Killing Off All the Heroines

Room 2507 remained much as it had been. Everything belonging to Brother Zhao had been preserved: the cabinets, the sofa, the coffee table—all the furniture the deceased had used while alive was still there.

Old Zhao had been an extremely frugal man. The decor was rudimentary, and the room felt cold and deserted, filled with an indescribable chill.

Xuan Wen did not turn on the lights. She walked straight to the balcony and looked down over the enclosed courtyard, watching the torrential rain.

After a fierce internal struggle, Gao Ming also entered Room 2507. His gaze was soon drawn to the living room wall, where a huge picture frame covered with black cloth hung in the most conspicuous spot.

"Want to know what that is?" Xuan Wen did not turn around, yet she seemed to know exactly what Gao Ming was thinking. "You can take off the black cloth and look."

Gao Ming caught a corner of the cloth and tugged gently. As it slipped away, an enormous black-and-white wedding photograph appeared before him.

In the photograph, Gao Ming and Xuan Wen wore happy smiles, but Gao Ming alone was in color. The stunningly beautiful Xuan Wen and her extravagant wedding dress were entirely black and white.

"Another Posthumous Photograph?" Gao Ming had no memory of ever taking a wedding photograph with Xuan Wen, let alone one so chilling.

"Do you remember anything now?" Xuan Wen turned around. Her smile was warm and her expression gentle, but the air she exuded was deeply unnatural. Secrets lurked in the depths of her beautiful eyes.

"What exactly happened in the tunnel on the night of the Ghost Festival?" Gao Ming had stayed close to the door the entire time, ready to leave at any moment.

"You boarded a vehicle you should never have boarded and went somewhere you should never have gone." Xuan Wen looked at Gao Ming with a sickly adoration that felt both unsettling and familiar. "You forgot what happened in the tunnel because your body was protecting itself. Subconsciously, you believed you couldn't accept that terrifying truth, so you selectively erased it."

"Then why do you know what happened in the tunnel? You should have appeared because of my game. The timing gives you no reason to know what I went through there." Gao Ming backed up to the doorway.

"Because I was the one who brought you home that night." Xuan Wen took another step forward. "Do you remember how you designed my story route in To Our Love That Will Eventually Fade? I always know where you are, and my favorite thing to do is watch you. That twisted ability, along with my uncontrollable love, made me seek you out the moment I woke up."

Just listening to Xuan Wen frightened Gao Ming. He had never made a dating game before and had never known one could be so terrifying.

"What did you see?"

"Bodies were embedded in the tunnel walls, their faces contorted with pain. When I arrived, you were talking to something and walking deeper into the tunnel, step by step. I brought you out." Gao Ming could not tell whether Xuan Wen was telling the truth, but a trace of fear surfaced in her eyes as she spoke.

"Simply seeing walls covered with corpses wouldn't scare me into losing my memory. But I did hear some voices." Gao Ming strained to remember, yet nothing came back to him. "Do you remember what the voice said?"

"Everything is spiraling out of control. Vengeful Ghosts run rampant, strange phenomena keep emerging, and the malice in people's hearts will overturn the city. Any of the games you made based on murders and urban legends could become reality. They will crawl out of rotting memories. The way to weaken their resentment is to get more people to play the games you designed. You can choose to lead them through the game, or sacrifice them to feed the horrors. Different choices will exact different prices and bring different rewards." Xuan Wen paused briefly before continuing. "The voice said you should have died, and that it had given you a chance to live. You seemed to have struck a deal."

"I should have died..." Gao Ming considered the deeper meaning of those words. "Did I die once in the tunnel? Had I already been brought back to life when you arrived? That makes no sense at all!"

"If you don't believe me, or think I'm lying, you can find the other passengers on the bus that night and ask them." Xuan Wen sat down on the sofa. "While I was bringing you out of the tunnel, I saw other living people."

"There were other passengers still alive?"

"Yes. Everything happened too quickly, so I didn't get a clear look at their faces. Otherwise, I would have found a way to lock them up and get to the truth." Xuan Wen changed into slippers, speaking the most terrifying words in the most casually domestic tone.

Having obtained some information, and with night already fallen, Gao Ming took another step back.

"Got what you wanted, and now you're in a hurry to leave?" Xuan Wen gazed at Gao Ming with a smile. "I suppose you don't remember what you promised me in the tunnel, either?"

"I don't."

"That's all right. You can take your time remembering." Xuan Wen took a black-and-white Posthumous Photograph out of her underclothes. "When I opened my eyes and woke up in reality, this black-and-white Posthumous Photograph appeared beside me. Over the past three days, as I eliminated the other heroines in the dating game, the wedding dress in the photograph seemed to change."

Xuan Wen compared the Posthumous Photograph in her hand with the enormous wedding photograph on the wall. It was clear that the wedding dress in the smaller portrait was gradually gaining color.

"The other girlfriends from the dating game also appeared under some unknown influence. Strictly speaking, they were dead to begin with. But the question is..." Xuan Wen approached with the Posthumous Photograph in hand, madness burning in her eyes. "A Posthumous Photograph represents the memories a dead person leaves behind in reality. If a black-and-white photograph turns to color, does that mean the dead person has come back to life? Killing other dead people seems to let me break free of some kind of restraint."

"Is that why you can move freely through the city, no different from a normal person?" Hearing Xuan Wen casually mention killing the other girlfriends made cold sweat bead on Gao Ming's forehead. Three days, eight girlfriends—she was utterly unhinged!

The least popular supporting girl in the dating game, an abandoned love interest with a twisted, pathological personality, had become a "person" who understood the "current situation" better than Gao Ming himself after the game became reality, all through clear, precise judgment and crazed, decisive action.

Xuan Wen's appearance also opened up Gao Ming's thinking. Those horror and mystery games contained not only dangerous monsters and vengeful Ghosts, but also "lunatics" with tremendous potential.

"I only want to become a person like you." Xuan Wen began speaking faster, her state growing increasingly abnormal as she revealed her real reason for seeking Gao Ming out. "After repeated attempts, I discovered that a game becoming reality is a process. The more terrifying and dangerous a game is, the more slowly it merges with this city, producing all kinds of ominous signs and warnings. To trigger it early, before the haunting fully takes shape, three conditions must be met: a haunted home where someone has recently died, a Posthumous Photograph from that world, and you."

Standing inside the haunted Room 2507, Gao Ming now understood exactly what Xuan Wen meant. She wanted to "hunt" the urban legend games and devour the ghosts inside them before they fully matured!

"The haunted home is the game venue. The Posthumous Photograph is a ticket that lets you enter the game early. And you are the passage." Xuan Wen grabbed Gao Ming's clothes with both hands. "That voice told you to bring more players into the games. I should count as a player too, shouldn't I?"

With bloodshot eyes, Xuan Wen opened the handbag she carried. Inside were eight blank Posthumous Photographs, each without a person in it.

"I have plenty of tickets."

"Calm down. Right now, all of this is just your hypothesis." Once Gao Ming understood Xuan Wen's true purpose, he was no longer afraid. He looked at her face, so close to his own, and could not find a single flaw. "But I can help you. We'll test your hypothesis in Room 2507 tonight."

Gao Ming was a psychological counselor at a Maximum-Security Prison, a doctor who danced with caged beasts. He knew exactly how to deal with dangerous people.

Just as Gao Ming agreed, footsteps sounded in the hallway, followed by the doorbell.

After Xuan Wen covered the wedding photograph with the black cloth, Gao Ming opened the door. The disfigured investigator stood in the fifth-floor hallway, gasping for breath. "This room is dangerous. You have to move out immediately!"

(End of chapter)