"Wenlong? Peihu?"
Xia Meili called out twice from the doorway, but the haunted house didn't even echo back, as if everything had been swallowed by monsters lurking in the dark.
"What is wrong with these two?" She didn't want to stay with Wang Hailong and Dou Menglu, but she didn't dare explore alone either, so she could only come look for her companions. "They couldn't have actually gotten into trouble, could they? But the way Wenlong sounded just now didn't seem like he was in danger."
Unable to figure it out, Xia Meili stood at the doorway for a moment, then pushed open the nearest door.
"304? The door even has a number on it? What does that mean?" Xia Meili peered inside. Contrary to what she had imagined, the room was spotlessly clean.
"The cleaner it looks, the more nervous I feel." She stood in the doorway and called out her companions' names two more times, growing more uneasy with each shout. "Two living people — where could they have run off to?"
She took out her phone to use as a flashlight, but once the area in front of her was illuminated, the surroundings seemed even darker. At the far end of the corridor, something appeared to be swaying at the intersection.
"Standing out here is too dangerous. I'd better just go inside first." Xia Meili entered Room 304 and casually closed the door behind her. "This room is perfectly normal in every sense of the word — it looks like an ordinary rental apartment. But the more it's decorated like this, the more likely it is that something terrifying is hidden in it. The haunted house owner wouldn't waste money building useless areas for nothing."
She was meticulous and braver than the average girl. Pressing her body against the wall, she shone her phone around the room before daring to take a single small step.
After spending several minutes running her hand along every wall in the living room, she found nothing out of the ordinary.
"There's nothing scary set up in the living room, which means the other two rooms are dangerous! Wenlong and Peihu probably let their guard down and got caught when they entered the other rooms." Xia Meili gripped her phone tightly and slowly approached the bedroom.
"The bedroom has no door, so there's no chance of a haunted house actor hiding behind one, but the two sides of the doorframe create blind spots. I need to be careful." She walked very slowly, but her heart was beating faster and faster.
When she reached the bedroom doorway, Xia Meili turned on her phone's camera, extended it into the bedroom, and panned the camera around.
After filming a full sweep, she pulled the phone back to review the footage. The image was dark, but she could confirm that no one was hiding in the bedroom.
"No one in the bedroom either? I almost forgot — there's still the scariest place of all: under the bed." She retreated all the way back to the living room, deliberately chose a specific angle, crouched down, and pointed the phone's light under the bed.
"There really is nothing. Looks like I've been watching too many horror movies." Xia Meili relaxed a little. "If I were the designer, there's no way I'd let a spot as terrifying as under the bed go to waste. I'd set up a mechanism down there — a half-body dummy that pops out the instant a visitor sits on the bed."
After saying that, Xia Meili went back into the bedroom for another look. There was no mechanism of any kind installed inside — just the faint scent of laundry detergent.
"Even the rag used to wipe the table smells like laundry detergent. The person living in this room must be a neat freak with OCD." Stepping out of the bedroom, Xia Meili turned her attention to the last remaining room.
"The bathroom is also one of the most common settings in horror movies, but this bathroom looks tiny — no stalls, not even a place for someone to hide."
Moving forward at a measured pace, Xia Meili was truly playing the haunted house like a survival challenge. She was extremely cautious, taking every step with painstaking care.
Tourists like this were actually the most troublesome kind. They would think of every possible way to spot the haunted house's scare setups in advance, and once a hidden scare point was discovered, its effect would be drastically reduced.
The bathroom in Haiming Apartments had been designed with a distinctive touch — the mirror faced the door directly, so whether you were walking past the bathroom or stepping inside, your attention would be drawn to the mirror.
Xia Meili was no exception. She stared at her own reflection and felt a vague sense of discomfort. "Is the unusual environment playing tricks on my mind? Why does the person in the mirror look like she's not quite me?"