Translator: Kii & Khun
Translation Checker: Anonymous
Editor: Agneya
Proofreader: 7qqy
“A little bloodstain? How big? What’s it shaped like?” Bai Chunian suddenly fired questions at him.
Rimbaud hesitated, pausing for a moment before answering, “A drop.”
Bai Chunian said okay but had in fact determined that the one he was talking to wasn’t Rimbaud.
Rimbaud’s observation ability was obvious to everyone; it was comparable to that of a mole. Of course, deep-sea fish had poor eyesight, so it was understandable.
And when Bai Chunian had asked, “What’s in the fitness room,” Rimbaud blurted out that there was a bloodstain on the ground. If it were a huge bloodstain, it would be easily noticeable, yet he actually said it was only a drop.
This was something Rimbaud wouldn’t have noticed unless someone pointed it out to him.
In fact, long before he had left the fitness room, Bai Chunian put two dumbbells behind the door which one needed to go through to enter the fitness room. The dumbbells were hexagonal and did not roll easily when placed on the ground. Therefore, it took a certain amount of strength to push the fitness room’s door open, which meant that it took a bit of time to open it.
But Rimbaud didn’t show that he was hindered at all. Bai Chunian was sure that the fake Rimbaud he was talking to was not on the same floor as him.
So Bai Chunian guessed that the fake Rimbaud was speaking nonsense.
Or, someone was directing him.
Because there was indeed a bloodstain on the floor of the fitness room that Bai Chunian passed by, and the blood had been smeared. He deliberately hid this info from Rimbaud to verify the location of the Rimbaud who was talking to him.
As for the blood being smeared, Bai Chunian suspected that it was the fake Bai Chunian who told the fake Rimbaud. As for how they contacted each other, he didn’t know. It might be through the camera, but it didn’t matter. Bai Chunian thought that there was a high probability that the real Rimbaud was on the same floor as him and was following him in the room behind him.
When looking for the dorm room passcode, he spent some time searching, but only found a small UV flashlight. He flashed it in every corner of the room and finally found traces of the passcode device having been pressed on.
He entered the number in order of the pressed number, “14579”, and the door to the dorm room unlocked.
Bai Chunian gently pushed open a gap and looked inside. He gripped the pocket knife in his hand, held the short blade between his fingers, then quickly opened the door and glanced at the back of the door.
There was no one behind the door. Bai Chunian turned around to look at the other parts of the room. After all, there was at least one reflection in this place that wanted to kill him.
Bai Chunian walked to the middle of the room, and the door he came from closed. He was already used to this mechanism, calmly checking other details.
This was a restaurant bar.
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.
Light yellow wallpaper, a range hood and an induction cooker were installed behind the clean bar, and a wine rack was on the right.
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Because wine production factories used a machine for putting in the cork, it was easy to put the cork into the mouth of the bottle, but the cork would expand after soaking in the wine, and the volume would become larger. There would always be some traces left behind if you want to take it out and put it back in as it was.
Bai Chunian carefully looked at the label on the bottle, it seemed to be in Spanish. Because of the need to communicate with colleagues from other branches of the IOA, Bai Chunian had to cram study Spanish for a while. There was no problem in daily communication, but reading was a little difficult as he was not very proficient.
He took the wine bottle and wandered to the wine rack to take a look. It was a simple wooden wine rack; the wooden boards were inserted obliquely to form a square grid.
Bai Chunian crouched, observed one by one, and carefully moved the wine rack. There was a faint pink stain left on the wallpaper.
“…” Bai Chunian held up the wine again, holding it against the light to look at the wine inside.
It was a pity that he didn’t have any tools on hand, so he couldn’t open the cork by hand or mouth alone.
Forget it, let’s just find the passcode for unlocking the door first. Bai Chunian simply tore off the label on the wine and put it in his pocket.
At this moment, Rimbaud muttered “failed” in the communicator.
Bai Chunian immediately and sensitively detected his abnormality, taking the opportunity to ask, “What did you see?”
Rimbaud had already gone from the gym to the dorm room with bunk beds with iron railings.
He went toward the passcode, there was a note stuck on it with a Band-Aid. Rimbaud didn’t even think about it, he tore off the note and hid it in his hand. After seeing that no one was around, he opened it and took a look.
After reading the note, Rimbaud carefully folded the note, put it together with the three notes from behind the round mirror in the bathroom, the calendar in the infirmary, and the barbell in the fitness room. He stuffed them into the bandage on his body and patted it.
It had been a long time since Xiao Bai wrote him a love letter. Rimbaud was more interested in the note than these lousy rooms.
But he still had to listen to Xiao Bai. Rimbaud immediately searched, climbing up and down several ladders, and finally found a stack of A4 papers under the pillow of an upper bunk.
Rimbaud threw the ballpoint pen clipped to the file, skimmed through the papers, the text on the papers were densely packed in English, making Rimbaud dizzy from looking at it. He held the papers in his mouth and climbed down the ladder.
A page fell out of the file, swayed twice, and fell at the foot of the bed.
Rimbaud had no choice but to hold the document in his mouth, lay down on the ground and extend his hand to grab the corner of the page. He pulled on it hard, and with a ripping sound, the paper was torn by him. Only half a page could be pulled off.
Rimbaud looked at it. Fortunately, he still knew one of the words marked in red, which said “Failed.”
He read it out in a murmur, then suddenly heard Bai Chunian asking him from the communicator, “Did you see anything?” Rimbaud was startled. He went over to the password lock with the remaining info in his mouth and entered the password according to the note Xiao Bai left for him.
While waiting for the door to open, Rimbaud scanned the surroundings boredly and found a few bloodstains on the ground, all of which had been smeared.
Bai Chunian kept asking, “What do you see? What is there in the room?”
Rimbaud said impatiently, “There are a few bloody footprints.”
“Footprints? From which direction?”
Rimbaud stared at the ground for a long time. “From my position to the other door.”
“Where are you situated?”
“Beside the passcode device.”
“Oh… You already found the passcode?”
“Mhm.”
Bai Chunian chuckled. “There’s also something very interesting over here. I’m at that wine restaurant right now. The passcode here is 89456; the same as the one you had said you randomly inputted.”
Rimbaud frowned. “I didn’t lie to you. Although you are not Xiao Bai, you are a kitty and I don’t lie to kitties.”
…It seems that the fake Rimbaud is just as cute, after all, the real one is cute.
“We can talk it out. How about I find my wife and take him back home with me, while you go to the Caribbean to replace him as Siren?”
“The Siren can’t be replaced. They need to lead the mermen to migrate, to clean up the garbage and oil leaked in the sea, as well as nuclear waste. The Siren’s job is very important, it’s different from your civil servants.” Rimbaud explained solemnly.
“Okay, okay, I’m not going to argue with you. What’s the dorm room’s passcode?”
Rimbaud took out the note Xiao Bai left for him to look at it again. He said truthfully, “36597.”
“Alright, let’s go.”
When Bai Chunian opened the door and entered the next room, Rimbaud heard him say “Huh”, and the door in front of him also opened.
Rimbaud pushed open the door. The first thing he wanted to do was go to the passcode device to see if there was a note left by Xiao Bai, but he couldn’t ignore the situation happening in the room at all.
There was an unpleasant smell in the room. It was a restaurant, but he wasn’t sure if it was the one he passed by in the beginning. The wallpaper was a warm pink. Except for the bar counter and range hood still being in place, the PVC board countertop of the bar had a dent.
The wine rack had fallen over and broke apart. There was a broken wine bottle on the floor, the black glass shattered everywhere.
There was a note stuck to the passcode device. Rimbaud took it off, looked over it, and was stunned.
Rimbaud described what he saw and Bai Chunian stayed in touch with him the entire time.
“What kind of smell is it?” Bai Chunian asked.
“I guess it’s nutty and bitter.”
Bai Chunian fell silent, as if he was thinking. After a long while, he slowly said, “I get it now. This time it was the research institute’s tricks again. They didn’t kill us because they wanted us to help wipe their asses.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain it to you later. Do what I say first.”
After Bai Chunian left the restaurant, he returned to the bathroom he was in initially. There was a toilet installed in the bathroom, the wall separating it and the shower were made of red tiles, and likewise, the red lasers in the corners of the ceiling were also lit.
He was even hoping the mirror would turn into a monitor and let him choose someone to call again, but the mirror didn’t react.
Bai Chunian went to the round mirror to reflect on the laser passcode, then suddenly thought of something.
The first time he deliberately made Rimbaud try out the passcode, he had him enter the passcode 74692 that he saw when he passed the bathroom, but Rimbaud said it was wrong. He argued that the passcode was obviously 96472.
Bai Chunian rested his chin on his hand and thought about it, then tried entering “96472” into the passcode device.
A beep sounded and the light lit green. It was actually right.
Before Bai Chunian had time to think about it, he suddenly noticed something strange. He leaned close to the keypad of the passcode device. There was a covered groove above the keypad to prevent peeping while entering the code. Bai Chunian pressed his face to the bottom of the groove, and reached in to pick at it.
At the top corner of the buttons, Bai Chunian felt a piece of sticker.
He continued to pick at it for a while and was able to pick off a corner of it. After being able to pinch it with two fingers, he tore it downward with some ingenuity. Slowly, he was able to actually tear it off.
The sticker torn off was just an ordinary button number sticker, just like a keyboard cover, which was used to prevent dust. It could be peeled off and reapplied when it was worn and dirty. There was often a stack in the drawer of the company’s logistic department equipped with a passcode device.
But Bai Chunian inadvertently glanced back at the passcode device, then suddenly broke out into cold sweat.
The buttons of the passcode device with the button stickers removed were very strange. The numbers were all reversed from left to right. The three numbers in the first row were reversed 3, 2, 1. The second row was a reversed 6, 5, 4. The third row was a reversed 9, 8, 7.
Bai Chunian compared it to the position of the sticker. If he pressed it according to the order of the sticker, pressing “96472”, what was actually being pressed was the corresponding “74692” on the keypad.
Bai Chunian understood the abstruse secret in it immediately. He stuck the sticker back and rummaged in his pocket, taking out the half piece of A4 paper he picked up in the dorm room. He ripped off a small piece and wrote on it using the ballpoint pen: “Passcode: 96472.”
Worrying that Rimbaud wouldn’t understand the writing, he thought, then used merfolk language to write pinyin under it and even drew a sketch of a cat’s paw. After he finished writing, he found the adhesive bandage he took from the infirmary in his pocket, used a razor blade to cut out a piece, and stuck the paper on the adjustable round mirror. As long as the real Rimbaud passed by this room, he should be able to find his warning.
Biting the pen cap, he deduced the passcodes of the last two rooms and wrote them down on the papers respectively. If the experiment worked, the message would be left for Rimbaud.
After writing the two messages, Bai Chunian added another line, “Rimbaud, I have already understood exactly what is going on. The only thing that remains now is verifying my suspicions. Rimbaud, be careful with everything.”
“Oh right, when you get to the fitness room, tell the guy you get in contact with that you saw a spot of smudged bloodstain on the ground.”
If it was like this, he could have his fake self think the real Rimbaud was following behind. If he wanted to kill Rimbaud, first, he might kill the fake Rimbaud. Second, he might run into Bai Chunian himself. In any case, the real Rimbaud wouldn’t be harmed.
What if he just close the door after entering password? I didn’t notice anything about how many people can be on one room 🤔 I know that they are observed for sure, but what if?
Thank You for the new chapter ( ꈍᴗꈍ)❤️
Only one door can be open at a time! They can only enter the room after the other has left!
Oh, I know that~! 😀 I was wondering about opening the door, but don’t entering the next room ^^
Rimbaud said the label on the wine was partially torn off. Bai Chunian tore off the title of the wine bottle he held. Rimbaud said there was a drop of blood on the floor, and Bai Chunian told him to tell the fake that there was a drop of blood on the floor.
In case you all don’t get it yet:
There’s definitely some time looping happening. There’s no fake Xiao Bai or Rimbaud, just the same people at staggered intervals. The Bai Chunian that spoke to Rimbaud through the mirror was the same one that talked to him through the camera in the dorm. Bai Chunian is also the one writing the notes.
Rimbaud is the one that tore the pages in the dorm; it wasn’t ripped with malicious intent. He’s just clumsy. I’m assuming that when Bai Chunian loops back into the infirmary, he kills the researcher.
I may be wrong about all this, but if I am I’ll be incredibly surprised!
This is what I was thinking too!!!!
Whoever thought and planned this plot… Just… WOW ✨✨
i understand what’s going on with the looping but my braincell said “uh no youre to dumb for this” and just reset what i understood lol