The diary placed on the lectern to scare visitors had become Chen Ge's guidebook for exploring the haunted house. He stuffed the diary into his backpack and headed for the horror scene described in the second entry.
As the most famous haunted house in Xinhai, Nightmare Academy's interior was far larger than Chen Ge had initially imagined. The entire place was built around the theme of a haunted school, covering nearly every horror urban legend that could occur within a school.
"Six whole floors. We've got plenty to play with today."
A larger space was a good thing from every angle. He could explore freely, and if he ever got the chance to merge this place into his own haunted house, he'd be able to fit in even more horror scenes.
The Pen Spirit room wasn't far from the classroom where the new student orientation ceremony was held. Running his hand along the mottled wall paint, Chen Ge spotted a worn-out door at the corner of the corridor. A sign on it read "Utility Storage."
"The diary says a girl named Die played the Pen Spirit game in the storage room."
He pushed the door open. Before he even stepped inside, he heard a girl's sobbing.
It drifted in and out, its source impossible to pinpoint.
"Is anyone in here?"
Nightmare Academy differed from Chen Ge's own haunted house in one major way: at his place, visitors could explore freely throughout, with no guides or assistance, while most other haunted houses on the market had fixed tour routes.
Having stumbled into the Pen Spirit scene without any warning, Chen Ge was concerned the actor might not be ready yet, which would ruin his experience.
After he spoke, the sobbing grew fainter. Chen Ge surveyed his surroundings.
The storage room's walls had been deliberately aged. Shelves were blanketed in dust, and all manner of junk was piled in the corners.
The lighting inside was dim, and the occasional squeak of a rat could be heard.
"The diary only mentions that Die played the Pen Spirit game here, but says nothing about the storage room itself. If something went wrong during Die's Pen Spirit session, then I might run into two ghosts in this room—one would be Die, and the other would be the Pen Spirit."
Chen Ge walked past the first row of shelves. Suddenly, a rat's squeak came from beside his left leg, and he felt something brush against his ankle.
Any ordinary person would have screamed at a scare like that, but Chen Ge was unmoved. Like a child curious about everything, he crouched down on the spot.
"There's a string stretched between these two rows of shelves. Once your leg touches it, the plush toy mouse tied to the knot bolts out." Chen Ge rubbed his chin. "Some people really are afraid of this sort of thing. Makes sense—haunted houses don't have to be filled with nothing but ghosts. Anything that can deliver fear and terror can be incorporated into a haunted house. That's how you cater to every kind of visitor, and it's more in line with my goal of building a diverse haunted house."
Chen Ge filed these small mechanisms away in his mind, planning to study them more carefully once he got back and see if he could create more fun and thrilling tricks of his own.
He stood and pressed onward, arriving between the first and second rows of shelves.
The aisle here was extremely narrow, with shelves on both sides packed full of items that gave the impression they could topple over at any moment.
At the very end of the shelf, Chen Ge noticed a glass jar teetering on the edge of the second row. He reached out and gently nudged it back.
As he did, he caught sight of a ghastly white face behind the jar.
"On the other side of the shelf? No—it's hidden in the shelf's gap." Chen Ge stared at the face for a moment, set the jar on the ground, and reached his hand in.
His fingertips touched the other party's cheek. Chen Ge gave it a gentle pinch. "Synthetic rubber? It's a model?"
He cleared away the items on that shelf layer, finally getting a clear look: it was a face mask pasted onto a basketball.
"A dummy? Replacing this with a real person would be scarier, but the space is too tight—a living person definitely wouldn't fit." Chen Ge moved forward to the space between the second and third rows of shelves, where he spotted more glass jars about to fall. This time it wasn't one, but five.
"They set them up like this without worrying they'll actually drop? Are these made of tempered glass that won't shatter easily?" Chen Ge passed by the jars and noticed that each one contained something—dark shapes that looked a bit like organs.
"Five jars for five internal organs?" Chen Ge casually pushed the jars back into place. When he reached the fourth one and was about to withdraw his hand, a slender arm suddenly shot out from behind the shelf and seized his wrist!
It was completely unexpected, with no warning at all. Chen Ge froze for a fraction of a second before reacting.
He clenched his fingers, grabbed the other party's wrist in return, and then turned his head to look toward the shelf.
A girl in a Nightmare Academy school uniform was grinning at him, half her body pressed against the shelving.
"Let go! Let go!" This clearly wasn't her intended line.
"Sorry about that—you startled me too." Chen Ge slowly released his grip and looked at her through the shelf, but the girl had already vanished.
"Where did she go?"
The sobbing resumed. Chen Ge rounded the shelf and walked to the very back of the storage room. Amid a pile of miscellaneous junk, a thin, frail girl was slumped over a table, crying.
"I'm sorry about earlier. I was really scared, so I grabbed too hard." Chen Ge crouched beside the table, genuinely worried that he had been the one to make her cry.
"I'm in so much pain. My heart feels like it's being carved up with a knife."
"I barely touched your wrist—you're not trying to scam me, are you?" Chen Ge muttered under his breath.
The girl looked at the red fingerprints on her wrist. Although this visitor's reaction wasn't what she had expected, she was a professional haunted house actress and quickly got back into character. "I loved someone deeply. It was only after consulting the Pen Spirit that I learned that person didn't love me back. I used the method the Pen Spirit taught me, but I accidentally killed him. I'm filled with regret, so I came back to seek the Pen Spirit's guidance again—to see if there's any way to make things right."
"He's already dead. How could you make things right?"
"The Pen Spirit will definitely have a way!" The girl's emotions suddenly surged, her eyes turning red.
"Speaking objectively, the Pen Spirit isn't all that powerful among hostile ghosts. You'd better not get your hopes up too high."
"I still have to try." The girl raised her head. Her face was covered in heavy makeup—vivid, twisted, and deeply unsettling. "Could you do me a favor? The Pen Spirit game requires two people to complete. Nobody really comes to this storage room, so I need someone to play along with me."
"No problem." After a brief pause, Chen Ge asked, "You said the Pen Spirit game requires two people. So when you played it the first time, who did you come in with?"
The girl didn't answer that question. Her voice grew even more shrill. "Sit across from me. We both hold this pen together, and then you don't need to do anything else."
"Alright." Chen Ge still had a measure of gentlemanly courtesy. He sat down on one side of the table and picked up the pen resting on it.
It was a silver-white fountain pen, slightly thicker than an ordinary ballpoint, with decorative engravings along its surface.
"Pretty nice-looking, actually."