Live Action Murder Mystery

Chapter 67

(Fresh flowers and coffins; The sunflower facing the light.)

Perhaps it might be true that this room had not been ventilated for the past 300 years because the stench permeating it was absolutely intolerable. After they opened the door, they decided to wait for a few minutes to allow the stench to disperse before they walked in.

However, they did not expect that the air in the main lobby would become contaminated in an instant.

Hence, the group of players went to the main entrance of the ancient castle and pushed open the two large doors completely to allow the fresh air from outside to come in.

Upon walking to the main doors, Gu Liang released a long exhale, trying to alleviate the nausea and discomfort he felt in his body.

It was only then that he realised— the sports car that Scumbag Yu had driven that day was still here.

Since that was the case, why did Scumbag Yu choose to sit in Magnate Rong’s commercial car?

Gu Liang took a few steps forward, planning to inspect the sportscar.

Before he reached the sports car, however, he reacted: the car windows could cause reflections, and it had properties similar to that of mirrors.

And almost at the same time, Gu Liang discovered that there was something wrong with the car tires.

Consequently, he borrowed the studying of the car tires as an excuse, and he immediately crouched down before he was in the proximity of the car.

With his actions, he could check the car tires while avoiding his reflection being shown in the mirror.

It was around 10:30 by that point, and Gu Liang had already switched back to his human identity. If his image was reflected in the car mirror, the vampires among the players behind him would become aware of his identity.

Soon after, Gu Liang pretended that he was looking back in a careless manner.

— Unexpectedly, not a single person had stepped closer to the car apart from him. They merely stood at the ancient castle’s entrance, looking at Gu Liang from afar before shifting their gazes away. It was as if they were trying to avoid being shone in the mirror.

Their behaviour was essentially proving Yang Ye’s previous conjecture.

The vampires did not dare to stand in a mirror because they did not want to risk being discovered by humans.

Whereas the humans did not dare to be in the mirror because they were afraid that they would die after being discovered by the vampires.

— This meant that everyone should have received the prompt that vampires would not be reflected in mirrors with minor differences between.

It was highly possible that all the vampiric players had received the task to conceal their own identity.

Which begged the question: why did no one mention the word ‘vampire’ after they saw the corpse that had been sucked dry of blood just now?

Hence, Gu Liang could not shake off the feeling that something was amiss in the deduction that he and Yang Ye had previously posited.

But he did know what was wrong specifically, and he could not verbalise it.

With numerous doubts sliding past his heart, Gu Liang turned his head back and looked at the car tires again.

The four car tires were completely deflated, making it apparent that there was no air inside the tires. The car could not be driven at all.

With all the pieces of evidence gathered thus far, the fact that Magnate Rong was the perpetrator of Scumbag Yu, Confidant Ai, and Designer Mei’s murder, was cemented even further.

After all, this was his territory; it was reasonable to assume that he was capable of releasing the air in the tires in secret, which would force Scumbag Yu into the situation where he had no choice but to sit in the commercial car.

Gu Liang routed around the car and took a few steps forward, only to realise that the surroundings were being partitioned off by the thick fog. When he glanced in the direction of the garden, he noted that the path on the outer periphery leading to the vegetable field had already been shrouded with thick fog.

Therefore, the first exploration segment was limited to the ancient castle without a doubt.

* * *

After some time, the stench dissipated by a fair amount. Thus, the players returned back to the main hall and entered the room that was brimming with bones.

When Gu Liang walked back to the main lobby, Yang Ye and Meng Qian Cheng were still standing there.

Gu Liang heard Meng Qian Cheng ask Yang Ye: “Huh? Did you become paler? Were you always this pale back then? The lights inside just now were too dark, so it wasn’t that obvious, but now that you’re outside—”

As Gu Liang’s heart tightened, he saw Yang Ye take out a small box from his pocket with his middle finger and thumb joined together.

Subsequently, he opened it and took out the powder puff inside to smear the product on his face.

It turns out he was holding a powder foundation.

Judging from Meng Qian Cheng’s expression, he had been stunned.

When all was said and done, Yang Ye did have a tall and robust physique and his facial features were incredibly hard and sharp, which made his actions inharmonious to a ridiculous extent. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I don’t have a choice, it’s a problem in my character design. I’m a little white face, more specifically, a little white face who depends on a financial backer. There are a lot of gay people in the entertainment circles, don’t you know that?” Yang Ye’s voice sounded helpless, “It’s all character design, the character design I’m telling you.”

Putting down the powder foundation, Yang Ye stared at Meng Qian Cheng as he said earnestly: “I’m different from the script in reality, I’m an out-and-out 1. Liang Liang is my wife. Don’t misunderstand anything.”

Meng Qian Cheng pursed his lips, speechless, before he walked away. “I’m going over to see what’s happening there.”

And when Gu Liang walked over to Yang Ye’s side, he asked in a low voice: “When did you take that?”

“I conveniently took it from Lady Rong’s room as I was smashing her mirror.” Yang Ye whispered into his ear, “Your husband really doesn’t have it easy. I hope this won’t affect the image you have of me in your heart.”

Gu Liang slanted his head, glaring at him with his obsidian black pupils. A moment later, he uttered: “There wasn’t really an image of you in my heart to begin with.”

Upon stepping into the main lobby, they saw the other players walking into the room full of bones.

Gu Liang gave a pause. Voice still lowered, he told Yang Ye: “It’s hard to perceive the sharp teeth if you don’t grin or laugh out loud, but your skin is certainly a problem. Magnate Rong doesn’t look like he has changed at all, we don’t know the new players, and it’s even harder to observe anything from the ladies because they are wearing foundation and blush. Whereas you… if we have to vote for the vampires later, and they can’t find any evidence to corroborate with the fact that you’re an assistant, you’d be placed in a very difficult position.”

Yang Ye mulled over it before saying: “This sort of normal side task is different from the accomplice task, since the latter can incur a deduction of gold coins. But failing a normal side task is different, you would merely lose the reward. I don’t mind it.”

Yang Ye was correct on this point.

Previously in The Fifth Person, Liu Bo Wen had failed his side task as Scientist Li but he was not punished, merely unable to obtain his reward. It was only when he failed his accomplice task in the Carrying the Doll scenario, which then turned him into a NPC.

“Mn.” Gu Liang nodded. Having thought of something, he spoke again: “This reminds me of Scientist Li since he had a side task. If he played the game masterfully and concealed it completely, or fabricated a perfect lie for his story, he would have completed the side task, but it might have caused a different result— allowing Xiao Cao to escape successfully.”

After giving a pause, Gu Liang continued, “I think, the concealment of our side tasks will have an effect on the final deduction of the truth. How we should persuade the rest on who the murderer is, while we are concealing our story, is something we have to consider. If we can’t have the fish and bear paw simultaneously, it seems apparent that we should abandon the side tasks.”

Yang Ye surmised, “Therefore, the deliberate imposition of some side tasks could also be one of the system’s cheap tricks in truth. Even if we were to comply with these side tasks, it’s not absolutely certain that we can accomplish it, to say nothing of the fact that we might mislead the other players. For the same reasons, if someone were to hide some information for the sake of completing their side task, it would serve as an obstruction when we’re trying to elucidate the truth.”

Gu Liang had been insulting the pitfalls that the system had installed in their tasks prior to this.

However, he was becoming increasingly aware that these side tasks were incredibly difficult to accomplish in actuality.

If the players committed to their side tasks in all seriousness, they might lose.

Take Yang Ye for example, the peculiarity in his complexion was too obvious, and it was ridiculously difficult to conceal.

Even though he used the foundation compact as a cover-up, it might not necessarily pass the test.

Therefore, while Gu Liang’s tasks had its traps, he still had ways to accomplish them.

Whereas Yang Ye would find it incredibly difficult to do so.

Hence, the system wanting to allow everyone to attain rewards through the side tasks was fake; it wanted all the players to mutually deceive each other and hide their own stories. Perhaps, the ultimate purpose to this set-up was to create obstructions in the final search for the real murderer.

* * *

As the group was advancing towards the room of white bones, Meng Qian Cheng had begun opening the other steel door in the sealed section.

He ran over a moment later. “The situation is quite similar to this side, I’ve already opened the door to ventilate the room. After we’re doing checking this room, the stench over there should have dispersed slightly, and we can go over directly.”

“Have you found anything?”

Look, over there.”

Gu Liang pointed at the items they had previously found.

It was a pile of tattered clothes, and they had pulled it out of the mountain of skeletal remains.

It was not hard to infer that they were the clothes the victims were previously wearing.

Gu Liang studied them. They were made out of rough cloth and hemp for the most part, it seemed like these people were not wealthy.

Li Xiao Yu had always been scared of these things. The fact that she could walk into the room was already the result of her mustering great courage, but she was still afraid of touching those bones. Thus, she went to the wooden shelves in the corner to rummage through them.

“There are some kettle-like objects here. Maybe these people were locked in this room? And the items here are things they would typically use, like chopsticks and bowls.”

When Su Lan heard her words, she sidled up to her. “I’ll inspect them with you.”

The two new players, Chief Mei and Sister Mei were quite unperturbed by comparison. Together with Yang Ye and Gu Liang, they moved the skeletons to one side to see if there was anything hidden underneath.

However, they did not manage to find any clues, since it was nothing but corpses upon corpses stacked here, which had later decayed into bones.

Gu Liang set his sights on the left corner in the end.

There was a row of metal railings there, and they were a certain distance away from the pile of bones inside the room.

There were also some white bones beside the railings.

When Gu Liang walked closer, he discovered that there were shackles on the railing, and they were extremely packed along the stretch of metal.

Most of the handcuffs had a corresponding set of bones underneath.

At this moment, Yang Ye had walked over to Gu Liang’s side and crouched down, inspecting the railings and handcuffs.

Subsequently, his gaze looked past the metal rails to scrutinise the wall behind.

Yang Ye did not care for finding some paper or cloth either as he directly used his hand to rub the wall.

Once a part of the accumulated dust on the wall had been removed, Yang Ye picked up his torch and illuminated it.

The “正” character was scattered all over the wall.

This indicated the number of days that this person had been imprisoned for.

With the passing of each day, he would carve another line into the wall.

Eyes lowering, Gu Liang glanced at the skeletal remains that were in the proximity of the carved characters, and he could not help but furrow his brows.

— It was a pity that this person did not manage to live to the day where they could walk out alive.

Gu Liang knew that Li Xiao Yu was probably correct in her remark. This was a place that acted like a prison.

Countless people had been locked in here, and their hands would usually be shackled to the metal railing, unable to move.

When they were needed, they would be taken off the railings for reasons unknown to them, be killed, and then thrown into the centre for the room. As for the people who were still surviving, they could only watch everything as they were being shackled on the metal railing.

It was hard to imagine how much despair those fettered people must have felt then.

And perhaps, for some undisclosed reason nearing the end, they were no longer cared for.

Hence, they were starved to death in their locked states, and it was only when their bodies were turned into bones, that their wrists managed to leave their restraints.

It was only in death where they were freed from their fetters and wrist shackles.

After looking over the railing, handcuffs, the skeletal remains that had fallen below the railings, and the bones piled in the centre of the room, Yang Ye and Gu Liang walked up to Li Xiao Yu. “Have you found any clues on your end?”

“We found a notebook, let’s go outside to read it.” Li Xiao Yu, “I don’t think there are other clues apart from this.”

Thus, the group departed from the room that invoked an incomparable sense of oppression and heaviness, and returned to the main lobby.

Switching off their electric torches, they borrowed the bright lights to study this book.

They flipped to a random page of yellowed paper, and it wrote: “7 October 17X9, 3 humans entered, 1 human died, 1 heavily wounded human. Remarks— the heavily wounded human needs to be supplemented with enough food to let them survive, and allow the Duke to use them again.”

In the next page, it wrote: “8 October 17X9, 0 humans entered, 1 human died. Remarks— the heavily wounded person from yesterday has died unexpectedly, but the living humans nearby are gradually decreasing, where do we find them? This will be difficult to solve.”

Inside the thick book, the contents recorded on every page was more or less the same, and the only difference was that the number of humans “entering” and “dead” were in constant flux.

“Too… this is too scary and disgusting.” Li Xiao Yu could not resist commenting, “What is going on with this Duke?”

Su Lan spoke up at this moment: “When the system was reading out the general plot, didn’t it mention vampires? The Duke came to these lands to escape from his troubles, built a castle, used his magic to bewitch the surrounding villages, and made the commoners worship him as a God that heralded from the west.

“Much later, all the people in the ancient castle disappeared in one night. Some said that they became evil spirits, while others whispered that they had become vampires. However, no one knew what the truth was exactly.

Having spoken to this point, Su Lan uttered, “The corpse in the kitchen was clearly sucked dry of his blood. I don’t understand why no one has mentioned this up until now. But from what we can currently perceive, our circumstances are exceedingly obvious, there are vampires inside this scenario.

“The servants caught those villagers, locked them in here, so they could provide an unending flow of blood to the Duke.

“The Duke probably wanted to nurture these people, since they could continue producing blood as long as they’re alive. It was just that he couldn’t control himself at times, and he sucked too much blood, thus causing the person to die. The servants didn’t throw the dead people into other places either; instead, they chose to pile them inside the room where they kept the villagers.

“Something unknown happened later. Perhaps owing to all the bad deeds the Duke had committed, he was met with his retribution, and the Duke died. And no one cared for these villagers later. Hence, the people who survived and were shackled to the railings were starved to death.”

As Meng Qian Cheng listened, he gazed at her: “Hey, you’re quite clear about this, are you aware of some inside story?”

“I don’t know. But these things are clearly placed before us. All of you don’t have the guts to say it, but I do.” Su Lan’s gaze swept past every player one by one, “Rather, the people who don’t dare to say the word ‘vampire’ are the ones with problems.”

Gu Liang did not reply immediately because he was deep in his own thoughts.

After a long moment, he said: “The general plot mentioned that— all the people in the ancient castle disappeared in one night. Is it possible that… all of them travelled over, and arrived 300 years after.”

Yang Ye pondered briefly, and said with a frown: “Li Xiao Yu said that she encountered bats and mouse corpses just now. Therefore, we can assume that the matter of travelling across certainly does exist, and these animals, the antiques in the main lobby, and the Duke’s people, have all travelled over. But, why did the corpses in that room fail to travel over?

“If they travelled over, there should be some fresh corpses at least; better yet, the decay of bones shouldn’t be this salient. But whether it is the stench or the rate of decay, it can’t be denied that they’ve been dead for 300 years.”

In reality, the doubts that Yang Ye had were similar to Gu Liang’s.

Faintly, Gu Liang had some conjectures in heart, so he went back to the room full of bones to have a look.

Inside the prison where the humans were locked up, the walls were pitch black, dreary and without light.

Naturally, such a room would not have any decorations.

The oil-coloured wall paintings that were frequently seen around the ancient castle was not inside this room.

Despite having some guesses in his heart, Gu Liang did not divulge it for the time being, having decided to look at the other clues before speaking.

After Gu Liang returned to the main lobby, the new player Chief Mei finally spoke on his own accord: “It’s useless for us to discuss these right now. It’s going to be 11 soon. There’s only one hour to 12 o’ clock, there’s still a lot of rooms we haven’t checked. Let’s investigate them while we can.”

It goes without saying that everyone agreed with Chief Mei’s suggestion and went into the room on the other side first.

It was similar to the other room, wherein the large room was piled full of bones.

The slight difference from the previous room was that the other room only had one row of railings, whereas two out of four sides of the room’s walls had railings installed. It could be observed that the people who died in the room could only be more, not less.

After doing a simple check of the room, the group made their way towards the second floor.

From everyone’s perspective – Gu Liang and Yang Ye excluded – they only had an hour remaining and five floors to check, since the second to sixth floors were unexplored, which meant they could only allot slightly more than ten minutes to each floor in actuality.

* * *

The rough construction of the second floor was a corridor winding around the lobby and main hall, with rooms on both sides and the centre hollowed out by the stairs.

Everyone opened each room swiftly, and they were reduced into a superficial understanding of each room since they did not have the time to check them carefully.

Majority of the rooms were similar to the rooms found on the first floor, wherein they emitted a malodour and there were heaps of bones inside.

However, they did not appear to be human bones but the bones of various animals instead.

The remaining rooms on this floor either belonged to the servants, or were used as storage.

After opening all the room doors and following the corridor to walk around the entire floor, the players had already expended a fair amount of time.

Once everyone did a rough survey of the floor, they headed for the third floor together.

Since the centre portion of the second floor was hollowed out and linked to the first floor, it increased the sense of the space that the main hall had.

Hence, the area covered by the second floor was smaller, and the rooms were also smaller as a natural consequence.

Whereas the third floor was different, and its construction was more similar to the sixth floor. Although there was still a long corridor, and both sides of the corridor were lined with rooms, the rooms inside were much bigger, since they were occupying all the available surface area.

The corridor floors was furnished with red carpeting, and quite a few small counters were placed along the passageway, which had flower vases filled with roses placed on top.

The roses were absolutely fresh, and there were even dewdrops on the flowers.

Amidst their investigation, they found that the grand doors to a particular room was different from the others.

It could be discerned that the door to this room was exceptionally gorgeous with the intricate drawing of a sigil, and the doorframe seemed to be made out of real gold.

Given those factors, everyone naturally chose to check this room first.

After trying a few keys, they successfully opened the door.

The sight that greeted them once the door opened was a dreamy room, and it looked like it belonged to a lady.

The entire room had paintings, and all the drawings were roses.

The window curtains were velvet, the bed canopy was pink, and there were rose patterns on the exquisite carpet as well. It was as though everything in this room was exhibiting the fact that the owner of this room truly loved roses.

But when everyone pulled open the canopy, an object that posed a great contrast to this dreamy illusion emerged— There was a coffin.

The place that was supposed to have a bed had a coffin instead.

When everyone approached it, they realised that there was a row of English words carved on the coffin lid: “For My Dearest Princess.”

— For My Dearest Princess.

After a brief discussion, everyone decided to push open the coffin lid since there were no objections among them.

— The coffin was empty inside.

The pitch-black coffin was filled to the brim with fresh rose petals, thereby causing a sense of aesthetic beauty that stemmed from the interweaving of death and gothic allure.

After walking out from the Princess’ room, the players proceeded to open the next few doors, and those rooms probably belonged to the servants that served the Princess.

Then, the players quickly made their way to the fourth floor after departing from the third.

And if they were to say that the third floor was the residence of the rose-loving Princess, then the fourth floor should belong to Duke Dahl himself.

Right above the Princess’ room on the third floor was the Duke’s room.

There were simple portrait paintings in his room, and there was a coffin in the middle as well.

The interior was also empty.

When everyone reached the fifth floor, there was only half an hour remaining.

Likewise, they chose to open the most gorgeous room first. Under the aid of their electric torch lights, they could see that all the paintings on the walls were sunflowers when they walked inside the room.

And without any suspense, there was a coffin in the centre of the room when they pulled open the bed canopy.

The English words on the coffin lid wrote: “For The Love Of My Life”.

— For The Love Of My Life.

As everyone was working together to push open the coffin lid, they had arrived at the silent but tacit conclusion that it was empty inside a long time.

Contrary to their expectations, that was not the case.

There was someone inside.

She had no breath, no warmth, but her corpse still looked fresh, as if she had died not long ago.

Since everyone was crowding around the coffin, they shined their torch lights into the coffin immediately.

The numerous rays of lights illuminated one face— It was Li Xiao Yu’s.

“What the fuck—”

Owing to the fact that Li Xiao Yu had been through Undying Town, she had experience with facing her own corpse. While she was not frightened, she certainly was shocked.

“Xiao Yu, do you know what’s going on with this?” Gu Liang asked her.

Li Xiao Yu: “I don’t know!”

Meng Qian Cheng could not help but ask: “Are you a vampire or something? Were you the one who killed the chef in the morning?”

“Fuck.” Li Xiao Yu blurted out, “It’s not me, I didn’t, I really don’t know anything. I’m Confidant Ai’s mother, and I just arrived here today.”

Gu Liang frowned: “It seems like this floor is special. I would like to stay here longer, and I might not have the time to go to the sixth floor. Perhaps we should act separately?”

After he said that, Gu Liang glanced at Yang Ye.

Yang Ye understood what he was trying to convey. He wanted him to go to the sixth floor.

For one, it would create the impression that Yang Ye had never been to the sixth floor, and that he wanted to explore the sixth floor proactively.

Secondly, he could observe the players on the sixth floor, and see if they had discovered any traces that were disadvantageous to him and Gu Liang.

In the end, Yang Ye, Chief Mei, Su Lan, and Meng Qian Cheng chose to go to the sixth floor.

Whereas Gu Liang, Li Xiao Yu, and Sister Mei chose to remain on the fifth floor.

Since Gu Liang was planning to stay in this room to search for clues for the time being, he opened a few cupboards and conveniently found some candles.

After lighting up a few candles, the room was a lot brighter, which made it easier to check over the space. Otherwise, the players would have to hold onto and use their electric torches constantly, and they might worry if some kind of demon or monster would suddenly appear from the corner where their torch lights did not reach.

As he borrowed the candlelight to carefully scrutinise the room, Gu Liang went over the front of the dresser first.

Unlike the dressers typical of other women, this dresser did not have a mirror.

Truth to be told, it did not matter if it was the Princess’ room or the Duke’s room, because they had not seen a single mirror throughout their entire investigation.

It was probably because a mirror could not reflect a vampire, so they had no need for mirrors.

Upon pulling open the drawer, he found a diary inside.

When Sister Mei and Li Xiao Yu saw Gu Liang raising the diary, they moved closer and encircled him in order to read the diary together.

Only one of the pages inside the diary had recorded content, but there were traces of the diary having been torn before.

Unlike the book in Magnate Rong’s room where only one page was torn away, which subsequently allowed Gu Liang to use a pencil to restore the contents, nearly half of the pages in this diary were torn away, and they had no way of puzzling out what the torn section might have comprised.

The words written on this paper was not coherent, the handwriting was in a slight disarray. It could be imagined and perceived that the person writing this entry was not in the best state of mind back when.

“He actually said he loved me. Hysterical, this is absolutely hysterical. He killed so many people, killed my entire family, and yet he says he loves me… Irony, what irony.

“He forced me to drink human blood again today. He said that if I feasted on enough human blood, I would no longer have to fear the sunlight which I loved the most. He said he wanted to take a stroll with me under the sunlight. No, that will never occur.

“I would rather trap myself in this dark prison that is without sky or day, I would rather paint sunflowers instead of seeing true sunlight, I will never drink human blood! I will not do what he wants! Never!

“Dahl, you will have your retribution! You will have your retribution! I will drag you down to Hell even if I die!”

All three of them had their eyebrows tightly knitted when they were done reading the diary.

Finally, Gu Liang flipped the diary to the title page. In the place where names were meant to be inscribed, was the appellation “Aimeili”.

The author has something to say:

Since this chapter is a little stifling, here’s a small scene for everyone to play with.

[An imagined scenario, it is not serious, do not treat it seriously, take it for fun’s sake]

–

Gu Liang had gone to his class reunion.

When Yang Ye heard that Yu Hui would also be attending, he pushed back his various meetings and followed after Gu Liang without resting.

Who was Yu Hui— She was Liang Liang’s first love!

Seeing his first love behind my back? I can’t let that happen!

–

Contrary to Yang Ye’s expectations, however, there was a group of girls deriding Gu Liang when he arrived.

The room of girls were not young by any means either, and quite a few of them were carrying their children. Hence, when they were talking about things that happened a decade ago, they did not feel embarrassed and they were merely treating it as a light-hearted joke.

–

Yu Hui: “There was an instance during class where I secretly stretched out my hands towards Gu Liang, wanting to hold hands with him. Do you know? He actually gave me a pen! His original words were— The section that the teacher is explaining is quite important, remember to jot it down in your notebook. Is your pen out of ink?”

–

Female Classmate A: “After you transferred schools, there was a point in time where I really wanted to confess to Gu Liang, and I took the opportunity to run over to him during self-study class, and placed the confession letter inside his exercise booklet. In the end, he explained the questions to me the entire time, and he didn’t even look at that letter once! There were heart shapes drawn all over the surface! Why couldn’t he understand it! What kind of forever alone, straight guy patient is he!”

–

Female Classmate B: “After we completed our runs during physical education class, I would frequently send Gu Liang some water. And guess what he did afterwards? When he came looking for one day, I thought he was going to confess to me, but he ended up handing me a dozen dollars, saying that he was paying for the water fee. I asked him, do you know why I’m sending you water, and guess what he said?”

–

Amused, Yang Ye could not resist opening the door to the private room to quickly ask: “What did he say?”

–

Although no one knew who Yang Ye was, they could not stop the conversation halfway, so Female Classmate B continued to speak: “He said, my family runs a small snack counter in school, and I’m probably selling beverages?”

–

Yang Ye became elated. He felt that Gu Liang Liang was way too amusing, and he could not stop himself from joining their group. “I’ll tell you a story, there was one time where Gu Liang—”

–

Once everyone was done laughing and finally came to their senses, they asked him: “Who are you?”

–

“Cough.” Yang Ye said, “I’m his superior, I’m looking for him for his overtime at work—”

Before Yang Ye could finish his words, Gu Liang stood up and said with cold apathy, “He’s the person who’s going to kneel on the washing board when we get home.”

–

Yang Ye smiled: “Are you officialising our relationship in front of your old classmates?”

Gu Liang turned around and left. “Move, when we’re done buying your washing board, I’ll make it official with you.”