Chapter 33

The cat explained, "Only novices get a safe room; it's the dungeon's way of protecting beginners. You won't have one anymore."

Liu Zhiyi felt a pang of regret; after all, in her own dungeon, that safe room of hers hadn't held out long before it was destroyed.

Cat: "Your safe room was a special case — you could say you were unlucky. Right from the start your mother had you locked on inside it, so she knew where it was."

Reading between its words —

Liu Zhiyi: "Normally, then, a villain boss doesn't know where the safe room is?"

Cat: "Right. My body's in a special state now — I don't count as a player. You saw it just now, outside: I needed Big Sister Ma to bring me in, or I couldn't have gotten into the safe room either."

Wait… if the villain boss doesn't know where the safe room is, and can't get in either…

Liu Zhiyi touched her neck.

Cat: "But these bosses will rack their brains and use every means they can to find where your safe room is."

Liu Zhiyi thought of the oxygen tube that had been looped around her neck.

—Squeak.

She heard a sound hard to describe — but one she'd often heard at the hospital: the wheels of a bed grinding across the floor as it was pushed.

Liu Zhiyi turned her gaze ahead, into the depths of the dark, where the sound came from.

—Squeak.

The head of a hospital bed came through out of the dark.

"…Ho… ho."

Liu Zhiyi heard again that breathing that seemed on the edge of suffocation.

—Squeak.

The bed stopped in front of the nurses' station.

She saw someone lying face-up on it — or rather, a fish with its mouth agape.

Big Sister Ma: "…Dad?"

Cat: "Ah. Found us."

The fish lying on its back flopped a few times and turned its head toward the nurses' station.

"Fancy that…"

Big Sister Ma's body jerked hard.

Ma Qirong: "Where are you, Qiao?"

As he spoke he heaved a violent breath, cheeks puffing several times, giving off the ho, ho sound.

Ma Qirong: "Qiao, Qiao, I'm so scared. Your mother's gone, your brother won't see to me… what am I to do."

The cat sighed again.

"Get ready to run."

Liu Zhiyi turned and seized Big Sister Ma's arm.

Cat: "It's no use."

—Crack, crack.

The fissures on the two-faced Buddha were splitting open.

Liu Zhiyi suddenly thought of her mother — of how, once, that "mama" too had called her by her pet name like this.

Ma Qirong: "My Qiao, daddy was wrong, he was wrong, save me, save me…"

Big Sister Ma's face was suddenly streaming with tears; she screamed, and the number on the blood-pressure monitor shot straight past 150.

"You're doing this to me again — doing this to me again!"

Too cunning. Too cunning.

This trick again.

Liu Zhiyi thought.

But why was it that no one could get past this level?

Mama.

Liu Zhiyi stared at the cracked statue; Big Sister Ma knocked her hand away and rushed out.

Cat: "Zhizhi — haven't you long understood this feeling?"

Liu Zhiyi grabbed again, but she was shoved aside once more, and could only watch, wide-eyed, as Big Sister Ma ran out of the nurses' station.

Almost the instant Big Sister Ma stepped out of it, the two-faced Buddha broke apart into pieces.

And Liu Zhiyi, without the least hesitation, ran to her grandmother and pushed the wheelchair off in the opposite direction.

This was Big Sister Ma's choice; if it had been her own gravely ill mother crying for rescue, Liu Zhiyi herself would have rushed in.

But she still felt awful, terribly awful.

That helplessness surged up in her heart again.

She ran a long stretch, and heard Big Sister Ma's screams and wails grow farther and farther off.

Guilt and anger seemed to turn into little knives, cutting at her heart without pause.

But Liu Zhiyi didn't look back; she pushed the wheelchair straight into the stairwell.

Before the nurses'-station safe room was destroyed, she'd been studying escape routes.

The elevator took time to open and close, and its floor display would give away her position; the stairwell had a fire door that was loud to push, which could also warn her early.

And besides… Liu Zhiyi could feel that a dungeon boss was generally more interested in its own acquaintances, and would chase them first.

Just as now: she'd stood in the stairwell a while and Ma Qirong hadn't come after her — he'd gone to find Big Sister Ma.

Cat: "Your choice this time wasn't wrong. You can't save Big Sister Ma; in a dungeon like this, no one can save anyone. Obsession — no amount of talk helps, if a person can't let go themselves."

Liu Zhiyi: "I know."

She brushed the loose hair off her grandmother's face; pushed along in the chair all this while, her grandmother was still fast asleep.

"It just feels terrible."

Even knowing, rationally, that this was the best choice, and that Big Sister Ma had run out on her own, this — abandoning Big Sister Ma to save herself — still weighed on her conscience.

Cat: "A dungeon is a cruel place, that's all."

Liu Zhiyi reached out to lift the wheelchair, throwing all the thoughts in her heart to the back of her mind.

There was no time now for melancholy; she had to get her grandmother somewhere safe, fast, and then come out alone to find a way to deal with Teacher Yang and Ma Qirong.

The wheelchair was heavy, and with a person in it, it pressed harder on Liu Zhiyi's already aching back.

She staggered the moment she hugged the chair up.

Cat: "Slow down, slow down — why not just push it? Carrying it like that is dangerous; you could both go rolling down."

In fact, the moment Liu Zhiyi had lifted the wheelchair a little, both her arms began to go soft and shake, her vision blacking out in waves.

There was no help for it; she couldn't manage it — so the cat braced the front wheels from below while she pushed the chair from behind to lift it.

One person, one cat, calling out "one, two, three," they eased the wheelchair down the stairs one step at a time.

If lifting a wheelchair was this hard — back when her grandmother was too ill to move much and her mother had brought her home to care for her, how had her mother moved her up and down the stairs?

"So hard."

Her chest suddenly began to speak.

Her chest: "Mama, when you were looking after Grandma, was it this hard for you too?"

Liu Zhiyi stopped short.

The cat gave a low meow.

"Rein it in — don't let your grandma hear what your body's saying."

Liu Zhiyi quickly looked at her grandmother, and once she'd made sure she was still asleep, began to breathe in deep gulps and empty her mind.

The cat's voice sounded in Liu Zhiyi's head: "That's just how I watched Big Sister Ma's chest talk, and it broke her father's nerve."

Liu Zhiyi: "Sorry. I'll try to control it."

"Do your best — though I think it'll be hard." The cat sighed. "A long illness at the bedside leaves no dutiful child."

The words truly cut deep.

Liu Zhiyi felt there was another meaning under them, and yet felt there was some truth in them too.

Even her mother — someone who'd tended her grandmother around the clock after she fell ill — would sometimes, on the phone, complain to her a little that her grandmother's temper had turned odd since the illness, that she'd gotten a good deal harder to care for.

Her chest: "After all, Mama's nearly sixty herself; staying up night after night to tend someone, she couldn't hold up either."

Her chest: "The state Grandma's in now — even out of the dungeon she won't be able to fully manage on her own; do I have to ask my boss for leave again? And who knows if I can even get it extended…"

The cat gave a meow.

Liu Zhiyi clapped a hand over her own chest.

She spoke up first and raised her voice, meaning to drown out the sound from her chest and change the subject at the same time, so her mind would stop dwelling on her grandmother.

"Was I used?"

Cat: "You mean Ma Qirong hanging the oxygen tube on your neck, or Teacher Yang's misdirection while she chased you?"

The former she'd realized — but Teacher Yang's misdirection?

Liu Zhiyi thought back carefully. After she'd shaken off Teacher Yang's pursuit on re-entering the dungeon, she'd gone downstairs and found the safe room and her grandmother — really… rather easily?

Cat: "Teacher Yang's clever. She knows exactly where you patients and patients' families hurt."

The more Liu Zhiyi thought, the more it felt off.

Cat: "Her skill leaves you families no way to hide your true thoughts. Do you think it's likelier she lost you in the chase, or that she let you go on purpose?"

Liu Zhiyi pushed her grandmother onto the stairwell's rest landing and propped up her head.

"Teacher Yang and the others can't find the safe room, but I'm different — I can not only get in, I can bring things in… a misstep. I shouldn't have gone into that safe room."

Cat: "What do you think Teacher Yang's aim is?"

Liu Zhiyi turned her head; the cat seemed to have realized something, but it wouldn't say, and instead led her to think it out.

Liu Zhiyi: "…To drive us apart?"

Many teams and groups were like that — not easily destroyed by outside force, but collapsing, often enough, from within.

Cat: "Near enough. And what else?"

Liu Zhiyi thought some more. From the start of the dungeon until now, she and Big Sister Ma had both been infected by that sound wave into the "saying one thing, meaning another" state, but neither of their bodies had mutated; it was Ma Qirong instead who…

Liu Zhiyi looked at her grandmother in the wheelchair.

"…Teacher Yang's target is these sick old people?"

Cat: "Mm. That's what I think."

Liu Zhiyi went back over every clue in her head, turning over what Teacher Yang's obsession really was.

Liu Zhiyi: "Shen Songyue told me that for someone gravely ill like Teacher Yang, death might be a release. But…"

Thinking back over the things Teacher Yang had done — the ones she'd warped were all sick old people —

Liu Zhiyi found herself doubting it.

"I don't think she seems to be seeking death. It's more like she wants to drag people down into it with her — to make others become like she is."

The cat didn't take up the question of Teacher Yang with her; instead it said one thing.

"You've probably been taken in by Shen Songyue."

Liu Zhiyi: "Huh?"

"If death were really a release, Teacher Yang wouldn't have mutated." The cat let out a long sigh. "There's hatred in her heart."

Hatred?

Liu Zhiyi: "I heard Teacher Yang curse her son — but afterward, out of the dungeon, her son wanted to come in, and Teacher Yang doesn't want him to… what is it Teacher Yang hates?"

"She hates fate — hates why she alone should be so unlucky, why she should come down with an illness like this…"

The cat sprang onto her shoulder and looked behind her.

"So she wants to drag everyone down with her, so that no one gets any release."

A chill shot up Liu Zhiyi's back; she turned around.

In the wall corner the emergency-exit sign flickered, lighting a small patch of wall; a louvered cover had fallen to the floor, and from the smoke-vent louvers in the wall a tongue poked out.

"Die… die…"

The sound wave echoed round and round the stairwell.

And in that cramped space, Liu Zhiyi at last heard clearly the whimper buried under the cursing.

"Die… why me… die… why me…"

Liu Zhiyi pushed the wheelchair straight at the fire door in front of her.

Her grandmother had Shen Songyue's coat on, so Teacher Yang shouldn't be able to see her; she'd find somewhere steady to hide her grandmother in a moment.

Her mind raced through the plan.

The fire door pushed open before her, pale-yellow light coming through the gap, her soles tapping on tile — and Liu Zhiyi stopped short and tugged the wheelchair to slow it.

But even so, she couldn't quite hold it, and it bumped lightly into a couch.

—Bang.

Behind her, the security door closed, and the scent of osmanthus spread through the room.

They were home.

Looking at the familiar furnishings of home, Liu Zhiyi stood frozen in place.