In the dark hallway, Ruan Nanzhu kept looking at his watch.
Five minutes wasn't much time at all. Inside the more dangerous doors especially, it was gone in a flash.
Lin Qiushi had gone into the room, and everything was quiet. There was only the flickering fire at the end of the hallway to look at.
The second hand ticked on. One round, two rounds, three… On its fourth time around, Cheng Yixie couldn't take it anymore, and quietly asked, "will he make it?"
Ruan Nanzhu glanced at Cheng Yixie and didn't say a word. But his eyes answered—Lin Qiushi would definitely make it.
Cheng Yixie sighed internally, and said nothing more.
Thirty seconds left, and there was still no movement inside the door.
There was movement inside the mirrors however. Luo Qianshui could sometimes be seen darting an dodging about; it seemed that five minutes truly was her limit.
Ruan Nanzhu's gaze was fixed on the second hand of his watch.
Beside him, Luo Qianshan suddenly said, "Qianshui, don't push yourself."
With only fifteen seconds left until their rendezvous time and Lin Qiushi still nowhere to be seen, things weren't looking good. Luo Qianshan wasn't surprised by this outcome. The world of the doors was already dangerous, and on top of that, they'd kept something hidden.
The key really was hanging on a wall. It was just not the only key on the wall. Luo Qianshan had confidence in Zhu Meng, and felt with certainty that had Zhu Meng been the one to go, she definitely could have found the real key within five minutes. But as for the one called Yu Linlin, he couldn't be sure.
But as the decision had been made by Zhu Meng's group, Luo Qianshan hadn't bothered to say anything.
Tick, tock, tick, tock. A few seconds seemed so long in times like this.
Luo Qianshui stumbled out of the mirror, apparently injured. She asked, "did we get it?"
Luo Qianshan, seeing her exit, shook his head with a heavy expression.
But just as they spoke, there came a light clang from the hallway, like something falling on the carpeting.
What others may not have been able to see, Ruan Nanzhu saw as clear as day—the moment before the door closed, a green copper key was flung outside. There was no question who had thrown it. The key was out, but the person was still trapped within.
A cloying malaise surfaced in Ruan Nanzhu's eyes.
He slowly approached the happy-looking Luo Qianshan, who was speaking to Luo Qianshui. Sensing something was off beside him, Luo Qianshan made to turn, but immediately felt something cold and sharp pressed against his neck.
"Go in," came Ruan Nanzhu's cold voice.
"What?" Luo Qianshui startled. "What are you doing—"
Her eyes went huge; apparently she hadn't at all expected Ruan Nanzhu to turn on them like this.
Ruan Nanzhu looked at his watch, then without hesitation pressed harder. The sharp dining knife pierced Luo Qianshan's skin and drew bright red blood. Luo Qianshan snapped, "kill me if you can then!"
But then Ruan Nanzhu smiled and asked, "you think I won't?"
Luo Qianshui didn't answer. She could tell from Ruan Nanzhu's voice that the person before her really would do it—would plunge that sharp blade right into her brother's neck.
And unlike her, Luo Qianshan was human, and could be injured or killed. Luo Qianshui gritted her teeth. "I can give you thirty more seconds…"
Ruan Nanzhu smiled coolly. "One whole minute. A second less and your brother dies here."
Luo Qianshui, "you—"
Luo Qianshan was so angry at this sudden turn that he was shaking; he didn't think Ruan Nanzhu would do something so foolish for the person inside the room.
"Yixie, you take it." Ruan Nanzhu handed the knife to Cheng Yixie. "If he tries to resist, stick it straight in." His tone was steady. He didn't seem to be joking at all.
Luo Qianshan also knew Ruan Nanzhu was serious. This person was an utter maniac. Normal people, upon seeing the key, would have already forgotten their teammate. Who would want to go into such a dangerous place to stage a rescue!
Luo Qianshan shot Luo Qianshui a look, and Luo Qianshui slightly nodded. They could hear Ruan Nanzhu's continued orders: "watch the time. One minute. If Luo Qianshui dares to come out a second sooner, kill him immediately."
Cheng Yixie said, "okay."
Luo Qianshui snarled, "Zhu Meng you filthy liar!"
Ruan Nanzhu scoffed, "liar? You're calling me a liar? We agreed to five minutes, and you came out early. If he's dead, I'm burying you all with him."
Luo Qianshui said, "I was only five seconds early— Even five more seconds wouldn't have—"
The rest of her sentence died in the frost of Ruan Nanzhu's gaze.
Luo Qianshui knew there was no point in arguing on, and spun in a fury to enter the mirrors once more.
Ruan Nanzhu watched the hallway until the mother and daughter disappeared again, then sprinted for the room with Lin Qiushi inside.
One minute was practically nothing.
Ruan Nanzhu opened the door, and upon seeing Lin Qiushi not too far from the entrance, released an almost violent breath of relief. He dashed in to get Lin Qiushi out.
But the entire room was on fire at this point, the temperatures scaldingly hot. Ruan Nanzhu choked down his coughs, hauled Lin Qiushi into his arms, and headed for the door.
The few short steps became a bridge through Hell itself.
The boiling ground and roaring flames cooked at Ruan Nanzhu's flesh. Burns were the worst kind of pain—Ruan Nanzhu was in agony, but his steps were steady.
One step after another. Ten seconds or so, Ruan Nanzhu finally managed to leave the practically melted room, and got into the hallway.
Lin Qiushi was still unconscious in his arms, and if Ruan Nanzhu looked down, he could see that sleeping face. His lashes lowered as he thought what a good thing it was that Lin Qiushi wasn't awake, because what if Lin Qiushi saw him? He certainly wasn't pretty right now.
"Zhu Meng!" Cheng Yixie watched from his end of the hallway, heart pounding.
What he saw was Ruan Nanzhu coming out of the room on fire, stumbling into the hallway and toppling over, rolling about to put out the flames.
But this seemed to completely use up his strength. He lied there prone for a long while.
The one minute was almost up. Just as Cheng Yixie was wondering if he should go over to help, Ruan Nanzhu struggled back to his feet. He got hold of the key, then painfully dragged Lin Qiushi back to their side.
Tick, tock, tick. One minute exactly.
Luo Qianshui emerged from the mirror half-drenched in blood. She was wounded too, and looked up to see Ruan Nanzhu burned to the point of disfiguration. A normal person wounded like this would probably have passed out already, but Ruan Nanzhu was still conscious. He was braced against the wall, glaring coolly at Luo Qianshui with those black eyes. His voice had lost its clarity and was ragged from the smoke. "Got the key. Find the door."
Luo Qianshui shot Luo Qianshan a look of panic.
Luo Qianshan's expression seemed a bit complicated too; it was his first time meeting someone like Ruan Nanzhu. He said, "I don't know about the door. We still have to look floor by floor."
But with such serious injuries, Ruan Nanzhu might not survive the search.
Ruan Nanzhu didn't answer at first. But just as everybody thought he'd passed out, he parted his lips and got out two words: "emergency exit."
Luo Qianshan jolted.
"Check the emergency exit." Ruan Nanzhu's voice was very weak, and it took concentration to parse. "The door's likely there."
As they spoke, the temperature around them was climbing.
Cheng Yixie thought it was just him at first, but quickly figured better—the entire hallway was on fire.
The wallpaper was blackening, and flames were licking their way out the plaster.
"There's no time!" Luo Qianshan didn't predict this either. Then he shouted, "they're gone!"
Cheng Yixie spun around, and indeed, the mother and daughter at the end of the hall were gone. But in the mirrors around them, two burnt figures began appearing.
Other people from the group also realized something was wrong, and began coming out of their rooms.
"What? What the hell is happening…" The hubbub was putting everybody on edge.
Ruan Nanzhu suddenly said, "Yixie, move away from the mirror."
At this, Cheng Yixie hurriedly took a step forward. Just as he did, the mirror behind him cracked, loudly, and a blackened pair of arms shot out, attempting to make a grab for him.
"Hurry and go." Ruan Nanzhu pushed himself up by the wall with difficulty. "Take him…"
He was, of course, referring to the unconscious Lin Qiushi.
Luo Qianshan watched the three before his gaze shuttered. But just as his hand slipped into his pocket, Luo Qianshan caught him from the side.
She begged him with her eyes, and slowly shook her head.
Why… Luo Qianshan looked at her in doubt. Don't you hate her?
Luo Qianshui pushed up onto tiptoes, and whispered into Luo Qianshan's ear, "she reminds me of myself at the beginning."
Luo Qianshan froze, and some pain slipped into his expression. He looked one more time first at Luo Qianshui, then at Ruan Nanzhu, and did nothing in the end.
The emergency exit was at the end of the hallway, text in large neon green and particularly visible in the dark.
But it was hardly easy to get there. There were numerous pairs of blackened arms in the mirrors on both sides, and they would shoot out past the glass, hoping to drag the living into their world of the dead.
Luo Qianshan braced Ruan Nanzhu.
Ruan Nanzhu glanced at him. "You won't kill me?"
Luo Qianshan said nothing, but judging by his expression, he certainly wanted to.
"Count yourself lucky that you won't kill me." And Ruan Nanzhu was smilng. His face was mutilated, but his eyes were still horribly bright. "Or who knows who would've made it out this door in the end?"
Luo Qianshan was silent for a while, then: "you really never thought, this time going in you might not come out?"
Ruan Nanzhu, "never."
Luo Qianshan twitched, like he didn't know what to say in the face of Ruan Nanzhu's sheer confidence. He could only ask, "he's important?"
Ruan Nanzhu's tone was calm. "I don't know about important. All I know is if it was me in there, he'd go in after me too." He was certain that that was the kind of person Lin Qiushi was.
Luo Qianshan said nothing more.
As they were leaving the hallway, many people in their team were caught by the black arms, and yanked right into the mirror world.
The moment they fell inside the mirrors, their bodies caught on fire, and the horror of their screaming was hard to bear.
Fortunately they had Luo Qianshui on their side, who could enter the mirrors first and get rid of the arms.
"I found the door, I found the door!" someone suddenly yelled, calling for everybody in the hall. "It's in this room! Hurry up, come on…"
"Door?" Luo Qianshui perked up, looking to Luo Qianshan.
Before Luo Qianshan could say anything, Cheng Yixie noted, "he's not alive." The person who called was a dead man they'd discovered hidden in the group earlier, with his toes pointed backward and heels pointed forward.
"The key! I got the key!" another dead person began to shout. Their voices had particular clarity amid the awful screaming, and managed to successfully lure in a few of the living.
"What about you guys? Aren't you coming?" that same person asked Ruan Nanzhu and Luo Qianshan.
"No," Luo Qianshan said. "You go ahead."
When that person seemed ready to say more, Luo Qianshan continued, "enough already."
The person's expression twisted at this, and he really did turn away. There were two people he fooled into entering the room, and the door immediately shut and locked behind them. Soon after, awful screams and the scent of cooking meat came from within.
This really was a kind of hell.
After the arduous passage, they finally made it to the emergency exit.
Luo Qianshan looked at Ruan Nanzhu. "The door's really here?"
Ruan Nanzhu was already burnt out, and avoided speaking at all if he could. At Luo Qianshan's question, he only glanced briefly up, as if saying trust me or don't, whatever.
And Luo Qianshan didn't bother asking further, shoving open the fire door with force. Behind it, sure enough, was another door of black metal. The large padlock that hung from it told them this was the way out.
Luo Qianshui burst into happy tears.
Ruan Nanzhu passed the key to Cheng Yixie, indicating he should open the door.
When Cheng Yixie opened the door, revealing the glowing passageway beyond, he bent, picked up the clue, and placed it in his pocket.
"We're off then." Luo Qianshan glanced at Ruan Nanzhu. "Take care."
Ruan Nanzhu replied lowly, "take care."
Luo Qianshan and Luo Qianshui entered the passage together. The moment they stepped inside, Luo Qianshui disappeared from beside him; it seemed she could only exist within the terrifying world of the doors. Once past it, she disappeared.
Cheng Yixie was about to call for Ruan Nanzhu to depart as well, but found that Ruan Nanzhu had passed out. With a small sigh, he lowered Lin Qiushi from his back to the floor too, then dragged both men out by the legs.
At that point the fire had already reached the door. Any slower and they would have been toast—as for which of them would have become the single survivor, who could know?
At the end of the passage, the scene around Cheng Yixie spun, and he reappeared inside the mansion.
Once he was out, he headed immediately for Ruan Nanzhu and Lin Qiushi's room. After knocking to no reply, Cheng Yixie opened the door with a spare key, and sure enough found the two on the brink of death.
One was pale as paper, barely breathing at all, and the other was lying in a pool of blood, practically dead already.
Cheng Yixie hurriedly called an ambulance and got the two to the hospital.
Then began their slow awakening.
Ruan Nanzhu truly just managed to keep his life. If it hadn't been for that superhuman body of his, he would have been dead halfway to the hospital.
Lin Qiushi was a little better off, but suffered some organ failure due to blood loss as well.
At the end of the day, the two pretty much survived on luck alone.
Cheng Yixie stayed mostly silent when he kept watch over them. Cheng Qianli, delivering food once, poked the back of his brother's head with a finger and said, "hey kiddo, what's with the face? What's going on in that noggin of yours?"
Cheng Yixie glared, and Cheng Qianli immediately backpedaled—"okay okay okay, keep doing what you're doing, I'll eat first"—as he mumbled something about being such a grump.
Cheng Yixie didn't bother playing nice. "Even if I told you, with an IQ like yours you wouldn't understand."
Cheng Qianli, "you haven't even said anything, how do you know I won't understand?"
Cheng Yixie's expression was disparaging.
And though Cheng Qianli felt ill-treated, he truly wasn't all that smart, and so couldn't even contest it.
The two stayed unconscious for two days. Lin Qiushi woke first, then Ruan Nanzhu. They remained hospitalized for two whole months before they'd recovered enough.
Nothing noteworthy happened in the interim though. The only thing was Cheng Qianli's daft insistence on shoving Lin Qiushi around in the wheelchair and riding him like a skateboard from one end of the hospital garden to the other. Nurses and fellow patients alike cast them looks that were clearly doubting their intelligence.
Finally Lin Qiushi couldn't take it anymore, and begged Cheng Qianli to have mercy, I'm a pitiful patient, why would you do this to me.
Cheng Qianli very shamelessly declared, "exercise is good for recovery!"
Lin Qiushi nearly lost his mind: "you're exercising the wheelchair, not me—"
Cheng Qianli, "but you're in the wheelchair, so aren't you basically exercising anyways?"
Lin Qiushi, speechless, stayed locked in a stare-down with Cheng Qianli for a bit, before he finally just got up from the wheelchair and walked away.
Cheng Qianli, "wait, huh?? You can walk—?"
Lin Qiushi barked, "it's not like my goddamn legs are broken, why wouldn't I be able to walk?"
Cheng Qianli looked disappointed.
In the evening, Lin Qiushi told Ruan Nanzhu about this incident.
Ruan Nanzhu was still lying in bed; though he looked livelier he was still weak. After listening to the story, he responded, "you're the only one who still messes around with Cheng Qianli."
Lin Qiushi, "…" Why did he feel like he was being criticized?
Ruan Nanzhu, upon seeing Lin Qiushi's sour expression, couldn't hold back a grin.
His body still hadn't fully healed. The wounds he'd gotten inside the door were seriously damaging, to the point that he was bed-bound even now. As they continued to chat, Lin Qiushi's gaze landed on Ruan Nanzhu's hand.
"Lin Qiushi?" Seeing Lin Qiushi gone suddenly quiet, Ruan Nanzhu called softly for him.
Lin Qiushi came back to himself, and smiled in apology. "Sorry, got distracted."
"What's on your mind?" Ruan Nanzhu asked.
Lin Qiushi, "nothing." He paused, lips pursing for a moment.
"Tell me." Ruan Nanzhu's voice was quite gentle.
Lin Qiushi was quiet again for a while, before finally asking, "it hurt, huh?"
Ruan Nanzhu watched Lin Qiushi's eyes, and realized he was being asked about the injuries from the door. He cocked his head in apparently serious recollection, and took a while before finally humming once for yes.
Lin Qiushi reached forward and took Ruan Nanzhu's wrist. His touch was light, clearly afraid of hurting Ruan Nanzhu further. He turned Ruan Nanzhu's wrist over, and examined the bandaging there.
When the wrapping was being changed, Lin Qiushi had seen the wound.
It was a long cut, blurry with blood, and looked awfully wrong on Ruan Nanzhu's fair skin. Lin Qiushi had seen the other wounds on Ruan Nanzhu as well—there were many, crisscrossed all over. A single glance could make a person flinch in sympathetic pain.
Ruan Nanzhu wasn't a dainty person. If he said something hurt, it must really have been an extraordinary pain.
Lin Qiushi's fingertips rubbed at the skin of Ruan Nanzhu's wrist. For a long moment, he didn't know what to say.
Ruan Nanzhu didn't ask either. The two just silently stared at one another.
Just as Lin Qiushi's lips shifted, about to say something, anything to break the silence, Cheng Qianli came in, holding a large basket of fruit. He said, "Ruan-ge, Tan Zaozao's here to see you."
Tan Zaozao, standing behind Cheng Qianli, poked her head out. "Ruan-ge, how are you then."
The moment she entered, she saw Lin Qiushi holding Ruan Nanzhu's wrist. She tsk'd, "Qiushi, how can you take advantage of Ruan-ge when we're not around?" She sidled up shamelessly. "Who doesn't want to touch Ruan-ge's hand…"
Ruan Nanzhu silently pulled his hand from Lin Qiushi's grip and slid it under the blanket.
Tan Zaozao looked disappointed.
Lin Qiushi, "…" Tan Zaozao get a hold of yourself.
Cheng Qianli set the basket down and asked what they wanted to eat, he'd wash them.
Tan Zaozao didn't bother looking back: "grab the lychee. Beautiful people ought to eat lychee."
Ruan Nanzhu, "Tan Zaozao."
Tan Zaozao, "yeah?"
Ruan Nanzhu, "you think I can't skin you because I'm injured?"
Tan Zaozao said, "who me? No." It's just that seeing Ruan Nanzhu so vulnerable for the first time was making her feel some kind of way, that's all.
Ruan Nanzhu, "just you wait."
Tan Zaozao wilted in submission, pouting at Lin Qiushi. She said, "Lin-ge, help me out here. He wants to skin me."
Lin Qiushi asked, "with what, a fruit knife? It's not like that's gonna work."
Tan Zaozao, "…" Oh you sick bastards are just perfect for each other, aren't you.