After the Little Crybaby Enters the Nightmare Cycle

Mosaic School (7)

Chi Nan calmly accepted reality. “Thank you for letting me know.”

Tang Yu was so worried that she bit her nails as she kept asking what they should do. Finally, she washed her hands clean and changed her contact lenses to glasses. “This can maintain the physical strength of my eyes. I can’t last all night wearing contact lenses.”

It was the most reliable way she could think of.

The seven people who gave Tang Yu the white flowers had mixed feelings. In the midst of their pity and sympathy, they couldn’t help feeling surprised by their casual bet.

The two dormitories were side by side at the end of the corridor. The furthermost room was the school doctor’s office that Chi Nan had visited during the day.

Before entering the door, Tang Yu turned to look at Chi Nan. “If either of us encounter something, maybe we can find a way to notify the other person for help. The female teacher only said that we aren’t allowed to change dormitories, but didn’t mention that we can’t go to the door or anything…”

Even so, Tang Yu was just comforting herself. No one knew if they would have a chance to call for help after danger occurred.

Chi Nan nodded. “If there is a situation, knock on the wall. I can hear it.”

“Huh?” Tang Yu was stunned.

“I’ve tried it before,” Chi Nan said firmly.

He had tried it with 229 last night. The sound insulation of the walls was very bad.

Seeing his calmness to the point of being expressionless, Tang Yu felt that her nervousness was just making a fuss and she relaxed her mood slightly. “No problem.”

Chi Nan returned to his dormitory, took a bath, and took medicine like yesterday. Before going to bed, he checked the windows and doors. Finally, his eyes fell on the mirror on the inside of the closet door.

It stood to reason that the bathroom already had a mirror. Why add a big mirror in the closet? It was also a student dormitory… it seemed a bit out of the norm.

Chi Nan paid attention to it, but he couldn’t come to a useful conclusion for now. The cold medicine started taking effect. Chi Nan sneezed and yawned before falling on the bed. He wrapped himself tightly in the quilt and fell into a deep sleep.

In the middle of the night, Chi Nan felt a beam of light on his eyelids that was bright.

He struggled a few times to wake up. Once he opened his eyes, the light hit his face.

During the time when he was blind, he could always sleep until dawn without suffering from his sleep being interrupted by the light.

Chi Nan instinctively covered his eyes with his hands and adjusted to the light little by little.

The source of the light was the wall facing the bed. It became a projector at some point, and a video was automatically playing without being controlled.

The protagonist in the video was himself. To be precise, it was Chi Nan who used this body.

The ‘Chi Nan’ in the video was unusual. The vivid and exaggerated fear and tension on his face made the image slightly distorted. This rich and tense expression would never appear on Chi Nan’s face.

The video covered the entire wall. There were two black shadows in the video besides the distorted ‘Chi Nan.’

One of the shadows had a rough hemp rope in his hand, and the other end of the rope was tied into a knot and loosely wrapped around Chi Nan’s neck.

The movement of his muscles and his posture seemed like he was going to strangle Chi Nan with a rope.

Another black shadow was carrying a gasoline can and seemed like he was going to burn down the dormitory.

The projection seemed like the pause button had been pressed. The actions of the black shadows and ‘Chi Nan’ were paused.

Chi Nan touched his neck. There was no hemp rope around it at all. He reached out his hand and waved it at the projection screen. His ‘self’ inside the video was still stuck in the twisted expression of extreme fear, without any change.

This meant his actions couldn’t affect the actions of the characters in the projection. Chi Nan came to this conclusion.

He tried to look behind him again. There was only a tightly sealed window with nothing outside the window except a bunch of snowflakes.

Just as Chi Nan was going to look back at the projection screen, a dull pain abruptly came from his neck as if he was being strangled. Oxygen was isolated in an instant.

Chi Nan quickly shifted his gaze back to the video. Due to his gaze, the image was fixed on the action of the black shadow tightening the rope. The rough limes of the rope created a shocking red mark on ‘Chi Nan’s neck.’

There was obviously nothing unusual in the room, but the smell of gasoline seemed to overflow from the projection. The intensity filled Chi Nan’s nose.

He immediately organized his thoughts. Just now, he had looked back and caused his line of sight to leave the video. It was only less than two seconds, but the video that was out of his sight started to play automatically. The plot of ‘Chi Nan’ being killed in the video was also sped forward until he turned to look at the video again, when the video playing was forced to stop.

The initial state of the system must be frozen by high-frequency observation or the system must be prevented from changing…

The system mentioned here could be replaced with the death video.

In other words, his viewing behavior was equivalent to pressing the pause button for the projected video. It would continue to play as long as he looked away.

The scenes shown in the video corresponded to the reality that would happen to him. For example, Chi Nan in the video was being strangled and he also experienced a sense of suffocation in reality. The smell of gasoline in the video also filled Room 210 where he was staying…

It was conceivable that if his self in the video died…in reality, he would die of the same pain.

This video was equivalent to a death trailer. All the scenes would become real after it was aired!

The only way to stop the video of death from playing was to not take his eyes off it.

There was no tension on Chi Nan’s face at all. He and his image were facing each other. The other party was frozen while he was free except for the staring part. The other person’s facial muscles were tight and twisted, while there was nothing on his face apart from a bit of annoyance from being woken up.

There was a sharp contrast between the two identical faces.

Chi Nan blinked and the video moved forward one frame. He looked at the closet behind him again and the invisible rope continued to tighten while he looked away. Chi Nan’s Adam’s apple moved with difficulty and he coughed twice.

In the video, his eyes dilated due to fear as he stared helplessly off the screen.

The other shadow had already lit the lighter. Sparks had sunk into the gasoline-soaked carpet and scarlet flames rose. Due to the synchronization with reality, Room 201 immediately became warmer.

Chi Nan had to continue watching the video as he moved step by step backwards toward the closet. He opened the closet door and aimed the mirror on the inside at the video.

In the video, the frightened facial expression of ‘Chi Nan’ was clearly reflected in the mirror and the mirror image was the opposite of the video.

Chi Nan adjusted the angle. He confirmed that the ‘Chi Nan’ in the video and the ‘Chi Nan’ in the mirror were facing each other. Then he tried to look away. As he expected, the feeling of suffocation didn’t come back and the fire didn’t continue to spread. The video stayed at the original progress bar and didn’t move forward.

By using the mirror image for the high-frequency observation to stare at himself in the death video, Chi Nan could lie back and sleep.

After all of this, the quilt that was hard to warm was completely cold. Fortunately, the fire in the death video was burning and Room 201 seemed to be supplied with heat. It was warm and dry.

At this point, Chi Nan was a bit grateful for the help that 229 sent.

Chi Nan quickly fell asleep in the warm dormitory, leaving only the mirror image and video staring at each other in the darkness.

At dawn, Chi Nan finally struggled to get up after the alarm rang five times.

The closet was still open, but the mirror only reflected a white wall. There was no video of Chi Nan being strangled by the shadow and the temperature of the room had plummeted.

The projected video on the wall disappeared without a trace after dawn.

Chi Nan was so cold that he didn’t want to stretch. He quickly put on the school uniform and closed the closet. Before closing the door, he saw a circle of red marks on his neck in the mirror as he tightened the neckline of the school uniform.

The snow stopped and it was another sunny day outside the window.

Chi Nan had just come out of the dormitory when he bumped into Tang Yu, who had dressed and gone out. She saw Chi Nan and exclaimed with a smile, “It is great that we’re both fine.”

She yawned as she spoke, her eyes dark. “Sorry, I didn’t dare to sleep last night. I stared whenever I heard something because I was so nervous…”

“It is a death preview video,” Chi Nan told her.

Tang Yu was stunned. ”What? Did you encounter it?”

Chi Nan nodded while Tang Yu was incredulous. “So you didn’t sleep all of last night?”

“No, I solved it using a mirror,” Chi Nan answered before sneezing. “I slept well. It was very warm.”

They knew that there would be a test on the school rules later, so all the sleepwalkers gathered in the cafeteria to exchange information and find ideas for answering the questions.

Last night, in addition to Chi Nan, Guo Xian’s Room 205 also encountered a death video. The method adopted by his dormitory was to watch the video in shifts, changing person every half an hour. After one night, the two of them had dark circles under their eyes like they were beaten up.

Guo Xian yawned continuously. “No no no, I have to make up some sleep during the lunch break. My awakening value definitely won’t be stable at this rate.”

The girl with the buns bit a deep fried breadstick and thought about it. “Now Guo Xian and Chi Nan encountered the death video in the 205 and 210 dormitories. Is it because the two of you were the only ones who got full marks for yesterday’s test?”

Guo Xian was thoughtful. “There is such a possibility, but it isn’t necessarily the case. It might’ve just selected the two of us randomly.”

The girl with the buns frowned. “Is there such a coincidence?”

Guo Xian shrugged. “Look and see if any other dormitories encountered it. Then there will be more samples to judge.”

“Only Dong Xiaoxiao and Fang Yue of Room 203 haven’t come. Did something happen in their dormitory…” the girl looked in the direction of the cafeteria door and muttered quietly.

Guo Xian replied, “If they don’t come to class then it is likely…the death video also appeared in Room 203. Then Tong Yu’s previous guess isn’t right.”

Tong Yu was the girl with the buns who ate the lollipop like she was smoking.

After learning about the method that Chi Nan used to crack the Zeno effect death rule alone, Guo Xiao called him a good guy. “Compared to you, Jiang Liang and I staring at the video all night are simply two fools.”

Chi Nan thought about it and felt they weren’t stupid. They would just have sore eyes.

“By the way, you are so daring to be able to sleep peacefully while using the mirror to face the video. I could never do it.” Guo Xian sighed.

Chi Nan yawned again in a listless manner. “I took cold medicine so it is easy to sleep.”

At 9:30, the teacher closed the door of Classroom 103.

The two students from Room 203 didn’t show up to the end. The group stared at the slowly closing door of the classroom and sighed inwardly.

“Students, I have to tell you the unfortunate news that two of your classmates were punished last night for breaking the school rules.”

“They are Dong Xiaoxiao and Fang Yue of Room 203. It is a pity. I hope that the students will pay attention to abide by the school rules in your future studies, and take this as a warning.”

Then she distributed the test papers to the remaining 14 students according to the same process as yesterday morning. “You need to work backwards based on the results of last night’s punishment to determine the cause of death of the two students. You will get credits if you answer correctly.”

“The students who were tested last night and survived in compliance with the school rules will also get credits as encouragement.”

Due to yesterday’s experience, today’s Classroom 103 was very quiet. They received the test papers and started writing.

The question wasn’t very different from yesterday’s.

[Which school rule did Dong Xiaoxiao and Fang Yue break that caused them to be punished with death?]

The answer was obvious. They broke the Zeno effect mentioned in yesterday’s physics class and didn’t use the high-frequency observation to prevent the death video from playing. It caused what happened in the death video to become a reality.

10 minutes later, all the sleepwalkers completed the test.

The teacher collected the test papers and looked at them one by one. Then she showed a smile of approval. “Today, all the students answered correctly. I am proud of you.”

Everyone in the classroom was relieved and even a bit happy. After all, answering the question would give them credits that could be exchanged for favorability. They would be one step closer to their wishes.

The death school rule was unlocked and the teacher played the death video of Room 203 as she did yesterday.

The two girls drowned. They were obviously surrounded by air, but they breathed desperately like their drowning ‘selves’ in the video. They opened their mouths as wide as possible, but couldn’t breathe in air. They struggled on the ground and crawled for help. Once they touched the foot of the wardrobe or bed, they grasped it like it was a life-saving straw, but there seemed to be invisible waves that swept over them again and again. Finally, their physical strength was exhausted and they lay on the ground in the middle of the dormitory. Their bodies went from violent convulsions to complete stiffness. They had drowned to death.

“If they had stared at the video like we stated in advance, then there wouldn’t have been such a tragedy.” Guo Xian carefully watched the video and analyzed it. It was a pity that the two newcomers were dominated by fear and completely forgot what they learned during the day. The moment they saw the death video, they were in chaos and instinctively looked at the dormitory door for help.

Unfortunately, in the design of the nightmare, there was no way to escape once the death rule was triggered.

After the morning class, Chi Nan went directly to the school infirmary according to yesterday’s agreement.

“Chi Nan, why are you going to the infirmary again?” Guo Xian asked a bit suspiciously.

Chi Nan wiped his nose. “My cold isn’t better.”

He always had no emotions, so the other person couldn’t tell if he was being serious or perfunctory. Guo Xian thought about it before saying, “I will also go. I have a small stomach ache and I want some medicine to be prescribed.”

Chi Nan naturally suggested, “I have diarrhea medicine. Do you need it?”

Was this classmate preventing him from going to the school doctor’s office? Guo Xian found it more and more interesting. “Thank you, but I don’t dare to take medicine indiscriminately. I still want to go to the doctor to see.”

TL: The names are similar but just a reminder that Tong Yu and Tang Yu are different people. Tong Yu is the girl with the lollipops while Tang Yu is the long-haired, transgender girl.

Proofreader: Kat