The Hand of Confession – Chapter 194
by Little PandaVolume 7: Days of Stargazing at the Inn
The her in the mirror had a face full of fear.
Golden Retriever felt he could still salvage the situation and quickly raised his hand to ask, “Um… excuse me, can three people stay together?”
The woman showed a puzzled expression. “Who do you want to stay with?”
“It’s just that… I have social anxiety, I only want to stay with people I know. But I don’t know anyone else, you get me ba2?”
Woman: “…”
Others: “…” In what fcking way do you look like you have social anxiety?*
However, since he had made such a request, the woman could only try her best to accommodate him. “Then I’ll go ask if there are any triple rooms. In the meantime, you all can form your teams. When I get back, we’ll go straight in.”
With that, she left again.
The players below began to look for roommates. Golden Retriever, having acted first and reported later, sheepishly asked Lou Jingmo, “Is this… okay with you?”
Lou Jingmo said indifferently, “It’s fine, don’t worry.”
Golden Retriever felt a little more at ease and stood with them.
No one wanted to share a room with the female NPC, so everyone was quite grateful to Golden Retriever for sticking his neck out3.
When the woman came out again, the players had already arranged themselves in a 3-2-2-2-2 formation. The NPC glanced at Golden Retriever’s teammates and couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “You, a big young fellow4, actually have the nerve to room with two young ladies?”
Golden Retriever thought, What’s a little embarrassment if it means staying alive? So he said with a cheeky grin, “What’s there for me to be embarrassed about? These two are my biological older sisters. How could a younger brother be embarrassed to stay with his older sisters?”
The surrounding players naturally understood him; if they could cling to a powerful backer5, they wouldn’t mind being shameless either.
So, in the end, only the woman found the joke amusing. After laughing for a while, she seemed to lose interest, her expression returning to impassivity. She said, “The room cards are all here. Each team send a representative to get them from me.”
Thus, Shen Maomao and Lou Jingmo pushed Golden Retriever forward.
After they collected the room cards, the woman added, “The inn provides food for us at seven in the morning, twelve noon, and four in the afternoon, for one hour each time. Service ends when the time is up. It’s currently two in the afternoon. In a bit, you should all go back to your rooms to unpack. We’ll gather in the lobby at four to prepare for dinner. There’s a stargazing platform on the mountaintop. After dinner, we’ll go up the mountain and have fun until nine, then come back. Let’s go in together now.”
The group filed in. The moment they stepped into the inn’s lobby, a wave of chilliness washed over them, making Shen Maomao shiver involuntarily.
Normally, stepping from the hot outdoors into a cool room should feel refreshing and comfortable, but the temperature in the lobby was a bit too low. It was a coldness difficult to describe with words; the cold air seemed to penetrate one’s pores, freezing the blood and making bones ache faintly.
“It’s so cold ah…” a player blurted out.
The lobby was spacious. Just inside the entrance was a service desk, and behind it sat a woman lazily applying nail polish. The pungent smell of low-quality nail polish permeated the air, causing Shen Maomao to let out two small sneezes.
On either side of the desk were neatly arranged tables and chairs. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, falling on these tables and chairs, making those spots look exceptionally warm.
The lead NPC guided them inwards with practiced ease. As they passed the front desk, the woman applying nail polish spoke without even lifting her eyes, “The air conditioning in the lobby is broken. It should be fixed in a few days.” This was in response to the player who had commented on the cold.
The group headed straight for the elevator, crowding in with a rush. The NPC reached out and pressed the button for the 3rd floor.
Twelve people occupied all the available space in the elevator. Shen Maomao, squeezed into a corner, looked at the mirror on the elevator wall.
The her in the mirror had a face full of fear, her eyes darting towards the back-right, her whole body trembling as if she had seen something utterly terrifying.
Shen Maomao was taken aback and couldn’t help but turn her head to look behind her.
There were only players behind her; there was nothing that could have caused the reflection in the mirror to show such an expression.
She turned back to look at the mirror, only to find that the person in it had returned to normal, no longer making movements different from her actual self.
She couldn’t help but tug on Lou Jingmo’s sleeve, blinking her eyes at her desperately.
Lou Jingmo gave her a wink in return.
Shen Maomao: “…” So frustrating, like hating iron for not becoming steel6.
Accompanied by a sense of weightlessness, the elevator suddenly stopped on the second floor. The elevator doors opened to reveal an empty doorway.
The people in the elevator looked at each other, no one daring to make a sound, afraid that the next second the elevator would announce it was overweight.
The NPC guarding the buttons pressed the close-door button again, muttering under her breath, “Pressing the elevator button and then not taking it, are they messed up or what7?”
From a scientific perspective, her deduction was sound—this situation could very well occur if someone outside had pressed the button but then left for some reason. But this was a game world, and the players couldn’t help but overthink it.
However, nothing strange happened next. They reached the third floor safely and went to find their rooms with their key cards.
The temperature on the third floor was also a bit low, but still within a comfortable range for humans, considerably warmer than the first floor. Exiting the elevator, the rooms to the left had lower numbers, and to the right, higher numbers. The group collectively turned left.
There was a long corridor in the middle, with five rooms on each side. Odd numbers on the left, from 301 to 309, and even numbers on the right, from 302 to 310. Rooms 305 and 306 in the middle were the public toilets and washrooms, mercilessly revealing the sad fact that they would have to come out at night to use the restroom.
The NPC stayed in 301, the room at the very end8 of the corridor.
Shen Maomao and her group were in 310, next to the elevator, furthest from the NPC’s room, and not adjacent to any other players’ rooms. It couldn’t be said to be good, nor could it be said to be bad.
As soon as they pushed open the door, the smell of air freshener assailed their nostrils. Room 310 wasn’t large. Inside, there was a large double bed, and further away, a small single bed. Both were covered with blue and white striped bedsheets, looking very ‘small fresh’9. Between the beds was a bedside cabinet, and at the foot of the beds stood a TV cabinet, upon which sat an old-fashioned ‘big-butt’ TV10.
The double bed was by the window, the single bed by the door. The window had a sill, on which sat several pots of small blue-purple flowers with needle-like green leaves beneath them, looking both beautiful and dangerous.
Below the windowsill was a long table and two stools. On the table was a water kettle, and several rather dirty-looking porcelain mugs11—the kind from the 80s or 90s.
Shen Maomao tossed her large bag onto the table under the windowsill and let out a long sigh. “Exhausted… What’s the situation here?”
“No idea.” Golden Retriever consciously sat on the small bed, leaving the large double bed for Shen Maomao and Lou Jingmo. “Something feels very off.”
Lou Jingmo also put her bag down by the bed and immediately unzipped it to check. Inside were two sets of clean clothes, toiletries, a charger, and a power bank. The rest was all sorts of snacks and fruits.
Shen Maomao also opened her bag and found the same items.
“No wonder it was so heavy…” She put the clothes aside, then grabbed the bottom of her travel bag, turned it upside down, and shook it, creating a small mountain of snacks.
Golden Retriever’s bag was the same.
The three of them lined up the snacks and found that the types and quantities of snacks in each of their bags were also identical.
Identical clothes, identical phones, identical luggage—what did all these things signify?
Lou Jingmo stuffed the items back into her bag and began to inspect the room, saying as she lifted the quilt, “Everyone stay sharp and adapt to the circumstances.”
The three of them searched the room but found nothing unusual. They then lay down on their respective beds to rest, conserving their energy for whatever the night might bring.
Shen Maomao opened her phone, which had no signal, and started playing the Snake game. As she played, she gradually became engrossed.
Golden Retriever wasn’t as carefree12 as her; he lay on the bed and took a short nap. Lou Jingmo, on the other hand, leaned against the headboard, watching Shen Maomao play, her gaze heavy as if lost in thought.
Two hours passed quickly. Lou Jingmo took the room card, while Shen Maomao and Golden Retriever slung their small water bottles over their shoulders. The three of them left the room and took the elevator downstairs.
Shen Maomao couldn’t help but stare at her reflection in the mirror.
Golden Retriever asked curiously, “What are you gawking at?”
Shen Maomao: “I think there’s something wrong with this mirror.”
Lou Jingmo glanced up at the surveillance camera. “We’ll talk when we get back.”
Shen Maomao immediately shut her mouth.
The first floor was truly cold, cold enough to make one want to shiver. Several players were already seated in the sunlight, enjoying steaming hot food. A fragrance of cooked dishes filled the lobby.
Besides the players who had arrived with them, there were surprisingly many other people downstairs whom they hadn’t seen before—a young couple feeding each other, a husband and wife with a little boy holding a rubber ball, an elderly man on the verge of death… These strangers spanned a wide age range and didn’t quite look like players. It was unknown how long they had been staying here.
Shen Maomao felt a bit intimidated.
Why were so many people staying in such a small inn in this desolate wilderness? Were they all here for that stargazing platform on the mountaintop?
The three of them casually found a table in the sunlight and sat down. A woman approached, swaying leisurely with a notepad in hand, and said lazily, “What would you folks like to eat?” Then, at this same unhurried and unperturbed pace, she listed a bunch of dishes.
Shen Maomao and Golden Retriever immediately looked at Lou Jingmo.
Lou Jingmo casually ordered a few dishes. The woman closed the menu and swayed leisurely away again. She spoke slowly, walked slowly, but her food delivery was surprisingly fast. In no time, she returned with a tray.
The three began to enjoy their dinner. Shen Maomao was like a little mouse stealing oil13, her eyes darting everywhere, never quite settling on the food.
More people came down from the elevator one after another. Only that one woman was slowly taking orders and serving food. Even when she was swamped, the woman behind the counter didn’t budge an inch, showing no intention of helping out.
Soon, their lead NPC also came down. She didn’t order food but instead stood in the middle of the tables and scanned the room. After confirming everyone had arrived, she clapped her hands, drawing everyone’s attention, and said, “Alright, it’s four-thirty now. We’ll set off at five on the dot to go see the aurora on the mountain!”
Shen Maomao: “??” See what?
What light??
LP: I remember patting the back of our CRT TV back then to ‘fix’ it. Does it work? Absolutely!
Footnotes
- 极光 | Jíguāng | Aurora (e.g., Aurora Borealis/Australis).
- 吧 | ba | ‘ba’ (吧) is a sentence-final particle indicating suggestion, supposition, or a softened tone.
- 出头鸟 | chūtóuniǎo | Lit. “bird that sticks its head out”; Fig. someone who takes the lead or sticks their neck out, often attracting attention or trouble, like the saying “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”
- 大小夥子 | dàxiǎo huǒzi | Lit. “big-small lad”; A young man, often implying he’s of a decent build or age.
- 抱大腿 | bào dàtuǐ | Lit. “hug big thigh”; Fig. to curry favor with or suck up to someone powerful or skilled for protection or benefit.
- 恨铁不成钢 | hèn tiě bù chéng gāng | Lit. “to hate iron for not becoming steel”; Fig. to feel disappointed or frustrated with someone (often a loved one or subordinate) for not living up to their potential or expectations, implying a desire for them to improve.
- 有毒吧 | yǒu dú ba | Lit. “is toxic/poisonous, right?”; Internet slang expressing that something is outrageous, ridiculous, or annoying; similar to “Are you for real?”, “That’s messed up!”, or “What’s wrong with them?”.
- 把头 | bǎtóu | Lit. “hold the head”; Fig. at the very end or head of a row/line. In this context, it means the first room in the corridor from one perspective, or the one at the head of the sequence.
- 小清新 | xiǎo qīngxīn | “Small fresh”; A Chinese subculture and aesthetic style characterized by light colors, simplicity, literary/artsy vibes, and often a touch of sentimentality or nostalgia. It implies a cute, light, and refreshing style.
- 大屁股电视 | dà pìgu diànshì | Lit. “big-butt television”; Colloquial term for an old CRT (cathode-ray tube) television, referring to its bulky rear section.
- 瓷缸 | cígāng | Porcelain crock or mug, often thick and sturdy. These were common in China in previous decades.
- 心大 | xīn dà | Lit. “big heart”; Can mean magnanimous, but often used colloquially to describe someone as carefree, unconcerned, or not easily bothered, sometimes to a fault.
- 偷油的小老鼠 | tōu yóu de xiǎo lǎoshǔ | Lit. “little mouse stealing oil”; Fig. describes someone acting furtively or glancing around shiftily, often with quick, darting looks.
- 哪个极的 | nǎge jí de | Lit. “which ‘jí’ (extreme/pole/utmost) one’s?”. Shen Maomao is confused by the word “极光 (jíguāng – aurora)”. She’s breaking down the word “极光”: “极 (jí)” means extreme, pole (like North/South Pole), or utmost. “光 (guāng)” means light. She’s questioning which “extreme” or “pole” the “light” refers to.
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