This was possibly the worst outcome.
For it suggested that all prior speculations about the state of the two hotels were incorrect; it could be that these two hotels were not linked by a sequential timeline but merely represented two distinct spaces.
Yet, Shiller thought the matter wasn't so simple; the two hotels couldn't possibly be entirely independent of each other. Jerome's point regarding communication corroborated this, as if an ordinary human like Jerome found a way to communicate with someone in the other hotel, it certainly indicated some connections discoverable by ordinary people between the two hotels.
Shiller still believed the connection was temporal, but what exactly it was, he had no time to think now, as he had to deal with the current situation first.
Although the plan had gone awry, Shiller was not panicking. In fact, Shiller was not a very arrogant person; he wouldn't stake everything on a single speculation, so even now, he had a method for turning the tables.
He knew the paranormal phenomena inside the room did not affect outside the room, and apart from the walls, Shiller guessed that the phenomena likely did not extend to the corridor either.
Because he had acted efficiently earlier, throwing out all the small items that could fly around the living room, now the room was left with only a sofa and a TV cabinet, not many obstructions otherwise.
Although the floating sofa and TV cabinet seemed somewhat restless, Shiller could instantly rush into the room, open the door, then dash into the corridor, thus leaving the room.
The problem was the corridor might not be safe either, especially when the mysterious surveillance rule kicked in at midnight. Although Shiller carried the alarm clock with him, a direct encounter with a contamination detection might not end well.
So, just dashing into the corridor wasn't enough, he needed to find another room to stay in besides Room 1905.
So which rooms were available as options? In reality, Shiller almost had no choice, since he only had the keycard for Room 1905, and other rooms couldn't be opened without their keycards, with the exception of one room, which was 1913.
The door of Room 1913 was already open, so it seemed the best option now was for Shiller to immediately dash out of his room into the corridor, and then before the surveillance rule activated, dash into Room 1913.
But Shiller did not plan to do that.
He was certain that Room 1913 was a trap, not solely because of the number 13, but more because the sequence of events was too smooth.
Shiller wasn't Batman, nor was he paranoid enough to suspect the entire world, but he still possessed the necessary vigilance. Again, if the paranormal entity in the room wanted to kill someone, it didn't need to toss furniture around; there had to be a special reason for its actions.
Shiller hadn't yet entered the bathroom, so he didn't know if there was any deadly trick there, but another possibility was that the entity was throwing furniture around to force him out of the room, then confront him with danger in the corridor, and finally drive him into Room 1913 as a refuge.
If the hotel was controlled by a ghost, Shiller might not make such an assumption because ghosts don't possess such high intelligence—disordered brainwaves often lead them to choose direct attacks rather than setting elaborate traps. Only an Outer God would do this.
Nyarlathotep was quite intelligent and cunning, even more deceitful than all humans put together, and he was very patient, skilled at disguising and deceiving. Confronting such an opponent required assuming the most malevolent intentions possible.
Or perhaps, killing humans wasn't Nyarlathotep's objective at all; he deceived humans just to toy with them, savoring the pleasure of manipulating humans, thus making it even more likely that he had devised such a deception, and Shiller would not fall for it.
Shiller had other methods.
He was now standing on the windowsill below, gripping the upper sill, but the wind was strong, and even though he wasn't exposed much to it, he had to hold on very tightly to stabilize himself, which clearly couldn't last for too long.
Shiller was at the far right of the window; the hotel windows were sliding ones, split into two panes. The left could be slid to the right, and since he had moved that pane earlier to throw things out, the right was now double glazed, and the left open.
Standing on the far right, Shiller had only one foot on the sill, half his body sticking out of the window; from inside, one could only see a small part of his body, which is why the furniture hadn't moved.
Very carefully, Shiller shifted his hands and feet to the left, essentially making his body reenter through the window, as if he could no longer maintain his balance and wanted to set his other foot down.
Given the small size of the window, Shiller couldn't see inside, but he could hear a faint noise; as expected, the sofa had probably taken off.
Since the paranormal activity in the room might be intelligent, he understood a simple fact: even if he couldn't affect the outside of the room, the laws of physics were enough to kill a person.
Shiller had already demonstrated this; when he threw things out of the window, he didn't just reach his hand out but stood at a distance from the window and directly threw things out.
The moment the object was thrown out, it escaped his control, but inertia still propelled it along the pre-defined trajectory.
Thus, the paranormal phenomenon within the room didn't need to control the couch from outside the room, but merely needed to throw the couch towards the window. Even if, at the moment of leaving the window, the couch escaped his control, inertia was enough to knock Shiller down.
The couch buzzed, as if some force was gathering strength, and Shiller continued to tentatively expose more of his body.
Whoosh——Bang! Crash!
The couch flew towards the window at high speed, and half of the couch just crashed out with a loud noise, the right half of the glass also shattered in response, but Shiller wasn't knocked down, and the couch got stuck in the window frame instead.
This was the result of precise calculation, the couch was destined to get stuck due to the slanted angle at which it lodged itself out.
The back of the couch was taller than the window frame, and a normal couch, no matter how much force was applied, couldn't break directly through the hotel walls; thus, logically, the couch shouldn't have been thrown out.
But Shiller was standing to the right side of the window, and to aim the long couch at him and shoot it out, the angle surely had to be adjusted. It was this slight tilt in angle that allowed the couch to just pass through the window frame but couldn't completely go through, thus it got stuck.
But Shiller's situation was also very dangerous; as the couch burst out, he instantly let go of the wall with both hands and dodged to the right, leaving only one foot standing on the windowsill.
He obviously couldn't stand stable like that, and Shiller was about to fall, but in the process of falling, he adjusted his body posture, allowing himself to fall to the left, and during the fall, he happened to hit the small half of the couch that had burst out.
One Hand instantly grabbed the back of the couch, Shiller turned his body back around, and he narrowly stabilized his posture.
Now, a couch had passed through the window, with half of it outside, and behind the couch stood a man holding onto the back of the couch, effortlessly flipping over it.
Most of the couch was inside the window, and based on the principle of leverage, the outside section of the couch, just enough for one person to sit, could bear a lot of weight, at least it was no problem for Shiller's weight; he nestled inside after flipping over the back of the couch.
This had many advantages, such as not having to stand there all night, and also the wind would just blow on the back of the couch, almost completely missing Shiller, so he could stay there for the night.
Shiller tightened his coat, glad that the season was not very cold, as sitting here all night wasn't much of an issue; since he had nothing else to do anyway, he started to examine the alarm clock.
The alarm clock, from the outside, showed no signs of abnormalities, and the only thing that had been safely removed was the battery compartment. Shiller gently pried open the cover of the battery compartment with his hand and found it opened very easily.
But as expected, there were no batteries inside the battery compartment; after all, the sound that had resounded wasn't the sound of an alarm clock, but the sound of an elevator, so whether there was a power source in the alarm clock wasn't important.
Using the light from his phone, Shiller suddenly discovered something in the battery compartment. He reached in and pulled hard, only to find it was two strands of hair.
These were two long black hairs, which looked to be of good quality, suggesting their owner had taken good care of them. Shiller carefully observed the hairs and noted they weren't broken but had fallen out, the side near the follicle didn't seem healthy.
It was actually very abnormal because usually, the hair ends are rougher, and newly grown hair is smoother. This situation could only occur if the hair's owner had fallen ill or had encountered some problem recently.
Shiller continued to look into the battery compartment but there was nothing else inside; these two strands of hair didn't seem to stretch from inside the clock but appeared to have been deliberately placed inside the battery compartment.
Shiller wrapped the two strands of hair in sticky paper and then took out his phone again; he wanted to check if there was a signal outside the hotel. But upon powering it up, he found that while there was a signal, it was jumbled, and the phone's screen began blink with some messy patterns.
Shiller put away his phone again, intending to ask Peter about the situation via a communication device, but as soon as he opened the chatbox, he found that Peter had sent a message and a photo.
In the photo, there appeared to be some changes at the living room window. Shiller enlarged the photo and saw many marks of friction on the outer edge of the window frame.
Shiller looked down at the part of the couch that had burst out and saw identical marks.
So, am I actually in the past???