, only to find it was just an ordinary room, not the small staircase and door he had seen before.

“It’s different now. When I came out earlier, it didn’t look like this,” Zhou Zhou said in puzzlement.

Alvia also saw the room’s layout, which was about the same as the other rooms, with no sign of any children.

Zhou Zhou entered the room, searching everywhere to see if he could find the small door, but there was no trace of it.

“Let’s go to the first floor first,” Alvia said, his icy blue eyes flashing. It seemed that after Zhou Zhou had come out, the room had been moved.

After most people were moved, they came out and returned to the first floor again. Only the two separate players were missing, leaving just Zhou Zhou’s team and Sharp family of four here.

Upon learning from Zhou Zhou that there was also a children’s playground here, everyone wondered if the exit might be there, since they had searched everywhere else and found nothing.

“Zhou Zhou, what’s with these crying sounds?” Xue Li asked in puzzlement after finding out Zhou Zhou had been sent to the children’s playground. The crying hadn’t stopped, leaving everyone on edge.

Zhou Zhou looked at Xue Li, his long eyelashes fluttering innocently, appearing bewildered. “I don’t know either. They just suddenly started crying, so I came out to find help, but then I couldn’t find that room anymore.”

“Maybe these sounds are their way of scaring us?” Eddie speculated, stroking his chin. “After all, the sound of children crying in the middle of the night makes it easy to imagine horrific scenes.”

Ke Li looked at the seemingly clueless Zhou Zhou and suddenly thought of something. “Zhou Zhou, what were you doing with those children?”

“I was just telling them a few bedtime stories.”

Ke Li: Could it be…those stories?

Ke Li suddenly understood why the children were crying so miserably and hadn’t stopped for so long. No matter which child, encountering someone who told horror stories as bedtime stories in the middle of the night, it would be stranger if they didn’t cry.

However, Zhou Zhou was his teammate, so he could only sigh in sympathy for the children suffering from the “bedtime stories.”

Seeing everyone still wondering about the crying sounds, Ke Li could only silently swallow the truth. They were fine themselves, but if the other players found out it was Zhou Zhou who made the children cry, possibly causing them to miss important clues, they might blame him.

“Now we need to find that room. There might be clues about the tree hole inside,” Xia Yan said.

“But how do we find it?” asked one of the other Sharp family youths.

“Yeah, we’ve searched all the rooms, and no one has seen a place like a children’s playground.”

The Sharp family members all looked at Zhou Zhou, but he didn’t know where that room was now either.

“For the past two nights, we’ve been moved around. The children’s playground may have also moved locations. If we search on the first floor, the room might have been moved to the second floor. When we search on the second floor, it may have moved back to the first floor again,” Alvia suggested, seeing the Sharp family looking at Zhou Zhou.

“Then how do we find it? With so many rooms and only ten of us, even if each person searches one room, it’s impossible for us to check all the rooms at the same time before the children’s playground moves elsewhere,” Eddie said with a frown, also feeling this was a tough problem.

“And tomorrow is the last day. If we still can’t find it, all of us will be eliminated,” Heya added.

At this, everyone fell silent.

Alvia looked at the people present, all pondering how to find the children’s playground, but didn’t speak.

Actually, the room movements followed a pattern. Before finding Zhou Zhou, he had checked rooms on different floors and confirmed his guess. As long as he found the pattern and timing of the movements, he could calculate the current location of the children’s playground starting from the room on the fifth floor that Zhou Zhou had come out of.

As Zhou Zhou pondered, he suddenly looked down at his own hands, then glanced around as if searching for something.

“What’s wrong?” Alvia asked.

“I just remembered I left my little yellow duck in that children’s playground. That should count as returning the doll to its owner, right?” Zhou Zhou asked uncertainly.

Based on how others completed their tasks, he should have returned the little yellow duck to the child called Xiao Jin. But Xiao Jin wasn’t there tonight, and the other children were all crying, so he didn’t have a chance to have them pass it on before leaving.

“Just check your task panel,” Alvia said.

Zhou Zhou immediately opened his task panel and saw that he had completed this task, relieving his worries.

“It seems those children helped me return the little yellow duck to Xiao Jin.”

Alvia suddenly remembered he still had a frog in his pocket. Perhaps due to Zeus’ influence, nothing had happened to him tonight after being moved to other rooms, giving him time to observe the patterns.

“Doll’s House, doll’s House…” Xue Li muttered repeatedly as she paced back and forth, looking very strange.

Just as Ke Li was sighing over Zhou Zhou being a natural black comedy protagonist, he noticed his sister’s abnormal behavior. “Xue Li, what are you doing?”

Xue Li suddenly paused. “I remember now.”

“Remember what?” Ke Li was puzzled.

“Do you still remember the toy we played with as kids?”

“Which toy?”

Xue Li immediately began gesturing to Ke Li. “That house-shaped toy that could be disassembled, where you could move the little rooms around.”

Ke Li started recalling. “I vaguely remember something like that.”

“That house looked exactly the same as this house we’re in now. I felt it was familiar even before entering.”

“Oh right, the one you broke after just playing with it for two days, and then you blamed me and told our parents I broke it,” Ke Li said.

Xue Li: “…There’s no need to remember it so clearly.”

Hearing they seemed to have made a discovery, Eddie immediately came over. “What toy are you talking about that’s like this house?”

Xue Li nodded seriously. “Yeah, it was a toy we played with as kids, with a similar structure to this house. The rooms were little cubes that could move left and right, while the rooms on the left and right sides moved up and down.”

“Does this house move the same way?” Zhou Zhou asked, understanding.

“In theory, it should. Let’s try to find the movement pattern first. Maybe we can use that pattern to also find the children’s playground,” Xue Li said.

Xia Yan stood up and addressed everyone. “Now, who still remembers what their previous room looked like? We can deduce the movement pattern based on the previous and current locations.”

“But don’t all the rooms here look the same?” Eddie asked in confusion.

Xue Li said exasperatedly, “How could they all be the same? The sizes are different, the decorations inside are different, and even the graffiti on the walls varies.”

Eddie: “Then do you remember the decorations in the room you were just moved from?”

Xue Li: “…No, I don’t.”

Eddie raised his eyebrows, giving a look that said, “See, you don’t know either.”

Of those present, only Zhou Zhou, Heya, Alvia and Xia Yan still remembered, so starting from the first room they entered yesterday and the subsequent room locations, they began searching for the movement pattern.

After Zhou Zhou was transported yesterday, the room where he stayed with the little boy was originally on the first floor, but now that room was on the third floor, and the other people’s rooms had also changed positions.

Based on these room position changes, they found the rooms moved in an S-shaped pattern, continuously upwards, and after reaching the fifth floor, would start again from the first room on the first floor.

“So does this mean we can find the children’s playground now?” Eddie could barely contain his excitement, having found the pattern and being close to clearing the stage.

Xia Yan found a piece of paper and a crayon previously used by the children, continuously sketching the room movement pattern on the paper. “No, we’re still missing some necessary factors.”

Alvia glanced at the time, it would be daytime again soon. They had spent too much time finding the room pattern. If they delayed any longer, they might truly be unable to clear within the time limit.

“Time, the timing of the room movements hasn’t been factored in. The rooms move every half hour,” Alvia reminded again.

Xia Yan looked deeply at Alvia, his lips curling slightly as if smiling at something, then lowered his head to continue writing and drawing on the paper.

But before he could calculate the current location of the children’s playground, daylight came, and the crying sounds echoing through the house finally stopped.

Everyone frowned as they saw the environment brighten instantly, wondering if there would be another game waiting for them today like yesterday’s.

They had already spent two days, leaving only one day and night. They had to find the children’s playground within one day and locate the exit inside it.

And in the worst case, if their guesses were wrong and the exit wasn’t in the children’s playground, they might have to spend more time searching elsewhere, wasting every precious second.

As expected, speak of the devil, the sound of tinkling came from the stairs, and a doll peeked its head out from the staircase, cautiously looking this way.

“What’s this? Yesterday that doll had the demeanor of a mischievous child, but today it looks…” Like it’s afraid of something? Xue Li said in puzzlement.

“Let’s play a game together,” the doll said in a small voice.

If they weren’t all staring at the doll waiting for it to speak, its voice would have been too soft to hear.

Seeing the doll wasn’t as arrogant today, Eddie squatted down and asked, “Can we not play?”

The doll clung to the steps for a while, its head slightly turning to look at Zhou Zhou standing behind, seeming to sense the doll’s gaze. Zhou Zhou immediately smiled at it.

It was a warm smile, but the doll shrank back in fright, saying in a tearful voice, “Okay.”

Eddie was just habitually trying to bargain and didn’t expect the other side to actually compromise. Hearing the doll’s words, he was startled. “Really?”

The others also didn’t expect to be able to avoid playing the game and looked pleasantly surprised amidst their shock.

Zhou Zhou took a step towards the doll. He recognized its voice as the blue-eyed blonde girl from last night and wanted to approach and ask if the other children were still crying. But the doll suddenly turned and ran upstairs, calling out in a crying voice as it fled, “We won’t play with you, you can play with them instead.”

By the time Eddie looked up the stairs, the doll was gone.

“It sure ran fast. Who did it just say we should play with?” Eddie scratched his head and turned to ask his companions.

The others shook their heads, having no idea who “they” were.

Just as everyone was pondering over the dolls not intending to play games with them anymore, but then mentioning some other beings, the surroundings instantly darkened again.

“Did it get dark so quickly? I felt like daytime had just begun,” Ke Li said in puzzlement.

“No, a large cloud has covered the sky above this house,” Heya said from the window, folding his arms.

“Is it going to rain?” Eddie also asked in confusion.

“Come to hell with me~” An abnormally familiar voice rang out from outside the house.

It was those large ghosts. They appeared from somewhere, drifting towards the house in droves.

“Is it starting again? Will we ever get a break? This is even worse than playing dodgeball with the dolls,” Xue Li complained. These massive ghosts the past two nights had really been too much of a nuisance, and unexpectedly they had come out during the day too.

“I hope they’re not going to shake the house all day. Even if we take turns at the door to distract the ghosts’ attention, it would still waste a lot of time.”

Just as everyone was bracing the furniture inside, and Zhou Zhou went to the door as usual, ready to run out once the ghosts started shaking the house, the ghosts didn’t shake the building. Instead, they slowly approached.

Then they extended their jiojio through the windows, actually trying to enter from the windows.

These illogically-behaving ghosts left everyone stunned for a few seconds. Xue Li waved her hand dismissively. “No worries, they’re too big to get through.”

No sooner had she spoken when the first large ghost that extended its jiojio through the window suddenly became slender, then slithered inside through the window frame.

“Damn it! Quick, get them out!” Eddie shouted, grabbing a chair and rushing to the window, using both hands to push the ghost back out with the chair.

There were six windows on the first floor, and besides the one Eddie was dealing with, the other windows also had ghosts probing their jiojio inside.

Zhou Zhou stood by the door, also hearing the doorknob turning, it seemed there were ghosts trying to enter from the door as well.

Alvia kicked out a ghost that had half its body stuck through a window, but these ghosts had a very special structure that couldn’t be kicked apart. After being kicked away, they immediately tried entering through that window again.

While Zhou Zhou kept the door closed to prevent the outside ghosts from coming in, he looked up at the ceiling.

Now there were seven ghosts total trying to enter the first floor, so where were the other ghosts?

This building had many windows, with each room having windows. Although much smaller than the first floor windows, the ghosts could stretch and shrink themselves, so had the remaining dozen or so ghosts already entered through the upper floor windows?