“This chapter is a little scary, but scared little angels can read it during the day~muah~
Luo Huayue took off her school uniform, reversed it by zipping it up at the back, and then let her long hair loose, arranging it in front of her shoulders. She stood with her back to everyone, like a faceless female student: “So, am I scary?”
The undercover team was discussing how to scare people that night.
Zhang Haiyang gestured towards her petite figure: “Rong Yi, with short hair, you’re the only one here with long hair. But your height is—”
“Stand behind the boys, and no one will even see you.”
Ice added, “And the scariest part of the ‘door ghost game’ is that the ghost will chase the person outside the door! They need to accurately pull the person inside the room and lock the ghost outside the door.”
“The gym has wooden floors, and when people run, their footsteps are loud, making it easy to spoil the scare and get caught.”
Rong Yi pondered for a moment, touching her lips: “…Actually, when the gym is closed at night without lights, no one can see clearly.”
“Meaning, we don’t need to be so specific in pretending to be ghosts.”
Luo Huayue tucked her hair behind her ear and scratched her head: “Just a silhouette is enough, right?”
“Yes.” Rong Yi pointed at the quiet senior student standing nearby: “For example, if we find him scary, is it everything about him that’s scary?”
“…Yes.”
“No! Specifically, what’s scariest about him are his eyes.” Rong Yi used the senior student as a model, turning his pale face towards the others: “His face is pale, and his eyes are too dark, usually expressionless. A sight of him will send shivers down your spine.”
“In the horror movies we watch, the scary ghost images are often due to the abrupt features. For example, overly large mouth, too dark eyes, facial features like black holes, or no features at all. They seem human but not entirely, falling into the ‘uncanny valley,’ stirring fear in people.”
“Such an image, even if appearing in broad daylight, would be terrifying.”
“As for other body parts, people won’t scrutinize them closely in panic.”
“We just need a frightening head, right?” Ice said. “But how do we silently place this head behind the players?”
Rong Yi packed up her lunchbox and stood up: “Have you seen ‘The Hanging Coffin’?”
Everyone looked enlightened, and Zhang Haiyang asked, “But we don’t have professional equipment…”
“Who needs professional equipment.” Rong Yi said, “We’re not actually hanging someone.”
“Similar to pretending to be ghosts, our ‘hanging coffin’ only needs an outline.”
She began to delegate tasks:
“Huayue, you design a ghost face that is human-like but not quite.”
“Zhang Haiyang, Ice, go to the physics lab, find a magnifying glass. Then go to the calligraphy classroom and get some white semi-translucent tracing paper and ink.”
“The senior and I will go to the infirmary to get some other things. 7:30 at the gym!”
Since it was a boarding school, the infirmary was staffed 24 hours a day. To enter and find things, they could only—
“Oh…oh…Doctor! My stomach hurts so bad…”
Feigning illness!
Rong Yi, supported by the senior, clumsily knocked into the infirmary, holding her stomach: “Doctor—”
No response.
She tentatively called out a few more times, but still no response.
“No one here?” Rong Yi stood upright: “Did they go to the bathroom?”
She pulled back the two bed curtains, the beds were neat and tidy with snow-white sheets without a single wrinkle.
What luck!
Rong Yi patted the senior’s shoulder: “Get two sheets, I’ll go find the red liquid.”
She turned back to the doctor’s office and rummaged through the medicine cabinet, not only taking the red liquid but also some purple liquid, iodine, cotton swabs, and gauze.”
She pulled out an empty box of cold medicine from behind the door and stuffed all the odds and ends into it.
“Tap, tap.” The sound of high heels gently stopped behind her. Rong Yi’s hand stopped as she was about to pick something up, and her hairs stood on end.
She turned slowly, seeing the school doctor in a white coat standing quietly behind her, taller than her.
The school doctor, wearing heavy makeup, with golden flowing curls scattered down, gracefully draped over her face that blended Eastern and Western features.
“Classmate,” her voice low, “what are you doing?”
Rong Yi was tongue-tied. She was thinking of an excuse to get by when she suddenly saw a rose inserted in a vase on the table.
A strange feeling surged in her heart.
At this moment, A walked out of the ward. It was unclear where he put the sheets; anyway, his hands were empty, and his walk seemed unnatural.
Rong Yi quickly said, “He hurt his leg, I couldn’t find the doctor, so I wanted to get some medicine myself…”
“Oh?” The school doctor teased, flipping her golden hair. “Wasn’t it a stomach ache? How come the pain moved?”
Rong Yi thought to herself: she intentionally didn’t show up at first!
The school doctor circled around A, interested, “Where is the wound? Let me bandage it for you.”
“No need!” Rong Yi grabbed A’s hand and ran out of the infirmary, saying, “I can handle it, thank you, doctor!”
The school doctor didn’t get angry. Watching them run away, she leaned against the door frame from a distance and shouted, “At such a young age, it’s time to learn. Don’t start love too early!”
Rong Yi and A finally stopped running when they reached the classroom building. Rong Yi held the box in one hand and A’s cool hand in the other.
After running for so long, his hand was still icy cold, cooling down Rong Yi’s sweaty hand.
Rong Yi released his hand belatedly. Leaning on her knees, catching her breath, she suddenly laughed.
During her school days, she was not a typical good student, often skipping classes, climbing walls, and challenging teachers. She didn’t expect that after being away from the campus for so many years, she would experience this exhilarating joy again.
She subconsciously glanced at A. He remained composed — maybe he didn’t even need to catch his breath.
He was staring at the hand that Rong Yi had just held, as if flowers could bloom in his palm.
Sensing Rong Yi’s gaze, he reached behind his back and pulled out two neatly folded sheets from his clothes. Thanks to his tall stature and the thin school sheets, it didn’t look too awkward from far away.
“Well done!” Rong Yi patted his shoulder. “Truly my little brother!”
A forced a smile on his stiff face.
“Only fishing line left.” She asked A, “Do you know where we can find fishing line in school?”
He decisively shook his head.
Fishing line was not a common item at school, Rong Yi thought, she would have to rely on Luo Huayue.
“No problem!” Hearing Rong Yi’s request, Luo Huayue confidently replied, “The experience points accumulated from the previous two copies have upgraded my skills!”
“Now I can draw some non-living objects that are not easy to directly depict through imagining their characteristics, such as sugar, salt, and a sturdy and delicate roll of fishing line.”
Indeed, according to Luo Huayue’s previous skill level, she would have to unfold and draw the fishing line to ensure its length. As for its toughness, it was just a gamble.
She lay on the gym floor, drawing a reel of line on a piece of drafting paper. After activating her skill, a hefty transparent fishing line emerged from the paper.
Ice watched Luo Huayue display her skill for the first time, curiously holding and examining the roll of fishing line in her hand.
“This reel is 500 meters long and can bear 15 kilograms,” Luo Huayue pointed to the product label stuck on the reel.
“Rong Yi picked up a spool of thread, pulled out a section and held it up against the faint sunset outside the gymnasium, the transparent fishing line appearing faintly visible.
In the dark environment at nine o’clock, such a line would be even more unlikely to be noticed.
She nodded satisfied, looking at the items piled at her feet. “Get ready!”
At nine o’clock in the evening, several sneaky figures appeared outside the gymnasium entrance.
The gate was locked with an iron chain, a bit long, so as long as the two doors were pulled apart with force, a slender person could squeeze in through the gap.
The iron chain clinked lightly against the door, and one by one, figures slipped inside. The girl at the front turned on a flashlight and scanned the empty and dark gymnasium.
“The storage room is over there!”
One person pointed to a small door room in the corner of the gymnasium, and a few followed the flashlight to the storage room door. “Creak,” the door opened.
“Cough, cough, cough, so dusty!”
“So smelly!”
“Of course, this is where they keep hygiene tools and basketballs and soccer balls. Don’t expect it to smell good here.”
Ten people squeezed into the cramped storage room one by one.
The flashlight clicked off, and they found themselves engulfed in pitch black darkness.
“Follow the numbering.” The girl at the front took a deep breath. “Number 1, you go out.”
A guy opened the door jokingly, “Haha, getting scared before we even start. Can you guys handle this?”
He closed the door from the outside, making ghostly noises.
The girl at the front spoke sternly from inside, “Can you be more serious?”
The guy was reprimanded and chuckled, “Okay, okay, don’t be angry.”
After 10 silent seconds outside, the agreed knocking rhythm began: “Thud, thud.”
Inside the storage room, the second girl stepped forward and opened the door.
Number 2 entered nervously and, following the same process, waited for 10 seconds before knocking three times on the door.
Numbers 3 to 5 smoothly completed their tasks. It was now the sixth girl’s turn to go out.
She was the most timid of all, her hands trembling with fear as she was pushed out by the others.
After 10 seconds, “…thud, thud, thud.”
Just as the seventh was about to open the door, the girl at the front stopped her, “Wait.”
“The knocking rhythm is wrong.”
As if a chill swept through the storage room, everyone involuntarily shivered.
Seeing no one came to open the door, number 6 panicked and pounded on the door, “Open the door! What are you doing, open the door!”
“It’s her.” Someone whispered, “Shouldn’t we open the door?”
The girl at the front mustered her courage and said to the outside, “Knock correctly, and we’ll let you in.”
The girl outside cried out, “I knocked correctly! Thud, thud, thud! I did it right!” She repeated the knocks several times, all with the correct rhythm.
The first time might have been due to nervousness causing her hands to shake, leading to the wrong rhythm.
After some hesitation, the girl at the front opened the door.
Number 6 rushed in and hugged her, crying, “Why didn’t you open the door?! You scared me!”
Suddenly, the first guy’s eyes widened in terror as he murmured, “She, she, she behind her…”
Everyone looked in the direction he pointed—
In the darkness hung a ghastly pale glowing face, eyes only whites without eyeballs, a half-smile on its face, clad in a stained white attire, slowly drifting towards them!
“Ahhh—”
They screamed and slammed the door shut with a loud bang!
Number 6 cried, “What was that… I didn’t see it… was it real…”
Suddenly, knocking sounded outside the door.
“Thud, thud, thud.”
The people looked at each other in fear in the darkness.
Person One swallowed nervously, “The signal is correct… Did we accidentally lock someone outside?”
Knock, knock.
The thing outside knocked again.
The leader girl tried to stay calm and whispered, “Let’s count and see who’s missing.”
Starting from One, everyone counted.
…
“Eight.”
“Nine.”
“Ten.”
The counting stopped, all ten were present.
Knock, knock.
The sixth person trembled in fear, pleading, “…It’s still there! I’m not going out! I’m staying here all night! Can’t we just stay until morning?!”
Suddenly, One shakily said, “The student beside me, did you not count just now?”
The leader girl scolded, “Don’t joke around at a time like this!”
“I didn’t!” One replied, scared and upset, “He was next to me the whole time, he really didn’t speak! But—”
He lowered his voice out of fear, “But when we counted just now, we already had ten people…”
Who was this extra person?
Everyone unconsciously moved away from One. He tried to keep his distance from that corner. They huddled by the door, forming a tight group.
Knock, knock.
The knocking urged them to come out if they were scared.
Their fear reached its peak. The leader girl shouted and turned on a flashlight, revealing an excessively pale face and dark eyes in the corner.
The air thickened with fear.
Terrifying!
Silent screams echoed in their minds. The face in the corner was a hundred, a thousand, a million times scarier than whatever was knocking on the door outside. Even though it had a human face.
In terror, they couldn’t even scream, and the leader girl quickly opened the door with the flashlight, only to find nothing outside!
That thing outside must have been as frightened of the face in the storage room, so it ran away!
Without hesitation, they dashed out of the storage room, screaming, heading towards the gym’s entrance.
As they fled, One looked back to see the ghostly figure from outside silently following them!
“Screams filled the air as they squeezed through the gym door, disappearing into the night.
Clap, clap, clap…
With no more sounds from the students, Rong Yi stood up among the audience and applauded, “Friends, perfect!”
A nearly invisible fishing line strung through the gym, connecting their hiding spot in the audience to the storage room, and from there to the door. Hanging on the line were ghost faces on translucent paper and bed sheets stained with various colors, giving a frightening appearance.
Luo Huayue twitched the fishing line in her hand, retracting the ghostly bed sheet, while Ice ran to help her.
Zhang Haiyang packed up the makeshift projector made from a shoebox and magnifying glass, turning off the small flashlight inside the box.
“Miss Rong, you are absolutely right about the importance of using a projector to illuminate the ghostly faces.” Zhang Haiyang was immersed in the joy of scaring people to the point of fleeing in terror and achieving a high ‘fright index’: “The ghostly faces glowing in the darkness are simply invincible!”
Senior A walked out of the storage room with a blank expression, and Rong Yi waved at him with a smile: “Luo Huayue’s control, Zhang Haiyang’s lighting, Ice’s switching path and improvisation outside the storage room, everyone’s collaboration was excellent.”
Ice coiled the fishing line into a ball, clapping off the dust from his hands: “If that girl hadn’t been too timid and shouted out all their signals, I wouldn’t have thought we could add this little act as well.”
Rong Yi gave him a thumbs up.
She didn’t say that the efforts of all of them combined weren’t even close to Senior A’s contribution in the storage room in one go, in terms of the ‘fright index’.
There was no way to compare with naturally talented players.
Zhang Haiyang jumped down from the stands: “Let’s go, let’s go quickly, let’s head back early so we don’t encounter real ghosts!”
Everyone cleaned up the scene, making sure not to leave any evidence, and headed towards the gymnasium entrance.
Just as Zhang Haiyang was about to slip through the door crack, the door suddenly slammed shut with a loud ‘bang!’
Zhang Haiyang cried out in pain as he fell to the ground, and Rong Yi immediately rushed forward to help him up:
“Think about math!”
“Think about conic curve formulas!”
“Hyperbolic curve equations!”
Zhang Haiyang’s eyes drifted blankly as he started murmuring, “When the focus is on the x-axis, x2/a2-y2/b2=1, where a>0 and b>0, when the focus is on the y-axis…”
Rong Yi, Ice, and Luo Huayue exchanged a glance.
It’s here!
“Thump, thump.”
The thing outside the door was actually mimicking them knocking!
Rong Yi took a deep breath.
Don’t be afraid.
Even though it’s a ghost, it’s just an NPC in the instance.
As long as it’s an NPC, she has ways to deal with it!
A red sleeve slowly emerged from the large iron gate.
An arm, a body, then a head with long black hair hanging down.
Luo Huayue’s fear caused a drop in her ‘fright index’, but closing her eyes only made her more afraid, so she stiffly grabbed Rong Yi’s sleeve.
Rong Yi took a deep breath and shouted before her teammates dropped their ‘fright index’: “Activate! Visit the parents!”
The skill effect manifested, and the red-clothed female ghost raised her head from the dark hair in a daze, surprisingly having a pretty and less frightening appearance.
She spoke with a light and ethereal voice.
“Huh? Sister-in-law?”
Rong Yi: … she didn’t seem surprised at all.
To their surprise, the red-clothed female ghost suddenly widened her pitch-black eyes, covered her mouth, and in a shocked manner, looked behind Rong Yi, exclaiming in disbelief:
“Big brother?!”
Author’s note: Regarding the game rules of the door ghost, I have never played it myself, only heard about it from friends, so it might not be standard.
Have you played any horror games? Like cutting apples in front of a mirror at midnight?
The theory of horror gradiation suggests that if an image closely resembles a human but is distinguishable as not being real, it triggers a fear response of ‘this is not a living person’. However, if a human-like image has low similarity to a real person (like a doll), it doesn’t evoke this fear. Conversely, if a human-like image surpasses the horror threshold and is indistinguishable from a real person, it also doesn’t induce fear. (This is roughly what it means, in my own words. For the standard definition, please refer to Baidu.)
A simple projector can be made using a magnifying glass and a shoebox, for specific methods, please search on Baidu~
The author is bad at math, so if there are any mistakes, please correct them in the comments! Thank you!
