The Anarchic Consort

“Can you tell me exactly what happened? How did this person die?” Helian Weiwei sat down and the smile on her face never went away, so it made everyone feel comfortable around her.

The four of them looked at one another before one of the boys finally started speaking hesitantly, “That was an accident and we didn’t expect it at all. On Wednesday afternoon, we didn’t have lab work to do, so the few of us agreed to go for one of those escape room games. We chose one that had a horror theme, and I think it was called Sobbing House?”

“Sobbing House?” Helian Weiwei raised her eyebrows. What sort of name was this?

The boy swallowed and continued, “That’s right, Sobbing House, like crying, you know? We wanted to play something that others didn’t dare to, since we’re all science students and we’re not very scared of these things. But that escape room turned out to be way more terrifying than we imagined. When we went in, we wore an eye mask, and each person would hold onto the shoulder of the person in front of him.”

“There are five of you, so when you went in, you formed a straight line, right?” Helian Weiwei immediately cut in. “Nothing happened during that time, right?”

Xiao Jingtian looked at her in shock. “How did you guess that?”

“I didn’t need to guess,” Helian Weiwei laughed lightly. “This method of walking is called the Pure Yang Formation, so it’s a formation that wards off evil spirits in the first place. If you walk in this formation with an eye mask on, you wouldn’t look in all directions, so you would form a proper formation. This sort of formation would be able to protect you to a certain extent.”

The four of them didn’t even know such a thing existed.

Helian Weiwei took out her phone and waved it. “Continue.”

“After we removed our eye masks, we walked into a very ordinary looking room. The room was very small and we needed to solve clues in order to unlock three locks.” The boy quietly said, “There was no problem when we first entered the room, but after we unlocked the third lock, a closet popped up, and that closet could only take one person at most.”

“A sliding door closet?” It was obvious that Helian Weiwei had played such things before and quickly guessed what was going on. “So you had to go in one by one to look for clues?”

The boy nodded and continued speaking with some difficulty, “I was the first one to enter the closet, and the other side was really terrifying. I was so frightened, you know? The closet led to another room, but all I had was one torchlight, and the first thing my torchlight landed on was a woman in white hanging from the ceiling, which was the scariest part of all. I told them to hurry over and I could feel all my hair stand on end because it was simply too terrifying. After everyone came over, we didn’t want to spend too much time in that tiny place, so we quickly took a picture of the clues and wanted to get out. Honestly, I was really scared and didn’t want to be the last one to go out, but we couldn’t put the girls at the back either, so when Chen Yang noticed this, he said he would be the last one and told us to go out first. Once we got out and reached the main area, we just needed to pull the closet door open for him to come out, but…that was when something happened.”

At this point, the boy clutched his face and his body started to tremble. “After we walked out, we wanted to pull the door open for him to come out, to find that the closet door was stuck for some reason and refused to budge. At this moment, we could hear the sound of a woman crying and it came in waves. We could also hear Chen Yang’s voice and he sounded like he was convulsing. We were all terrified and tried out best to pull at the closet door, but no matter how hard we tried, it refused to budge. We all started calling Chen Yang’s name and hit the closet, but nothing worked. I frantically pressed the walkie talkie button to call the escape room boss over, and he cut the electricity to the room after entering the room, and we were able to pull the closet door open. But then…then…we found Chen Yang already…already lying there.”

Helian Weiwei went quiet for a moment and placed her phone on the table. “Where did the woman’s crying come from? Did the room already have sound effects, or did all of you really hear sounds that nobody else could?”

“We’re not sure either.” All four of them exchanged glances before giving Helian Weiwei an unsure answer.

Helian Weiwei stood up. “Then we have to go play again and understand the rules.”

“Now? Go play again?” One of the girls’ eyes opened wide. She was the only one among them who didn’t wear spectacles, and her eyes seemed to bulge out from her fear. “No, no way!”

Helian Weiwei raised her eyebrows. “Why?”

“Someone died there, so would they allow people in to play again?” the girl stammered. “The police already sealed off that place earlier, so how could they possibly be in business again?”

Helian Weiwei looked down at her. “You just said it was sealed off earlier. This person you guys are talking about has passed away for a long time now, right?”

“How…how did you know?” Xiao Jingtian was more and more in awe of this high school aged store owner.

Helian Weiwei smiled. “In general, when a case of unnatural death happens and the police aren’t able to find clues, even very close classmates wouldn’t have thought of looking for a fengshui master to deal with this. All of you are just fellow graduate students and you spend a lot of time together, but you guys aren’t that close, right? Otherwise, why didn’t some of you know about her family’s situation? Since the five of you are just ordinary friends, then it means that right after this incident, none of you would have wanted to talk about it. The rest of you have to study and the police couldn’t find any clues, so it was most likely classified as an accident. But of course, this matter traumatized all of you, so you would have had nightmares or gone to see a psychiatrist, which is all normal. But after all this was over, none of you would have wanted to talk about this matter, since humans always subconsciously choose to forget the most horrifying memories you have. None of you would want to talk about this ever again and it was best if it remained a secret. I believe both the school and other people must have asked all of you a lot of things about this matter, so once all these questions finally stopped, you wouldn’t have wanted to let this matter disturb you anymore. After all, talking about this matter would mean that you would have to relive those nightmarish memories again. Since it’s such a painful memory, why are you concerned about it? The answer is very simple. It’s not because any of you want to do anything for the one who died, but because all of you are afraid of something unknown to yourselves.”

The four of them were stunned.

Their expressions went through several changes and each one of them carried a different expression.

But that was a clear sign that Helian Weiwei’s words had hit the nail on the head.

Xiao Jingtian wrung her hands and said a little indignantly, “Store Owner, aren’t you going too far by putting it like that? You make it sound like we’re all inhumane.”