Kaleidoscope of Death

Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zixu

Zhu Ruyuan wasn’t human. In other words, they had no way of finding her right now. But even if they couldn’t find her, they could still find the living Zhou Hanshan.

Ai Wenrui knew the address of Zhou Hanshan’s room, so the three ran straight for the dormitories.

On the way Lin Qiushi encountered the girl named Zuo Sisi again. She and her partner were sitting at the school flowerbeds with an item in their hands, seemingly in discussion.

Gu Longming saw what they were holding from afar, and exclaimed, “it’s a wooden doll. Where did they find that—”

Lin Qiushi recalled the two people from outside the door that died the night before. Upon some thought, he approached Zuo Sisi and greeted them: “Zuo Sisi, what are you guys up to?”

When Zuo Sisi saw them coming, she smoothly tucked the doll away, smiling.

“Nothing. Just chatting.”

Lin Qiushi had a good impression of this girl, and so didn’t beat around the bush: “You also found a doll?”

“Mh…” Zuo Sisi replied vaguely. “Why?”

“Since you’ve found one, keep it safe,” Lin Qiushi said. “I also found dolls on the two people who died this morning. Those dolls were missing heads. I suspect it has something to do with how they died.”

Zuo Sisi’s companion sitting beside her went pale.

“What?”

Seeing his expression of panic, Gu Longming said, “oi, you haven’t thrown it away already, have you?”

“I…I…” He pointed at the pond behind him, face colorless. “I thought the thing was kind of ominous, so I tossed it just now!”

“What do we do? Nothing’s gonna happen to you, right?” Zuo Sisi was also frantic.

“I’ll go look for it!” her companion said in a rush.

“Wait—”

Before Lin Qiushi could stop him, Zuo Sisi’s companion jumped straight into the pond behind himself.

It was just one of the school’s landscape ponds; it was very shallow. The water only reached the knees of a 170cm-man standing. Under normal circumstances, drowning in it was completely impossible.

But the world of the doors obviously could not be assessed by “normal circumstances.”

After that person entered the water and bent over to fish out the wooden doll, the water around him began to toss and roil, as if it were boiling. Seeing this, Lin Qiushi immediately called out, “get out of there—”

The man heard him. After one step toward where they were standing, however, countless pairs of white, rock-like arms emerged from the green waters. They caught hold of his body and began dragging him into the pond.

Lin Qiushi reacted the fastest, dashing to the edge of the pond. He grabbed the man’s frantically waving hands and said, “help him—!”

Zuo Sisi, Gu Longming, and Ai Wenrui all rushed forward, wrapping their arms around Lin Qiushi and pulling both of them backwards.

Together, the four finally saved the man from being pulled into the pond. When he got hauled up the man was nearly in tears.

“Fuck oh fuck that was terrifying—they pulled my pants off—”

The jeans he wore on the outside had been yanked into the pond, leaving him with only problem-pattern boxer shorts.

“Tsk.” Zuo Sisi shot him a persecuting look. “You wear these kinds of pants?”

The companion: “…” Oh sure, if he’d known he’d be stripped in front of a crowd he’d have put on a nicer pattern.

Lin Qiushi let out a breath and said, “I suggest you stay away from water from here on out.”

“Yes, thanks for the heads up. Where are you headed?” Zuo Sisi had also gotten the sense that Lin Qiushi’s team was different from the rest.

Lin Qiushi said, “going to the dorms for a bit…Where did you find this doll?”

“In the sculpting club’s activity room.” This time, Zuo Sisi answered Lin Qiushi’s question. “We heard that all the dead students seemed to be part of the sculpting club, so we went over there to take a look.”

Everyone seemed to know this piece of information now. It was just that they weren’t as lucky as Lin Qiushi, and they hadn’t found an NPC with so much insider knowledge like Ai Wenrui.

“Let’s go. If we don’t go now classes are going to start,” Ai Wenrui spoke quietly by the side.

Zuo Sisi glanced at Ai Wenrui, a new understanding appearing in her gaze. She said, “good luck to you then.”

“You too,” Lin Qiushi nodded. Then he pointed at Zuo Sisi’s partner. “Why don’t you go find a pair of pants first.”

The partner in his underwear: “…yeah. Thanks for that.”

The three went to the dorm. According to Ai Wenrui, Zhou Hanshan lived in Room 307.

But the three stood outside knocking for the longest time. Nobody responded inside.

“He’s not here. Why don’t we go?” Ai Wenrui said.

Gu Longming, “go, go, what do you mean go? Go inside? We sure can, yeah?”

His gaze fell on Lin Qiushi.

Lin Qiushi, after three seconds of silence, “…keep an eye out for me so nobody sees.”

It was only then that Ai Wenrui remembered Lin Qiushi could pick locks. With a bit of a complicated expression, he made a sound of agreement.

A few minutes later, they entered Zhou Hanshan’s dorm room.

Once inside though, they found the room was empty. Nobody was living here at all. Both the inside and the balcony on the outside were devoid of items. And judging from the state of the sink and dust, nobody had lived here for a very long time.

“Zhou Hanshan went home?” Lin Qiushi asked.

“I don’t know. Ever since people started dying, I haven’t seen him, and it’s been a while,” Ai Wenrui said. “But I haven’t heard anything about him dropping out.”

After he said this, he laughed self-consciously. “Or maybe he really did drop out, I just don’t know it…After all, who’s got the energy to care about other people right now?”

Lin Qiushi thought about it, and asked out of the blue, “can you get in contact with that friend of yours from before?”

“Which one?” Ai Wenrui asked.

“The third one from when you were in the classroom,” Lin Qiushi said. “There was you, Xiao He, and the one who ran away—you can get in touch with that guy, right?”

“I’m not sure,” Ai Wenrui shook his head. “I don’t know if he’d pick up my call…”

Lin Qiushi said, “just call him first.”

Ai Wenrui nodded, got out his phone, and dialed a number. The phone rang for about ten seconds before going through. A boy’s voice came from the other end: “Hey.”

Hearing his voice, Ai Wenrui was about to answer, when there came a huge crash from the glass beside them. Lin Qiushi looked up and saw something round being thrown through the window. It shattered the glass and rolled to a stop in front of them.

Ai Wenrui looked at the thing on the ground and fell into a state of paralysis. His phone was on speaker, and his friend’s voice was still coming through.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” the person on the other end asked. “Did something happen? Do you need me to come find you?”

Ai Wenrui hung his head, staring at the thing on the floor.

It was a person’s skull, severed at the neck by something sharp. Blood was still dripping from it. Had it been just any head that would have been fine, but…

Stiffly, Ai Wenrui turned to the phone from which sound was still coming through. The head of the owner of that phone was currently lying prone in front of him, staring at him with lifeless eyes.

“Say something, why aren’t you saying anything—” Whatever was on the other end was still speaking. It was just that the voice held something twisted in it now. “Say something, why aren’t you saying anything?”

Some mess of music was scattered through the background, making his voice even creepier.

“But it’s you…” That voice kept talking, but Ai Wenrui couldn’t take it anymore—with a scream he pitched the phone out the window.

“Aaaaaaahhhh!!! He’s dead, I’m going to die too!! Help me! Help me!”

“Calm down!!” Ai Wenrui look like he was about to go insane. Seeing this, Gu Longming quickly grabbed hold of him, scared that overstimulated like this, he really was about to take a dive out the window himself.

“Help me, help me, I don’t want to die—” Ai Wenrui kept weeping.

Lin Qiushi said, “take him back to the dorm!”

Gu Longming said, “what about you?”

Lin Qiushi, “there’s something I want to confirm—”

Gu Longming glanced once at Ai Wenrui, then once at Lin Qiushi. He looked indecisive, clearly caught between the two. Though Ai Wenrui seemed really quite real, at the end of the day he was still an NPC from inside the door. If, in trying to protect him, something happened to Lin Qiushi, then that would truly be an unbearable loss.

“It’s fine. You go ahead,” Lin Qiushi said. “I’ll be back quickly.”

At Lin Qiushi’s firm expression, Gu Longming could only nod. He picked Ai Wenrui up on his back and headed out.

After watching them go, Lin Qiushi cast his gaze onto the shattered window, and then at the open eyes of the decapitated skull on the ground.

“When did you die?” Lin Qiushi looked at the head and murmured to himself. “Today? Yesterday? Or…”

Here, he paused. He turned and headed downstairs, in search of something he wanted to see.

Pretty soon, Lin Qiushi found a phone with a shattered screen in a dark corner among the bushes. He pressed the On button with a litany of internal prayers. He got lucky—the phone’s homescreen turned on. Though the screen was shattered and details were hard to make out, there were no major issues.

Lin Qiushi took the phone and began searching through the list of contacts. He found the list of names starting with Z, but did not find the name Zhou Hanshan.

It seemed that Ai Wenrui hadn’t been lying when he said he wasn’t close to Zhou Hanshan.

Phone in hand, Lin Qiushi suddenly thought of something else. He opened the call log and saw that the name on the most recent call was “Xiao Zhuan.”

Xiao Zhuan was probably the name of Ai Wenrui’s friend then.

Returning to the home screen, he tapped into the text messages. Upon seeing a text from Xiao Zhuan to Ai Wenrui, he clicked in immediately and read the most recent message.

The text had been sent last night. When he read the message, Lin Qiushi’s expression froze.

Because at the very beginning of this text was written a name they were all familiar with: Zhou Hanshan, what in the world should we do?

The text put a bad feeling in Lin Qiushi’s stomach. He immediately thought of Gu Longming, who was taking Ai Wenrui back to their room, and began running for the dorms.

The entire way there, Lin Qiushi was parsing through all the information that Ai Wenrui had given them.

Ai Wenrui had told them everything they knew about the sculptures, Zhu Ruyuan, and the wishes. This meant that even if Ai Wenrui lied, they had no way of telling. Ai Wenrui said he was an innocent victim, but the text that named the owner of the phone gave away his identity.

He was Zhou Hanshan—Zhu Ruyuan’s lover, Zhou Hanshan.

He was the one who had lied to the members of the sculpting club. He’d gotten them to smear their blood on the wooden dolls and make the wish. Of course Ai Wenrui couldn’t die, because he was most likely the only one who knew the truth…But of course, this was all Lin Qiushi’s conjecture.

Lin Qiushi arrived at the dormitory building out of breath. He climbed to the second floor with great difficulty and banged on their door: “Gu Longming. Gu Longming are you there!”

Moments later, the door opened, revealing Gu Longming’s face.

“Keep it down, he’s asleep.”

“Ai Wenrui’s asleep?” Lin Qiushi looked inside the room, and indeed saw a frail little body curled up in the bed closest to the corner of the room. Judging by the silhouette, it really was Ai Wenrui.

“Mh,” Gu Longming whispered. “What’s the rush? What did you find?”

Lin Qiushi said, “let’s talk outside.”

The two went down to the end of the hall and found a remote corner. Lin Qiushi cut right to the chase: “Ai Wenrui isn’t Ai Wenrui, he’s Zhou Hanshan.”

“What? What?” Gu Longming evidently could not parse Lin Qiushi’s meaning for a moment, repeating himself several times more. He even grabbed hold of Lin Qiushi’s arm, lurching out: “Zhou Hanshan, you mean that Zhou Hanshan?”

“Mhm, yeah,” Lin Qiushi said. “That’s him.”

“Then what’s the deal here?” Gu Longming said. “He’s been lying to us…in order to kill us? Or does he have some other purpose…”

He was a bit disoriented at the moment. Ai Wenrui…no, Zhou Hanshan had practically taken them through their entire understanding of the situation at hand. From the sculpting club to Zhu Ruyuan to the supernatural games—and even the wishes they’d made—Gu Longming honestly had no idea what he was trying to do.

“So what do we do from now on?” Gu Longming rubbed at his face. “Shit, he lied to us? I even carried him for so long.”

“Cards on the table,” Lin Qiushi said. “Let’s not waste any time guessing.”

“Sounds good,” Gu Longming said. “He’s just a human after all, it’s not like he do demon things at us.”

He seemed a bit pissed about Ai Wenrui’s lie, turning around and storming back inside. He pulled Ai Wenrui, still dazed with sleep, right from the bed and said, “Zhou Hanshan—”

Woken up like so Zhou Hanshan looked bewildered: “What is it?”

Two seconds after responding, he realized Gu Longming hadn’t called him Ai Wenrui, but Zhou Hanshan, and his expression changed for the worse. He stammered, “you guys figured it out…”

“Mh.” Lin Qiushi tossed the phone in front of Zhou Hanshan. “That’s what the text on your phone said.”

Zhou Hanshan’s expression was closed off.

“Talk. Who the hell are you, and why did you lie to us?” Gu Longming said. “What do you want?”

Zhou Hanshan laughed, agonized. “I…I didn’t want to lie to you. But if I had told you I was Zhou Hanshan then you guys would never have believed me.”

Lin Qiushi and Gu Longming didn’t respond.

“Everybody knew that Zhou Hanshan and Zhu Ruyuan were dating,” Zhou Hanshan said. “I was just scared that you two would think I have bad intentions…But the truth is…”

“But the truth is you don’t?” Lin Qiushi watched his eyes. “Do you really think we’d believe that?”

Zhou Hanshan was silent for a while.

“Then what do I have to do for you to believe me?”

Lin Qiushi, “did you know Zhu Ruyuan was dead?”

Zhou Hanshan shook his head. “I didn’t know. It wasn’t until when we played that game…”

He hid his face in his hands, shoulders beginning to shake.

“I discovered, I discovered that she didn’t have a shadow.”

While everybody’s attention had been on the sculpture, Zhou Hanshan had his arms around the smiling Zhu Ruyuan. The two had been whispering about something when Zhou Hanshan felt that there was something wrong.

He’d looked down, a touch of doubt crossing his expression. He’d even rubbed at his eyes.

But no matter how he rubbed, there had only been a single shadow on the floor…The girl in his arms didn’t seem to exist at all.

When he discovered this, a chill had crawled its way up Zhou Hanshan’s spine. The person beside him had noticed, and asked softly, “baby, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Zhou Hanshan had replied. “I’m just a bit tired.”

He’d watched as the friends in front of him cut their hands with grins and laughter, rubbing red blood all over those little wooden figurines. His arm had been wrapped around the person beside him, but upon discovering that person had no shadow, he’d felt the places where their skins touched go stiff and cold, as if…as if what he held was a statue.

Upon recalling this, Zhou Hanshan trembled all over. He stammered, “I wanted to stop them, but I couldn’t even speak.”

“You also bled on yours?” Gu Longming asked.

“I did. I was the first one.” Saying this, Zhou Hanshan’s voice was filled with lament. “It’s just that I wasn’t very sincere when I made the wish. I didn’t enter that competition afterwards either.”

Since he didn’t enter, he couldn’t have won the prize. Zhou Hanshan had managed to escape misfortune just like that.

Gu Longming asked, “why didn’t you sign up? Doesn’t your sculpting club care a lot about this contest?”

“Hahah,” Zhou Hanshan laughed dryly. “I’ve got really bad grades, haven’t I…”

“Really?” Gu Longming was still disbelieving.

“It’s true!” Zhou Hanshan was a bit desperate. “Please believe me…I have pictures of my sculpture in my phone! If you, if you don’t believe me, you can look through those!”

With a face full of distrust Gu Longming took his phone.

“Don’t think I won’t really look.”

He opened the photo album and really did find Zhou Hanshan’s sculpting project. Lin Qiushi took a single look, and fell into a deep silence with Gu Longming.

In the end Gu Longming couldn’t hold it in anymore: “Fuck dude, are you really an art student? What the cock and balls is this supposed to be!”

Zhou Hanshan, “…that’s really mean.”

Though most of the time Zhou Hanshan suffered for his school work, this time, it was a blessing in disguise—he’d avoided disaster.

Back when the scores were being announced, the prize-winners had all been ecstatic. They’d even talked among themselves about how the school legend was true…Of course, what they didn’t know was that this award came with a painful price.

“So what the hell did you want to achieve, lying to us like this?” Gu Longming asked.

“The truth is…The truth is I just wanted to put a stop to it all,” Zhou Hanshan said shakily. “It all started because of me, so naturally, I should be the one to end it…”

“How do you end it?” Lin Qiushi asked.

“I’ve looked up a lot of information. This school legend’s actually been around for a long time,” Zhou Hanshan said. “But there’s a last bit to the legend that Zhu Ruyuan didn’t tell us.”

“A last bit?” Gu Longming sat up.

“It has to be equivalent exchange. The sculpture grants your wish, you have to grant the statue’s wish in return,” Zhou Hanshan said. “But I just can’t figure it out, what’s the statue’s wish? What if her wish is for us to die?”

At Zhou Hanshan’s words, Lin Qiushi remembered the phrase from the hint. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

His and Gu Longming’s gazes met. The two reached a point of perfect mutual comprehension.

“Why didn’t you just tell this to us earlier?” Gu Longming was still caught up on the fact that Zhou Hanshan had lied to them.

Zhou Hanshan hung his head and didn’t speak. But Lin Qiushi could read the meaning hidden in his expression.

“Zhu Ruyuan’s wish. Does it have something to do with you?”

A shiver went down Zhou Hanshan’s body. He said, with tears in his voice, “I don’t want to die…”

This answer pretty much corroborated Lin Qiushi’s hypothesis.

Zhu Ruyuan and Zhou Hanshan were lovers, but Zhou Hanshan had been too scared to tell them this the entire time—so Lin Qiushi had reason to suppose that Zhu Ruyuan’s wish was for Zhou Hanshan to stay with her.

It was impossible to bring a dead person back to life. The far simpler method, then, was for the living person to die.

“Please, I’m begging you, I really don’t want to die,” Zhou Hanshan wept. “I’m really really scared—”

“Do you love her?” Gu Longming asked, frowning.

“Maybe? I don’t know anymore,” Zhou Hanshan said. “Ever since I found out she wasn’t alive, all of our memories together turned into a blur…I almost can’t remember at all.”

As he spoke, discombobulated, he suddenly stopped. Terror congealed in his eyes as he looked at the window beside him.

Lin Qiushi followed his gaze and saw a woman, with long black hair and a ghastly pale face, silently standing by the glass, glaring at everyone inside with vitriol. They were on the second floor, and there was nothing outside the window. Without question, this girl was Zhou Hanshan’s once-lover, Zhu Ruyuan.

When Zhou Hanshan saw Zhu Ruyuan, he let out an awful scream and passed out once again on the bed. And it only took so little a moment for the silhouette by the window to disappear completely. It was as if the pallid face just now had just been an illusion.

But both Lin Qiushi and Gu Longming were clear—Zhu Ruyuan really did pay them a visit…

Author’s Note:

I’m planning on finishing this by May. Who knows if I’ll make it /melancholically lights a cigarette

Names in this chapter:

• Xiǎo Zhuàn / Xiao(3) Zhuan(4) / 小篆