Rainy Night Theater (24)

The dorms.

Ever since they first entered the theater, everyone had noticed that the layout of each dorm room was exactly the same—simple, sparse, and devoid of anything unusual.

Furthermore, once people started moving in, everyone focused their attention on the scenes and clues on the first floor. They gradually gave up on inspecting the dorms, believing it was impossible for any useful information to be hidden here.

But Bai Ci no longer thought that way.

The dorms might not have had any information to begin with, but could the residents have left behind some words after moving in?

For instance, before they died, could the victims have left behind clues out of fear or for other reasons? Even a single symbol or character could be the key to cracking the game.

With this in mind, Bai Ci shared her thoughts with Cheng Xi.

Hearing this, Cheng Xi agreed. “You have a point. The deceased might have indeed left traces after moving in. Let's go right now and check their rooms one by one.”

Aside from the reasons she could share with Cheng Xi, Bai Ci actually had her own ulterior motives.

For example, she could use whatever they found to connect it to the extra information she already knew, finding a plausible way to share it with the others.

Having reached an agreement, the two walked toward the dorms of the deceased.

First, they went to Wang Er's dorm. They carefully inspected the bed, table, and chairs, even rummaging through the table drawers, but found absolutely nothing.

Aside from the bed, which showed signs of having been slept in, the room was so clean it looked as though no one had ever lived there.

Next, they went to Liu Shanxi's dorm, but again came up empty-handed.

Bai Ci did not give up. Together with Cheng Xi, she continued to the dorm of the next victim, Liu Siwei.

Pushing open the door, they found the room's layout identical to the other dorms. Her corpse had already been moved downstairs to the stage by the group.

While Cheng Xi inspected the table and chairs, Bai Ci stood in the center of the room, her gaze slowly sweeping across the space as she pondered where Liu Siwei might have hidden a clue before her death.

Remembering the posture in which Liu Siwei had died, and not caring if she might invite bad luck, Bai Ci lay down on the bed to recreate it exactly, observing what could be seen from this angle.

Suddenly, Bai Ci spotted what looked like a piece of paper lying near the foot of the bed, so she reached out to grab it.

After getting a handful of dust, her fingers brushed against the object. She pulled it out and saw that it was indeed a piece of paper.

Noticing Bai Ci's movements, Cheng Xi leaned in to take a look as well.

It wasn't a whole sheet of paper. Its edges were somewhat torn, and it was covered in crooked, squiggly lines that looked like random scribbles, yet also like a deliberate warning.

Bai Ci stared intently at the lines, turning the paper upside down several times to determine which way was up. She tried to decipher it over and over, racking her brain to recall any possible character shapes.

“These are definitely characters, but they look like chicken scratch.” Cheng Xi took the paper and looked at it from various angles, unable to make out what was written.

Her imagination even ran wild, wondering if it might be written in mirror writing.

She held the paper up, turning it over to look at it against the room's light.

The light was somewhat dazzling. When Bai Ci squinted against the glare to follow Cheng Xi's movements, her eyes narrowed.

By sheer coincidence, from this angle, the lines that had previously seemed chaotic and disorganized gradually became clear in her eyes.

“Sister Cheng Xi, turn it over and squint at it,” Bai Ci suggested.

“Ziwei? What is this?” After doing as told, Cheng Xi indeed made out the contents on the paper. But what did it mean? “It looks like a person's name.”

Ziwei? Liu Ziwei?

Bai Ci turned the name over and over in her mind. She felt it was incredibly familiar, as if she had seen it somewhere before, but she couldn't pinpoint exactly where at the moment.

However, she was certain that this name had definitely appeared in this instance; it wasn't something she had conjured out of thin air.

With this question in mind, Bai Ci began to work backward in her head.

In this instance, all the names she had seen belonged to either the living participants or those engraved on the tombstones.

None of the living participants were named Liu Ziwei. That left only the tombstones.

At that thought, Bai Ci finally remembered. Among the twelve tombstones she had seen at the very beginning, one of them had the name Liu Ziwei carved on it.

Was Liu Siwei actually Liu Ziwei?

If so, did that mean there was a third ghost in this game besides Fu Liu and Zheng Ba?

If there really was a third ghost, would there be a fourth or a fifth?

Aside from the players, were there any actual human NPCs among the participants of this game?

And what would be the point of her changing her name?

After all, Fu Liu and Zheng Ba, who were in similar situations, hadn't changed their names and had appeared using their original ones.

If not, why did Liu Siwei write this down before she died? Was there some connection between her and Liu Ziwei?

Thinking along the lines of familial relationships, a melodramatic but logically sound hypothesis crossed her mind.

Could “Siwei” mean “missing Ziwei”?

Suppressing the complicated thoughts in her heart, Bai Ci turned to look at Cheng Xi and asked in a calm tone, “Sister Cheng Xi, do you still remember the names of all the participants in this game?”

“Could you tell them to me? I'm afraid I might have mixed them up and want to double-check.”

It was mainly because they had met too many people all at once. Aside from a few, Bai Ci habitually remembered them by their features.

If she really had to recall them, she could, but she wasn't entirely sure if she had misremembered, so she asked Cheng Xi for confirmation.

Of the two directions her thoughts had taken, the hypothesis that Liu Siwei was actually Liu Ziwei was the most chilling.

Out of an instinct to seek safety and avoid danger, Bai Ci thought she should first use this logic to filter through the game's participants and see if any other ghosts had sneaked in.

Hearing this, Cheng Xi took out her camera and invited Bai Ci to look with her. She had her own special "notebook"—she had annotated the information of each person within the details of the photos.

The photos were taken in chronological order. When she had entered the theater, there were already three people ahead of her: Wang Er, Qi Lixin, and Fu Yan.

Then came those who arrived after her: Bai Ci, Fu Liu, Liu Siwei, Liu Shanxi, and Wu Tong, followed by the last batch: Zheng Ba, Sun Hao, and Li Yi.

As Bai Ci flipped through the photos, she matched them one by one in her mind with the information on the tombstones, eliminating those who didn't fit based on their names and approximate ages.

After a full round of comparison, aside from Liu Siwei, only Li Yi—the first to die—seemed likely to be the Li Juan recorded on the tombstones. For now, she found no signs of anyone else fitting the profile.

This conclusion allowed Bai Ci to breathe a slight sigh of relief, but the doubts in her heart did not lessen in the slightest. It felt as though she was still overlooking something.