Winners in Life
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“Ha, looks like you’re not dead either.”
The rather unlikeable tone from behind only makes Ruri slow down a little, but she does not stop.
“Hey hey, I thought we were companions. Why so cold?” An Wenhui doesn’t seem to mind the distant attitude at all, chasing right after her, saying, “the protagonist is dead. Wanna guess who the new one is?”
Ruri gives him a glance.
“Not me,” the man waves his hands away.
“I couldn’t care less,” the girl says coldly, “nor are we companions. Honestly, I would prefer to be away from you.”
“Eh?” An Wenhui makes a slightly surprised tone, then scratches his head, “am I that much of a nuisance?” Then he ignores the matter and changes the topic, “nevermind that, but I saw you go back around to save her. What happened? You were fine but the ‘Protagonist’ died.”
“Make of that what you will.”
An Wenhui shakes his head in defeat, “that’s not a good attitude. You’ll lose friends this way.”
“You’re the last person I wanted to hear that from,” then Ruri decides to ignore him entirely, whatever he says.
And when An Wenhui realise how cold she is, he decides to stop trying to fish information out, and looks around instead.
This room appears to be a morgue of some sort. He can see sets of skeletal remains on the rusted long tables. In a corner of the room is a fresh puddle of blood and familiar clothing.
“Woah, this is…” He makes a show of being surprised, asking, “these belonged to the ‘Protagonist,’ I’m sure. Any thoughts on that?” He looks at Ruri with a ‘friendly’ smile.
Thoughts? She’s seen her share of corpses already. Plus, the girl rejected her help in the first place. It can’t be helped she ended up dead.
Even so, Ruri still looks away.
The guard earlier left her behind to go after Xiao Rou. She could hear her screams and cries for help then, and hear how it weakened into nothing. Afterwards, she went back to look, but she didn’t see a body in the corridor nor see the monster around for that matter.
The two of them did not stay long in the obviously abandoned, insignificant room, and went into the adjacent room.
As soon as they step in, something feels wrong.
“It really stinks,” An Wenhui is covering his nose up, “missus, I suggest we turn around.”
Ruri agrees. She doesn’t like the man, but she’s not dumb enough to act on whims here. Before they can exit, however, the door behind suddenly slams itself shut behind them.
They can only look around. It must have been like some kind of storage room, as their flashlights are showing many collapsed racks and glass shards scattered all over. The black, charred debris scattered everywhere is the only other significant thing around.
Suddenly, it is moving.
The scattered black debris, right after the door is closed, has begun to move and gather together. As if returning to ‘life,’ it is going a vivid crimson in colour. The shadows cast on the walls from the flashlight is visibly enlarging. It almost seems to be proliferating; growing.
In the end, it has become a disgusting monsters made up of smushed up organs!
Even the very childish An Wenhui now has to be on alert, saying, “wow, talk about deathtraps. Say, if we apologised nicely, would it let us out?”
Ruri has no time for idle chatter, and announces, “it’s coming!”
The organs monster is rushing at them!
The two dodge to either side. Ruri has done a front roll, but can see the organs monster turn towards her.
“Haha, looks like it’s more interested in small girls,” he says, insufferably smug.
Not that he can smile for long either. The room is small enough that attacks from the big gross thing is still wrecking stuff up everywhere.
A few moments later, they both look worse for wear.
“Missus, time to use your ability now. It doesn’t look like it’ll let us go easily.”
Ruri says, panting slightly, “I can’t. It’s in cooldown.”
“What, so you’re just a helpless little girl right now?”
“…” Ruri gives him a death glare, asking, “and you?”
“Well, fine,” An Wenhui gets back up, “it looks like I’ll have to get serious.”
But suddenly, the ferocious organs monster stops its movements, and opens up its big gaping mouth, beginning to howl in pain.
It is turning back to charcoal.
The howl is almost threatening to pierce their eardrums right through. While Ruri is covering up her ears, her eyes are still dead set on the monster. Odd, the monster is burning up by itself on no part from them. The organs are all turning back into carbon and falling off, turning back into what they were when the two of them entered.
Soon enough, the entire form collapses, and crumbles, scattering into dust.
And with that, the door opens back up with a ‘click.’
Why did the monster suddenly appear and disappear? Although the reasons are unclear, they at least managed to escape.
An Wenhui looks at his camera’s progress bar. It reads 70%.
“Clearly we’re just the winners-in-life group. The others must have done something,” not that he has any problems with being the beneficiary, and says, “it’s opened up, let’s go.”
He walks right over the ashes of the organs monster unfazed. Ruri pauses before following with more calculated steps.
After leaving the nightmarish room, they head for the corridor leading downwards. The repeated monster attacks have made Ruri visibly tense.
An Wenhui says, “don’t worry, I was down there earlier. There’s nothing but locked up rooms.”
Ruri gives him an odd look.
“What,” the young man shrugs, and continues, “the guard wasn’t after me so obviously I was going to investigate. Speaking of which, that room just now was not open back then.”
Then An Wenhui’s smile turns a little twisted, as he remarks, “oh, then I guess I can’t guarantee the safety downstairs either. Apologies.”
“…” Ruri chooses to ignore him.
“Don’t be so cold. I’m just trying to cheer you up.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
They walk downstairs. As the young man said, it’s just a single corridor with lots of shut doors. Yet, when she tries the nearest handle, the room opens just fine.
An Wenhui is mulling it over, “is the number of people the trigger point? Or like the elevator, ‘they’ unlocked the door?”
They investigate the room. It’s less than ten square metres in its entirety. There’s a rotten bed on the corner with a dirty toilet over on the other side. There’s nothing else to be seen.
They leave and continue to walk forward. Each room looks the same from outside, until they stop in front of a door.
“Oh?” An Wenhui pushes the door to enter, “this is…”
There’s a conspicuous notebook placed on top of the mouldy wooden bed in this room. He picks it up to look, and the writings look recent.
He captures it with his camera, and the progress bar increases up to 80%.
“Bingo,” An Wenhui whistles, “missus, we’ve finally made a little achievement ourselves.”
That is when there’s suddenly footsteps from outside the door. The two of them look at each other and, without further ado, they hide on each side of the door respectively, on high alert.
The footsteps become louder and louder until finally stopping at the door.
TL’s notes: Guess who it is. Surprise! Or rather not, hehe.
Oriental Rabbit 