Chapter 62

"I'm sorry… did I stir up something sad for you?"

Zhou Fuqing's breathy voice sounded, his tone trembling faintly, sounding just like…

Liu Zhiyi gazed at the pink umbrella, its ribs hung with little beads of water.

"…You're crying?"

In real life, most adults wouldn't express their feelings so plainly.

Come to think of it, was the cat's personality like this?

Liu Zhiyi looked at the pink umbrella — blood-rain outside, tear-rain within.

In the last few dungeons the cat had been so dependable; how did he look, just now… a bit not-very-bright?

Liu Zhiyi could only comfort him softly.

"It's all right. The worst of my grief has already passed."

But the moment the words were out, the little rain inside the umbrella fell harder.

Liu Zhiyi: "…Aiya, it's all right."

She hadn't imagined that a change of dungeon would put her in the position of comforting the cat — even if only a part of the cat's body.

Zhou Fuqing's voice in the earbud sounded a little muffled. "…Sorry. Ever since I became like this, it's been hard to control my feelings."

The umbrella spun a circle over her head, flinging the water drops out into a ring.

It looked a bit like a dog shaking off water, Liu Zhiyi thought.

—Slap.

Footsteps sounded in the carriage, like wet feet stepping on the floor.

The red cord on her body cinched tight again, the raincoat all but wrapping her face in too.

Bound and unable to move, Liu Zhiyi could only watch out of the corner of her eye, and glanced at the watch as well.

The watch's task bar hadn't updated, but the phone screen was very bright.

Liu Zhiyi saw an exquisite image.

It seemed the game in the phone had reached a climactic point too, and put out a CG.

In the image the red thread danced, Zhou Fuqing reaching a hand toward the phone screen, the pose as if drawing something into his arms, the raincoat lifting from his body to cover one corner of the screen.

The CG was first-person; it looked as if she were being held in his arms.

—Whoosh.

Wind sounded in the earbud and in reality both at once.

Liu Zhiyi was drawn backward by the red thread, the threads drifting in the air, glittering.

The wind whooshed, the raw smell of blood surging from behind her, a cold mass of air closing in.

Something's coming, Liu Zhiyi thought.

But she saw nothing.

She saw the raincoat dancing, saw the red threads spreading like flower stamens, blocking the way before her.

Zhou Fuqing: "Don't look."

The scene was cliché enough, really — corny, even.

But the image was so beautiful, the music in the earbud so lovely —

that it made even this soaked raincoat and severed hand… rather moving.

Zhou Fuqing: "That was a subway staff member just now. If she found you, a living person would be forcibly kept here… Sorry, did I hurt you binding you?"

The red thread tying her suddenly went slack.

Liu Zhiyi came to herself, and only then found her arms had been cinched into welts.

She touched her face; it was a little hot.

The feeling was too strange.

Rationally she knew clearly this was just an otome game's plot beat, not to be taken as real, and the cat's feelings were only the product of a prop.

Yet her heart still sped up for it, again and again.

So this was the charm of an otome game?

Liu Zhiyi turned her head. "…It's all right, you only wanted to protect me."

Zhou Fuqing in the earbud said nothing; the severed hand hovered over the red welts on her arm, as if wanting to touch them — the fingers moved, but in the end didn't come down.

One person and one severed hand froze there.

The air suddenly grew a little awkward.

Liu Zhiyi had never dated; in her life up to now she'd either studied hard or worked herself ragged to earn money.

As she grew older, she seemed to have become a love-repellent — she'd only occasionally scroll past a related post or novel, smile knowingly, and toss it to the back of her mind.

Was dating this cramped and awkward?

Liu Zhiyi rubbed the gooseflesh on her arm, drew a few deep breaths, and steadied her heartbeat.

That was the bad part about going through a romance plot in a horror dungeon like this — she couldn't tell whether her racing heart was from fear or… liking.

—Hum.

The carriage vibrated, slowly decelerating.

It looked like it was pulling into a station.

Though she knew this train pulling in was nothing good, it did ease the awkward air.

Light shone in through the carriage windows.

Liu Zhiyi looked out and saw a huge round moon.

She'd never seen a moon so enormous.

Come to think of it, was the moon this close to Earth?

Liu Zhiyi narrowed her eyes and studied the moon closely.

Beneath the moon dark clouds massed; from afar it looked like a round cloud-mass set into the moon.

This shape.

Liu Zhiyi began to make associations.

It looked… it looked…

like a head wearing a ring of light behind it.

Zhou Fuqing's voice sounded, breaking into her thoughts.

"This is the stop I'm getting off at."

Liu Zhiyi drew back her gaze and looked lower.

Because the moon was so big she hadn't even noticed there was a building on the horizon below it.

Blue windows, white walls, giving off a cold metallic gleam, a white cross edged in red hanging on the roof.

A hospital.

Hospitals were fairly common in dungeons.

But unlike the Ankang Hospital she'd been through, Liu Zhiyi saw the words psychiatric hospital.

This psychiatric hospital was a bit different too — the building was astonishingly tall, the top floor all floor-to-ceiling windows.

It didn't look like a hospital so much as some high-end hotel.

Not only was the sign pink, it even had two cat-paw icons on it.

And there was more — behind the hospital stood a Ferris wheel, ablaze with light.