According to the redhead, the exit from St. Louis Hospital (lair version) was in the gatehouse outside the hospital building.
They had to go up to the first floor, cross the lobby, and leave through the main doors... Along the way, they had to avoid not only the residents but also the redhead's companions. Without someone to lead the way, it really would be a tricky problem.
Mai Minghe was very grateful.
"Young man, what's your name?"
She spread the white sheet back out-this was a habit she had kept for seventy or eighty years; even after getting off a mortuary bed, she had to smooth it flat-and sighed. "It's a shame we don't know each other in Blackmoor City. Otherwise, I'd have to knit you a sweater and send it over. Look at you, you're not dressed warmly enough today. It's November, and you're still in short sleeves."
The redhead glanced at her as though she were the strangest thing in the entire lair.
"...You're not my great-aunt." Only after a long moment did he mutter, "My name's Jonah. But I'd advise you to keep acting like you don't know me once you're back. Don't let my faction discover you."
She actually still had endless questions and very much wanted to ask Jonah about them somewhere safe, but he was right. None of those questions mattered as much as the Phantasm.
As for the lair, she could slowly find things out, bit by bit, sooner or later.
"Let's go," Jonah said. "We've reset, but it's still safer not to go back the way we came."
As they left, Mai Minghe switched off the light. In the instant before it went out, the body under the white sheet in the corner of the morgue passed through the edge of her vision once more-then darkness swallowed it inside the room.
The morgue door was heavy. Without anyone holding it open, it swung shut on its own with a bang behind them.
Mai Minghe followed Jonah around the corner toward the other end of the corridor. For some reason, her mind felt unsettled and vaguely adrift.
She kept thinking about that silent outline beneath the white sheet in the morgue. It seemed like a real corpse: it had not reacted when Jonah turned on the light, nor when they spoke, nor even when they left.
"Do people use the morgue to store actual dead bodies too?" Mai Minghe asked. "Thinking we might have been lying right beside a corpse just now gives me the creeps..."
"Hm?" Jonah answered casually. "Just now? A corpse?"
Swallowing the words that nearly slipped out, Mai Minghe raised her eyes and looked at his back.
Jonah's red hair was cropped very short. Below the neatly trimmed hairline at the back of his head, a faint orange fuzz that had not been shaved clean spread like mist over his neck.
For a moment, her thoughts rose and fell, and she could hardly have said what exactly she was thinking about. She said vaguely, "Yes... just now."
Jonah went quiet for a second or two.
Amid their steady footsteps, he said, "I don't know either. Maybe some people do that. It is a morgue, after all."
Mai Minghe murmured an acknowledgment.
She turned to look. Behind them was a straight corridor leading to the stairs they had just come down.
If she turned and ran from here, she would have no way to change direction. Running in a straight line would make it hard to shake off pursuit... No, no, perhaps she would not need to run at all?
Perhaps she was overthinking it?
Right, no hurry. Sort it out first, Mai Minghe told herself.
1. The morgue was a place to "reset." People went inside, lay down, and pretended to be dead. Once they had lain there long enough, the hospital residents would forget them;
2. Before they went in, someone had already been lying in the morgue-or at least something human-shaped;
3. After they came out, Jonah had clearly forgotten that someone else had been lying in the morgue.
Goose bumps rose in waves over Mai Minghe's thighs, an icy chill seeping from every pore.
Reasoning from those three known facts could lead to only one conclusion: Jonah was a resident.
But that conclusion was absurd. He was clearly a living person of flesh and blood, and he had even saved Mai Minghe. She might have overlooked something. She needed to think it through again.
Jonah walked fast. After following him with long strides for a while, Mai Minghe climbed out via the stairs at the other end of the hospital and reached the first floor, not far from the emergency room.
The hospital corridors and waiting area were brightly lit. There was no one at the nurses' station.
Aside from being deserted everywhere, this place was exactly like the real human world. There was even a paper cup on the counter of the nurses' information station, only the person drinking from it was gone-as though the apocalypse had suddenly arrived and humanity had abandoned this place.
There were several consulting rooms along their corridor. Some doors were tightly shut; others stood half open, revealing a sliver of impenetrable darkness.
Along the way, there was no sound except their footsteps and breathing. Jonah had chosen a very good route. They had not encountered a single resident and had avoided all the dangers.
"There are often things in the emergency room." Crouching behind a wall, Jonah quietly peered around it, watched for a while, then told Mai Minghe, "When we pass it, we have to stay absolutely silent."
Mai Minghe nodded, but a thought intruded into her mind.
...But we didn't have to stay quiet while pretending to be corpses?
She certainly did not understand lairs or the "Life Gate," but by ordinary logic, she felt that someone pretending to be a corpse should not have been chatting and joking back and forth the way they had.
A corpse-shouldn't it be like the person lying in the corner... motionless and silent, whatever happened?
If the person in the corner was the hunter who was really "resetting"...
Then did I actually reset successfully?
Mai Minghe lowered her head and looked at her fingertips.
Thinking it over carefully, she really did have one way to test whether Jonah was a resident or a living person.
Although she had wiped most of the blood onto the long, thin patient, a trace of filthy blood remained deep beneath her nails. She had not shaken it all off.
With a nail on her other hand, Mai Minghe picked out a little of the dark red grime and held it between her fingertips. When Jonah stood and whispered, "Let's go," she immediately reached out, grabbed his arm, and said, "Wait."
Fortunately, he was wearing short sleeves. The dark red blood on her fingers smeared smoothly onto Jonah's skin.
Nothing like the long, thin patient's writhing and struggling happened at all.
"What is it?" Still half bent over, Jonah retreated behind the wall. "Did you spot something?"
Aside from looking a little pale-but who could have a rosy complexion in a life-threatening situation like this? Mai Minghe suspected she looked even worse-there was nothing unusual about him. He felt neither pain nor irritation and had not even noticed the round-headed one's blood on his arm.
It seemed he probably was not a resident. Mai Minghe secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
There was probably another explanation for what had happened in the morgue, even if she could not think of it right now-but she was not God. How could she account for every detail and foresee everything?
I'll just pay closer attention from now on.
"Say something."
"Um... I was thinking," Mai Minghe faltered under his stare, needing to find a reason, "won't it be quite dangerous once we leave here? We should find some handy weapons before going out."
Jonah frowned in thought. "We don't have much time. Who knows how long this corridor will stay safe? As long as we're fast and reach the exit before danger gets close, weapons aren't essential."
It had only been an excuse, but after he said that, Mai Minghe felt finding a weapon was very necessary indeed. Whatever one did in life, having an extra precaution could only help, not hurt. It was normal for a young kid like Jonah to be full of confidence, but she could hardly afford to be overconfident along with him.
"How about this? When we pass the nurses' station, I'll go in and have a quick look on the way. That won't waste any time."
To leave this building, they had to pass the nurses' information station. If she entered at one end and left through the other, all she needed was enough time for a few quick glances.
Jonah was reluctant, but he did not object.
"Then I'll go in with you." He tipped his chin and said, "If there's nothing strange inside the nurses' station, it's actually safer than walking outside it. There's cover."
With that settled, they immediately stooped low and stepped lightly out from behind the wall.
Looking left and right as they hurried toward the nurses' station, they resembled two scurrying beetles, their four feet rustling across the floor before disappearing behind the station's partition.
The nurses' information station was rectangular, with entrances on either side facing each other. Mai Minghe kept fearing that if she looked up, a face would appear in the opposite entrance, so every few seconds she nervously glanced over to reassure herself.
On the side facing the lobby were three nurses' workstations, furnished with computers, desk chairs, telephones, and miscellaneous things such as forms and folders-if not for what she had just experienced, she could hardly have believed this was not the real St. Louis Hospital.
Why were there telephones and computers in the lair too? Who had brought all these things inside?
The letters on the keyboard were worn pale, as though someone really used it to type often. A little potted cactus, which she could not tell was real or fake, sat dustily in a corner of the desk.
For a moment, she almost forgot her objective. With the peculiar feeling of a television viewer seeing a filming set for the first time, she found even the most ordinary, dull duty rosters and ballpoint pens seemed to have acquired a layer of novelty, worth a few extra looks-unfortunately, she saw nothing that could be used as a weapon.
Mai Minghe had just reached out, intending to listen for a dial tone on the telephone, when Jonah immediately stopped her.
"Don't touch anything used for communication," he warned in a breathy whisper. "There's no telling what it might summon."
Her pressing the call bell four times in succession earlier had probably left him traumatized. His face practically said, "Why don't you ever learn?"
Mai Minghe withdrew her hand and considered for a few seconds.
"There's nothing here." Jonah crouched behind the counter so that no one outside the nurses' station could see anyone inside. He pointed toward the other entrance and continued in a breathy whisper, "Let's go. Don't waste time."
"All right."
When Jonah reached the entrance, still stooping, he suddenly stopped and glanced back at Mai Minghe. "What are you just standing there for? Come on."
Mai Minghe pulled out a desk chair. The rumble of its four casters scraped through the quiet air before stopping in front of her.
Half bent over, she pressed both hands onto the chair's backrest and looked at the face across from her.
Jonah looked no older than thirty. It would be fair to say his journey as an adult had only just begun. His eyes were a little red, his lips dry, and a faint warmth of sweat rose from him-very human.
She did not know what the truth really was, but she could not help feeling sad. Like a conditioned reflex, she ached for such a young child, and for the mother who had raised him little by little.
"You go," Mai Minghe said hoarsely. "I'm not going with you."
Jonah frowned and stared at her, as though he thought she was talking nonsense.
But two seconds later, his brow relaxed.
"...What did you notice?" No longer afraid of being seen, he straightened beside the nurses' station entrance and gave Mai Minghe a white smile. "Tell me too."
"Not counting the long, thin patient who was already in the room,"
Mai Minghe said softly, "after I rang the bell four times, a nurse came, then a pair of hands under the bed, and the underground resident controlling the round-headed one... That makes three 'figures disguised as nurses.' You were the fourth one to enter the room."
To tell you the truth, I thought that once I finished posting Mai Minghe's and Jin Xueli's sections, someone would definitely spot the foreshadowing about the "fourth person" and the "exit," but nobody did (Jin Xueli's section mentioned that returning to Blackmoor City also involved taking a passage). So I win this round. Going back to leave comments now doesn't count!
You grannies have done me a kindness too, letting me win a round. After all, things have been so hard lately, running around and dealing with things every day, anxious and angry... Sigh, let's not talk about unpleasant things.
The stockpile is gone. Starting tomorrow, I'll have to shamelessly put on talking, singing, comedy, and imitation acts for everyone (not really). Open the Phantasm Report page and take a look: oh, folk performance, chitchat, crosstalk comedy (nope).
First lure people in, then, once the stockpile's gone, perform the ballet "Swan Lake with a Broadsword" to repay my debts to you grannies. Is that all right, this new form of fraud of mine?
(End of chapter)
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