The moment the hat touched his head, his entire body shuddered violently. Seemingly realizing what this unfortunate symbol meant, his shoulders hunched up, and his neck stiffened.
The two people sitting beside him appeared to be his teammates.
After seeing what happened, his two teammates were frozen in astonishment, staring at the red hat on his head. Before they could say a word, an announcement echoed from the stage: "Understudy... please take your place."
The voice did not come from a speaker like a normal theater; it sounded as if it were seeping out from the wood grain of the walls, the dust in the floor cracks, and even from within the worn velvet seats of the audience area...
It seeped out from countless invisible pores simultaneously.
It was turbid and accompanied by the rustling static of an old phonograph scratching a record, yet it drilled into everyone's ears with terrifying clarity.
It made the hair on the listeners' bodies stand on end, sending a chill creeping up their spines and leaving them completely tense.
The theater fell into an eerie silence until the second announcement rang out: "Understudy... please take your place."
The moment the words fell, the wreckage split on stage, along with the prop axe and the unnatural crack in the floor, vanished silently, as if wiped away by an eraser on a pencil drawing.
Only the still-vivid cardboard scenery remained, illuminated by the lonely, ghastly white spotlight in the center of the stage.
The players sitting in the audience knew exactly who that light was waiting for.
In the dimness of the audience, the male player wearing the red hat jerked suddenly, as if a drowning man had finally surfaced, and shouted: "Help me take it off! Quickly, take it off! It will be fine if you take it off!"
His two teammates reached out immediately, grabbing at the brim of the ominous hat almost at the same time.
The teammate on the left frowned, and the teammate on the right looked equally anxious, but just as one of their fingers touched the soft edge of the red cloth...
Whoosh...
Another gust of wind. This was a cold wind blowing behind every player.
Yet it was this very wind that caused the little red hat, which had been firmly locked on the head of the player in the middle of the team, to fly up and land on the head of the person who had touched it.
The announcement hissed immediately, as if letting out a sinister laugh.
Immediately following, like a death warrant, it repeated the phrase: "Understudy... please take your place."
This was already the third time.
The red hat had already grown onto the head of the player on the left side of the trio.
The anxiety on his face had not yet faded, frozen instead by astonishment and a chill that reached his marrow. He subconsciously wanted to raise his hand to touch it, but his fingertips hovered a few inches above the brim, trembling, afraid to let them fall.
He could feel the weight of the hat—a soft, cold sensation, as if it were tightly clinging to his scalp with a life of its own.
The teammate on the right was currently slumped in the chair beside him, looking at the fingers that had almost touched the hat, then at his companion wearing it. The color drained from his face, his lips quivering, unable to utter a single word.
The teammate in the middle sat back down heavily, gasping for air as if exhausted, his eyes filled with the relief of someone who had just survived a disaster.
In the silence, the player wearing the hat finally reacted. He grabbed the middle teammate, his fingers digging into his shoulders, and roared with a hoarse voice:
"Touch it quickly, take the hat back! Take the hat back! It chose you! It chose you!"
The player kept his head down, saying nothing, letting his shoulders sway under the shaking of his teammate.
He did not resist, nor did he look up, only staring fixedly at his hands resting on his knees.
"Say something!" the teammate wearing the hat had his voice distorted; fear had completely devoured his reason. "I was trying to save you... just touch it! Just once! Take it back! I beg you!"
I beg you.
These three words, like the final piece of ice, smashed into the heart of the player who had originally been chosen by the little red hat.
He raised his head extremely slowly.
There were no tears on his face, no expression, only a dead, gray silence and hollow eyes.
He looked at the face of his companion, now shrouded in that glaring red.
That face was etched with the shock of betrayal and the fear of impending death, distorted until it was almost unrecognizable.
He tugged at the corners of his mouth, laughed lightly, and finally said a single sentence to his scapegoat: "But I want to live too..."
This light, airy sentence had more lethality than any roar or struggle.
The roaring of the player wearing the hat stopped abruptly.
He stared fixedly at the teammate who had lowered his head, the shock, fear, and pleading in his eyes being replaced bit by bit by despair.
The last shred of luck was extinguished along with it.
His lips quivered, as if he still wanted to say something, but only a wheezing sound escaped his throat.
The hand gripping the other's shoulder slid off limply.
Just when everyone thought the outcome was sealed, the teammate sitting on the right suddenly stood up.
He grabbed the hand of the person in the middle and, with extreme speed, before either of them could react, pressed his hand onto the little red hat.
Another gust of wind, and the little red hat fluttered with it.
Circling back, the hat returned to the head of its first owner.
Everything happened too fast, so fast that even expressions of astonishment did not have time to fully emerge.
The teammate who had stood up took a step back quickly after doing this.
His face was hidden in the deeper dimness of the audience, his expression unreadable; one could only see the tense line of his jaw and his slightly heaving chest.
No explanation, no apology, not even another look at the companion he had personally forced the hat back onto.
He just stood there silently, his gaze fixed on the teammate in the middle.
"You—" the person wearing the hat managed only a single word before being interrupted...
"If you don't want to die, does he want to die?"
That made sense. Cheng Shuili couldn't help but look at that person a few more times, but unfortunately, the lighting was dim, and apart from large movements, nothing could be seen clearly.
Because of the silence, the voice was quite clear.
As Cheng Shuili waited for the one wearing the hat to refute, she heard the announcement again.
"Understudy..."
"Hiss... hiss..."
The announcement hissed twice, its volume suddenly increasing many times over, roaring almost violently: "Official actor, please take your place!!!"
This voice was different from the previous ones; it clearly came from above the audience.
It felt as if a monster were lurking in the shadows, waiting to jump down at any moment to take a fresh life.
All the players looked up in horror, trying to find the source of the sound in the dimness, but saw only a blurry dome and the shadows of layered, heavy curtains.
Immediately after, the player wearing the hat shuddered violently!
A slight "click" sound emanated simultaneously from his shoulders, elbows, and knees—all his joints.
It was as if a stick figure were being forcibly twisted by the person manipulating it, forced into various poses.
His arms lifted unnaturally, then bent; his legs straightened and drew together. His entire body was slowly straightened by an invisible force at an angle that defied logic.
The expression on his face froze in despair, his eyes began to lose focus, yet the depths of his pupils reflected the spotlight on the stage.
The player wearing the hat, or rather, this existence about to become an "actor," began to move.
Like a puppet manipulated by invisible strings, his joints emitted unbearable fine sounds. He walked step by step toward the shadows on the side of the stage that devoured everything.
His movements were stiff and strange, every step landing in a heart-stopping silence.
The red hat on his head swayed slightly with this uncoordinated movement, appearing increasingly shocking in the dim light.
No one spoke again.
No one tried to do anything else.
His two teammates had unreadable expressions on their faces, staring only at that splash of red.
The other players also held their breath, watching the figure sink bit by bit into the darkness at the edge of the stage, as if slowly being swallowed by a giant beast.
On stage, the cardboard house smiled silently, and the understudy took his place.
The spotlight shone on him; the little red hat seemed to have grown quite a bit, its shadow covering his eyes and nose, leaving only his lips pressed into a pale, straight line.
In the gaze of everyone, the axe fell once more...
Everything was without suspense.
The prop axe that fell from the sky swept a cold, real glint across its edge in the light, easily slicing through his fluffy hair, then his skull.
The entire process was cruel in its speed, yet because of the figure's neck-bared submission, it appeared infinitely long.
The blood did not spray out; it surged out slowly.
At the very first instant, there were only a few thin blood lines winding down the wooden handle. Immediately after, crimson liquid surged violently from the gaps on both sides of the axe.
A large amount of blood splashed onto the colorful cardboard mushrooms at his feet; those round, cute smiling faces were instantly soaked, then collapsed softly.
The person was gone, but the second before the axe fell, the red hat flew up again.
The audience's pupils contracted sharply, staring fixedly at the flying red.
The hat spun lightly, like a maple leaf blown by the wind in the beam of the spotlight, but when it landed, it possessed a fateful precision, landing steadily on the head of another player in the audience.
This time, it was a female player.
She had been sitting in the shadows of the back row, attracting almost no one's attention.
The moment the hat landed, her body stiffened, and a short, sharp gasp escaped her throat.
The announcement followed like a shadow, immediately repeating: "Understudy... please take your place."
On stage, the pool of blood and the wreckage were being quickly cleaned by an invisible force.
The corpse, the axe, and the blood-stained mushroom dolls seemed to be sucked into the cracks of the floor, disappearing in the blink of an eye. Only the spotless stage scenery and the tireless spotlight remained, waiting for the next actor.
The female player was alone; she seemed to have no teammates.
The surrounding players subconsciously moved away from her, fearing she might find a gap and force their hands to touch the red hat on her head that could take their lives.
She sat there, her hands gripping the edge of the seat tightly, her knuckles white.
She did not try to take it off, only raising her head. After a moment of struggle, her gaze was quickly drowned out by despair and resignation.
After the announcement sounded twice, the female player stood up.
Her movements were much smoother than the previous actor. She did not wait for the dungeon's rules to control her body, but walked step by step toward the side of the stage herself, her figure disappearing into the shadows, then reappearing under the spotlight.
She wore ordinary white clothing, appearing out of place in front of the childlike scenery.
The little red hat was on her head, her face beneath the brim a dead, gray white.
She did not look at the audience, only looking up at the ceiling, her lips moving silently, and a burst of light suddenly erupted in her eyes.
But it seemed it was already too late...
The axe fell.
This time, the blood splashed higher, and some even splashed to the feet of the front-row audience.
The front-row players shrank back sharply, their faces deathly pale.
The red hat flew up again.
The cycle of death began once more.
The hat landed again and again, choosing its actors.
The players gradually became numb from their initial terror.
Everyone kept their heads down, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone, as if that could reduce the probability of being chosen.
And the reactions of those chosen were not the same.
Some screamed and struggled hysterically, trying to shake the hat off, even frantically scratching at their own scalps until their nails drew blood, but the red cloth seemed to have merged with their skin, remaining motionless.
Yet, under the invisible control, they were still carried toward the stage with blood on their hands and tears on their faces.
Others, like the second female player, accepted it silently, even walking actively toward that ghastly white light.
That person's final performance clearly showed they had found a way to live.
These people held onto a shred of luck as they went on stage, only to become increasingly desperate as time passed, finally dying under the giant axe.
There were fewer and fewer audience members, and the bloody smell in the theater grew heavier.
The only thing that remained unchanged was the red hat spinning as it flew.
In the SVIP box, Cheng Shuili watched this cruel casting call quietly.
The box of watermelon slices on the coffee table in front of her was already empty. She picked up a glass of water beside it and took a sip.
To her, the performance outside was more like a silent film viewed through a screen.
Safe, but truly bloody; watching too much just felt nauseating.
Cheng Shuili withdrew her gaze.
Compared to whether these people could survive, she was more concerned about when this level would end, and...
Where exactly was A Gentle Kiss?
She couldn't have really died, could she?
The number of players in the audience was decreasing slowly but steadily.
Every time the axe fell, it was accompanied by a reduction in numbers.
The seats gradually became sparse, and the aura of despair enveloping the remaining players grew even heavier.
When the red hat flew up again, a thick, single-pane window at the back of the audience area shattered with a bang! Countless glass fragments splashed into the dimness.
Immediately after, a figure burst out from this rain of shards that had not yet landed.
The person's movements were so fast they almost left only afterimages, yet they adjusted their posture precisely in mid-air, shooting toward the hovering red hat!
The red hat seemed to sense something; its rotation speed accelerated suddenly, attempting to drift higher.
But the figure was faster!
Reach out, grab!
"Snap!"
Five fingers closed, accurately gripping the brim of the hat.
Following that, they performed an aerial flip to dissipate the momentum, landing lightly on an empty seat in the last row of the audience.
Rate on N.U.
