"Han Yun!" I cried out. Han Yun turned to look at me.
A smile still lingered on his face. He flashed me a victory sign. "Done!"
What was done? What was going on with hide-and-seek?
I had a whole stomachful of questions, but Jimny had suddenly vanished, and I should have followed his ghost into Han Yun's alternate space. Now my soul hadn't followed him. Instead, it had floated upward. I'd managed to call out to Han Yun in that brief moment, but then my soul had already flown away and returned to my body.
I let out a breath and opened my eyes. Screams and sobs filled my ears.
The earlier events weren't over yet. In this real alternate space, every ghost seemed to have encountered something terrifying, and they were screaming like mad.
Wu Ling immediately asked me, "What did you see?"
I tried to speak, but Han Yun and the other children's voices rang out together in my mind.
"One, two, three, four..."
They were counting.
I glanced at Wu Ling and the others. They had all stopped what they were about to do, frozen in place as they listened intently.
"...Fifty!"
After the last number was called, the children's voices vanished. Only a girl's voice remained, echoing in my mind.
"Come, come find me..." The girl's voice was choked with sobs, and it sounded as if the last syllable had been cut off.
I froze.
A girl? Who? Could it be Lina?
I frowned and looked at Wu Ling again, telling them what Han Yun had done.
"Hide-and-seek isn't supposed to work like this, is it?" Guo Yujie asked hesitantly.
"There's no point arguing about that. This is how Han Yun plays hide-and-seek. He's making all the ghosts search for someone... Those are the rules he