My House of Horrors

Seeing how no one was taking him seriously, Wang Dan’s brows were creased deeply. He knew very well that any visitors who had entered Boss Chen’s Haunted House before would not say anything so ‘naïve’.

“Is this the first visit to this Haunted House for all of you?” Wang Dan had a bad feeling in his heart.

“Mr. Shinozaki and I have just returned to the country. He is attempting to change his style, to challenge a new type of serial comic, so we’re here at the Haunted House to seek inspiration,” the female assistant said softly. She was not that courageous. Even though they had not yet officially entered the scenario, her voice had already started to shake. “We saw how high the rating is for this Haunted House online, so we came over here once we got off the plane. Are there any other things that we should have done before attempting the Haunted Houses in the country?”

“Don’t listen to his rambling. The only reason this Haunted House is so high on the internet is due to the hype of a bunch of plebs. The only thing the boss is good at is advertisement and promotion,” the man who walked in with the feminine man said. “Compared to people like us who poured all of our energy into creating a Haunted House, coming up with our scripts seriously and designing the many mechanisms for the Haunted House, the man by the name of Chen is at most a very good businessman.”

“A businessman?” Wang Dan almost had his head blown off from how angry he was. He wanted to clamp his hand over the man’s mouth. If Chen Ge happened to hear what he had just said, the difficulty of the scenario would be raised to an impossible level.

“He is only capable of tricking innocent students like yourself. For us who have been in the business for years, this is nothing new. Hell, his tricks are all outdated if I am being serious.”

The man wanted to say something else, but he was stopped by the feminine man. “Stop saying things like that. It won’t leave a good impression if we’re overheard by the actors at this Haunted House. People might get the idea that we’re purposely here to create trouble.”

Even with his temper, Shinozaki had the experience of age on his side, so he picked up the issue immediately. “Are you all Haunted House operators?”

He soon understood that this was a competition between people from the same field. He did not have a good impression of these few line-cutters.

“The three of us are the employees from the biggest Haunted House in Xin Hai—Nightmare Academy. We’ve been in the business for seven years already. We were the earliest people on the market to commit ourselves into a physical Haunted House business.”

The three made a simple introduction. The man with the brashest attitude was called Wei Jinyuan. He was the youngest script designer at Nightmare Academy. His main job scope was to come up with scary stories as well as mechanisms and plots to go along with them. The smallest of them, the one who had an altercation with Shinozaki earlier, was Li Jiu. He looked fragile and weak. His main responsibility was making the props for Nightmare Academy. He was gifted with a pair of skillful hands and could work various tools.

The final one, the man with the feminine features, was called Lee Changyin, with the nickname Cold Guy. He was a reticent fella but was the most-praised actor at Nightmare academy. He was one of the core members of the Xin Hai Haunted House. He did not appear that old, but he was the most senior of the three of them.

“Wait, didn’t the four of you come together?” Wang Dan saw the other man squeezed together with the three employees from Nightmare Academy, and he assumed that he too was one of the employees.

“He is one of Xin Hai’s biggest live-streamers. He is very famous online, at least much more famous than this Haunted House’s boss. Rather, I should say, they are not even on the same level.”

Wei Jinyuan wanted to continue the introduction, but the host frowned. “If you wish to continue wasting time chatting, then go ahead, but I’ll be heading in first.”

The man finished talking, and he grabbed his bag and walked alone into the scenario. The man seemed to be very courageous.

“Hey!” Seeing how the male host had wandered ahead, Wang Dan quickly ran over. “Do not wander off on your own. Also, I am not kidding, do not think about starting a livestream here—you will harm all of us.”

The host did not even attempt to acknowledge Wang Dan’s presence. His eyes scanned the surroundings, already wondering how many viewers he would get from starting a livestream there. The host was familiar with Chen Ge’s Haunted House’s popularity online. If he livestreamed inside the Haunted House in a new scenario, the livestream would explode. Whether it would expose the interior of the Haunted House or affect Chen Ge’s business, that was definitely not part of his concern.

After coming to understand the host’s attitude, Wang Dan felt his scalp go numb. Just kind of teammate had he found himself tied to this time?

It was one thing that everyone was a newbie, but more importantly, none of them wished to listen to his advice for self-preservation. It was fine if they wanted to die on their own, but the way that they were acting was going to harm him as well.

“If you want to do thing like this, then go ahead. I’m not going to do this anymore,” Wang Dan said and grabbed his girlfriend to leave.

“Wang Da, what are you doing?” His girlfriend thought that he was being unreasonable. “Let me go!”

“It’s fine if we want to visit a new scenario, but going in with them is definitely not a good idea. I plan to quit.” The reason Wang Dan had come to the Haunted House was to vent his displeasure and to embarrass his girlfriend’s high school friend, but now, the situation had changed. He was going to walk into an endless abyss. Once he fell, there was no getting back up.

“Are all the medical students so cowardly?” the male student mocked. “And I thought that you guys would be braver considering that you come into contact with dead bodies so often. It looks like I was mistaken.”

Hearing that, Wang Dan was so angry that his face turned green. However, he did not know where to unload his grievance. Gritting his teeth, his huffed and allowed his anger to take over. He walked back and said, “Fine, then we’ll continue this tour.”

“Don’t force yourself now. I hear that some might wet their pants during Haunted House visit,” the sports student joked, thinking he was being funny.

“That won’t happen.” Wang Dan sighed softly. He knew how things work here. He would be unconscious before his bladder had the chance to work.

“It’s be fine. Don’t mind him,” Wang Dan’s girlfriend said soothingly, and he finally quieted down. He tried to gather his emotions, but as he scanned his teammates, a cold hole opened up inside his heart. There was none that he could trust.

“There is only forty minutes to the tour; we should enjoy this.” Wei Jinyuan walked next to the male host. “If you’re scared, you can come with us, but it might be boring. I am used to analyzing things from a professional angle. In our eyes, as real Haunted House creators, all the secrets and traps are revealed without a trace. For example, this window here…”

Wei Jinyuan pointed at the glass window a few meters ahead. “The window is left unlocked, and the glass is purposely left shattered. When we walk past it, something scary will pop out from inside. If you don’t believe me, you just wait and see.”

Wei Jinyuan slid quietly to stand next to the window. He pointed at the window beside him and then jumped up and poked his head into the window. If an actor was hiding inside the window, they would be scared by him.

“Jinyuan, stop joking! If you accidentally scare their workers, they will just blame it on us.” Lee Jiu tried to stop him, but Wei Jinyuan did not reply. He was leaning on the window, with his upper body reaching into the room. He was not moving like his body was captured by something or someone.

“Wei Jinyuan?” Lee Jiu jogged over with a frown. He patted Wei Jinyuan on his back. “What are you looking at?”

“Shush, be quiet. I saw an actor running away to hide earlier. I seemed to have spooked her.” Wei Jinyuan yelled into the room with a cheery voice, “You can come out now; I’ve already seen you.”

When Shinozaki and the female assistant heard that, they also ran over. However, the room was empty, and there was no one there.

“But it’s an empty room, right?” Goosebumps crawled on the assistant’s arm. “Are you sure you’re not mistaken?”

“It only looks like an empty room. There’s hidden pathway in there—they are the routes used by the actors. The person that I saw earlier probably is now cowering in the pathway, too afraid to come out.” Wei Jinyuan scratched his neck and continued to move forward. “There are only so many methods to scare someone. It’s simple if you want to clear this scenario, just stick to us closely!”

Wei Jinyuan and Lee Jiu walked down the narrow street, and they kept scratching their necks.

“Mr. Shinozaki, should we follow them?” the female assistant suggested. “With more people around, it feels safer.”

Shinozaki nodded absently, and he kept staring at Wei Jinyuan’s neck. “Xiao Xia, look at his neck. Do you see a birthmark there? It looks like a person’s palm print…”

“Birthmark?” The assistant did not have that sharp an eye, and she rarely paid attention to these things. “I’m not sure, but this is someone’s privacy, so you shouldn’t go and ask the man about it!”

“Of course, do you think I’m some kind of unruly kid?”

“Which adult would use a pen name like yours though?” the woman grumbled softly before running to catch up to Wei Jinyuan. The team was stretched apart. The three from Nightmare Academy and the host walked at the front, Shinozaki and the female assistant were at the middle, while Wang Dan’s group was at the back. The man in the trench coat stood alone by the earlier window, like he was looking for something.

“It’s time to go,” Wang Dan reminded the man out of kindness. The man shrugged him off like he thought that Wang Dan was in his way.

“I really do not understand what these people are thinking.” Wang Dan took in a deep breath. As he watched the other visitors wander away, he suppressed the anxiety in his heart and moved to chase after them.

After Wang Dan’s group joined the rest, Wei Jinyuan stopped. “The boss gave us four clues to follow before we entered the scenario. Each clue corresponds to a method to escape. There are ten of us. Moving in a group is a waste of time, and it is very inefficient, so I suggest we split into two groups to explore. What do the rest of you think?”