In life and death, we pledged ourselves to each other

The Route 444 Last Bus currently had nine passengers.

Su Bai sat in the front row, not daring to make any rash moves. After all, the Su Bai aboard the Route 444 Last Bus was not the Su Bai from eleven years later. This body was still that of a boy who had yet to graduate from high school. It had never endured the torments of the Nightmare World, nor had he regained the power that had kept him alive there.

But... he was not entirely without it.

If the "chosen" players wanted to survive one nightmare game after another, they had to possess power.

In the Nightmare World, there were two kinds of power that players could obtain most easily. The first was a "trait"-one and only one-bestowed by that mysterious voice with its mocking tone after a player survived and cleared their first game.

Traits came in all varieties. Walking barefoot on stones might hurt less. They might tan more easily in sunlight, know their multiplication tables better than others, or shell sunflower seeds faster... These gifts sounded useless at first, but if players kept exploring and developing them, they could become their greatest asset in the Nightmare World.

The same was true for Su Bai.

The second was the Red Moon's Power. Although no one understood how it worked, the longer players survived beneath the Red Moon, the more of this power gradually accumulated in their bodies. At first, it was like droplets of water. Little by little, it grew in quantity and strength, eventually becoming a warm current flowing through their bodies. Though this power from the Nightmare World and the Red Moon was not entirely beneficial, the players' physiques and other capabilities improved as it emerged. All they had to do was stay in the Nightmare World and bask in the moonlight.

Normally, players who cleared a game could choose to return to the real world and rest until the next game began. Some, however, chose to remain in the Nightmare World. Some wanted to become stronger as quickly as possible. Others, like Su Bai in the past, had nothing left to care about in the real world.

What Su Bai sensed inside his body was precisely the Red Moon's Power. It was extremely faint, but it was undeniably there.

Though it was not strong enough to let him act recklessly on the bus, the Su Bai of this moment was different from when he had first entered the Nightmare World. Last time... or rather, in his previous life, he had entered the Nightmare World in a very strange state: he could have died at any moment, yet he still wanted to live. Because of that, he had gone about things without haste, and had even gained more opportunities than Regular players.

But that strange state had also made Su Bai seem... not quite human from the very beginning.

Things were different now. Unlike when he entered the Nightmare World in his previous life, he now longed to return to the Real World. He even wanted to end this game as quickly as possible, then go back to the hospital and see his mother, who was still alive!

"Come here... your wish can be fulfilled here..."

The moment that longing surfaced in Su Bai's heart, a completely unfamiliar voice sounded beside his ear. It was as though a child were whispering right next to him, yet the tone was not childish at all. Instead, it was filled with an eerie, beguiling quality.

As though driven by some mysterious force, Su Bai turned to look out the window.

The world beyond the window should have been shrouded in mist. Beneath the Red Moon, that mist should have swallowed everything beyond the bus stop's streetlights. Yet now, Su Bai saw something strange outside-a shop that should not have existed!

Everything around it was concealed by mist, but that small, ordinary-looking storefront alone appeared clearly in Su Bai's vision. The shop had no sign. All he could see was a display window and a somewhat weathered wooden door, like an ordinary, empty storefront on the street that no one ever visited.

But...

"How is that possible?"

Su Bai could clearly see a "double happiness" character pasted on the shop's display window! Its corners had curled up, and its red color had faded almost to white! It was exactly the same character he had seen on that eerie shop before entering the Nightmare World!

A spine-chilling sensation sent cold shooting straight to the crown of his head. Su Bai was certain that the shop he had seen in the real world and the one in the Nightmare World were one and the same.

But why?

Su Bai had seen supernatural entities relentlessly pursue human players, and he had seen humans relentlessly pursue supernatural entities. But this was his first time seeing a shop refuse to stop pursuing someone-and this time, that someone was him.

The Route 444 bus continued swaying along, and the strange shop in the mist soon vanished from Su Bai's sight. But before he could turn back, another identical shop, with the same "double happiness" character pasted on its window, appeared ahead!

This time, lights were even glowing inside the shop, dim and yellow yet conspicuous in the mist. A childlike figure suddenly appeared behind the display window.

Because of the distance and the mist, Su Bai could not make out the child's face or even their clothes. He could only see the figure standing there, slowly beckoning in his direction.

"Come here."

That figure was the one telling Su Bai to enter the shop!

Gradually, Su Bai's eyes could see nothing but the child's hand, slowly beckoning to him... Perhaps I should get off at the next stop... then go to the shop...

"I think I heard someone speaking just now," Wan Shasha's voice sounded inside the bus.

Wan Shasha was not speaking loudly, but her voice happened to pull Su Bai's reason back from that shop. He immediately averted his gaze and even closed his eyes for a while to clear his head. When he opened them again, the scenery outside seemed to have returned to its earlier state. There was nothing but mist, and certainly no strange shop with a "double happiness" character on its window.

Only Su Bai knew that the shop had definitely not been his imagination.

"Did you hear someone speaking just now? I think I heard someone say, 'How is that possible?'" Wan Shasha's seat was closest to Su Bai's, which was why she had caught his muttering.

"I think it was the special passenger in the front row." Wan Shasha quickly identified her target. Apart from her and Zhang Yibu, the only people at the front of the bus were the white-haired old woman and Su Bai.

"Special... special passengers can talk too?" Compared with Wan Shasha's boldness, even Zhang Yibu's tone sounded timid.

"Are you sure?" Qin Ge considered things more deeply than the two children did. "If we can find another passenger besides the driver whom we can communicate with, we might be able to figure out how to clear the game sooner."

Su Bai: "..."

"I-I think I recognize that person's school uniform." Zhang Yibu suddenly spoke up as well. The boy in pajamas had barely said anything until now. "I think it's... it's the uniform from Rainbow Locust No. 1 High School."

"Rainbow Locust No. 1 High School?" Qin Ge repeated the school's name from the back row. "Then does that mean you were all in Honghuai City too, before you appeared on the Route 444 Last Bus?"

Qin Ge emphasized the word "too."

"Yes." Wan Shasha nodded, then tapped the window and asked Zhang Yibu, "I remember Rainbow Locust No. 1 High School is famous for being a good school. Are you a student there?"

Zhang Yibu quickly shook his head. "I go to Ninth Middle School. If it were our school's uniform, I would have recognized it right away. None of the students near my home go to Rainbow Locust No. 1 High School, but my mom's friend has a son who goes there. My mom often uses him as an example when she lectures me. I-I've seen him a few times too..."

Zhang Yibu's voice grew fainter as he spoke.

Naturally, Su Bai could hear the conversation among the Trio behind him. Though they had very carefully lowered their voices, there was little privacy or secrecy to be had inside such a cramped bus.

In truth, Su Bai had not been particularly intent on pretending to be a special passenger. What had happened to him was simply far, far more complicated than what the other three newcomers aboard the Route 444 Last Bus had experienced. When he had rushed through the rain toward the hospital, he had thought of little except seeing his mother again. Now that he was trapped on the bus, he was just as desperate to clear the game, but he did have a little more time to sort out the jumble of thoughts in his head.

He had gained a stretch of time to think quietly: to recall the details of how he had cleared the Route 444 Last Bus last time, to remember what had happened before his rebirth-if rebirth was indeed what this was-to consider how much of an advantage starting over gave him over Regular newcomers, and to ponder why the smiling driver had looked at him with such a strange expression earlier...

Unfortunately, though Su Bai had been famous in the Nightmare World before his rebirth, and his strength had even earned him several widely known nicknames that he personally found unpleasant, his memory was utterly ordinary. The details of his first encounter with the Route 444 Last Bus eleven years ago had long since become hazy. His memories of the period before his rebirth seemed veiled in mist; he could not recall even a few blurry images.

So rather than saying Su Bai was sitting quietly in the first row to deliberately pose as a special passenger, it would be more accurate to say that he had spent most of that time lost in thought and simply had not taken the initiative to strike up a conversation with the trio.

Now, hearing the Trio in the back discuss how to talk to him, this "special passenger," and coax information about this world out of him, Su Bai decided that properly engaging with them would not be a bad thing. In any case, telling the truth would be much easier than continuing to pretend to be some damned special passenger.

But just as Su Bai was about to turn around and say something, another voice sounded beside his ear-

"In life and death..."

Following the voice, Su Bai looked out the window again. Sure enough, the shop with the faded "double happiness" character was still there in the mist. Although the Route 444 Last Bus had been swaying forward all this time, whenever Su Bai turned his head, he invariably saw that shop outside.

The childlike figure was still standing behind the display window, illuminated by dim yellow light, slowly beckoning toward Su Bai as though calling him to leave the Route 444 Last Bus and enter the shop.

Unlike before, the "double happiness" character, which should have been faded and curled at the edges, changed in the blink of an eye. Not only did it lie perfectly flat against the glass, its color had become a dazzling red! That red was exceedingly strange. In the dark, misty night, even with light inside the window, someone outside should have struggled to make out the character's color. Yet Su Bai could see its piercing red with perfect clarity!

"We pledged ourselves to each other."

If the voice beside his ear had merely kept calling him into the shop as before, Su Bai might not have fallen under its spell again. But what he heard now was-

"In life and death, we pledged ourselves to each other..."

Wasn't that the vow inscribed on that eerie marriage contract?

Setting aside the completely blurred stretch of memories before his rebirth, Su Bai remembered taking part in an extraordinarily difficult nightmare game before that gap in his memory. He had even been on the brink of death during it. In the end, to escape a terrifying scene, he had taken out a mysterious item he had never imagined using-a marriage contract from a supernatural entity.

To survive, Su Bai had signed his name on that marriage contract.

"In life and death, we pledged ourselves to each other." That was the blood-red vow inscribed on the eerie marriage contract.

Pale-faced, Su Bai stared at the mysterious shop outside the bus window. This was a contract he had signed with his own hand, and now... the other party had come for him.

And he did not even know whether the terrifying entity he had entered that marriage contract with was male or female-or whether it even had a human form.