Since we weren’t sure whether the way out was on the first floor, we decided to hide on the second floor for the time being.
The homeowner was a pervert. He regularly tortured and killed players on the second floor. Many players had tried to get down to the first floor, only to be discovered by him. The sound of an ax chopping into flesh and their agonized screams made everyone shudder.
If we kept hiding, we were bound to be discovered.
Besides, there was another practical problem: we needed to eat.
For the first two days, we survived on snacks alone. The strange thing was that the storage room where we were hiding was stocked with snacks and drinks.
Os had been here with us for two whole days, and contrary to what we’d imagined, he hadn’t disappeared. His parents hadn’t gone looking for him frantically, either, as if nothing had happened.
I kept an eye on Os, watching to see if he did anything strange.
“Are you hungry?” Os tore open a bag of potato chips and held it out to me. They were tomato flavored, my favorite.
Maybe because I’d saved him, Os was very clingy with me. He ate very little, sharing most of the snacks with me.
I had a strange feeling about it.
Two days ago, when the man with glasses and I split up to scout the area, Os came with me. By chance, we wandered into the homeowner’s study. Just then, the old man had finished killing a player and was coming back into the room.
Os and I hurried under the desk. His footsteps drew closer and closer. Sensing how anxious I was, Os wrapped his arms tightly around me before I even realized it. “Don’t be scared.”
Luckily, the homeowner was drawn away by another player’s footsteps. Os still didn’t let go, as if he were hugging a favorite toy.
“He’s gone,” I reminded Os, letting him know he could relax.
“Mm.” The space under the desk was cramped; we were so close that his nose touched mine.
“Are you tired?”
His voice was right by my ear. He even had time to massage my aching shoulders.
He seemed to have changed a little.
After we came out from under the desk, he rummaged through a drawer, found a pastry, and handed it to me. How bizarre.
Why was there a pastry in the drawer?
He found plenty of other food in corners around the room, too. I was surprised. Was this really just a study?
“If you’re hungry, just tell me. Don’t go without eating.”
For a moment, I thought I saw a hint of… affection in his eyes.
How strange.
But the strangest thing happened on the third day. A heart-shaped hickey appeared on my neck, as if someone had deliberately left it there.
I stared impassively at the handsome teenage boy beside me.
He blinked at me, looking completely innocent.
On the fourth day, the homeowner went up to the third floor and stayed there a long time without coming down.
Our chance had come. We needed to go down to the first floor and see what was happening.
As we went down the stairs, the man with glasses pulled me aside and whispered:
“Don’t you think Os is really strange? He’s awfully clingy with you. Be careful.”
I nodded and looked toward Os.
Unusually quiet and motionless, he looked like a doll.
A premonition flickered through me, and I glanced at the doll in my bag. The doll was always silent, too.
We were extremely careful as we went downstairs. We’d already tried the house’s front door. It clearly wasn’t locked, but somehow, we couldn’t open it.
“The way out isn’t here.” I suddenly stopped and said it.
“Huh?”
“Have you noticed? There isn’t a single mirror anywhere in this house.”
The man with glasses’ eyes widened.
“You mean the mirror is the real way out?”
“Very likely.”
It suddenly came back to me.
On the first day, when I was hiding under the bed, I saw a small line of writing:
“The mirror has been hidden.”
At the time, someone had crudely crossed it out with blood, smearing the words until they were hard to make out.
I hadn’t understood it then, but now it all made sense.
The man with glasses was excited. “I remember now! There’s a mirror in the wardrobe on the third floor, covered with a red cloth. I was so busy searching for clues that I didn’t lift it.”
“Hurry, let’s go to the third floor!”
As we climbed the stairs, we ran into the mistress of the house.
“Os? So this is where you are. Are these people your friends?”
Unlike the cruel old homeowner, the mistress of the house smiled warmly and beckoned us closer.
“You must be hungry. Come over and have something to eat.”
She carried a pot of soup over to the table. It landed with a heavy thud.
A moment later, the rich smell of meat filled the air.
I was about to grab a knife, but Os clasped my hand tightly.
He pulled me toward the dining table.
The man with glasses followed, on his guard.
The mistress of the house kept smiling as she set out bowls and chopsticks for us.
We sat down at the table.
The pot seemed to hold nothing but ordinary meat soup, not anything horrifying like fingernails or fingers, as I’d imagined.
But could we really eat the mistress of the house’s meat soup?
“Why aren’t you eating? Why haven’t you picked up your chopsticks?”
When the mistress of the house saw that we weren’t moving, her body gradually began to twist out of shape, and her eyes darkened.
I deliberately dropped my chopsticks on the floor.
As I bent to pick them up, the doll in my bag suddenly fell out.
The mistress of the house screamed in terror. It was clear the doll had frightened her.
Taking advantage of the moment, I signaled with my eyes: “Now!”
The man with glasses was already behind the mistress of the house. He plunged a knife straight into her heart.
The mistress of the house fell to the floor and struggled to get back up, but the man with glasses stabbed her several more times.
I covered Os’s eyes with my hand.
“Run upstairs!”
We’d only made it halfway up the stairs when the old homeowner suddenly appeared, an ax in his hand.
“Damn it!”
He blocked our way up the stairs.
He grinned maliciously. “I finally found you, you little rats.”
Os was quieter than usual today. He stepped in front of me. “Don’t hurt her.”
“Then are you willing to become my doll?”
“If you don’t hurt her, I’m willing.”
The old homeowner gave a cold laugh. “Come here.”
I gripped Os’s hand tightly. “Don’t go.”
Os looked at me, his beautiful eyes reflecting my frown.
He seemed to smile.
The very next second, the old homeowner charged at us with his ax and swung it down.
Os shielded me, taking a deep slash across his back.
At the same time, my knife plunged into the old homeowner’s stomach.
He narrowed his eyes. The wound wasn’t serious enough to hurt him much.
But he didn’t get the chance to do anything else. The other surviving players appeared from every direction, joining me in attacking him.
“Everyone, upstairs! The exit is on the third floor!”
The man with glasses shouted, then noticed I was supporting the injured Os.
He objected. “Giang Tảo, he’s just a character in the game. He’ll be fine. We have to find the exit, fast!”
“Don’t worry about me. Just go,” the teenage boy said softly, his voice weak as he pulled away from my hand.
The man with glasses said no more and pulled me up to the third floor.
But the mirror in the walk-in closet had disappeared.
“Where’s the mirror?”
One player slapped his forehead. “Last night, I saw the monster drag something huge down to the second floor.
My friend died fighting it. Maybe that was the mirror!”
We hurried back down to the second floor and saw Os sitting there alone.
The mistress of the house, who should have died from the stab wound to her heart, was dragging herself up the stairs, leaving a long trail of blood, and was about to reach Os.
“I found it!”
A player at the end of the hall had found the mirror and successfully stepped inside it.
“It really is an exit!”
The man with glasses breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness.”
When he saw me keep looking toward the stairs, he frowned and lowered his voice:
“Giang Tảo, he did all of this on purpose. He’s playing with us. You have to realize that. Come on, let’s go!”
I realized that Os had deliberately orchestrated everything.
His intentions kept changing. Everything we’d been put through—including his deliberately getting hurt—might just have been a game to him.
But I had a feeling.
If I left, I would definitely regret it.
“Go on ahead.”
I turned and headed toward the stairs.
“Giang Tảo, what are you doing?”
I didn’t answer.
I already knew the answer in my heart.
I’d forgotten what Cố Mặc Trì looked like, but I couldn’t be wrong about the feeling he gave me.
Os was Cố Mặc Trì—my amnesiac boyfriend and the final boss of this horror game.
Os watched me take step after step toward him, and his eyes suddenly darkened with a terrifying intensity.
The man with glasses was still trying to persuade me when something suddenly shoved him hard into the exit.
“Aren’t you leaving?”
Os’s voice had changed, low and carrying a faint, barely discernible note of hope.
The mistress of the house, who had crawled up the stairs, had long since disappeared.
It seemed there was no one left in the room but the two of us.
“That’s right.” I looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to see you trapped in such a hopeless situation. I want to stay by your side.”
Os blinked, and bright red tears streamed endlessly down his face.
I gently wiped away his tears.
He rested his head in the hollow of my neck and drew a deep breath.
“You said it yourself.”
[Os’s Diary]
My parents fought all the time. Their loud curses mingled with the sound of things being smashed.
They never cared whether I was hurt.
I once tried to get their attention by cutting my arm with a knife.
But no one paid any attention to my wound.
That was when I realized they didn’t love me at all.
But I came to love wounds.
They hurt me, and I liked the feeling.
I began dissecting animals—birds, mice, snakes.
Before long, they found out.
They looked at me as if I were a monster.
But at least they were finally looking at me.
I grew worse and worse.
Terrified, they took me to see a doctor, then locked me in a pitch-black room.
I was locked in there for eight years.
Every day, I used my finger to carve a mark into the wall.
As the marks on the wall multiplied, I knew I was becoming more and more abnormal.
After that, I started pounding on the door like a madman and clawing at the walls with my hands until blood was smeared everywhere.
But they didn’t react at all.
I wanted to kill myself, but every time, they saved me.
They removed everything from the room that could hurt me.
I once thought they didn’t want me to die because they had finally come to love me.
But then I learned that my mother was pregnant with another child.
They loved that child dearly.
But the baby had heart disease.
It turned out they’d kept me alive all this time because they wanted to take my heart.
They took my heart and gave it to my younger brother.
They made my skin into a human doll, then locked me away in that dark room again.
They said that way, our family could be together forever.
They wanted to imprison me forever.
But they never expected that once I became a doll, I would turn them into dolls too.
They were disgusted and afraid of me.
I should have felt satisfied.
But my heart was still cold, and I was miserable.
I felt as if something was missing.
Was it the heart they’d taken from me? It didn’t seem so.
That was until I met her.
A player.
She’d passed out in the room where I’d once been locked up.
No one understood how cold and dark that room was better than I did.
She was so frail.
Forget it.
If she died right at the start, the game wouldn’t be any fun.
Reluctantly, I spread a warm rug on the floor.
Waiting…
Why hadn’t she woken up yet?
I controlled my puppet’s body and gave her cheek a gentle pinch.
Why was it so soft?
One more pinch.
So strangely soft.
I was starting to get a little addicted.
She was about to wake up.
Suddenly feeling guilty, I fell onto the rug like a corpse.
When she woke up, she accidentally tripped over me.
Thank goodness there was a rug. Otherwise, it must have hurt.
…Wait. What does it matter to me if she fell and got hurt?
Watching her fumble around in the dark, she looked so helpless.
Taking pity on her, I placed a matchbox in the corner of the room.
But it seemed I’d scared her.
Was I really that scary?
Even so, I approached her in human form.
She said she’d come to save me.
A lie.
She obviously wanted to take something from me.
I hated being deceived, but strangely, I couldn’t bring myself to kill her.
She tied a little bow around my wrist.
I’d never seen such a cute little bow, damn it.
I was conflicted.
I could only wait for her to reveal her true colors.
Before she got what she wanted, she was bound to abandon me.
Only if she became more selfish would I be interested in killing her.
But for now, she couldn’t die.
I couldn’t let her go hungry.
What did she like to eat?
Pastries, potato chips, cookies?
Those were all things I’d craved as a child.
Watching her eat with such relish made me even happier than she was.
I couldn’t help myself. In the middle of the night, I gently nibbled at her neck.
Soft and fragrant.
I felt like something was wrong with me.
There was something about this player that seemed to draw me in, making my feelings for her swing back and forth.
Until I got what I wanted, I needed to keep my distance from her.
It worked. I led them around in circles.
At last, when they found the exit, she had indeed gone upstairs.
She abandoned me.
She really had abandoned me.
Why had she abandoned me!
I should have killed her.
But I didn’t want to move. Instead of wanting to kill, all I felt was the unbearable pain of loss.
It felt as if a heavy stone were pressing down on me. I clearly didn’t have a heart anymore, so why did it hurt so much?
But to my surprise...
She came back.
She came over and said she would stay with me.
Had she really... agreed to stay by my side?
To stay with a heartless puppet with a dark soul?
In that moment,
I understood.
She was the one who had come to save me.
She was my salvation.
—
The version of Os in the game was a clingy, arrogant puppet.
But on the last day, he still let me leave.
On the day I left, he clung tightly to me.
I’d once suspected that he’d considered keeping me with him forever.
But for some reason, he gave up on the idea.
“I’m the only one in your heart, right?”
He kept asking me.
“That’s right. You’re the only one.”
He smiled, and the puppet on his shoulder smiled too.
Even though I knew the person in front of me wouldn’t hurt me, for some reason, the sight still sent a shiver down my spine.
He looked at me. “If you say one more thing, I won’t let you leave.”
I said firmly, “You’re the only one.”
He suddenly pulled me tightly into his arms.
“You’re my heart. No matter where you go, I’ll find you.”
After leaving the instance, I appeared in the main hall once again.
I didn’t know what had happened, but a large crowd had gathered in the center of the hall.
At the same time, an electronic announcement sounded in my ear:
“Congratulations, player, on clearing the ‘Dollhouse’ instance. The next instance, ‘The Haunted Phone Call,’ will begin in one week. Please make your preparations in advance.”
—The End—