"Remember, whatever you do, do not get off at the final stop."
The Route 444 Last Bus only stayed at each stop for a limited time. If possible, Su Bai even wanted to get back on before it left the Commercial Street Stop, so he had hardly any time to explain things to the trio. He could only use the fewest words possible to steer them away from an almost certainly fatal path.
After leaving them that rare, kindly warning, Su Bai turned and continued off the bus.
"Attention, passengers. The bus will remain at this stop for five minutes. Those wishing to get off, please hurry." Hearing the Route 444 Last Bus driver's oddly inflected announcement behind him, Su Bai couldn't help feeling that the driver he remembered had been a quiet, taciturn sort. In this life, however, he seemed a little too considerate.
Five minutes, though?
The instant Su Bai's right foot left the bus and touched the ground of the nightmare world, he felt the light of the Red Moon spill over him, carrying a chill he knew all too well. It pierced him to the bone, yet brought no urge to shiver or seek warmth. This was a cold unique to the world beneath the Red Moon. Once accustomed to it, he could even forget the warmth of basking in the sun in the real world.
Back beneath the familiar Red Moon, feeling the chill around him, Su Bai suddenly regretted that he had returned to the past on a rainy night. He hadn't even had time to remember what sunlight felt like before returning to the nightmare world, where he would have to face a terrifying betrothed he had never met.
Had he returned to the past just to be eaten by the Strange Creature on the other end of the marriage pact?
Pushing the jumble of thoughts out of his head, Su Bai took his left foot off the bus as well. He stepped forward and surveyed his familiar yet unfamiliar surroundings. They were familiar because the nightmare world had plenty of dim places like this, with almost no light source besides the Red Moon. They were unfamiliar because areas completely shrouded in fog were rare outside beginner games.
The place where the Route 444 Last Bus had stopped was presumably the Commercial Street Stop the driver had mentioned. Unfortunately, all Su Bai could see was a battered streetlamp casting a dim yellow glow and a rust-covered stop sign beside it.
There was no shelter or bench for waiting passengers. Apart from the fog, the only other thing Su Bai could see was the eerie shop lit up a short distance away.
When he had first seen this shop, the glass display window occupying more than half the wall had been empty. Only a faded, curling paper cutout of the "double happiness" character had been pasted onto the glass. There had been no sign bearing the shop's name, and the wooden door beside the window had looked just as old and worn, like a vacant storefront that had gone unrented and unnoticed for years.
Now, however, a dim yellow light shone through the clean, clear display window. The wooden door beside it looked as though it had been freshly painted, and a small sign reading "Push" hung on it. There also seemed to be a new wooden sign above the door, but it was pristine and completely blank.
Looking through the window, Su Bai could make out the child standing inside more clearly. He could even see that it was a little boy wearing a loose white top and black trousers, still standing in the display window and beckoning in Su Bai's direction.
Su Bai glanced back at the Route 444 Last Bus, which remained motionless beside the stop beneath the Red Moon, then strode resolutely toward the eerie storefront. He was a veteran player who had survived ten years in the nightmare world, not a rookie who hesitated over every decision. He knew perfectly well that this was the only path open to him!
"Ding-"
Just as he reached the entrance, before Su Bai could put his hand against the wooden door, a sound like wind chimes rang out. Then the door swung inward on its own with a creak, revealing the illuminated shop interior.
Su Bai entered the shop, and the wooden door closed behind him. The chill of the Red Moon receded with it, shut outside the door.
The lighting inside was brighter than it had looked from outside, without that dim yellow cast.
Perhaps to make it look like a proper shop, two tall shelving units stood against the west and north walls of the white-walled, white-tiled room, while four slightly shorter units were arranged neatly inside. Yet every wooden shelf was empty, so clean that not even a speck of dust was visible.
A long wooden checkout counter stood on the east side of the shop. Several small racks sat on top, likewise without any goods on them.
The whole shop was small, about the size of Su Bai's high school classroom. However, two wooden doors stood side by side off to one side behind the checkout counter. There might have been a storeroom, a break room, or some other space beyond them.
After briefly surveying the eerie shop that had been following him all this time, Su Bai immediately turned his gaze to the child standing by the display window a short distance away. Dressed in black and white, the boy looked about five or six by human standards. He had blood-red eyes like the Red Moon and a fair, adorably delicate face. The moment his eyes met Su Bai's, he narrowed them into a smile.
If one could overlook the fact that he was a Strange Creature, he really was a cute child.
Unfortunately, Su Bai couldn't.
"You..."
"Madam." The child's young voice cut Su Bai off. "Welcome to the Mist Shop."
"..." Su Bai was momentarily speechless. The boy's reaction was rather different from the life-or-death ordeal he had expected, so he could only ask tentatively, "Madam?"
Su Bai even cautiously glanced to either side out of the corners of his eyes. Apart from him and the child facing him, there was no third humanoid creature in the shop.
"You-you signed your name on the marriage contract, so naturally you are the master's betrothed, and therefore our madam." As the child spoke, he glanced through the display window again. The Route 444 Last Bus was parked beside the dim yellow streetlamp. "Rest assured, madam. The master has stopped time in this shop, so you can return to that filthy bus whenever you like."
There was a note of disdain in the child's voice when he mentioned the Route 444 Last Bus.
Su Bai could doubt what the boy said, or even choose not to believe any of it, but that wouldn't improve his chances of survival. As a veteran of the nightmare world, Su Bai had long since grown used to trusting the remaining one-tenth of a percent whenever he found himself in a situation with a 99.9 percent chance of death, then following that last path all the way to its end.
So, at this moment, Su Bai chose to believe that the Strange Creature before him had no intention of killing him just yet. Instead, the boy intended to stand here and chat calmly with him, and had even told him he could leave the shop and return to the bus whenever he wished.
Still...
"I'm a man, not a madam." Su Bai chose to correct the boy's form of address anyway.
As for the "master" the boy had mentioned, that was presumably the terrifying eerie entity on the other end of the marriage pact.
Su Bai carefully observed the child with the flawless face before him, using this correction to test his attitude and see whether he could truly communicate with Su Bai peacefully, as an equal.
The child didn't look displeased at all. Instead, he nodded, still smiling. "Then how about I call you 'boss' in everyday conversation, madam? After all, this shop is a gift from the master. From now on, you will be its owner."
"..."
Su Bai fell silent. This strange shop that had been eerily following him all along... counted as... a betrothal gift from a Strange Creature?
Before you continue