The Hand of Confession – Chapter 354

Volume 11: The Days of Traversing Through the Mirror

Willow Catkins¹

That’s not it! I’m not lying!! There really was something!

Shen Maomao trusted her intuition.

Whether it was her name or her behavior, this person, Hai Dongqing, gave her a strange sense of oppression—as if she were truly a pitiful little rabbit that could be snatched away by a goshawk soaring high in the sky at any moment, then torn apart piece by piece and devoured.

Overall, it was a capital “危”².

The two of them were the last to return; the remaining few people were all there. Peng Xiaorui was a little excited after walking around, saying over and over that this was what university life was like. She seemed very optimistic.

Shen Maomao pulled her bed curtain shut to change into her pajamas, then asked them in her slippers, “Want to go wash up together?”

“Let’s go together,” Bai Lu said. “Wait for us to change too. It’ll be safer if we go together.”

The washroom and the toilets were connected, located in the middle section of the entire building. They walked through the long corridor, past dorm rooms with tightly locked doors, and finally arrived at the entrance to the washroom.

Inside were two long, rectangular sinks, each with six very simple faucets. A few NPCs were washing up on the left side, so their group went to the right. Shen Maomao tried to turn the first faucet. The aged metal parts scraped against each other, making a sound that set one’s teeth on edge, but no water came out.

The first faucet was broken.

She didn’t think much of it and moved to the sixth one instead.

After washing up, the group went to the toilet together. The toilets in the instance were very simple and didn’t have any strange smells. They were just two deep trenches with a total of six squatting positions, separated by partitions that were about half a person’s height. Each had a horizontal-slatted wooden door, allowing people outside to see if it was occupied.

It was worth mentioning that the lights in the toilet were fucking voice-activated.

Shen Maomao had heard that joke before about clapping for yourself while on the toilet, but she never expected to realize it here today.

By the time they returned, the sky had completely darkened. Through the window at the end of the corridor, they could see the stars in the sky. Further beyond, there was only a stretch of roiling darkness.

The door to 3056 next to the window was shut tight, but light was seeping through the glass pane on it, so everyone was probably inside.

The five of them returned to 3058. Hai Dongqing, who was walking at the very back, locked the door. She checked it two or three times and even placed a glass cup on the doorknob. One could say she was being extremely cautious.

Gan Ze watched her all the way until she sat back on her bed, then asked softly, “Do you think something will come in the middle of the night?”

Hai Dongqing said, “I don’t know.”

Gan Ze pressed her pale lips together and didn’t ask for a snub again. She lifted the quilt of bed number 5 and slipped inside.

Bai Lu sat on bed number 3, pulling the curtain. Halfway through, she called for Shen Maomao to take over. The two lazybones by the window worked together to close the sky-blue curtain properly, then lay back on their own beds without any further communication.

On the first day of entering the game, everyone was very silent. Only Gan Ze let out a dry cough from time to time; besides that, there were no other sounds.

The lights would automatically turn off after 10:30 PM, so they had kept them on.

It was still early, and Shen Maomao couldn’t sleep, so she started playing with the phone assigned by the instance. You had to know, she was the kind of woman who could play Snake all day even on an old person’s phone, let alone a smartphone. Maybe if she fiddled with it, she could get some kind of card.

Time flew by when she was playing. Shen Maomao didn’t even react when the dorm lights went out with a shua. The dorm wasn’t that dark, because besides her, several other phones were still lit up. It turned out no one was asleep.

Peng Xiaorui had been very excited all along. Seeing this, she said softly, “None of you are asleep either? Is real university life different from this? Are the dorms at Jiang Da³ really this bad?”

“Well, it’s pretty much confirmed you got in. You can go see for yourself when the time comes,” Bai Lu’s voice rang out.

Peng Xiaorui said, “I’m afraid I won’t have the chance to see it.”

Gan Ze: “Don’t be a crow’s beak.”⁴

“Pei pei pei!”⁵ Peng Xiaorui quickly spat three times. “A child’s words carry no harm, a child’s words carry no harm.”⁶

Bai Lu said, “It’s not that different. The environment at Jiang Da is a bit better than this. If we can all live until next semester, I’ll come pick you up at the gate when you start school.”

Peng Xiaorui’s eyes were shining. She began to look forward to that scene and changed how she addressed her, calling out, “Thank you, Xuejie!”⁷

Shen Maomao rolled over, facing the wall and leaving her back to them, not participating in their conversation.

Before long, the sound of chatting gradually died down, and the dorm once again fell into silence. Shen Maomao grew drowsy, on the verge of falling asleep.

Just then, she suddenly heard the sound of footsteps.

The sound was shuffling and slow, distant one moment and near the next, like an elderly person in slippers dawdling back and forth in the corridor. It instantly woke her up. She couldn’t help but hold her breath, straining her ears to listen to the movements outside.

It’s probably not a normal student.

There were only six dorms at the end of the corridor, and the soundproofing was extremely poor. If one door opened, the other five could hear it. She hadn’t heard any dorm doors open just now.

She had encountered this kind of situation many times before, so she wasn’t particularly surprised.

She took out her phone to check the time. It was 11:52 PM, eight minutes until midnight.

Two minutes later, with a creak, the door of some dorm was opened. The owner of the footsteps walked into a room. Judging from the sound, it was to the left, right, or opposite of 3058. Her intuition told her that they had probably entered 3056 on the left.

The footsteps stopped, and there were no other strange noises from next door. She waited for another two minutes with her eyes wide open, but there was still no movement from next door.

It seemed this was it for tonight.

She just didn’t know who had come.

But combining this with the story she told Hai Dongqing in the afternoon, she had reason to suspect that the sound belonged to the dorm matron⁸ from the first floor.

With this thought in mind, she groggily fell asleep. The next morning, she was startled awake by a shrill scream. She shot up with a jolt, her head knocking against the bed board of the top bunk with a dull thud. The pain made her cry out, “Ow!”

Hai Dongqing from the top bunk poked her head down. “Are you okay?”

Shen Maomao clutched her forehead as the world spun around her. “I’m fine… ugh… Let’s go check next door first. That scream sounded like it came from that little newcomer.”

The other three had already put on their shoes and run out. Shen Maomao was anxious to go too, but as soon as she stood up, she felt dizzy, and little stars floated before her eyes.

Hai Dongqing helped steady her and said, “Take it slow. They’ve all gone anyway.” As she spoke, she even tried to look at the lump on her head with concern.

Shen Maomao dodged awkwardly. “I’m fine now… Let’s go take a look too.”

The two of them followed the others out and found Peng Xiaorui and Bai Lu blocking the doorway of the neighboring dorm, peeking and peering inside. Gan Ze was leaning against the windowsill with her arms crossed, occasionally covering her mouth to let out a soft cough or two.

The sound of crying came from inside the dorm. Shen Maomao clutched the lump on her head and moved closer, asking in a whisper, “What’s the situation?”

The two people at the door made way. Bai Lu said in a low voice, “We don’t know. She just kept crying here after she screamed. She won’t say anything no matter what we ask.” She sighed. “I hate these sawn-mouthed gourds⁹ the most.”

Shen Maomao took the opportunity to look inside. The little newcomer was sitting on the empty floor in the middle of the dorm, covering her face and wailing her heart out. The skin visible between her fingers was completely colorless. She trembled as she cried.

Wu Mei¹⁰ stood beside her, consoling her. The other players sat on their respective beds, watching her coldly without any reaction.

After a while, Wu Mei finally managed to calm the newcomer down. The newcomer sobbed a few times and said in a small voice, “There… there was something on my bed… sob sob sob… so chilly… so cold… sob sob sob I’m so scared…”

Everyone’s gaze immediately fixed on her bed.

The newcomer was in bed number 5, the lower bunk opposite the cabinets. Her quilt was spread flat on the bed, with a human-shaped bulge in the middle, making it look as if a person was there.

The scene fell silent, with only the newcomer’s low sobs remaining. Without asking for her permission, Wu Mei directly flung the quilt open. Whoosh— The quilt stirred up a gust of wind, and some reddish willow catkin fluff flew out from underneath, spinning and dancing wantonly in the dorm’s mid-air.

The newcomer stared fixedly at the willow catkins in the air, her eyes wide, as if she had seen something utterly terrifying. She probably wanted to scream, but under the circumstances, her mouth just hung open dryly, as if she had lost her voice.

The quilt was piled in the corner of the bed. Her bed was completely empty; there was nothing there.

The newcomer broke down again. She pushed herself back a couple of steps with her feet, shouting in despair, “THAT’S NOT IT! I’M NOT LYING!! THERE REALLY WAS SOMETHING! It was ice-cold… there really was…”

The woman from bed number 1 put on her slippers, went to open the window, and vigorously fanned a piece of clothing twice, blowing some of the red willow catkins out. Then she turned, looked down at the newcomer, and said coldly, “Stop howling. No one said they don’t believe you.”

The newcomer glanced at her cautiously and swallowed with difficulty.

The woman from bed number 1 spoke again, “If you keep being so jumpy and flighty, I’ll just kill you myself to save you the trouble of attracting something else.”

The players all knew she was just saying that, because if someone who died in the game held a grudge, they were very likely to become a monster too. So, unless absolutely necessary, players wouldn’t attack each other.

But the newcomer didn’t know this. The expression on the woman from bed number 1 was exceptionally vicious, and she didn’t doubt for a second that this group of cold, strange people would kill her without hesitation.

She sniffled a couple of times. Finally, she didn’t dare to make another sound. She could only curl herself into a ball as much as possible, hoping to gain some sense of security from it.

Ever since she came to this godforsaken place, it seemed like everything had changed.

The sky full of willow catkins, the tragic death of her friend, the familiar yet bizarre environment, and the incredibly indifferent humans… It was like being in a grotesque dream, one she could escape from just by waking up. But how difficult it was to wake up.

Just like that exceptionally dark night yesterday, something had stood by her bed, covered her body, lifted her quilt, and breathed its icy breath on her face. She wanted to wake up, to see what that thing was, to scream her lungs out and wake the others so they could help her… But it was all in vain. She couldn’t wake up, nor could she make a sound. She could only struggle in terror, hoping that someone would come and save her.

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