Kaleidoscope of Death

Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zixu

One of the students had run off. Of the two left, one was so scared he was shaking all over, his face as white as paper. The other had collapsed limp to the ground, looking like he was going to pass out any moment.

With little option, Gu Longming could only cast his gaze onto the person who could at least stay upright. The person was so scared by Gu Longming’s sudden glare that his legs gave out, and he almost fell like his compatriot. Luckily Gu Longming caught him by the arm in time and prevented him from crumpling to the ground.

“What are you so scared of,” Gu Longming said with some exasperation. “I’m not gonna eat you. It’s those things that will eat you, so what are you so scared of me for? C'mere little man and cool down for a second. Tell me your name?”

“I…I'm…” That student was hoisted in Gu Longming’s grip like a chick; he couldn’t cry even if he wanted to. “I’m Ai Wenrui…”

“Ai Wenrui, yeah?” Gu Longming said. “So what the heck did the three of you do? And what’s it got to do with the people who died?”

At the mention of the people who died, Ai Wenrui couldn’t help but shiver again. He was too scared to even meet Gu Longming’s eyes, and kept silent for a long beat.

“Why aren’t you talking?” Gu Longming said. “If you tell us now, you still have a chance at surviving. If you don’t say anything, how are we supposed to help you?”

Ai Wenrui was so scared that he kept gasping for air. After Gu Longming spoke, it was another long while before he managed to squeeze one word from his throat: “Sculpture…”

“What?” Gu Longming perked up.

“The strange sculpture in the club activity room,” Ai Wenrui said. “…It’s all because of that thing…”

Gu Longming saw that he was willing to talk now, so released him to stand on his own. Ai Wenrui wrapped both arms around his own torso.

“Everything started half a year ago. I just joined the sculpting club…”

As he spoke, the student crouched on the ground slowly stood as well. That student’s expression though, was strange, like after some tremendous shock he had gone numb.

Lin Qiushi noticed his condition, and called out to him: “Student?”

“Xiao He?” Ai Wenrui also noticed how odd his friend seemed. “Xiao He…What’s going on?”

The student that Ai Wenrui called Xiao He made a song-like noise in his throat as his gaze lifted to the ceiling above his own head. With a bad feeling, Lin Qiushi followed Xiao He’s line of sight, and saw a mass of something red crouched on the ceiling. The Lin Qiushi of the past may not have been able to recognize it, but having experienced so many doors, Lin Qiushi could actually recognize this thing with ease—it was a completely skinned human, its scalpful of long hair hanging in midair. The red on the outside looked upon first glance like a jacket, but a closer look discovered it was actually distinct strands of bloody muscle.

“Aaaaahh!!”

Upon seeing this, Ai Wenrui let out an awful scream, turning to sprint out of the classroom. Gu Longming sensed something was off, however, and caught him in a grip. He managed to catch Ai Wenrui but couldn’t catch Xiao He. Xiao He stumbled to the classroom door, and the moment half of his body cleared the threshold, Lin Qiushi heard a loud bang!—the classroom door slammed shut.

Xiao He let out a wail. He’d been crushed right in half by the classroom door; half of him was outside, the other half inside. The most terrifying part was that he did not die immediately after his bisection. Blood poured out of his mouth along with his screams, his arms spasming wildly on the ground.

At the sight of this, Ai Wenrui couldn’t take the shock anymore and completely fainted. Gu Longming didn’t look too good either; he hadn’t thought there would be such a bizarre way to die.

Logically speaking, though the door was made of metal, it wasn’t sharp. Even slamming it like that should have at most broken a couple of ribs. The world inside the doors, however, was well outside the scope of common sense, so though it seemed impossible, it still happened.

When Lin Qiushi looked back up at the ceiling, that thing was already gone.

The bisected Xiao He died just like that. With an uncomfortable expression Gu Longming looked at the corpse outside.

“What do we do? Call the cops?”

Lin Qiushi, “…let’s tell the school first.”

“Okay,” Gu Longming said… Though it didn’t seem quite appropriate, it was the only thing they could do.

The two went to a class in session nearby and told a random teacher another incident had occurred inside the building. The teacher wasn’t surprised to hear it at all, asking offhandedly, “another one’s died?”

“Mh,” Lin Qiushi said. “Will you please call the police?”

“Yes,” the teacher said. “Stay away from Building Three though. So many have died there already, why won’t these students learn…”

Building Three was the building that hosted Class Three. The majority of Class Three’s schedule was in Building Three, so they often went there.

Lin Qiushi chatted a little with this teacher and learned that the three students from Class Three all died in Building Three. Beside this though there was no new intel. Lin Qiushi left the classroom and saw Gu Longming sitting outside with Ai Wenrui in his arms.

“Not awake yet?” Lin Qiushi asked.

“No,” Gu Longming said. “This kid’s pretty fragile.”

“It’s not fragility—normal people probably can’t take a sight like that,” Lin Qiushi said. “They mentioned an activity room right? I want to find a time to go take a look.”

“Sure. How about I carry him and we go over there now?” Gu Longming said.

“Wouldn’t he be too heavy?” Lin Qiushi asked.

“Nah, small thing like him’s no problem at all.” Giving his sturdy biceps a pat, Gu Longming hoisted Ai Wenrui up like a canvas sack. “Let’s go.”

“Mh,” Lin Qiushi nodded.

The two of them had planned on asking a student for the club location, but just as they were walking out, Ai Wenrui woke back up. The moment his eyes opened he began to frantically struggle, yells tearing from his throat: “Help me, help me—let me go, let me go—!”

Gu Longming, “buddy, calm down, that thing’s not here!”

“No no no no! She’s going to keep following me. It’s our fault, it’s all our fault. We shouldn’t have done it, we shouldn’t have done it…”

Ai Wenrui began to sob. It looked like he was having a complete breakdown.

“What do you mean? What did you guys do?” Lin Qiushi hurriedly asked.

Ai Wenrui refused to answer and kept trying to struggle out of Gu Longming’s hold. In the end Gu Longming snapped, slapping one palm down on his back and bellowing, “if you keep fucking moving you best believe I’m going to kill you here myself. We don’t gotta trouble those things to do it!”

Ai Wenrui wailed from the hit, but being shouted at like that did clear his mind a bit. Sniffling, he said, “I was only a bystander, I don’t know anything.”

“Bystander? What were you a bystander to?” Lin Qiushi’s immediate thought was this better not be another school bullying situation. Did these students bully another and cause the rest of the incidents to happen?

But unexpectedly, Ai Wenrui wiped his face and said, shakily, “have you…have you heard the campus legend?”

“The hell?” Gu Longming’s accent was pure northerner. “Hell’s that?”

“Every school has those stories,” Ai Wenrui said. “Like if you go under the statue of the principal at three in the morning time will stop, the staircase by the art classroom has thirteen steps at midnight…” As he mentioned these, he began to cry again. “I didn’t know things would be like that though. Nobody told us it was going to be like that.”

“What did you guys do? What campus legend did you try to do?” Lin Qiushi already understood what Ai Wenrui meant. This group of students likely participated in some scary school legend and provoked something that shouldn’t be messed with.

All of Ai Wenrui wilted and he went silent. But thanks to Gu Longming’s urging, he did continue in trepidation: “At first, we did the pen immortal.”

The pen immortal was basically the hottest, always-sold-out number one product among supernatural rituals. It was particularly popular among students because it was easily done, and the required items were commonplace.

Basically, in every single class, there were the handful of daring kids who’d play it.

“Oh, that I know about,” Gu Longming said. “Keep talking.”

“Nothing happened,” Ai Wenrui continued. “We didn’t see anything, and nothing came out.” He began to cry again. “If only it ended there. It would’ve been good if it had ended there—”

It seemed like these students didn’t stop at the pen immortal.

“Then what happened?” Lin Qiushi could feel some key intel coming.

“Then they said, in the activity room, there’s this sculpture, and it’s got special powers,” Ai Wenrui said. “If a lot of people made a wish to it, their wish will come true…”

This whole time they were talking, the three of them were standing outside the school building.

The space was wide open outside. There was no ceiling and nothing blocking their way; the moment anything changed, they could easily get away.

But just as Ai Wenrui was describing what happened, a peculiar feeling came over Lin Qiushi. He lifted his head and began looking around, wanting to find the source of the strangeness.

Gu Longming saw Lin Qiushi’s motions and said, “what is it?”

Lin Qiushi, “I think something’s off…”

His gaze stopped on the building on their right.

It was a classroom that had its curtains drawn. The light was on inside, and there was a long, lean silhouette standing with its back to it. The silhouette belonged to a woman with long hair in a long skirt. With that single, thin layer of curtain in the way, she just stood there staring at where they were.

Gu Longming also saw what Lin Qiushi’s gaze’s had stopped on. Logically, this silhouette wasn’t scary, but a layer of goosebumps appeared on the back of his arm anyway. He asked, “that a human?”

“Mh…” Lin Qiushi said. “It doesn’t feel right. Put Ai Wenrui on your back. Get ready to go at any second.”

Gu Longming nodded, and had Ai Wenrui up in his arms in a flash.

Ai Wenrui was a little guy around 170cm, and in Gu Longming’s hold he was just like a doll. Normally he’d at least grumble about it, but with his life on the line, who had time for dignity?

So Ai Wenrui didn’t resist, obediently letting himself be tossed over Gu Longming’s shoulder.

The moment Ai Wenrui hit Gu Longming’s back, Lin Qiushi heard the crisp crack of glass breaking. He reacted in an instant, calling to Gu Longming, “run!”

Gu Longming sprinted like mad, clearing ten-plus meters in just a few seconds with Lin Qiushi close behind him. From where the two had just been standing, there came the sound of broken glass hitting the ground. Lin Qiushi looked back and saw that the spot where they’d stood was now covered in a dense layer of shattered glass. It was easy to see that had the two left just a moment later, they might be greeting God right now.

“Fucker,” Gu Longming swore. “Who the fuck threw that?”

Lin Qiushi didn’t answer, observing the carpet of glass shards from afar. Though it wasn’t very clear, he was still fairly certain that he could see some bloody handprints on some of the glass surfaces. He said, “let’s stay away from the school.”

“Mh,” Gu Longming said. “Hold up, Ai Wenrui, you went silent.”

Lin Qiushi scooted closer and discovered he’d passed out from fright again. This poor kid, to have experienced so many scares in a single day and brushed right past death a few times.

Gu Longming and Lin Qiushi found a place to sit down far away from the school building and patted Ai Wenrui awake.

Ai Wenrui had managed to calm down some at first, but after such a big shock he basically cracked—upon waking he started to sob. He sobbed so much Gu Longming became utterly frustrated.

“Will you stop crying already? Can’t a man be tougher than that?” Gu Longming urged.

“Uwaaa…” Ai Wenrui’s answer was: “I want to cry out all the water that was in my head when I was being dumb…”

Gu Longming was speechless.

Lin Qiushi kind of wanted to laugh, but laughing under such circumstances was clearly a bit inappropriate. So he only coughed twice to stop himself and said, “stop crying for now, and tell us what actually happened?”

Ai Wenrui kept crying. In the end Gu Longming was annoyed enough to say well you just take your time crying then, we’ll be leaving first, if you’re still around tomorrow let’s talk then.

Scared to be left alone, Ai Wenrui grabbed hold of Gu Longming’s arm.

“Please don’t leave.”

Gu Longming, “then stop crying!”

Ai Wenrui wailed, “but I’m scared—”

Gu Longming, “fucker, what are you so scared of?? Like you won’t die if you weren’t scared? Be good now, and hurry up and talk to us. If you talk you might still have a chance to live. If you don’t, you’ve got no chance at all.”

As the two spoke, students periodically passed them by. Some even tossed an occasional strange glance in their direction. Lin Qiushi got to hear a young woman walking by hiss in disdain, and then say to her own companion, “it’s another one of those scumbag men, scumbag losers? Look how much he’s making his boytoy cry…”[1]

Lin Qiushi fell into a queer silence. He glanced once at Gu Longming, and once at Ai Wenrui. Then, he quietly scooted himself a few steps away from them, trying to look like he didn’t actually know them.

Gu Longming was still trying, with the last bits of his patience, to persuade Ai Wenrui to talk. God knows he’d never had such patience before. Were this reality, he’d have already rolled up his sleeves and gone to work. But because this was inside the doors, violence was no good—if, after all, a punch and a kick later the guy ended up dead, how awkward would it be to bump into each other as ghosts again, huh?

“Sh, don’t cry, be good now, Ai Wenrui is the bestest best,” Gu Longming said. “Be brave, your geges are all here to support you!” He really was disgusting himself to death.

Fortunately, Ai Wenrui seemed to buy this sort of move, and his crying got quieter. He said, “I can tell you guys, but you have to protect me, I don’t want to die—”

“Got it got it got it, protect you, I’ll tie you right onto my belt and bring you absolutely everywhere,” Gu Longming said. “I’m not the smash and dash kind of man you know…”

Hearing him say that, Lin Qiushi once again subtly scooted further away.

“We went to pray to that sculpture.” Ai Wenrui was finally done crying, and spoke through his hiccups. “We did as Xuejie[2] told us to do…And after prayers, we all made a wish, but we didn’t expect…that they would really come true.”

“What did you wish for?” Lin Qiushi recalled the sculptures they saw in the library. “You wished to win the awards?”

“It was only a joke—” Ai Wenrui tried to explain. “There were so many people at the time, and none of us thought this was real. We really only thought of it as a joke.”

As if he thought of something, his expression went a bit dazed.

“Who’d have thought…who’d have thought that to grant this wish, we had to pay with so much…”

Lin Qiushi asked, “where’s that sculpture now?”

“Still the activity room,” Ai Wenrui replied, exhausted. “After the things started happening, we went back to the sculpture and made another wish. But it was useless. People kept dying…”

When he said the word “dying,” he couldn’t help but look up at that window in the side building. Fear clearly lingered about the shattered glass falling from the sky.

“Then let’s go take a look,” Lin Qiushi said. “Let’s go see the sculpture in the activity room.”

“Right now?” Ai Wenrui stammered. “But I’m scared…I can’t, I can’t even walk.” He pointed at his noodley legs.

“No problem,” Lin Qiushi said. “He can carry you, can’t he?”

Gu Longming, a bit wronged: “…I can’t keep carrying him, can’t I?”

Lin Qiushi, “just bear with it for a bit longer.”

Gu Longming, “I’m saving my back for my future girlfriend!”

Lin Qiushi ruthlessly exposed a certain cruel truth: “But he just got off from your back.”

Gu Longming, “…”

Ai Wenrui peeked at Gu Longming, a little shy. “Sorry, I still like women…”

Gu Longming, through gritted teeth, “what a coincidence, me fucking too.”

It didn’t matter if they liked women—there were no women here after all. Guys would just have to make do. With a deep sigh, Gu Longming once again offered his sturdy back to Ai Wenrui. Ai Wenrui hung over his shoulders, directing them along the road ahead.

The three headed to the activity room.

The activity room was next to the exercise field. According to Ai Wenrui, lots of people used to go there because the sculpting club was a superstar club on campus. With countless awards, it had a prestigious position in the school, so there was a lot of participation from new students and the club was always active.

After things started occurring in the school, however, the club’s popularity instantly went cold. This was because even though the school didn’t say anything, everyone in the club knew perfectly well that most of those who’d died had been a member, and that they had all participated in the activity that night.

“I don’t think anyone’s inside,” Ai Wenrui said. “We have to find a teacher first and get the key to the room…”

Lin Qiushi said, “no need to get the key.”

Ai Wenrui, “without the key we can’t get in…”

But as he finished speaking, there Lin Qiushi was standing before the door. Lin Qiushi fished out a black hair clip from his pocket and began unlocking the door.

A few minutes later, the door opened with a click. Ai Wenrui’s eyes were wide from staring.

“You detectives have skills like that?”

Lin Qiushi sighed, “life’s not so easy, you gotta learn a bit of everything.”

Ai Wenrui, “…” You also gotta learn lock-picking? Why did that not seem quite correct?

But the door was open, at least. The three pushed their way in, and Ai Wenrui flicked on the light beside them, illuminating the entire activity room with light.

Lin Qiushi began to inspect their surroundings. He’d originally thought that the activity room would be small, but it was actually quite big. All sorts of items and sculpting tools were scattered about, and it was easy to see from a glance that the students here were all engrossed in this art form.

In the very center of the activity room was a large wooden table. There were lots of info-sheets on the table, along with a few sculpted busts.

Though Ai Wenrui had worked up the courage to bring them here, he still seemed a bit scared. He frittered about in the doorway for a while: “Why don’t you guys go in, I’ll wait for you out here.”

“Nah, stick together.” Gu Longming peered at him. “If something happened to you outside, it’s not like we can help you out.”

“Nothing’s out here, I don’t think anything will happen, right?” Ai Wenrui said.

“What do you mean you don’t think, you don’t remember how your friend just died?” Gu Longming gave the door a casual thump, indicating that Ai Wenrui shouldn’t let down his guard.

“Fine…” After some consideration, Ai Wenrui ended up listening to Gu Longming’s suggestion. If he hadn’t thought the two of them trustworthy enough to help him dodge a couple of attempts on his life, then he wouldn’t have brought them here in the first place.

If they could resolve this whole situation it would of course be for the best…There was really no guarding against those things, after all.

Lin Qiushi entered the activity room and surveyed the entire room. He asked, “where’s the sculpture?”

“We locked it up,” Ai Wenrui said. “I think it’s inside that room.”

He pointed at a small storage space.

Lin Qiushi went to the storage room door and took another couple of minutes to get rid of the lock on that. As he did so, he gave a mental shout-out to this very useful technique of Ruan Nanzhu's—otherwise they’d have to bother with a lot more troublesome things.

Popping the storage lock, Lin Qiushi did indeed see a statue wrapped up in a white cloth. “This one?”

“Yeah…” Ai Wenrui observed it for a moment, about to nod, but then found something was off. “No…It’s not…quite right.”

He swallowed.

“This, it kind of looks bigger than that one.”

Lin Qiushi, “…” Could the sculpture have been swapped out?

Author’s Note:

Hotpot for dinner makes me SUPER happy~

Translator’s Note:

1. the girl actually says “Xiao Shou” here as in gong/shou top/bottom kjdsnfkjsd
2. “Xuejie” is female upperclassman; if a better non-transliteration comes up (I think they’ll mention her grade in a few chapters?) I’ll replace it

3. Gu Longming’s accent over all… I’m having fun with it lmao but I don’t quite have rules set in place. The northern/northeastern accent has associations with manliness and just being super casual and chummy, so I’m mostly writing his dialogue like that.

Names in this chapter:

• Aì Wénruì / Ai(4) Wen(2) Rui(4) / 艾文瑞
• Xiǎo Hé / Xiao(3) He(2) / 小和