Xu Ziyue followed after the troop of players and decided not to run up and make conversation.
He knew that since he had Sun Mo with him, there were some things that weren't very convenient to discuss.
The high school library wasn't particularly large – it just barely covered the area of two classrooms – and yet it held a lot of books stuffed within.
As soon as they entered, everyone scattered and began to peruse the shelves and flip through books. The players huddled in small groups of two or three, and whenever one saw something useful, they began to whisper and discuss animatedly.
Sun Mo looked over at Xu Ziyue who was casually flipping through random books and looking like he just came along for the ride, noticing the stark contrast in behavior when compared to everyone else. The other players also observed Xu Ziyue’s actions, their eyes filled with disdain.
Xu Ziyue popped a white rabbit candy into his mouth and then unwrapped another to wave in front of Sun Mo. "Have a candy?" He had already made the mental preparations that Sun Mo would probably refuse.
However, he suddenly saw Sun Mo lower his head and take the other end of the candy with his mouth.
Xu Ziyue, face bright red, quickly turned his head away and found a random book to bury his face into. Sun Mo's teeth were so white, so straight and perfect. His tongue was also a seductive red, if he could kiss it, then….. Xu Ziyue became a quail. (Note: safe to assume that he became like a small, timid bird.)
Although his heart was bold enough to shamelessly rush forward without thought, his repertoire of knowledge remained purely theoretical. While his actions showed great initiative, as soon as the slightest bit of intimacy was suggested….. He turns shy and embarrassed.
Xu 'Practical experience of zero' Ziyue, just due to Sun Mo biting down on a piece of candy from his hand, without even any physical contact involved, turned bright red in both ears because of his own thoughts and mental images.
As the milky sweetness spread throughout his mouth, Sun Mo looked over at the person who had slightly shifted away from him and lifted a hand, pinching at one of the ears that had turned so red it was burning.
Xu Ziyue's body trembled. "You, what are you doing?" He was very startled, and also afraid that the others would notice him acting like this in broad daylight, and so he had deliberately lowered his voice, the sound emanating from his throat trembling and shaky. He covered his ears – not noticing that his face was also a flaming red – and managed to stutter out, "Ear… you can't touch." What’s more, Sun Mo’s hands were ice cold, the temperature a stark difference from that of his ears, too stimulating….
“What are you – and them – looking for?" Sun Mo pinched Xu Ziyue’s earlobe and after scaring him, he let go. However, the question he asked had nothing to do with the ear.
Being pulled into the library, watching a large group of students rummaging around looking for things, and being the only one not knowing what was going on, Sun Mo's question was not strange.
“They are looking for the reason why the old lecture building was abandoned a few years back." Xu Ziyue secretly touched his left chest, this thing just couldn't calm down ah. Bdump. Bdump. It kept telling Xu Ziyue that his vulnerable resistance to beauty in the end was very pitiful.
Sun Mo asked, “Why are you guys looking for that?”
The heat on Xu Ziyue's face gradually dissipated, “I don’t know. They're all so mysterious and secretive." Xu Ziyue shrugged. "They're also terribly fierce, remember to stay away from them in the future." Otherwise, what would he do if one of them got captivated by Sun Mo's handsomeness? He wouldn't even know where to go to cry.
Suddenly, a classmate shouted, “I found an old newspaper!"
A large group of people swarmed past to where the student had shouted.
Xu Ziyue also followed over. Most of the players' attention was caught on the old newspaper, and so they didn’t pay much attention to the people around them for the moment.
“Shangyang city, Shangyang High School, a ceiling fan fell down and smashed into a student…?" The people who were closest to the front first finished reading the newspaper.
Xu Ziyue quickly skimmed the article, roughly getting the gist that the school's ceiling fan was old and then it fell, killing a student who was currently at the school. It's just that when the incident had occurred, it was 11 o’clock at night. Only on the next day when the students came back to class was the scene discovered. As for why the student was still in the classroom at 11 o’clock pm, that was also a puzzling matter.
The newspaper was very old and yellow. Xu Ziyue did not know what year it currently was in the game, so even though there was a date stamp on the newspaper, he still could not deduce how long ago that incident had happened.
"So the classroom over there had been cordoned off due to a death?"
“If it was just a classroom, then it is unlikely that the whole building be sectioned off. Something else must have happened."
“Nowadays, the classrooms are all equipped with air conditioning, including our classroom ah…”
“No, that's wrong. I just remembered, our classroom has a ceiling fan hanging up above, and…”
“That ceiling fan is very out of place in the new classroom, it looks old as heck, and it creaks when it turns."
“But I don't remember anyone turning on the fan!"
“Maybe it’s… It's turning from the air conditioning wind?"
If this was the normal world, then the air conditioning airflow could possibly have made the fan turn a little. But in this world… With so many coincidences coming together, no one truly believed that it was really just a coincidence.
“Ah!!!!!" A girl suddenly crouched down and buried her head into her arms, crying, "I don’t want to play anymore, I don’t want to die again, woo-woo-hoo… ”
Someone tried to pull her up, but it appeared as if she was completely petrified. Her whole person was huddled together, shaking and choking and crying. The more the others pulled at her, the more she cried and screamed.
“With that thing in the classroom, how can we sit in peace anymore… The ceiling fan might fall off at any moment and smash us, or cut us into… pieces."
Xu Ziyue even forgot that he had a piece of candy in his mouth, let alone to suck up the sugary-sweet saliva that had pooled up. As he listened to this group of players discuss, he felt like they were becoming more and more outrageous. Why was it that they thought they were going to die merely from seeing a piece of old newspaper?? Their speculations were causing Xu Ziyue who was just listening on the side to become a little frightened…. To the point that he thought they even might be telling the truth.
And to be fair, it wasn't impossible…. Xu Ziyue thought back to the horrific murder scene he had witnessed earlier.
Xu Ziyue suddenly wanted to interrogate the system, was this really a dating simulation love game?? How come it felt like everything was completely different ah!!
Zhang Jin became annoyed with all the crying. “What are you crying about! Is there any use, crying? If you don’t want to die, then look for a way to kill the ghost! Keep looking! We will head back a little earlier to the dormitories tonight – we haven't searched for clues there yet. And later on, we'll go back to that ladies’ washroom and see if there are any clues left behind. There's no way that they died arbitrarily – those two must have found out about or seen something." Zhang Jin clenched his teeth. "Otherwise, if not that, then they might have just had horrid luck."
Xu Ziyue was very confused about the current situation. He watched as the crying girl was slowly comforted, and continued to look through books while suppressing the urge to cry. The other players also resumed their search amongst other piles.
Xu Ziyue pulled Sun Mo to the side, “Don’t listen to them, their brains seem to be kind of slow, or maybe they all have a huge hole in their head. Their imaginations are too vivid." Although Xu Ziyue's sixth sense was starting to get a bad feeling, there was no need to let Sun Mo know.
"Okay."
Sun Mo’s expression did not show what he was thinking.
Xu Ziyue became more preoccupied with flipping through the various books, and then he saw a heap of old newspapers. The newspaper which had just been shared around had been found from this pile of old papers. He crouched down and started to read the news headlines one at a time. With the conversations of the other players still fresh in his mind, Xu Ziyue was more serious this time around.
Xu Ziyue skimmed a lot of the news, but most of it was all about people’s livelihoods, or what happened at x place, or which medals the local sports team received, and so on. He also found several more pieces of news related to the city of Shangyang, including one that discussed a teenage trafficking circle which had been uncovered more than 10 years ago, but that many of the children who had been taken away could not be found, or had been killed, or were too ashamed to go back home. Also, a man from Upper Shangyang had committed a homicide, killing a local ruffian, and had been sentenced to death.
Xu Ziyue didn’t know if any of this was useful information, but he still picked them out and placed them to the side.
Sun Mo reached over and took the newspaper discussing the man who had committed the homicide. The article had a clear picture of the murderer, and he stared at it very intently.
Curious, Xu Ziyue poked his head over and asked, “What is it?"
Sun Mo has a tendency of ignoring Xu Ziyue's questions. "Are you returning to your dorm later tonight?"
Xu Ziyue also has a tendency of being easily led off-topic. “Yah I'll probably go back.” Though, he doesn’t actually know yet which floor of the dormitory his room was on. But, seeing how everyone had assigned rooms….. He should have one somewhere too, right?
“My room is meant for four people, but I am the only one in it. Do you want to come sleep over at my dormitory instead?"
“Ah? I, I…. Yes I want to!"
It was as if Xu Ziyue had been knocked over the head by a pleasant surprise. Half dizzy, he didn't even think about it and just said yes.
“But, later in the evening, I have to go out for a short trip with everyone else. Will that bother you?" Xu Ziyue thought about what Zhang Jin had just said about searching the dormitories, as well as revisiting the scene of the murder in the girls' washroom…….
Sun Mo replied, “In that case…. I’ll come with you. If you're coming back to the dorms later by yourself, you'll get scared. You said that you were afraid."
Afraid? What did he say he was afraid of? Xu Ziyue couldn't understand the meaning of Sun Mo’s words. Also, he wasn't alone ah – there was still Zhang Jin and everyone else, they would be travelling together as a large group of people, coming and going as one. But if Sun Mo was offering to accompany him…. Alright. If Sun Mo says he's scared, then he'll be scared!
And so Xu Ziyue quickly nodded very hard, scared that Sun Mo would change his mind in the next moment.
Roamer -
XZY: If I can sleep together with Sun Mo, then yes I’m terrified!!
SM: …… you clearly said last chapter that normal people are terrified of these things.
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