The shards of the mirror fell to the ground, clinking and clattering. Behind the blood-red reflective surface, the smiling face was twisted and warped.
The corners of his mouth cracked wider. The closer to death he got, the happier he became, the harder it was to hold back the urge to laugh.
"We're called the Smileless. Father once said we didn't deserve to smile." The man in the mirror seemed to recall something amusing, his lips splitting open. Even through the glass, his piercing laughter was audible, as though his father's words were the funniest joke in the world.
"Father?"
"He was a doctor at the hospital. He wasn't a good father, but he was the greatest doctor I'd ever seen." Behind the man's manic eyes lurked a trace of pain, a trace of terror, and a trace of fanaticism. "Other doctors only treated illness. He saved people and killed people at the same time. He believed angels and devils both hid inside the human heart, and so he built heaven and hell with his own hands."
"Hell — you mean that cursed hospital?"
"No, that was heaven. A heaven everyone wanted to escape from!" The man in the mirror had fully revealed his true nature. He stared at Chen Ge, laughing with obvious delight, seemingly thrilled to be talking to him.
"If it was heaven, why did you want to escape?" In his mind, Chen Ge had already filed a brief assessment of the man in the mirror — lunatic.
"It was my father's heaven alone. Not ours." The man pressed his face against the mirror's surface. The network of cracks was imprinted on his face, making it look as though his features had been sliced into pieces. It was deeply unsettling.
"If heaven was already that terrifying, what kind of hell must your father have built?"
"No one has ever seen hell. Do you think anyone who's seen hell could still be standing here talking to you?" The man's eyes were wide open, the corners of his mouth stretched to the human limit, as though his face would tear apart at any moment. "Hey — why are you interested in that hospital? You know something about it. When I said I was a school teacher, you immediately realized I was lying. Have you seen other Smileless before? Have you met my family? Or did you receive an invitation from that hospital too?"
The middle-aged man in the mirror was practically the incarnation of evil. He was extremely sharp — from just a few small details, he had deduced a remarkable amount of information.
Against someone who was obviously this clever, Chen Ge usually didn't waste time talking. He secretly signaled to Xu Yin with a hand gesture, planning to take the man out at the first opportunity.
Whether friend or foe — once he was dead, he would become nourishment for the haunted house.
This was a lesson Chen Ge had reflected on and summarized after his clash with Dr. Gao.
"Forget it. Whether you've met my family or received an invitation from the hospital, once you're connected to that place, you can never escape. He'll keep appearing beside you, in all sorts of forms, until one day when you open your eyes and suddenly find yourself lying on a cold operating table, beginning your own curse game." The man's tone didn't sound like a threat — it was as though he were simply stating a fact.
"That's none of your concern." Chen Ge stared at the mirror. "You just said you have other family members?"
"What? Can't you tell? You and I — we were both once living, breathing people. The difference is that what accompanied you was love and friendship, while what accompanied us was pain and hatred. We lived every day in that grim, hopeless hospital, watching death and disease spread, until they crawled onto our own bodies."
*Smack!*
The man's palm struck the mirror hard, his body pressing against the web of cracks. "Daddy didn't want us to cry, so we could only smile. When it hurt, we had to smile. When we were sick, we had to smile. The more our hearts ached, the harder we had to smile! But even though we tried so hard, he still didn't like us. He said we were ugly when we smiled, said we weren't really laughing!"
Laughter echoed from inside the mirror. The man's face was wedged into the cracks, slamming against the glass over and over. "Look — look! I'm laughing so happily! I'm clearly laughing so happily!"
Blood seeped from the wounds, and the man's face was scratched and marred. He touched the blood at the corners of his mouth. "We smile every waking moment, yet we're called the Smileless. Isn't that hilarious?"
"My emotional intelligence is pretty low — I can't quite appreciate your sense of humor. But if you tell me more about the hospital and the school, I might consider helping you." Chen Ge had dealt with plenty of deranged psychopaths. He wasn't a doctor; he couldn't cure those patients. All he could do was not listen, not believe, and stay firmly rooted in his own convictions without letting them talk him around.
In truth, persuading Chen Ge was extraordinarily difficult. He had glimpsed an entirely different world, and if it came to a real debate, it was anyone's guess who would convince whom.
They could exchange ideas and spar, but there was no need.
"So I guessed right — you really have met my family! Which one could it be? My pitiful eldest brother? My youngest, stupidest little brother? Or my sister whose body was the most intact? Or maybe my little sister? No — if she'd met you, she would have fallen in love with you and then killed you without a moment's hesitation."
"Can you be quiet for a moment?" Chen Ge found that once the man had dropped his mask, he was incredibly talkative. "From now on, I ask, you answer."
"Fine, I'll tell you everything I know. You've met my family — I'm sure that wasn't a pleasant memory. I—" The man in the mirror pressed against the glass, his body almost pushing through the surface. Blood streaked across the mirror, but he acted as if he felt no pain. Words like "crazy" and "sick" didn't begin to cover it.
However, this behavior let Chen Ge notice something else: this man who called himself the Smileless was entirely blood-red — a genuine Red-coat!
Chen Ge recalled the Smileless from Liwan Town. It seemed this entire deranged family were all Red-coats.
"What's your relationship with the patient who escaped from the cursed hospital? Why did he trap you inside the mirror?" Chen Ge went straight to the point. While his mouth asked the question, his mind was already calculating — this Red-coat seemed to be in a weakened state right now. If he finished him off, he might just gain another half-Red-coat employee.
"We had a partnership. I could never have escaped the hospital on my own — I needed an accomplice."