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It’s a perfect autumn day. Lu Guang eyes the entrance to the haunted house in front of him and sighs lightly. “Qiao Ling…”
“Aw, come on!” Qiao Ling wheedles as she wiggles her phone in the air, QR code visible on the screen. “I have a coupon! Buy two tickets and get the third free!”
“Yeah right,” Cheng Xiaoshi immediately says, popping up over her shoulder. “That’s the stupidest promotion I’ve ever heard of, are you trying to trick a three year old?”
“What’s so stupid about it?” Qiao Ling puffs up like a cat whose tail has been stepped on. “Maybe they couldn’t afford buy one get one free, huh? Have you ever thought about that? Blockhead!”
“Who’s the blockhead? Don’t you know that haunted houses are a top tier couples’ destination?” Cheng Xiaoshi clicks his tongue. “Y’know, so that people have an excuse to go kyaaa I’m so scared~ or gege please hold my hand, nobody will see~ or whatever. Who wants to third wheel something like that all day? Gross.”
“Wait, is that why Xu Shanshan gave these away?” Qiao Ling mutters. “Well, that’s not the point!! The point is, we’re already here anyway, so why not? They’re not going to be here in another month, and it’ll be a great memory!”
“... I’d really rather go home and nap,” Lu Guang raises his hand. “We’ve already been outside all day.”
“No! I mean, uh… but that’s…” Qiao Ling’s gaze darts over to Cheng Xiaoshi, desperately signaling him with her eyes.
“What’s with that look on your face?” Cheng Xiaoshi scratches his nose. “You hungry or something?”
Qiao Ling glares at him, and jabs her heel into his foot.
Cheng Xiaoshi yelps and doubles over. “You—”
“My bad!” Qiao Ling says. She leans over and hisses into Cheng Xiaoshi’s ear. “Help me find a way to stall him! The others aren’t done decorating for his birthday party yet!”
“You literally could have just told me that,” Cheng Xiaoshi whispers back. “Did you have to be so violent?”
He straightens up and swipes her phone from her hand, quickly scanning through the details on the advertisement before raising an eyebrow. “Ah! This place, huh? I’ve heard some of our classmates talk about it, it’s supposed to be like a horror-themed escape room, right? ’Actual, genuine, haunted attraction, exorcist certified—’ wow, this ad is a riot. I’m kinda curious now, actually.”
“Uh-huh! Right, exactly!” Qiao Ling starts nodding so enthusiastically that her bangs bounce up and down. “Pleeeease, Lu Guang, come on! Let’s go!”
“...” Lu Guang narrows his eyes, before closing them and sighing. “Fine, I guess. Let’s go to your haunted house… thing.”
MISTS OF THE ABANDONED VILLAGE: A UNIQUE HORROR EXPERIENCE is… kinda boring, if Cheng Xiaoshi is gonna be honest. Sure, the prop work is pretty impressive, considering how big this place has to be—they’ve set themselves up in the old 3-level supermarket that went out of business last month, and by the looks of it every game instance is about… half a floor? That’s big!— but it’s been like, ten minutes and he hasn’t seen a single jumpscare yet. It’s just been a moderately well furnished haunted village set so far, and the story premise was pretty basic too— you’re a group of lost tourists, you wandered into this village, escape before something bad happens or blah.
What a letdown.
He suppresses a yawn, as he opens up an abandoned dresser lying on its side in the middle of the plaza. The sound of wind whistling plays through hidden speakers— again, cool for the first like 10 minutes, until he realized it was just a short loop of the same spooky-sounding recording. Lu Guang is sitting next to a bunch of fake dead shrubs, and Qiao Ling is crouched down, looking at the underside of a bench for clues.
Qiao Ling suddenly stands up, hand touching her ear. “My earring’s fallen out!”
“Wow, sucks for you,” Cheng Xiaoshi mutters. He opens the last drawer and finds a blood splattered book. Score! This must be the plot item they’re looking for. “Hey, check it out—”
“Forget that!” Qiao Ling tugs at Cheng Xiaoshi’s arm. “Come on, help me go find it. Lu Guang! We’ll be right back, okay?”
“They warn us to not split up when we first got in, but sure, if you wanna leave him on the ground to get eaten by ghosts—”
“Just for a few minutes!” Qiao Ling leans closer. “Shanshan texted me, something’s come up.”
“Ah jeez, fine— hey man, hold onto this for me!” Cheng Xiaoshi tosses the clue at Lu Guang, who catches it without even opening his eyes. Seriously, is he trying to nap in here?!
Qiao Ling pulls Cheng Xiaoshi off in an alley. “So, Shanshan just told me that the restaurant they were catering from closed early today, and their backup was busy with a wedding reception, so they’ll need maybe two or three more hours to get dishes from other places. We need to stall here for at least an hour and a half!”
“Didn’t the ticket lady say that this whole attraction should only last an hour if we’re good at puzzles?” Cheng Xiaoshi points out. “How are you going to drag this out for so long?”
“What do you mean ‘you’? You’re helping!”
“Like hell I— Okay, fine, don’t look at me like that, I’m helping, jeez— got any ideas, o great genius miss?”
“I guess… maybe if we just miss the clues on purpose? Keep walking in circles?” Qiao Ling frowns. “But I kinda think Lu Guang would see through us really easily if we tried to do something like that… and even if we didn’t help at all, it would probably be easy for him to solve the whole escape room by himself.”
That’s true, Cheng Xiaoshi admits to himself. Lu Guang is the best at logic puzzles out of all of them. But… hm. He puts one hand on his chin and frowns. Qiao Ling follows suit, wrinkling her nose in deep thought. As they think, the loop of generic spooky wind whistling starts again and man, that’s going to drive him crazy. Just like the rest of the attraction, the atmosphere is the only appeal to this place, and it wears thin so fast. If there was even a single monster in this place—
“Ah,” Cheng Xiaoshi snaps his fingers. “I got it!”
“Really?” Qiao Ling perks up. “Alright, what’s your idea?”
“Look,” Cheng Xiaoshi hooks an arm around Qiao Ling’s shoulders. “I’m thinking, y’know. The whole reason why we’re worrying about this is because this haunted house sucks. This—” he says as he gestures at the dark alley they're standing in, covered in fake cobwebs— “wouldn’t scare a baby! So. We should be good customers, and give them some pointers. Help these guys along. Maybe even… lead by example! You get what I’m saying?”
“Lead by… Cheng Xiaoshi! You just want to dress up like a monster to scare Lu Guang!” Qiao Ling grabs him by the ear.
“Owowowow, let go! Hey, okay, maybe I just wanna see him scream like a little girl— but it’s not like you have any better ideas, do you?”
“Any idea would be better than that!” She takes a quick look at her phone and frowns. “We need to put this on hold for now, we’ve been away for like ten minutes and I don’t want to leave him alone for too long. Come on!”
“What are you, his mom?” Cheng Xiaoshi rolls his eyes. “Worst that happens is that he’s fallen asleep waiting for us.”
But he follows Qiao Ling back anyways, bickering with her the whole time.
Cheng Xiaoshi sticks his hands in his pocket as he saunters back into the plaza. “Yo! Lu Guang, we’re back!”
There’s no response.
The book that Cheng Xiaoshi remembers tossing to Lu Guang lies quietly on the ground where he was sitting.
Cheng Xiaoshi walks over, and picks it up. A piece of paper slips out, saying “DON’T SEPARATE THE GROUP” in big, frantic writing.
…That’s just a coincidence, right?
Qiao Ling can’t help it. Her immediate thought is c rap, we lost Lu Guang followed by I don’t know how, but this is totally Cheng Xiaoshi’s fault!
Cheng Xiaoshi slips the torn piece of paper he’s looking at back into his pants, and he puts his stupid idiot hand up to his mouth. “Heyyyy~ Lu Guang~ We found the exit and we’re gonna leave without you!”
No response, not that Qiao Ling can hear anything over that creepy background music they’re playing in here.
“Huh, did he need to go pee or something?” Cheng Xiaoshi scratches the back of his head. “Maybe he got lost.”
“You think Lu Guang wandered off alone to find a bathroom in the middle of a haunted house?!” Qiao Ling says. “Oh my god. We lost him. No, worse, the ghosts got him!”
“You’re totally overreacting here, we didn’t lose him—”
“Cheng Xiaoshi, you gigantic butthead,” Qiao Ling hisses as she grabs his labels and shakes him. “You! Youyouyouyouyou! This is your fault! You jinxed it!”
“Hey, hey, not the collar, I got this shirt of Taobao and—”
Riiiiiiip.
“Oh come on, you evil woman, this is my last clean shirt!”
“Get me out of here right now or I rip the buttons off too, see if I won't!”
“Are you a three year old?!”
Something falls over, in the distance, and Qiao Ling freezes. Sure, this place probably isn’t haunted for real, but it’s still creepy! It’s seriously giving her the chills and having Lu Guang go missing isn’t helping in the slightest!
“That’s just shoddy construction, right?” Qiao Ling asks. “Right?!?”
“No, no, no, calm down,” Cheng Xiaoshi says, voice just a little more high-pitched than normal. He clears his throat. “It’s Lu Guang. I think. No, it's obviously Lu Guang! I bet he’s off on his own solving the puzzles already. Seriously, how could he make us worry like this, that jerk.”
“Oh.” Qiao Ling peels her fingers out of their death grip on Cheng Xiaoshi’s shirt collar sheepishly. “Y-yeah. You’re probably right. Then… wait, we need to catch up to him, fast!”
“Right, right, if he gets through everything too quickly then we’ll have no choice but to lock him in a storage closet for half an hour, and who’d want that— joke, that was a joke, let’s get on with it.” Cheng Xiaoshi flips the folder open, and Qiao Ling leans over his shoulder to take a look.
October 21, 19XX
What bad luck! We’ll have to stay at this strange village overnight. Mao-dage went to ask the villagers if anyone had a room open, and he said that the southmost courtyard by the grove of trees has no residents, how lucky. Now we just need to sort out who gets which room!
There's three guys and one girl here, so obviously Xiao Hong is getting her own room. Unfortunately, it looks like the room facing west has been boarded up. Taotao said he’s fine with either of the middle rooms, but I know he thinks I snore, so—
Cheng Xiaoshi slams the folder shut in disgust, and Qiao Ling jumps.
“Hey!” She complains. “I wasn’t done reading!”
“What’s there to read?!” Cheng Xiaoshi says. “Ugh, I can’t believe I let this place get to me. What’s the point of giving us a logic puzzle here?? Their environmental storytelling is so bad, really…”
Qiao Ling smacks his elbow before he can really get going on his tirade. “Alright, Mister Critic, stop drawing it out. Do you know the answer or not?”
“Hohoho. We don’t need to know.” Cheng Xiaoshi waggles his finger with full confidence. “All we need to do is go to the right courtyard and see which room Lu Guang picked!”
Is it really that easy? Qiao Ling scratches her cheek. “Can I just read the journal again? Just to check?”
“No worries!” Cheng Xiaoshi says as he walks away purposefully. “We can read it in the courtyard if there’s no other clues.”
A few minutes later, Qiao Ling puts her hands on her hips as she looks at the doors inside the courtyard. All of them are tightly shut except for one, which has been conspicuously ripped open. There’s no sign of anybody else in the area. “Well. Clearly Lu Guang isn’t in this area, so you were totally wrong. Gimme the stupid notebook.”
“No, wait,” Cheng Xiaoshi makes that face that he thinks makes him look profound. Qiao Ling just barely resists the urge to tell him he looks constipated. “There’s an open door right there!”
“You’re saying that Lu Guang’s the one who ripped the door right off its hinges?” Qiao Ling scoffs. “Who do you think he is? You— what are you doing?”
“Hellooooo? Lu Guang?” Cheng Xiaoshi leans back out of the open door. “Not here, unless he’s sleeping. Which I wouldn’t put past him, now that I think about it…”
“Is your brian waterlogged or something?? Get away from the creepy door!” Is it just Qiao Ling’s imagination, or can she see movement in it? The hairs on her arms raise, and she can’t say it’s all because of the AC. “Ugh, let’s just get out of here! We can figure out somewhere else to stay for a bit.”
“What, don’t tell me you’re really scared of all this?” He laughs.
Behind Cheng Xiaoshi, something really does— oh shit, there really is something there— “Cheng Xiaoshi,” Qiao Ling starts to say.
Cheng Xiaoshi pulls a scary face at Qiao Ling. “Oooooh, here I come, I’m gonna getcha~”
A long, clawed hand slowly reaches out of the door behind Cheng Xiaoshi, curling around his shoulder.
Qiao Ling grabs him by the hand. “ Run! ”
Cheng Xiaoshi turns his head and shrieks like a little girl.
At the first aid station outside the haunted house attraction, a staff member approaches Lu Guang, sitting in a metal folding chair. She smiles at him. “Hello there, valued guest, still feeling faint? Do you need more water? Another cookie?”
“Ah,” Lu Guang smiles politely. “No, I’m much better now. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Honestly, young people. It’s nice of you to not want to ruin an outing with your friends, but low blood sugar is no joke, you know? You’re lucky that the whole attraction is monitored at all times.”
The corner of Lu Guang’s mouth twitches. “I’ll… keep that in mind.” Honestly, he’d really just fallen asleep waiting for Qiao Ling and Cheng Xiaoshi to come back. Not that he’s going to say that now, of course.
The staff member checks her watch. “It looks like your friends still have another half hour in the haunted house. Would you like to rejoin them?”
“No, I think I’ll pass,” Lu Guang laughs under his breath. “Considering it’s those two… I think they’re having plenty of fun by themselves already.”