When Sheng Canyang said he would see him tomorrow, Hai Ri didn’t actually think that they would meet the next day. Even if they were both starting tasks tomorrow, they probably wouldn’t be placed in the same group. At the most, they would just have a hasty encounter on the bus.
The next day, Hai Ri got on the bus early in the morning at 8am. He found a window seat and then put on his earphones to listen to music. When a bag was tossed onto the luggage rack above his head, Hai Ri looked up and saw Sheng Canyang, who was wearing a blue hoodie over a white undershirt today, along with black jeans and the ever-present peaked cap. The tiny earrings in his ears twinkled under sunlight. Hai Ri was nearly pummeled into unconsciousness by the sunshine-like handsomeness that pounced at him.
Sheng Canyang flung his bag up there before sitting down. “You’re early.”
“I wasn’t sure what time we would set off, so I came over at 6.30am,” Hai Ri’s warm and caring mom heart acted up. “You didn’t sleep well last night? Those are very heavy eye bags.”
Staring blankly, Sheng Canyang picked up the pair of silver-edged sunglasses from his shirt collar and casually put it on with a smile. “It was fine.”
Hai Ri felt like there was something troubling Sheng Canyang, but he wasn’t in the position to enquire, so he could only remain silent and continue to play Jewel of Atlantis with a lowered head while waiting to set off.
He had been stuck at this level for a very long time. After two thousand levels, it could be said that passing a level was purely dependent on luck. In the six years Hai Ri had played this stupid game, he had never felt that any aspect of the game could be mastered with practice.
A little weeping icon regretfully informed him that he had run out of steps and still had three ice cubes left to eliminate.
Under his sunglasses, Sheng Canyang shifted his gaze over. All he saw was Hai Ri taking a deep breath and calmly raising his head. Hai Ri watched the scenery outside the window for a while and lowered his head again after his emotions stabilized. Calmly switching apps, he opened the video app Fast, Short Hands and clicked on a livestream in a practiced manner.
Sheng Canyang smiled, feeling that Hai Ri was quite interesting when he suppressed his anger. Before his smile had even settled on his face, he saw the male anchor in the video make coquettish looks at the camera in his low-cut lolita dress.
Sheng Canyang’s eyes wavered.
He thought that this might just be an accident; it was possible that Hai Ri pressed the wrong button. But after that, he watched Hai Ri frantically give the anchor little hearts with a calm expression, causing special effects in the form of sparkling red hearts to bloom under his fingers.
Sheng Canyang glanced at Hai Ri and then took another look at the male anchor on his phone. For a moment, he couldn’t control the stunned expression on his face. Sensing his eyes on him, Hai Ri turned around. “You watch these?”
Sheng Canyang shook his head crazily.
Hai Ri already had his hands on his earbuds, all prepared to hand him one. Seeing this, he could only place it back in his ear. “Oh.”
This was a huge shock to Sheng Canyang, and he couldn’t help but ask, “…What is that?”
Hai Ri: “A livestream.”
Was it possible for Sheng Canyang to not know what a livestream was? “What are you watching?”
Hai Ri: “A guy from Northern Hua, 3rd district. He’s quite funny.”
Sheng Canyang: “What has he done for you to give him gifts?”
Hai Ri: “I didn’t give him gifts though? Oh, the little hearts? Giving a little heart to a fellow comrade is free of charge. The anchor’s popularity goes up with these little taps. Give it a try.”
Sheng Canyang took off his sunglasses and Hai Ri held his cell phone out to him. “Press the screen twice.”
After a moment of hesitation, Sheng Canyang gave it a tap, and a little heart floated out from under his fingers.
Hai Ri praised, “Smart.”
Sheng Canyang: ?
What am I doing?
The bus door opened, and the big-bellied driver finally got on, seating himself in the driver’s seat. Hai Ri exited the app after noticing this and put on a song instead. He didn’t plan to continue watching the livestream as it was easy to get motion sickness when watching videos on a vehicle.
A mixed-race youth watching a livestream on a bus in another world and giving free gifts to a King Kong Barbie – it was strange no matter how Sheng Canyang thought about it.
The twenty-first century was complicated.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Vtfcu Jjcsjcu uijcmfv ja tlw sfa jcbatfg alwf klat j mbwqifz wbbv. Pcafgfra lc Ljl El jgbrf jygeqais. “Xf, ktja vbfr sbeg cjwf wfjc?”
Ljl El abbx bea j fjgyev. “Pc Zbcubiljc, Ljl El wfjcr ibnf.”
Vtfcu Jjcsjcu: “Tbe mjc rqfjx Zbcubiljc?”
“P’w Zbcubiljc,” Ljl El rjlv. “Zs Jtlcfrf lrc’a nfgs ubbv.”
Sheng Canyang couldn’t tell that his Chinese wasn’t good. Hai Ri’s speech somewhat resembled a northerner’s and gave off a feeling that he cared for nothing. It was sloppy and very frivolous.
Sheng Canyang put his sunglasses back on without saying anything more.
Hai Ri took the initiative to say, “Actually, Hai Ri is a girl’s name.”
Sheng Canyang felt the same. Giving a boy the name ‘love’ seemed a bit strange. “Why give you a girl’s name?”
“I changed it myself after growing up,” Hai Ri replied. “It sounds nice.”
Sheng Canyang: …
Hai Ri: “Take a nap.”
Sheng Canyang came to a sudden realization and cast a glance at him. What other reason could there be to give himself a girl’s name? Hai Ri didn’t seem to want to conceal anything and had very calmly taken the initiative to tell him a very personal matter.
It was unknown if he had such a habit or if it was intentional.
Sheng Canyang pondered over it, saying, “It does sound nice.”
A smile stretched across Hai Ri’s face.
The trip didn’t take three hours this time. When they arrived at the destination of their new task, Hai Ri vomited as per usual after getting off the vehicle before reporting with empty hands.
The area where their task would be carried out was extremely spacious, and they had to traverse through a patch of woods according to the road signs. Whether it was intentional or not, the entire stretch of woods was exceedingly quiet. An enormous whale tail blocked out the sky above their heads, dimming the woods.
There wasn’t anyone in front or behind Hai Ri; he lost contact with the others after his vomiting spell. He made his way all on his lonesome through the last bit of dense underbrush, made a turn, and finally caught sight of a large residence. There were already five to six people standing by the entrance, and in one glance, Hai Ri saw Sheng Canyang among the group.
Hai Ri: …
Sheng Canyang looked back and shot him a glance. “We were part of the same batch to sign up, there were only two tasks for this batch.”
Hai Ri said somewhat absent-mindedly. “What a coincidence.”
His luck in chasing celebrities had never been good his entire life. He was aware Sheng Canyang was a talented, good child, even if he didn’t explode in popularity. Hai Ri also never hoped for Sheng Canyang’s popularity to skyrocket. He was a pure mom fan, and a mother could only wish that Sheng Canyang would have a bit more fun in the entertainment industry. In the end, that wish didn’t come to fruition.
When other people chased after celebrities, even if their idol wasn’t popular, they could still be a fan for life. Everything was all right as long as their idol was still alive. But in the end, his idol didn’t even have his life left.
His fortune at chasing celebrities was indeed bad when he was alive, yet it improved after his unexpected death?
Sheng Canyang looked up, oblivious to his thoughts. His gaze was fixed on the words written on the directions board as he stated, “This time, the task scenario is ‘Little Sister Carries A Doll’.”
Hai Ri was baffled till he heard Sheng Canyang hum, “Little Sister carries a doll to the garden to see cherry blossoms. The doll cries for its mother, and a bird up in the tree laughs.”
Sheng Canyang’s clear and bright voice made any song sound incredible. Even in the case of a nursery rhyme, his clear singing was very pleasant to the ear and it felt like he was singing a trendy song.
Hai Ri asked, “Is this a nursery rhyme? Why isn’t it scary at all?”
Sheng Canyang’s smile was ripe with unsaid meaning. “There’s more at the back, you should be able to hear it a while later.”
Hai Ri didn’t pay any heed to this statement. The door swung open, and a woman carrying a doll walked out. Her long hair trailed on the ground, and her complexion was a ghastly white. She bowed, a bloody-red kimono clothing her figure. “Everyone, please enter–”
Having participated in a task once, Hai Ri knew that she was the deceased in this scenario. Compared to the deceased in the previous scenario, she was already very presentable.
Including Hai Ri, there were a total of seven people standing outside the door. It was a seven-player scenario this time round.
Hai Ri carelessly glanced at the few people, while Sheng Canyang took the initiative to enter. Only after Hai Ri went in, hot on his heels, did the remaining people slowly stream in as well.
The woman seated herself on a tatami mat. “Please choose your role.”
Hai Ri switched on his phone and connected to the wifi. A webpage automatically popped out in the browser, on which seven portraits were displayed.
It was a random selection.
Without any knowledge of the story’s background or the identity of the deceased. In any case, they could only choose randomly based on whichever one was pleasing to the eye. Hai Ri selected a man who was a bit on the uglier side, thinking he didn’t seem very much like a killer. In general, ugly men wouldn’t be the main character.
In real time, he watched Sheng Canyang select a girl who looked to be around six or seven years old on the webpage.
Hai Ri’s intuition told him this was far from good.
His son seemed to have chosen a dangerous role.
He glanced at Sheng Canyang, but he was looking down and his face was covered by his peaked cap, so there wasn’t much expression he could distinguish. Moreover, everyone had successfully made their selections by this point, so there was no way to make any changes.
The woman looked up, her hair parting slightly as she moved, finally revealing half a face as well as a scar-ridden forehead that gave off the aura of death. Hai Ri just happened to be seated opposite her and was nearly frightened out of his wits when he looked back and saw her grinning at him.
The woman propped herself up with her withered arms and stood up. Her eyes bored into them, as if imprinting their roles into her memory.
The life history of Hai Ri’s chosen character automatically popped up on the webpage. As he was reading, he had a niggling sensation that there was a seemingly present yet absent voice in his earphones. He’d originally been playing Sheng Canyang’s song, but had turned it off when he was speaking to Sheng Canyang. He wasn’t sure if the voice was a figment of his imagination or something.
Hai Ri tried his hardest to focus on his script. He was… the deceased’s lover? It was a bit dangerous to rely on such a character. Hai Ri instantly went to read his timeline on the day the deceased had perished. When he didn’t see any record of him killing the deceased, a sigh of relief left his lips.
He wasn’t the murderer this round. The rest wasn’t important then, they could be left for later.
Right at this moment, he suddenly heard the voice in his earphones clearly. He wasn’t the only one, everyone could hear it. There were some whose phones were playing the song out loud. A little girl’s voice rang out in the enclosed room, singing —
“Daddy got drunk one day. Picking up his ax, he walked to mommy. Red blood stained the wall scarlet, and mommy’s head rolled under the bed. And then, daddy asked me to help him. We buried mommy beneath the tree. And then daddy raised the ax, peeled off my skin to make a doll, and buried it under the tree to accompany mommy.”
This was the latter half that Sheng Canyang didn’t sing.
Hai Ri thought of the nursery rhyme Sheng Canyang had sung after hearing this melody, and immediately turned to look at him. Sheng Canyang had also glanced at him by coincidence, the corners of lips hooked up in a smile. Hai Ri then understood what Sheng Canyang had been smiling at the previous time. He’d only said this song wasn’t creepy because Sheng Canyang only sang the first half.
There was a high chance Sheng Canyang knew this story… then his choice of the little girl must have been deliberate as well.
He just didn’t know if he had deliberately chosen a murderer or a good person.
Based on the script, this was a pretty sad story.
There was a daughter named Yu Shang in this household. She was the daughter of a general and was born incomparably ugly. The people of that time took ugliness as an infectious disease, so she was isolated by even her parents and younger sister. Due to this, she became increasingly closed off and started locking herself inside her room with only a rag doll as her companion.
At the age of fifteen, Yu Shang hung herself in her room from loneliness and self-degradation. But because no one entered her room, nobody realized that Yu Shang had already died. Only when the corpse’s hair grew into the floorboards and her white clothes turned a muted red was she discovered.
Yu Shang’s heartbroken mother wailed day after day. One day, she inexplicably died in the room, hugging Yu Shang’s doll.
The deceased before them was most likely Yu Shang’s mother, and their task was to find out who killed her.
Not wanting to continue reading his script, Hai Ri casually scrutinized the complexions of the remaining five people. These people didn’t appear to be newbies; they remained silent all the while and were very familiar with the game. A girl seemed slightly on edge – her gaze was fixed on her phone’s screen and for a long while, she didn’t flip the page. The left hand resting on her leg was curled into a fist.
Hai Ri had one hour to read his script, but since he wasn’t the murderer, he had no use for such a long period of time. He didn’t actually have much desire to continue reading the script. After a simple look through, he closed the webpage and put a song on. The nursery rhyme was indeed slightly hair-raising. Hai Ri might be a pure 0, but he wasn’t unworthy of his 1.8m height – his courage was not little, and he had seen his fair share of horror films without feeling much. However, this song really seemed like it was sung by a dead person, as if a dead girl was lying beside him and singing into his ears. The sensation of his hair standing on end was quite fitting with the house’s damp temperature.
Hai Ri stood up, shooting a glance at the deceased. “Can the door be opened?”
The deceased lifted her lower jaw, looking at him with jet-black eyes. For a moment, there was no reply, likely because such a question had not been anticipated.
Hai Ri spoke to the people behind him, “It’s too stuffy, I’ll open the door. No objections, right?”
Sheng Canyang’s gaze swept across everyone from his seat at the corner. Everyone scrutinized Hai Ri, and then a middle-aged man said, “No objections.”
Hai Ri nodded. He pulled open the door, taking in the scenery in the yard – a cherry blossom tree in full bloom stood in the yard, occupying one-third of the entire yard. In this season, the wind that blew past carried the scent of flowers.
Everyone’s breathing seemed to halt for a moment, entranced by the massive and beautiful cherry blossom tree.
Hai Ri sat back down. “Who has their speakers on? Can you turn it down?”
Even till now, someone was still playing the nursery rhyme. Even with his earphones on, he could still hear the song that reverberated through the room on repeat.
The seemingly-anxious girl reacted, her face reddening instantly. “Ah! Sorry, I forgot to turn it off.”
Hai Ri: “No worries, you can ask me if you need the song lyrics, I’ve memorized them.”
A man added in a timely manner, “Let’s change our clothes.”
In this game, everyone had to wear the clothes of the role they had chosen in order to get infinitely closer to the real character. The characteristics of a killer would also be reconstructed in vivid realism.
The red-clothed deceased stood up, her voice unexpectedly very gentle despite her appearance that no one could bear to look straight at. “Please return to your rooms and make preparations.”
In this game, the deceased was the judge and also the real ghost. There was a possibility that they would kill every night, but the moment it was daytime, they would return to being completely harmless.
No matter how scary she was now, there was no real harm she could do.
Everyone followed the deceased out of the room. The house seemed to only have one floor. After leaving the room, they passed through a corridor and then found their rooms according to the directions in their script.
Hai Ri’s room was the second room from the left. He saw Sheng Canyang come to a stop at the room diagonally opposite his.
Hai Ri didn’t actually care whether he died or lived. Even if he had to go back as a vegetable, he could also accept it. He was more distressed about the cheap son he had unilaterally recognized.
He pushed open the door, stepping in. The room was very simple – a bed-mat on the floor, a bathroom, and a small desk beside the bed. A change of clothes was placed on the bed, along with his props.
Hai Ri put on the kimono. There was a streak of blood running down his kimono – it would probably be a clue everyone would question him about later. Not that it mattered anyway, it had nothing to do with the woman’s death.
This role was indeed not the murderer. As long as he wasn’t overly anxious and led along by someone else to a wrongful death, this round would be a stable one.
He just wasn’t sure what he should do if the murderer was his son.
Hai Ri’s heart was filled with distress. But when he walked out, Sheng Canyang’s door coincidentally swung open and a leg clad in white tights stepped out, the foot in a pink sandal with flower patterns. Hai Ri’s gaze slowly inched upwards. Sheng Canyang walked out in a tight-fitting sunflower-patterned dress with white lace. The dress only reached his thigh, probably due to his height and the small size of the dress, leaving him no choice but to wear a pair of shorts under the dress. Hai Ri looked further up. There was a white headband with tassels on Sheng Canyang’s head.
Hai Ri: …
He was gobsmacked by this image.
Ilyz: Since we’re on the topic of names, here’s a little tidbit – Hai Ri means ‘sun over the sea’, while the ‘Yang’ in Sheng Canyang’s name is the character for sun. The author never confirmed if this was done intentionally, but I still like to think of them as little suns 
☀️
I’m gobsmacked just from imagining it as well..
+1 they should have made the clothes fit the person’s body height at least 😭
Dunno if it was a good idea not to read the whole script :’D
Thx for the ch ٩( >ヮ<)۶
yep. i would rather be safe than sorry. well, i don’t think this quote works since.. yknow (ToT)
thanks for the chapter ♡
Do you think Shen Canyang picked the little girl role just because he’d seen how much Hai Ri liked the cutely dressed man on the bus??
Thank you to the translator!!
Oooooooooo I didn’t think of that!! That’s most probably it xD
hahaha this possibility didn’t even crossed my mind!! but a possibility is a possibility right??
I bet he regrets it now though 😅
I can’t breathe xD that image
This is relatable. I would never read the whole script either, staying lazy even until death 🕊
Thanks for the chapter (●’◡’●)
This…this image will live forever in my head, rent free.