Editor: Kitty
[March 2, rain. My classmates are looking at me more and more strangely. They often resort to petty little tricks such as throwing away my textbooks and homework, taking away my stool, and writing strange words on my desk. I usually choose to ignore them because if I take their words seriously, I’ll only hurt myself.]
[But there’s a guy who goes too far. He scolded me for being cheap and touched my leg with his hand. I gave him a slap. Unexpectedly, these boys are so lacking in quality. He kicked me with his feet. He not only kicked me by himself but also encouraged other boys to kick me too. It hurt so much that I almost fainted. Finally, the homeroom teacher arrived. Oh, this old man finally acted like a man for once. He lashed every one of those disgusting boys with his teacher’s pointer.]
[He also carried me into the hospital. He gave me a ring in the hospital and asked me to wear it on my left hand. I think I’m indifferent to it. I’ll just wear it.]
[My love, when will I die?]
The other person did not respond after Xiao YaXuan’s diary entry on this date. Luo Jian looked at the following contents. Almost all the entries were about the classmates bullying her and how the means of bullying varied. They not only beat and scolded her, but they also locked her in enclosed classrooms or curriculum material rooms and usually kept her locked up for one night or even one to two days.
It could be seen from this girl’s writing that one by one, her classmates started to behave abnormally or to act like lunatics who seemed to take pleasure in bullying her, and their means to do so were extremely despicable. After going through the whole diary, Luo Jian reached the last entry. He saw that Xiao YaXuan penned the last diary entry of her life with shaky and twisting writing.
[April 4, rainstorm. I think they are all crazy, or maybe I am also becoming crazy and following their footsteps. I don’t know why I have the terrible feeling that maybe this will be the last time I write a diary entry. I think my life is probably not complete. It lacks a lot of important things, but I’ve already run out of chances to fill it up.]
[I know I’ve been deceiving myself. You’re no longer in this world, but I’ve been pretending that you’re still there, pretending that you’re still sitting in that empty seat, pretending that the reason you won’t reach out a helping hand to me is because you’re sleeping. I’ve been using the notes you’d written in your textbook to imitate your handwriting and buying two mobile phones to send messages to each other to simulate everything we used to do. I thought that you had always remained there and that you didn’t leave, but in fact, I know very well that you’ve long been gone.]
[How pitiful. I’m so desperate just because I used to be happy.]
[So this is goodbye.]
As the diary entry ended here, the remaining pages that Luo Jian flipped through were blank. Luo Jian hesitated for a moment. Now his thoughts were blank. The last diary entry revealed the most important information. It was so important that Luo Jian was scared out of his wits immediately.
That is to say that the 35th student&#k2026;&#k2026; the person does not exist!
No, maybe the student once existed and maybe there were originally 35 students in this class, but one of them seemed to have met with an accident or something of the like. In other words, he died and left! His departure not only made his family sad but also made his girlfriend, Xiao YaXuan, miserable. So Xiao YaXuan wrote this diary to contain her grief and pretended that her lover was still there.
It was not known if this student’s death was the beginning of everything, but it obviously made Xiao YaXuan and her whole class fall into a strange panic-stricken mood, which led to various conflicts. At last, the misunderstandings between them became more severe, so all kinds of things happened later.
But in fact, all this was not the main point. The main point was…… there is no 35th student at all!
Luo Jian held his forehead and sat on the ground with his back against the wall. He could not hold the diary in his hand anymore. It fell to the cold concrete floor with a clattering sound. Many thoughts circled through his mind, and he did not understand what was going on.
Since there was no 35th student, how on earth could Luo Jian find the 35th person who disappeared? If they could not be found, how could Luo Jian identify the real and illusory secret chambers and doors?
Which door was the real exit?
“Impossible!” Luo Jian shook his head and refuted his idea. He calmed himself and began to analyze in a composed manner: “The 35th student must exist. Otherwise, the secret chamber would not explicitly ask me to find the person in the hint. So even if the diary says that the person was actually imaginary, I have to believe that the person exists. ”
“Since the person exists, I will be able to find him sooner or later.” Luo Jian tapped his fingers and began to think: “There are still many questionable areas. I need to organize my thoughts. First of all, since Xiao YaXuan pretended that her boyfriend was still there in her exchange diary, I’m afraid that the scrawls and the scratches, along with the one or two sentence replies, were all her work. She was imitating the handwriting of the dead person.”
“Secondly, her diary basically summarizes the whole process of what happened. On the surface, the girl was probably raped in turns by many people, and the cause of the teacher’s death was also due to torture. He was subsequently hung up on the ceiling. The causes of death of these two people were the work of the remaining 33 students in the class. However, why did the remaining 33 students die? And they all died strangely with no scars on their bodies, and almost all of them were sitting in their seats—or, of course, someone might have placed them back into their seats after they died.”
Who killed the rest of the students in the class? Who was the real murderer? Luo Jian was afraid that finding the murderer was the problem he needed to face this time. As Luo Jian thought about it, he sighed again. He reached out and picked up the diary that had fallen on the ground. Then, unexpectedly, a piece of paper fell out, possibly from an inner pocket of the diary.
Luo Jian picked up the note. This note was not printed with purple patterns like the papers commonly used in the secret chamber but seemed to be a corner torn from an exercise book. Luo Jian was very familiar with the contents:
[One side is one side, one side for one side, a left hand exchanged for a right hand, your face is my face.]
Of course, the words on this note were also reversed. Also, the handwriting was very familiar. After looking at it for a long time, Luo Jian realized that it was Xiao YaXuan’s imitation of her boyfriend’s handwriting…… or the handwriting of the 35th person who had disappeared.
After reading the note repeatedly, Luo Jian did not come to any new revelations. He turned to look at the large mirror placed in the hollowed-out wall, which still reflected the view of the whole secret chamber clearly, but not his face.
Luo Jian thought for a moment and took out from his pocket the small mirror, which had been broken into pieces and pieced back together with transparent glue. The small mirror reflected Luo Jian’s face, but because the mirror itself was broken, the reflection of Luo Jian’s face was also broken.
“That’s right!” Luo Jian said: “Since the blackboard in the illusory chamber can be removed, so can the blackboard in the real chamber.”
As his thoughts shifted to that, Luo Jian read the ‘transmission phrase’ once again. But nothing happened. He had momentarily forgotten that the transmission phrases had to be read in reverse, so he read it again, but backwards. Then, his vision blurred. The whole scenery of the secret chamber flipped backwards, and the smell of corpses rushed at him. He looked at the time on the cellphone: 14:24.
Time had started to flow again. There were about 40 minutes left.
Luo Jian did not dare to delay any longer. He immediately ran to the blackboard at the back of the classroom and pushed it hard with his hands. It was loose and, as expected, could be removed. Luo Jian’s strength had recovered a lot, and he kicked the whole blackboard down somewhat violently, imitating the way the stalker had removed the other blackboard.
Behind the blackboard was a similarly hollowed-out wall, and in the wall, there was a big mirror, along with a diary. It was exactly the same as the diary he found previously, but the words were written in the correct manner. As for the mirror, Luo Jian stood in front of it and was horrified when he found that his face was not reflected in the mirror.
The reflection of the big mirror showed the chamber filled with still corpses. The world reflected in the mirror did not have any living persons or Luo Jian.
“Why can’t I see my face?” Luo Jian did not understand. The little mirror in his hand could clearly reflect his face. What was wrong with the mirror, or did the problem lie with Luo Jian himself?
“That’s right, it should be that way.” Looking at the mirror, Luo Jian seemed to realize something at this moment, and he murmured: “I originally didn’t exist in this secret chamber, and since I don’t exist, the mirror won’t reflect me.”
“I don’t exist…” Luo Jian continued to murmur, “I don’t exist…”
“I don’t exist…”
“I don’t exist!”
Luo Jian retreated a step backwards. He still could not see his reflection in the mirror, but Luo Jian seemed to realize something terrible. For a while, he was deathly pale. He stepped backwards several times until he accidentally stepped onto the fragments of one of the corpses on the ground. It made a cracking sound, which helped slightly snap him out of his reverie.
“That’s right, I don’t exist in this secret chamber, just like the 35th person who disappeared…… Perhaps, this damned secret chamber has been set in this way since the beginning. I am the 35th student! ”
Luo Jian thought of many details that he had ignored. For example, when he first woke up in the secret chamber, he was sitting on the empty seat of the missing student! Also, every single word and phrase of the poem on the blackboard was written clearly: one side is one side, one side for one side, a left hand exchanged for a right hand, your face is my face. The meaning behind the poem was obviously ‘substitution’ and ‘interchanging’!
T/N: There would be a bonus EIC ko-fi goals chapter release tomorrow, weds and fri, please look forward to it! I tried to keep Xiao YaXuan’s writing style as I translate, so there might be a difference in style between the main text.
Hehe, have most of you here have an idea of how Luo Jian would escape from this secret chamber?