Kaleidoscope of Death

Chapter 92: Umbrella

With yesterday's event as cushioning, everybody was less affected today upon seeing the teru teru bōzu.

Lin Xingping had originally wanted to do as they did yesterday, and have someone get the doll down. However, she was stopped by a young woman, who seemed to be named Xiao Cha, and counted among the more clear-minded of the newbies. She seemed critical of Lin Xingping bossing everyone around, saying, "don't. We don't know what this doll does at all. What if the person who takes it down gets cursed?"

Lin Xingping defended herself, "the person who took it down yesterday is just fine, isn't he?"

Xiao Cha scoffed, "who knows about that. What if it just hasn't gotten to him yet? Might happen in a couple of days."

Lin Xingping, "how can you say that..." She put on a moue of offense at being so maligned. "Why are you making my good intentions out to be bad?"

Xiao Cha wasn't having it at all. "Then how about I grab you a stool and you take it down yourself, if you want to be the good guy here?"

As Lin Xingping continued to argue, Cue Xueyi saw the situation going south and hastened to play peacemaker, saying alright already, stop arguing, we're all a team here, why make things so unpleasant? So we won't take it down, they're dead anyways, it's fine to leave them hanging.

Lin Xingping played angry, spun around, and left.

Xiao Cha spat at the ground and cursed; her feistiness definitely had the glory Ruan Baijie from way back when. After the argument, Xiao Cha seemed to notice Lin Qiushi staring. She rolled her eyes quite aggressively at Lin Qiushi, hissing, "the hell are you looking at? Never seen a beauty before?" Then immediately left.

Ruan Nanzhu, beside Lin Qiushi, said with absolute schadenfreude, "wow, is this your first time being treated like this then."

Lin Qiushi, "..." It seemed to be, yes.

Ruan Nanzhu looked over at Lin Qiushi, before sighing nice and long. "It's this face of yours; it's completely to blame."

Lin Qiushi, "..." Enough already, how many times do you have to say it? How ugly could he actually be?

The bathroom in this world had no mirrors, after all. They'd been here for two days and he still didn't know what he looked like.

Seeing Lin Qiushi's clueless expression, Ruan Nanzhu gave the matter some thought before fishing out the phone from Lin Qiushi's pocket. Then he turned on the front camera. "I mean. Have a look."

Lin Qiushi took the phone, and found in the camera a face that was very difficult to describe—the simple adjective "ugly" was completely inadequate. Sufficed to say that after Lin Qiushi saw his own face, he closed the camera immediately, and he now completely understood everybody's looks of utter disgust.

Wordlessly, Lin Qiushi looked at Ruan Nanzhu.

Ruan Nanzhu's palms flipped skyward. "I didn't know you'd become so ugly inside either."

Lin Qiushi, "I've wronged your eyes." This was a serious hit on his vision.

Ruan Nanzhu laughed. "Come on, let's go have some breakfast, and hurry out to look for clues before the sky goes dark."

"Okay," Lin Qiushi nodded.

The two had breakfast at the dining hall—well, call it breakfast, but the time was nearing eleven.

Lin Qiushi had something small, then left the hall with Ruan Nanzhu.

Today, Lin Xingping enthusiastically invited Lin Qiushi and Ruan Nanzhu along, saying that they'd discovered a bamboo forest in the mountains around town, and that there was a stone path through the forest, though they didn't know where it led...