Horror Game Designer Chapter 7: Tickets

Room 2507 was basically the same as before. Everything Brother Zhao owned remained. The dresser, the coffee table, the couch, all the furniture was there. Brother Zhao was a frugal person, and his place was spartan. The place felt deserted and unlived.

Rain pattered on the window. The sky was dark even though it was only 6 pm. Xuan Wen did not turn on the light. She walked to the balcony and looked down at the apartments’ shared yard.

After some thought, Gao Ming also entered Room 2507. His eyes were soon attracted by the living room wall. At the most obvious spot, there was a giant picture frame covered by a black cloth.

“Do you want to know what that is?” Xuan Wen did not turn around, but she knew what Gao Ming was thinking. “You can remove the cloth.”

Gao Ming pinched a corner of the cloth and lightly pulled. As the cloth fell, a giant black-and-white wedding picture appeared before him. Gao Ming and Xuan Wen in the picture smiled brilliantly. However, Gao Ming was in colour while Xuan Wen, including her exaggerated wedding dress, was black-and-white.

“Another death portrait?” Gao Ming had no idea when he had taken this wedding picture with Xuan Wen.

“Do you remember now?” Xuan Wen turned around. Her smile was still gentle, but her presence was very abnormal. Secret sunk in her beautiful eyes.

“What happened in the tunnel on the night of the Hungry Ghost Festival?” Gao Ming stayed close to the front door so he could book it at any time.

“You took a car you should not have and went to a place you shouldn’t.” Xuan Wen looked at Gao Ming with extreme love. It scared Gao Ming, but it also felt very familiar. “You have forgotten everything in the tunnel. That’s your body protecting you because your subconscious refuses to accept the horrible truth.”

“Then, how would you know what happened in the tunnel? You should have appeared because of my game. Timeline-wise, you should not know about the tunnel.” Gao Ming retreated to the door.

“Because I sent you home that night.” Xuan Wen took another step forward. “Do you still remember the storyline you gave me in To Our Transient Love? I will always know where you are because I love to look at you. This interesting power and my deep desire compelled me to search for you when I first woke up.”

Just the description chilled Gao Ming. He had no idea dating sim could be so scary.

“What did you see?”

“Dead bodies with pain visages were embedded into the tunnel wall. When I arrived, you were talking with something as you walked deeper into the tunnel. I was the one who brought you out.” It was hard to tell if Xuan Wen was lying or not, but when she said these things, there was fear in her eyes.

“If it were just a wall of bodies, I wouldn’t be so scared that I lost my memories. But I do remember hearing some voices.” Gao Ming tried his best to remember, but he got nothing. “Do you remember what the voice said?”

“Everything is spiralling out of control. Ghosts wander the streets, and human evil will overturn the city. The games you’ve made based on crimes and ghost stories might become true. They will crawl out of your rotten memory. The only way to weaken them is to have more people play your games. You can choose to lead them to clear the games or choose to sacrifice them to feed the ghostly stories. Different choices will lead to different rewards and punishments.” After a short pause, Xuan Wen continued, “The voice said that you should have died. It gave you a chance to live. You two seemed to have come to a trade.”

“I should have died…” Gao Ming pondered it. “Did I die in the tunnel? I was resurrected?! This makes no sense!”

“If you don’t believe me or think that I’m lying to you, you can ask the other passengers on the bus that night.” Xuan Wen sat on the couch. “When I led you out of the tunnel, I saw other living people.”

“Were there other living passengers?”

“Yes. But I was in too much of a hurry to notice their faces. If I had known, I would capture them and torture them for the truth.” Xuan Wen changed into slippers. She used the most casual tone to say the scariest thing.

Gao Ming took another step back since the sky was darkening, and he got all the info he needed already.

“Are you that desperate to leave now that you’ve gotten the things you want?” Xuan Wan turned to Gao Ming with a smile. “I don’t think you remember the promise you gave me in the tunnel, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s alright. You have time to remember it.” Xuan Wen took out a black-and-white portrait from her bra. “When I opened my eyes in this world, this picture appeared beside me. For the past three days, as I eliminated the other female characters from the dating sim, the wedding picture started to change too.”

Xuan Wen compared the picture in her hand to the giant wedding portrait on the wall. It was clear that the wedding picture in her hand was gaining colour.

“The other female characters from the game appeared under some unknown influence. Technically, they were already dead. But…” Xuan Wen’s eyes burned with sadistic passion. “Death portraits are the dead’s memories for those who are still living. When the black-and-black portrait becomes colourful, does it mean that the person in the picture will come back alive? Killing others seem to be able to help me break some shackles.”

“Is that why you can move through the city freely?” Gao Ming shivered when he heard how Xuan Wen had casually murdered eight women in three days.

The side character in the dating sim had her mind twisted by her lover. However, when she came to real life, her persistence and directness made her someone who understood the situation more than Gao Ming.

Xuan Wen’s appearance also warned Gao Ming. In the games he made, other than ghosts and monsters, there were many humans with ‘crazy’ potential.

“I just want to be like you.” Xuan Wen spoke faster, and her status became weird. She stated the real reason she approached Gao Ming. “After multiple trials, I notice something. The games need a process to assimilate into reality. The scarier the game, the slower it’ll combine with this city. There will be various warnings beforehand. To speed up this process, you’ll need to satisfy three conditions: a place where someone just died, a death portrait from that world and you.”

Standing inside Room 2507, Gao Ming finally understood Wen Xuan’s intention. She wanted to hunt down and devour ghosts from Gao Ming’s games before they could fully formulate in the real world.

“The crime scene is the game setting, the death portraits are the tickets to enter the game, and you are the channel.” Xuan Wen grabbed Gao Ming by his collar. “That voice told you to bring more players into the game. I should be a player too, right?” Xuan Wan opened her handbag. It contained eight blank death portraits. “I have a lot of tickets.”

“Calm down. This is just your hypothesis.” Gao Ming became less worried after he found out about Xuan Wen’s goal. He looked at her face closely and could not find any flaws. “But I can help you. Tonight, we’ll verify your hypothesis in Room 2507.”

Gao Ming was a criminal psychiatrist. He knew how to deal with dangerous people.

Just at that moment, footsteps came from the corridor. Then, the bell rang.

After Xuan Wen replaced the black cloth over the wedding portrait, Gao Ming opened the front door. The investigator with the ruined face stood there and said with hurried breath. “This room is very dangerous. You have to move out now!”