Chapter 38

Liu Zhiyi still remembered the floor Big Sister Ma had pointed out earlier, the last one her grandmother had run onto, so she headed there.

She'd just pushed open the fire door and run a few steps when her bones began to ache, and the walls falling away behind her slowed down bit by bit.

The prop's window had passed, and the aftereffect was setting in.

She took one shaky step forward, but her legs really couldn't hold her, and she dropped to her knees.

Liu Zhiyi fell and rolled once across the floor, still not forgetting to keep hold of the phone.

[This is a magic phone. It can call anyone (any ghost) you wish to reach, and bring them to your side.]

[But one person can use it only twice — once to call someone (a ghost) you love, once to call someone (a ghost) you hate.]

Was there any controlling who the call went to?

The thought flashed through Liu Zhiyi's mind the moment she read the prop description.

Nearly every prop she'd come across had a side effect.

But the side effect of the phone in her hand wasn't written out very clearly. Going by how Shen Songyue had given her the coat and specially explained its backstory —

Liu Zhiyi guessed that because she didn't fully understand Ma Qirong's story, the phone's description was vague too.

She lay on the floor a while, and once some strength came back into her arms and legs, she braced herself up and crawled to hide under a hospital bed off to one side.

The cat really did have a knack for luring ghosts; running on the stairs, Liu Zhiyi could still hear the whistle of wind behind her.

Now, hidden under the bed, she heard the cat's cries from over by the fire door only at first, and they soon faded off.

It must have drawn Big Sister Ma away.

Easier in her mind, Liu Zhiyi gave her full attention to the phone.

She could roughly grasp some of the dungeon's regularities: dungeon or prop, it all came from what a person thought and felt.

Really, understand one person and you could understand the dungeon and the props.

The hard part was how to understand a person.

Big Sister Ma had said her father called his granddaughter.

Was that love or hate?

By normal logic, the one Ma Qirong loved most should be his son; and the phone could be used only twice — rule out the loved one, and only the hated one was left.

Ma Qirong hated his granddaughter?

Impossible. From what Big Sister Ma said, it was the granddaughter who'd noticed something wrong with him and gotten him to the hospital.

That didn't sound like hate either.

Liu Zhiyi's own family ties were fairly simple and harmonious; she really couldn't follow Ma Qirong's thinking.

So this was what it meant to grasp the principle and then find, the moment you tried it, that it wasn't so simple.

Liu Zhiyi pressed the buttons on the phone.

It was still one of those old button phones for the elderly; she hadn't used one in a long time, and after some fumbling she found the call log.

The call log had only two calls on it.

Liu Zhiyi had worried that, not knowing Ma Qirong's family, even with the phone she wouldn't know whose number was whose.

As it turned out, both calls were labeled.

She glanced at the labels and froze.

Yaya, Son.

Yaya should be the granddaughter, and Son was most likely Ma Qirong's boy.

Neither call had connected.

He'd called them both — so which one did he hate?

Liu Zhiyi opened Son's number and tried dialing it.

Not long after she placed the call, the other end played the tone for "the number you have dialed is not in the service area."

Liu Zhiyi gave up the idea of finding a loophole.

The thing was, calling needed a number; her grandmother had no phone, so how could she call her?

She was still thinking when she saw the phone screen jump to the dialing page, a number popping up.

Only, the number was all asterisks, and Liu Zhiyi couldn't make head or tail of it.

So she opened the labels for Yaya and Son, and sure enough, their numbers were all asterisks too.

Liu Zhiyi thought a long while, and thought of Ma Qirong's tangled attitude toward Big Sister Ma — endlessly wringing his own daughter dry, yet when he saw she might die, going to save her.

Like hate, and like love.

And being left to rot in the hospital by his son — was there really not the least trace of hate in that?

The instant the thought formed, the watch buzzed.

Liu Zhiyi knew this routine by now, and opened the prop tab.

Two more lines had appeared under the phone's description.

[Love and hate sometimes can't be told apart — it comes down to whether you love more or hate more, and that decides where your call finally lands.]

[Why not give it a try, and see who your call reaches?]

Full of malice.

Liu Zhiyi looked at the phone screen.

But she still wanted to try. Before entering the dungeon, maybe even she'd have found it hard to say for certain whom she hated.

But now, Liu Zhiyi knew perfectly well whom she hated.

The worst outcome was the call going to Teacher Yang — and she'd already cut off Teacher Yang's tongue before, so a few more stabs now would just be icing on the cake.

With that thought, Liu Zhiyi pressed the call button.

—Beep.

As it sounded, a countdown appeared on the phone screen.

A countdown — thinking of Ma Qirong's two calls that hadn't connected,

even a call that didn't go through probably still used up a use.

Liu Zhiyi listened closely to the sound on the other end; her mind had already run through many scenes it might be — Teacher Yang's cursing, or some garbled scream, or a ghost face lunging out of nowhere…

She'd even taken out the fruit knife, gesturing with it in the dark.

But what she heard was a man's voice.

"Hello, is this Liu Zhiyi?"

Liu Zhiyi froze; her fierceness drained clean away in that instant, and she stammered back a question.

"…Who's this?"

The man's voice: "I'm Teacher Yang's son. I saw your name come up on my phone and I could hardly believe it…"

"Officer Shen! Miss Liu's calling me!" the man's voice pulled away suddenly, as if speaking to someone else.

Footsteps flooded in from the other end, along with Shen Songyue's voice.

"Ask about the dungeon."

The man's voice: "How's my mom doing? Can you tell me?"

Liu Zhiyi's mind went blank again; she felt it was unbelievable.

"How can it be you? How could I have called you?"

The man's voice: "What?"

Liu Zhiyi was baffled, but she didn't dwell on it.

"Give the phone to Shen Songyue."

Shen Songyue's voice came from far off: "You hold the phone, this call's for you; if I take it I'm afraid it'll trip some mechanic in the prop and cut us off. Liu Zhiyi, run through the dungeon situation quickly."

Liu Zhiyi ordered her words, but with Teacher Yang's son there, she left out that she meant to kill Teacher Yang and what the phone prop could do, giving only the broad picture.

Shen Songyue seemed to catch Liu Zhiyi's intent, and answered obliquely.

"Good — just do as you're thinking, don't worry too much about what others feel. Once you're out, I'll help you tie off the loose ends."

Once they'd finished, Liu Zhiyi thought of the phone's power, and after turning it over, decided she'd better warn Teacher Yang's son.

"This phone can bring people from outside the dungeon in. Be careful."

In a situation like this, Teacher Yang's son coming into the dungeon wasn't necessarily a good thing.

Liu Zhiyi: "If you can stay out, you'd better—"

—Beep.

Before she could finish, the call's countdown ran out.

Liu Zhiyi stared at the phone a few seconds, vexed.

She'd braced herself in advance, but having the call go to someone other than she'd imagined was still pretty maddening.

Why had it gone to Teacher Yang's son?

Why had Ma Qirong called his granddaughter?

Liu Zhiyi went back over her view of Teacher Yang once more, and the relationship between Big Sister Ma and her father.

It seemed… Big Sister Ma had gone mad on learning Ma Qirong had called his granddaughter, and killed her own father.

What was the dungeon's ultimate aim?

To break people's defenses, to make them fall apart…

Liu Zhiyi looked at the watch.

She saw two icons had appeared in the task bar. The first was a shrunken blood-pressure monitor, with a line after it.

[Love a person and you love all that's theirs — seeing you makes me think of my granddaughter, and all at once I want very much to see her.]

The second icon was a little watch, with a line after it too.

[Hate a person and you hate all that's theirs — hating someone, how could you want things easy for her? A call to bring her over is hardly enough.]

Liu Zhiyi drew a sharp breath.

Little as she wanted to admit it, when her grandmother mutated in the memory replay, she really had hated Teacher Yang bitterly; for a moment she'd even wanted to take revenge, to make her taste, too, what it was like to watch someone you love be hurt.

But she'd never have imagined that this hatred would, in the end, take form in this way.

"The dungeon is fair to everyone — it means, equally, to break every single person's composure."

The cat crawled in under the hospital bed.

"But isn't that just as well." The cat licked a paw. "The way this dungeon carries on, Teacher Yang and her son might well go down the same road as Big Sister Ma and her father — maybe you won't have to lift a hand, and the two of them will tear each other apart."

Cat: "My guess is Teacher Yang realized this, which is why she wouldn't let her son come in."

"Was that your plan too, wanting to send Teacher Yang's son in at the start?" Liu Zhiyi shot back.

Cat: "Not ours — Shen Songyue's. That woman's a lot colder than she looks to you. Though I'm no better, really; sometimes you just have to weigh one thing against another."

Thinking of the scene of Big Sister Ma and her father hurting each other and then fusing, Liu Zhiyi suddenly doubted whether she could get her grandmother to come to terms with things.

Liu Zhiyi: "It's easy to talk about other people, but I don't have much confidence about myself either."

She cupped the phone in both hands.

"I thought my first call would go to Grandma."

Her mind had been full of her grandmother — worrying how her mutation was going, whether she'd be afraid running alone through this pitch-black hospital, whether her body still ached…

But the instant she dialed, she'd been afraid.

How was she to talk to her grandmother?

Apologize, and say I don't blame you, Mama's death was only an accident.

Or, you've run off on your own, I can't stop worrying, come back quickly.

A thousand words gathered in her heart, and she didn't know how to get any of them out.

Because these words couldn't even convince Liu Zhiyi herself.

Liu Zhiyi: "After Grandma fell ill, some things did change."

In feeling and in reason, she wanted to do all she could to care for her grandmother, to make her happy, to make her comfortable.

But rushing back to the hospital after a night spent handling her mother's affairs, in the snores and sighs of the old people in the ward, Liu Zhiyi would feel worn out.

Exhausted, her head splitting for want of rest, and still having to bear a patient's bad temper, Liu Zhiyi would feel a rise of irritation.

And then, seeing her mother's death in the memory replay, Liu Zhiyi would still feel blame.

I shouldn't, I shouldn't.

Liu Zhiyi told herself over and over, how can you think that way about a sick old woman, all the more when she's your own flesh and blood.

Liu Zhiyi: "I feel so guilty. I don't understand why I get these negative feelings — when I go back over the times with Grandma when I was little, my heart warms too, I want to smile, and then I feel happy."

Liu Zhiyi: "I can feel love. I do love Grandma."

Why? Why?

Why are these feelings all tangled together? Why can't there be only love?

Cat: "Make the call."

Liu Zhiyi: "…Huh?"

Cat: "Saying more to me is no use. Better to say everything you want to say to your grandma. From the look of it this call can't be hung up before its time runs out, so even if your grandma doesn't want to listen, she'll have to."