Chapter 15: The Asylum Pantomime: 14

Cafeteria.

Nan Lin sat in thought, his eyes half-lidded, having eaten only half the food before him.

Song De, who had vanished from the cafeteria earlier, was nowhere in sight… yet the game still hadn’t announced his death. That meant he was still alive.

Alive, but invisible. Unable to communicate. Even able to evade the asylum’s schedule.

Had he been locked in a solitary cell or interrogation room?

Nan Lin thought that was unlikely.

There was still something he had overlooked…

He stared at his tray in deep concentration, fingertips tapping his knee in a habitual rhythm.

After a while, Nan Lin suddenly looked up and out toward the cafeteria entrance. The midday sun was blinding. The shadows of flowers, grass, and buildings were virtually invisible at this angle, creating a hazy, surreal illusion.

Something important had indeed been overlooked.

Nan Lin looked down at his own feet. In the asylum’s reflection, there existed another asylum, an Inverted Side, connected to the right-side building by an elevator.

As for the exact differences between the two asylums…

Thinking of this, Nan Lin recalled Lin Yi’s sudden attack on him earlier.

If the two asylums were truly perfect opposites, for instance, if buildings that were dilapidated here became pristine and gleaming there…

“If it’s not just objects that are inverted… asylum, asylum, madman, sane person.” Nan Lin murmured the words aloud, his gaze fixed on the table before him in silence.

Then he suddenly turned his eyes toward the serving counter. The familiar female nurse still stood there, the corners of her lips curled in an enigmatic smile.

He would have to go inside again to confirm this theory.

To prove that everything in the two asylums was perfectly inverted. That the decrepit buildings would become new in the Inverted Side. That players who were sane here would become madmen in the Inverted Side.

Nan Lin looked away and glanced at the third iron table beneath the wall on the cafeteria’s left side. The phone call from before had told him there was an escape tunnel beneath that table.

But something that even terrified Teresa lurked there…

Recalling Teresa’s bloodcurdling scream, Nan Lin patted the last dregs of his conscience and kept his gaze utterly serene.

Currently, there were only two known escape routes: the underground passage beneath the cafeteria, which was not safe, and the emergency exit on the seventh floor that Qiu Xinxin had found, which lacked a key.

Two paths…

Neither one feels like you can walk out alive.

Lunchtime was shorter than breakfast and dinner. When Nan Lin came back to himself, he happened to catch the cafeteria lights flicking off one by one.

He stood and left. Next was nap time.

But on the way, he suddenly remembered a problem he’d neglected.

Ruan Yu was locked up somewhere unknown, and the asylum had no single-patient rooms.

He glanced toward the right-side building.

Then he would have to find a “familiar face” to fill in…

12:00.

Nan Lin arrived at Room B-301 in the right-side building right on schedule. He glanced at the lock cylinder that had been removed at some point and pushed the door open.

The moment he stepped inside, he saw Chong Jiu sprawled across the bed in a half-dead state. The injuries from the director’s office were clearly serious enough to keep him from even standing, and someone had just tossed him back into the room.

Perhaps sensing the noise, Chong Jiu cracked open an eyelid, glanced at Nan Lin, and let out a soft laugh. “What are you doing here?”

Nan Lin didn’t answer. He simply shut the door behind him and stood there, quietly watching the figure on the bed.

Chong Jiu fell silent.

Don’t look at me like that. You’re scaring me.

The two stared at each other in an oddly prolonged silence before Nan Lin spoke in a low, measured voice: “You look more and more human.”

He still remembered the first time he’d seen Chong Jiu. The man had been no different from the other NPCs in the instance, wearing the same blank expression.

But looking back, the first words Chong Jiu had spoken were already a dead giveaway. Even his act of pretending was half-hearted.

Still, whether it was Nan Lin’s imagination or not, he felt that as time went on, Chong Jiu was becoming… more and more like the current director.

Not in appearance. In bearing.

Hearing this, Chong Jiu flopped back onto the bed and drawled, “Thanks.”

Nan Lin said in perfect seriousness, “Maybe you should try pretending again. This is really uncomfortable.”

Chong Jiu turned his head and laughed, neither confirming nor denying.

Nan Lin circled the bed and walked back into Chong Jiu’s line of sight, crouching down to meet his gaze at eye level.

Chong Jiu said nothing.

He snapped his eyes shut, refusing to look at that calamity of a face.

Nan Lin poked at the wounds on Chong Jiu’s body, enunciating each word like a devil’s whisper: “You just said thank you.”

Chong Jiu slapped Nan Lin’s hand away and snapped, “So?”

Nan Lin stood and folded his arms. “So what’s your relationship with the director?”

“You think I’d tell you? Wait… Nan Lin! Put that thing down right now!” Chong Jiu’s voice nearly cracked, but he succeeded in getting Nan Lin to set down the director’s photo frame.

Nan Lin glanced back at Chong Jiu.

The relationship between this man and the current director was odd indeed. They both kept each other’s photos.

“You really won’t say?” Nan Lin pressed.

Chong Jiu turned his head away, refusing through action.

Nan Lin set down the frame and stared at the photo inside, lost in thought.

He couldn’t resort to violence. The rules explicitly stated: bullying Chong Jiu was strictly forbidden.

So he switched questions. “Why does your name appear on the rules sheet?”

Chong Jiu stared at Nan Lin’s face and said, “Obviously, someone added it.”

“The director?”

“Of course n—”

Chong Jiu’s denial jammed mid-sentence. He pressed his lips together and said nothing more.

Seeing his reaction, Nan Lin knew he’d guessed correctly.

Having watched the surveillance footage, he also knew who had inflicted the wounds on Chong Jiu.

Others were forbidden from bullying him, yet the current director himself treated Chong Jiu like less than human.

But even after being beaten to this state, Chong Jiu didn’t seem to resent the director’s cruelty. He even unconsciously imitated him and instinctively shielded him.

Nan Lin stopped engaging and began searching the room on his own.

Chong Jiu didn’t care at first. But the image of Nan Lin holding that photo frame kept resurfacing in his mind until he couldn’t help but turn around.

The movement made the whip wounds on his back throb. He clenched his teeth against the pain and growled, “What exactly are you here to do?”

Nan Lin answered without turning around. “Sleep.”

“You call this coming to sleep?!”

“Isn’t it nap time?” Nan Lin paused, genuinely baffled.

Chong Jiu glared at Nan Lin with pure venom but couldn’t stop him.

A while later, Nan Lin sat in a chair reading Chong Jiu’s detailed medical file, questioning him between pages. “Has anyone ever made it out of this asylum’s interrogation room alive?”

Hearing this, Chong Jiu gave him a look that was half smile, half sneer. “Finally thinking about your little pet?”

Nan Lin looked up at Chong Jiu. The page in his hand happened to be open to the attending physician’s record. A photo on it looked remarkably familiar.

“He’s not my little pet.”

“I’m not close to him.”