Kaleidoscope of Death

Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zixu

Under the weight of night, Lin Qiushi finally slipped down into sleep. But it was unsteady; due to his hearing, even small movements could wake him from his dreams.

Tonight was no exception. As he slept, he once again heard an odd sound.

Af first this sound was faint and not very clear. Lin Qiushi wanted to sleep, so kept his eyes shut. But as time went on, the sound became gradually louder. If he had to describe it, he’d say it sounded like something heavy hitting the ground.

As Lin Qiushi pondered what the sound was and whether or not he ought to get up, he was startled fully awake by a loud bang. It really was too loud—even Ruan Nanzhu in the bunk above and Feng Yongle across from him heard it.

“What’s going on?” came Feng Yongle’s mumbling voice.

Ruan Nanzhu knew Lin Qiushi must be awake, and said, “it came from the window.”

Feng Yongle, “should we go see?”

Ruan Nanzhu, “wait a bit longer.”

So the three continued to lie in bed. A few minutes later there was another loud bang, this time much closer to them.

Lin Qiushi heard Ruan Nanzhu sit up in bed. He was slowly descending, and seemed to want to see what was happening outside the window.

So Lin Qiushi also got up and off to bed to look with him.

Ruan Nanzhu peered at him, but said nothing.

The two left their beds and came to the window. They worried about something being outside, so moved carefully.

“There’s nothing there.” Ruan Nanzhu looked from the window and confirmed the view outside.

Nothing? Lin Qiushi began to type: it sounded like something heavy hitting the ground.

Ruan Nanzhu, “hitting the ground?”

He seemed to have thought of something.

As Ruan Nanzhu was thinking, Lin Qiushi, who faced the window, saw a black shadow fall past. And then there was the familiar sound—BANG!

This time, Lin Qiushi finally knew what the sound was. It was somebody jumping from the building above and hitting the ground.

Ruan Nanzhu looked out the window once more, only to see that the ground that had been bare before now had on it a corpse, snapped and shattered from the fall. The body was partially hidden by the night, but Lin Qiushi could clearly see it was wearing a sanatorium nurse’s uniform. Liters of fresh blood gushed from her form. She seemed to have landed head first, her whole body contorted oddly on the hard cement, still slowly spasming.

This was the source of the noise. Ruan Nanzhu watched the corpse in silence for a while, before murmuring, “so it’s hers.”

Lin Qiushi didn’t understand and glanced at him, perplexed.

Ruan Nanzhu explained, “she wore the red high heels…”

Lin Qiushi, “…”

As they spoke, the nurse’s tattered body actually started to move again. Both her legs seemed to have shattered in the fall, and so she dragged herself forward by her arms, heading back to the building before her…

Feng Yongle had gotten up too, and this was the first sight he saw when he got to the window. He went pale, and uttered a curse.

The nurse’s corpse quickly crawled back into the building they were in, and the bloodstains on the ground began to fade.

Just as Lin Qiushi wondered what would happen next, he heard rustling noises coming from the stairs. Luckily it didn’t come towards them, but went to the floor above.

Three minutes later, a shadow jumped from above them. There was another bang—that nurse had climbed to the room directly atop theirs, and jumped again.

“I heard that people who commit suicide continuously relive the scene of their death,” Feng Yongle said, watching the scene before him. “That’s terrifying.”

Ruan Nanzhu slowly said, “yes, terrifying.” Though he said that, he didn’t sound scared at all.

So this nurse continued to climb, and continued to jump. Left to right, she jumped from basically every room across the whole building. It was only when dawn brushed the horizon that it all finally ended.

Ruan Nanzhu looked at his watch and said it was almost breakfast time, come on.

Lin Qiushi practically stayed up the entire night, and was horribly sleepy. He yawned and rubbed at his eyes.

As the three went down to the cafeteria they bumped into some of the others, who also seemed to have suffered sleepless nights. They probably watched the building-jumping all night too.

“I’m exhausted,” Feng Yongle complained. “Why don’t we go back for a nap later?”

“Sure,” Ruan Nanzhu said.

Lin Qiushi mentally agreed. The twin dark circles under his eyes only made him look more frail. At the cafeteria, the guy Jiang Yingrui who had wanted to team up sat just a seat over. He smiled after spotting them. Lin Qiushi ignored it, but Ruan Nanzhu smiled back.

“Good morning,” Jiang Yingrui approached. “Slept well last night?”

“Not really,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “Didn’t you hear that noise?”

“Of course I did.” Jiang Yingrui spoke to Ruan Nanzhu with his eyes on Lin Qiushi. “You didn’t watch all night, did you?”

“I’m fine, but Qiuqiu seems to be a light sleeper. She couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up with her,” Ruan Nanzhu replied. “You guys all slept?”

Jiang Yingrui, “of course.”

“Oh, that’s impressive,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “Was there anything else?”

“No,” Jiang Yingrui smiled. “How do you like the breakfast?”

“Average.” Ruan Nanzhu set down his spoon. “What, you don’t think it’s yummy do you?”

Jiang Yingrui shook his head, pulled a chocolate from his pockets, and handed it to Ruan Nanzhu. “If you’re hungry, munch on this.”

Lin Qiushi saw this chocolate, and stared evenly at Jiang Yingrui.

Jiang Yingrui didn’t notice his stare and got up. “I’ll be off then.”

“Okay.” Ruan Nanzhu took the chocolate, slipped it into his own pocket, and smiled. “See you.”

Jiang Yingrui turned around and left.

“This chocolate looks good,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “After our nap, let’s give it a taste.” Though his tone was calm, like the matter they spoke of was inconsequential, Lin Qiushi knew him well, and knew that at that moment, Ruan Nanzhu was angry.

As he should be. Lin Qiushi wiped his mouth. That damn Jiang Yingrui, who knew what he was planning.

Inside the doors, some key NPCs gave them clues as well as rules. The clues were mostly true, but the rules could be true or false.

Such as only eating in the dining hall and that outside food was not allowed. These were some of the rules that the nurse who guided them upstairs had given.

Judging by the noodle-eating patient who stabbed his own eyeball yesterday, the rule against outside food was true.

This was already door six, and Jiang Yingrui wasn’t a newbie—so despite the rules, he’d knowingly given Ruan Nanzhu that chocolate. He really was an instigator.

If they hadn’t noticed or hadn’t remembered the nurse’s rules—and consequently ate that chocolate—who knew what would happen?

Even if nothing happened, they were just proving a rule fake for everybody else.

After getting back, Ruan Nanzhu got the chocolate out and carefully examined it. After confirming it was just a normal bar of chocolate, he broke it up and tossed it down the plumbing.

As he did this Lin Qiushi stood beside him, and was a bit wary. He typed: when I first got here, that Jiang Yingrui wanted to team up with me.

Ruan Nanzhu, “he approached you directly?”

Mh, Lin Qiushi answered. Very directly. Like he’d… locked onto me in the crowd. He didn’t quite understand: Is there something notable about me?

At this, Ruan Nanzhu smiled strangely. “For a certain kind of people, you certainly are notable.

Lin Qiushi: hm?

Ruan Nanzhu, "it seems he and I are a bit similar.”

Lin Qiushi kept curiously watching Ruan Nanzhu.

Ruan Nanzhu murmured, “we can both see things.”

Lin Qiushi startled, and wanted to ask more, but Ruan Nanzhu didn’t want to answer further. After careful thought, Lin Qiushi remembered his first meeting with Ruan Nanzhu. He’d thought then that Ruan Nanzhu treated him differently. Though the explanation later on was that Ruan Nanzhu had mistaken him for a client, deep inside, Lin Qiushi didn’t believe Ruan Nanzhu would actually make such an amateurish mistake.

He had an answer to that question now.

Ruan Nanzhu can see things, and on him, there was something that attracted Ruan Nanzhu’s gaze.

Lin Qiushi wondered what that thing was.

And Ruan Nanzhu leaned in close, lips nibbling lightly along the shell of Lin Qiushi’s ear. “Of course it’s your beauty, Miss Mute.”

Lin Qiushi shivered at the sensation and made to move back, but Ruan Nanzhu caught him by the arm.

“Or what did you think was so special about you?” Ruan Nanzhu chuckled. That insolent gaze did not match his pretty face at all, and inspired a flinch.

For a moment, Lin Qiushi couldn’t tell in Ruan Nanzhu was serious, or just play-acting.

Luckily Feng Yongle knocked on the door at this moment, calling, “what have you two been doing in there for so long?”

Ruan Nanzhu shoved his way out the door. “None of your business.”

Feng Yongle cringed back at Ruan Nanzhu’s ruthless glare, and rather pitifully said, “I… I also need to use the bathroom.”

Ruan Nanzhu, “your kidneys are that weak at this age?”

Feng Yongle, “…”

Ruan Nanzhu, “pathetic much?”

Feng Yongle snapped, “want to give it a go then?”

Ruan Nanzhu looked at Feng Yongle with a cool smile. “Want to?”

Then Feng Yongle wilted, scampering into the bathroom and pretending like he hadn’t said anything.

Lin Qiushi watched Ruan Nanzhu with a grin.

Ruan Nanzhu put on an innocent face. “Babe, don’t look at me like that. Don’t worry, you still have my whole heart.”

Lin Qiushi couldn’t be bothered, and returned to bed for rest.

They napped for an hour, then got back up to explore the sanatorium some more.

Feng Yongle had provided them with the hint for this door. Ruan Nanzhu took this gig because the backstory was relatively detailed, and the world seemed parsable.

When the NPC was giving them the clues to the key and exit, Lin Qiushi and Ruan Nanzhu both recalled a detail from their research into the hint.

It was that in Waverly Hills Sanatorium, there was a very special tunnel.

This tunnel was once used for transporting cargo, but as the number of deaths in Waverly increased, the tunnel gained another purpose—transporting dead bodies.

After the bodies were wrapped up, they left the Waverly through that tunnel. The tunnel’s original function was reduced, and it became known as the tunnel of death.

“That tunnel is probably a key hint,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “There’s an 80% chance that’s where the door is.”

The nurse said they only had seven days. Seven days until their treatment—this was a clear warning to find a way out within that timeframe.

If they failed to leave by then… who knew what could happen.

“Since it’s a tunnel it must be close to the ground,” Feng Yongle joined the analysis. “Should we search along the edges of the sanatorium?”

“It’s not necessarily close to the ground.” Ruan Nanzhu shook his head. “It could be in a room. This isn’t the normal world after all, and architectural laws don’t have to be followed. Let’s go check out the original tunnel location first.”

“Alright,” Feng Yongle agreed.

Lin Qiushi discovered that pretending to be mute was nice too. Not needing to speak meant he had more time to think.

The tunnels of Waverly were originally located in the building’s ground floor. After a large circle around, they weren’t surprised to have found nothing.

Just as Ruan Nanzhu said, the location of the tunnel has moved.

“So where can it be?” Feng Yongle said. “The building’s huge.”

Ruan Nanzhu shook his head in silence.

Lin Qiushi typed: then let’s search floor by floor. We can look for other clues too.

That was the only way. So the three started from the bottom and went upwards, searching for clues to the tunnel.

On their way up they bumped into another group. Compared to them, the other group seemed much more anxious. They didn’t know about the tunnel after all, nor did they know this sanatorium’s history. To find the exit, they had to start from the most basic clues.

Lin Qiushi once again realized how deeply important the door hints were.

After three stories, they didn’t find anything noteworthy. Only a group of highly disturbed patients.

The sanatorium was a pretty awful place; patients were even parked right in the halls. The warm season has passed, and the wind hissing in was chilly, but these patients were put right by the windows—it supposedly helped them breathe fresher air.

Lin Qiushi knew this from the background research, but seeing it for real still made him uncomfortable… They were treating human lives like weeds.

On the fifth floor, they went first to that legendary Room 502.

A huge lock hung on the door, but it was nothing in face of Ruan Nanzhu.

Under Feng Yongle’s stunned gaze, Ruan Nanzhu easily coaxed the lock apart.

The door opened with a push, revealing a dust-drenched room.

It looked long out of use, and like an office of some sort. This was because there was no sickbed, just a bookshelf and desk.

What caught Lin Qiushi’s attention was the fact that there were books on the shelf.

They walked inside the room.

Lin Qiushi pulled a book from the shelf, and found it was a medical text. Turned out, most of the books were about treating patients. It was just that medical studies at the time operated from majorly misguided beliefs. Lin Qiushi remembered things like blood-letting that seemed absolutely ridiculous to people today.

“Oh fuck, what is this!” Feng Yongle had been searching through the drawers, but now suddenly backpedaled, scared by something.

Lin Qiushi got close, and saw the drawer in front of Feng Yongle had been pulled open, revealing a dried-up corpse inside. This body was small, clearly an infant less than a month old.

“Why’s it here?” Feng Yongle asked. “And didn’t the clue say… the abortion failed?”

A failed abortion wasn’t so serious nowadays; the procedure just had to be repeated. But for a sanatorium of that time with limited knowledge of medical procedures, it was pretty much fatal. And most importantly, this child was actually an unrecognized bastard.

“So the abortion failed.” Ruan Nanzhu observed for a while. “This infant’s corpse is missing a part.”

Feng Yongle grimaced. “You’re very brave.”

Ruan Nanzhu was silent, and just as Lin Qiushi thought he wouldn’t say anything else, he surprised them with a declaration: “this dead baby was recently placed in here.”

“What?” Feng Yongle was shocked.

“There’s no dust around it,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “…It’s quite clean.”

Everything else in the room was covered in dust, except this. The infant’s corpse did not have any dust on it, and was in fact very clean, like someone had carefully laid it in there.

Lin Qiushi paced two rounds around the dead baby, and discovered a locked cabinet beneath the drawer. He waved at Ruan Nanzhu, and pointed.

Ruan Nanzhu half-crouched and opened the cabinet too with his hairpin.

The cabinet opened, revealing a shoebox. Ruan Nanzhu glanced at Lin Qiushi, then opened the box. Inside was a single red high heel—identical to the one they saw in the hall yesterday.

The moment they opened the shoebox, Lin Qiushi suddenly heard the sniffle of an infant. He stiffened, and quickly realized that the cry was coming from inside the drawer…

“Uwa, uwa!” Like a newborn baby, the desiccated infant opened its eyes. Its arms and legs started moving too.

It tried to climb out of the drawer, but Ruan Nanzhu reacted quickly, shoving the drawer back shut.

“Go,” Ruan Nanzhu said.

The three turned and left as one. They didn’t forget to redo the lock in front.

Once they left the room, the infant’s crying stopped.

There was a thin layer of cold sweat on Feng Yongle’s forehead. He swallowed. “That baby, could it be related to the key?”

“I don’t know,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “But we can be sure it has something to do with the red heels.”

As they spoke, they returned to their dwellings downstairs.

Due to the incident yesterday, Lin Qiushi took particular care to check their door number before going in. Once he was sure it hadn’t turned into the peculiar 502, he finally made to go in.

But even though their door hadn’t become 502, the one next to them had. Lin Qiushi was going to go warn them, but Ruan Nanzhu pulled him back: “that’s Jiang Yingrui’s room.”

Lin Qiushi’s footsteps stalled.

“Since he likes you so much, and gave me that chocolate—” Ruan Nanzhu said this with a smile that was only on the flesh. “—we ought to give him a gift right back.”

Lin Qiushi nodded in understanding.

Jiang Yingrui definitely gave Ruan Nanzhu that chocolate with ulterior motives. Lin Qiushi wasn’t so naive that he thought Jiang Yingrui actually cared about Ruan Nanzhu not eating well.

Feng Yongle didn’t care either, expressing that everybody in the group beside his teammates were competition. It was nothing if one died.

They returned to the room to discuss the day’s findings.

As they spoke however, Lin Qiushi heard whispering footsteps at their door. The steps were very light—if Lin Qiushi’s hearing hadn’t been so supernaturally sensitive, he’d have missed it too.

Lin Qiushi first thought this was like the running heels yesterday, but after the footsteps, he heard a soft sound on their door, like paper scraping against wood.

Lin Qiushi made a gesture to stop, interrupting Ruan Nanzhu and Feng Yongle’s discussion. He pointed at the door.

Ruan Nanzhu understood, got up, and went to the door to pull it open.

It revealed a startled-looking girl. Lin Qiushi remembered her name. She was the one who wanted to join them, but got turned away yesterday by Ruan Nanzhu—Xue Zhiyun.

“Yes?” Ruan Nanzhu asked coldly.

“N- Nothing.” Xue Zhiyun’s expression was hassled. “I… just wanted to come say hi.”

Ruan Nanzhu looked up at their door, only to see that their room number 406 had been removed, and was currently clutched in Xue Zhiyun’s hand. Her other hand was hidden behind her back, and she was shaking lightly all over.

“What’s in your hand?” Ruan Nanzhu’s voice was very light.

Xue Zhiyun’s trembling got worse. The person in front of her wasn’t shouting, and didn’t even look particularly aggressive, but she was thoroughly frightened. There were even goosebumps slipping up her back.

“What is in your hand?” Ruan Nanzhu asked again.

Lin Qiushi knew Ruan Nanzhu was about to erupt, and so rushed forward before he could to snatch away what Xue Zhiyun was hiding behind her back.

It was a door number. The digits on it, 502, was clearly, stingingly discernible.

Ruan Nanzhu saw this door number, and smiled. He reached out, grabbed Xue Zhiyun by the hair, and yanked her face right up until they were staring eye-to-eye. “Xue Zhiyun, was it? I know you now— No, I should say I know the two of you now.”

Xue Zhiyun was so scared that she was shaking, as she tearfully apologized to Ruan Nanzhu.

Ruan Nanzhu released Xue Zhiyun’s hand that he’d grabbed and took the door number from Lin Qiushi. He spoke calmly, as if an ocean before the storm. “I recommend sleeping apart tonight, and best in multiple rooms.” He began to smile again. “After all, who knows when this number will appear on your door?”

As soon as he finished, Xue Zhiyun burst into sobs.

But Ruan Nanzhu just mercilessly shut the door.

Lin Qiushi looked at the closed door and frowned. “Why would they do this? Don’t people murdered inside get revenge?”

Ruan Nanzhu replied mildly, “they get revenge, but they have to at least know how they died, and who killed them.”

If they were absolutely clueless about how they died, how could they even talk of revenge?

Author’s Note:

Did I forget to mention… Most of the hints inside the novel are from urban legends or other things from real life. There really is the Woman in the Rain painting, and the “Sister Drum” song.