Escape to the Heavens?
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Both parties sigh in relief seeing who it is.
“It’s you,” An Wenhui is smiling again, “long time no see.”
It’s Du Yixin and Ying Sheng. Du Yixin is also surprised to see people inside, and asks out of shock, “you’re not dead yet?”
Ruri answers, “yes, how unfortunate.”
“Hey, even I’d get saddened by that,” An Wenhui is wiping nonexistent tears away, then says, “Ying Sheng, you’re the only one not chasing me away. You’re my man, right?”
And quite the appropriately terse response comes, “fuck off.”
Really, An Wenhui is never affected by the attitudes around him anyway. Quickly cheering back up, he says, “anyway, time to exchange information.”
Du Yixin might not like the guy, but what he proposed is important.
After the conversation, he realises something. The present and past are connected, when ‘players’ have done something.
For example, even if someone used the elevator to B2 in the past, if the ‘players’ weren’t the ones using it, nothing will happen in the real timeline. It unlocked only when the two of them activated it in the past.
And so is the organs monster Ruri and An Wenhui met. They looked at the room in the past, incidentally unlocking the door, and only through the fire they indirectly caused did the organs burn up again. Perhaps in his past timeline, both Ruri and An Wenhui would end up dead by the monster.
Speaking of which, the monster that the two of them met when they were forced back into the real timeline must have been the one Ruri and An Wenhui pointed out that ate Xiao Rou and became more powerful.
“A fire? How did you escape?”
“We thought we’d burn to death,” Du Yixin shakes his head, “we went into the deepest parts of this corridor as a delaying tactic, but we were back soon enough.”
“So there was an inexplicable delay between you starting the fire and coming back,” An Wenhui is rubbing his chin to think, “it looks awfully like the fire had to consume some key individual first.”
“Key individual? Did you find something?”
“Thanks to you we were just piggybacking alright, but we did find something as well,” An Wenhui waves the notebook in his hands, and says, “come look at this.”
The last date written on the notebook is quite some years after the fire. It’s not owned by anyone at the hospital, but actually an intruder that, like Du Yixin and co., sneaked in to investigate some time ago.
[Background: There was a ghost story going around. Apparently there’s some ‘Liu family village’ in ███. It had some private hospital nearby that had a good reputation for treating the poor free of charge, but after an accident caused the hospital to be abandoned, all the residents of the Liu Family village were also gone. The elder that told me the story said it’s haunted. Nobody can come back alive from the place. He even knew some brave fools who went and never came back]
[I saw it as a tall tale until I actually found a newspaper clipping showing this hospital actually existed:]
There’s the news story Du Yixin saw in the Archives earlier. An Wenhui and Ruri had not seen it before, and read it quickly before moving on.
[It certainly is interested when a haunted hospital story is actually based on a real hospital. I think it’s normal the villagers moved away after the hospital caught on fire because of the bad fengshui, but I felt that this isn’t the whole story, especially after I tried to investigate the hospital and, besides the fire and one promotional poster, there was not a single piece of information on it. I can’t believe such a large hospital would have left no information behind anywhere]
[I came to ███, but the village is quite remote and I can’t even find it on a map anymore. I looked for locals but everyone shrugged me off when they heard where I was heading. I paid good money to finally find someone willing to guide me along]
[I was guided to the end of the road and I have to walk the rest of the way, apparently]
[I found the Liu family village. It sure is eerie here with all the graveyards. The number of graves seems way out of proportion for such a small village. None of them are marked either.]
[I can’t open the hospital door so I had to climb inside the second floor window. I almost fell]
[I’m finally in the hospital. I checked all the open rooms and, strange. This place seems way too well-preserved for somewhere abandoned immediately after it was engulfed by a huge fire]
[There’s someone in the hospital?!]
[I think I was seeing things… Anyway, there was something interesting inside the director’s room]
There’s finally some new information here. The man entered from the second floor and so explored the places above first. Du Yixin met the nurse instead and the plot went a whole other way, so they have no idea what’s up there.
The notebook’s owner has found several contracts in the director’s office. There’s a contract of employment aside from all the illegal organ harvesting business. The employed are – villagers of the Liu family village.
Put simply, the hospital has employed the village to deal with the ashes after cremation, with monetary compensation.
So the entire village is some sort of gravekeeper. They’re probably paid really well, and even though they know about the hospital, they keep quiet and might even persuade people to go there.
The village looks to be in awful shape when they were there earlier, so it’s perhaps also not managed to escape the fire. And in any case, given they have to deal with the ashes, and the graveyard being way too big for the village’s size, it can be assumed they’re actually the ashes of the former patients.
In any case, it seemed nigh-on impossible any survivors of the Liu family village would have wanted to build graves for the dead in the creepy place.
They continue reading, and besides the contract, the owner of the notebook also found a skeleton that was doubly locked up in the closet. The owner thought there must have been some valuable clues in such a securely locked container when it turned out to be that thing instead.
Through the contracts, the owner of the notebook has also come to his own conclusions.
[The patients must have been searching for the culprit, and the director had nowhere to hide and locked himself up in the closet instead. The mad patients did not kill him when they found it, but instead also locked it from the outside and set the whole hospital on fire. Everyone died. This is way too unreal]
Then, when the person was at the ground floor, they realised the elevator was still powered somehow, and began exploring floor B1. They already had a key card from upstairs and was able to explore floor B2 right after that. It seems like the person did not meet the monstrosities either. They didn’t find anything new underground that Du Yixin already knew.
Du Yixin is quickly flipping through the pages after to see if there’s any clues. However, a while later, the notes suddenly become short and scattered. There was finally mention of a ‘monster.’ The person seems to be in great danger.
Finally, the owner left one message.
[Damn it. I should have taken the skeleton skull with me. If I destroyed it, then the monsters——]
It was written with such force that it even pierced the paper. Then, a few smaller characters follow.
[I can’t get out]
That’s the end of it. The owner of the notebook probably met a grisly fate in the end.
While a lot of the information is already known, the notebook had some key clues as well.
It has incriminated the Liu family villagers. The graves do not belong to them, but the innocent patients whose organs were harvested before being incinerated en masse.
And it has also indicated what to do next.
Return to the upper floors, find the director’s skeleton, and destroy the skull, which should finally break the curse of the abandoned hospital.
Du Yixin puts the notebook away and looks at everyone, then declares, “let’s go. We can end this now.”
They leave the cells and the morgue behind, reaching the elevator again. They tap the magnetic card, and choose to go to the top floor——where the director’s office is.
The elevator is rising at a sluggish pace. It really makes one’s heart race.
Perhaps the metal box would suddenly get stuck, trapping everyone inside. Perhaps they’d end up canned food as a monster suddenly invades.
Thankfully, the worry is unfounded. The number on the display jumps again, finally reaching the fifth floor safely.
‘Ding,’ and the door opens up to either side.
Another long, dim corridor. The floor creaks with every step they take, and it’s even snapped from rot and fire damage here and there. They have to move carefully. Windows line the left side of the corridors, and the glass is sealed shut.
It seems the rain has stopped some time ago, leaving only trails of water behind.
The group does not waste time in any other rooms, but head directly for the director’s office as indicated in the notebook.
They push the door open. Two sofas are on either side of a coffee table, probably as a reception area. The director’s desk is behind that, where several documents are scattered over it. They pick it up, and it’s the contracts mentioned in the notebook.
“Well, the closet would be…” An Wenhui looks around and spies a side door. It’s a small area with a closet and a bed, probably where one could take afternoon naps. They can see a smashed up lock on the closet. They open it up and it’s a skeleton. Well, it used to be a skeleton, at any rate, but most of it has already collapsed onto the floor of the closet. Only the skull can be said to still be complete.
“It’s practically broken already. So we just have to smash it up further?” An Wenhui is pondering.
“Look,” Du Yixin has been holding the camera up the whole time, and as soon as the skull was captured in-shot, the progress bar goes right up again. The empty progress bar is almost filled up.
It currently reads 99%.
“It must have been a key item,” An Wenhui answers with a smile.
Another percent and the filming portion would be done.
“Is the Instance over as soon as the skull is smashed up? What is the 1% remaining?” Du Yixin is furrowing his brows.
They should have found everything there was to find out about the hospital already.
What else could it be? Is it the reason the hospital became haunted?
But it seems like something that need not be said. A fire has burned up the patients and even the staff alive. So there was too much hate or whatever and everyone became ghosts, right?
Speaking of which, they’ve only ever met the staff in the hospital up to this point. Where’s the patients?
“Instead of thinking, let’s get the skull first.”
“You’re right,” maybe some new clue would pop up after they destroy the skull.
But as soon as Du Yixin is about to reach out, choices appear again, stopping him in his tracks.
[The protagonist chooses to:]
[A. Take the skull away]
[B. Leave the skull behind]
An odd question. Or rather, there is only one possible choice. They came here for this, to escape, and to complete the story.
But then he pauses right before touching option A.
The game never offers any meaningless choices; the choices affect the plot progression afterwards. Given the bones to be critical to the entire haunted hospital, they would surely not let them take it away easily. In other words, something is bound to happen when they attempt to do so.
But his former judgment still stands. He cannot let the clue go just to be absolutely safe.
It is time to make the choice.
TL’s notes: The finale of an arc is always exciting.
Oriental Rabbit 