Fan Dade stared at the ceiling with hollow eyes, seemingly contemplating life and the future. His younger brother Fan Cong had already recovered, though his body kept twitching from time to time, which was rather unsettling to look at.
"Feeling better?" Chen Ge sat down by the hospital bed with a kettle of hot water. Fan Dade looked at Chen Ge blankly, unable to reconcile the kind-looking mastermind before him with what he had just experienced.
"Thanks for asking, I'm feeling much better." Having been terrified multiple times in a row, Fan Cong seemed to have stumbled out of his post-breakup depression, rediscovered the value of life, and found his reason for living.
"That's good." Chen Ge poured two cups of hot water and set them on the table, then prepared to leave. The haunted house was still open for business, and he couldn't be away for too long.
"Boss Chen, wait a moment." Fan Cong sat up on the hospital bed and looked at Chen Ge.
"Something on your mind?"
"Can I ask you a question?" Fan Cong gripped the edge of the bed with his chubby hands, thought for a long while, then spoke. "You've designed all those ghosts and mechanisms for the haunted house, but do you personally believe that real ghosts exist in this world?"
"A lot of visitors have asked me whether ghosts exist in this world." Chen Ge looked at Fan Cong with mild surprise. This chubby homebody seemed to have experiences unknown to others. "I don't know the answer either. Maybe they do, but I've never actually seen one."
"Never seen one?" Fan Cong's expression fell slightly with disappointment.
"Why are you asking this all of a sudden?" More curious than the question of whether ghosts existed was whatever had happened to Fan Cong himself. He looked like an ordinary person, yet after enduring repeated terror, he had still managed to keep his wits about him. That was truly impressive.
"Actually, it's nothing big. Recently I've been playing a small game that seems to have been made by a serial killer. It might contain records of his murders." Fan Cong's words instantly drew the attention of everyone in the hospital room.
"A game made by a serial killer?" Chen Ge perked up with interest. "But what does that have to do with whether ghosts exist in this world?"
"Maybe the visuals were too grim. While I was working through the game over a long period, I started hearing a child crying. At first I thought it was just part of the game's sound effects, but after I took off my headphones and walked out of the room, I realized something was wrong — the sound kept ringing in my ears." Fan Cong was saying these words aloud for the first time, his expression peculiar. "I suspected I was having auditory hallucinations, but the doctor examined me and said there was nothing wrong with my body. Which means the child's voice was actually real."
"Can you tell me what that voice said to you?" Chen Ge stopped in the doorway of the hospital room.
"She kept crying. She always appeared at night."
"What was the game about, roughly?" Chen Ge posed another question.
"On the surface it was a dress-up game. You could make your daughter look pretty, and after completing various small tasks, it would reward you with different kinds of clothes — dresses, formal gowns, school uniforms, and so on."
"A daughter-raising game? A dress-up game?" Chen Ge eyed Fan Cong suspiciously. "Why would you play something like that?"
"That's not important. What matters is that after I beat all the mini-games, the game rewarded me with one final piece of clothing." Fan Cong clutched his head, his fingers digging into his hair. "That outfit was called Mom's Pajamas. When I obtained it, a line of text popped up on the screen: Xiaobu found a key to the dungeon in Mom's pajamas."
"Xiaobu is the name you gave your daughter in the game?" Chen Ge was deeply curious.
"No." Fan Cong shook his head. "At that time I had just broken up with my girlfriend of four years. I named the in-game daughter after my girlfriend — Liu Jiaru."
"You named your in-game daughter after your girlfriend?" Even Chen Ge was stunned. He sat down on the edge of the bed, deciding to dig deeper.
"Don't worry about those details. I was confused at the time too. I had clearly named the character Liu Jiaru, so why did it change the name to Xiaobu on its own when I completed the game? I looked up walkthroughs online but couldn't find any information about this game." Seeing the puzzlement in Chen Ge's eyes, Fan Cong added, "I found the game on a small indie game forum. There were lots of player-made mini-games on it, and some of them had cranked up the difficulty — perfect for self-inflicted torture."
"You beat a daughter-raising dress-up mobile game and got a key to a dungeon. Then what happened?" Chen Ge sipped his hot water and listened quietly.
"The game's map wasn't large — it was a small town, and all the tasks took place within it. After I got the dungeon key, I made the girl — whose name had already changed — put on her mother's pajamas, walk out of her room, and start searching for the dungeon entrance." Fan Cong huddled against the headboard, his expression gradually shifting. "The game's art style was incredibly warm and cozy — sunshine, flowers everywhere, everyone in the town was friendly and helpful, always lending each other a hand. I had just gone through a breakup, and it was precisely those heartwarming visuals that made me decide to keep playing. I thought the game would help me distract myself, but who could have imagined that something far more painful and horrifying would happen next?"
"Skip the buildup, just tell me the result." Chen Ge was impatient to hear what came next.
"It took me a week, clicking on every spot in the town with my mouse, before I finally found the dungeon entrance hidden behind a closet on the first floor of Xiaobu's classmate's house." Fan Cong looked up at Chen Ge. "Another line of text popped up on screen, telling me I had found the dungeon entrance. Did I want to use the dungeon key?"
His hands clenched tight and then went limp — it was clear that Fan Cong was extremely nervous. "I used the key. After I pressed confirm, the closet opened, and I guided Xiaobu through the space behind it. My computer screen went completely black for a moment, maybe one or two seconds. When the image came back, the art style of the game was nothing like before."
"Was it a blood-red world behind the closet?" Chen Ge thought of the "door."
"No." Fan Cong shook his head. "Everything behind the closet was dim and muted. There were withered sunflowers scattered on the ground, and the walls were very thick."
"After walking out from underground, I was on a dusty gray road. There were streetlights spaced far apart on both sides of the road."
"You could still tell I was in the same town, but it was nighttime now, and the surrounding buildings felt completely different from during the day."
"I guided Xiaobu further down the road. Up ahead was a bus stop, and parked beside the sign was an old, somewhat battered bus."