Paintings of Terror

Chapter 48: Visiting is Prohibited

Translated by Eve

Edited by EB

In the dead silence of the night, the knocking was especially jarring.

Ke Xun felt like the knocks were reverberating right against his ears. Actually, he thought that the knocking was against his door.

The knocking grew increasingly louder. Female sobs accompanied the knocks: “Open the door, open the door!”

The voice seemed familiar. It sounded like the voice of one of the three girls from earlier. Upon realizing that it was one of their teammates, Ke Xun could no longer stay down. He sat up, planning to peek out of the window.

Mu Yiran, who was lying beside him, pulled at his arm. In a whisper, he said, “She’s knocking on Room 410.”

The knocking continued and gradually transformed into slamming. The girl outside shouted for help. “Hey, there’s an issue with this building! We can’t stay here! Come out! Let’s discuss how to get out of here!”

The sound of her palm slamming against the door grew louder and louder. The despair of imminent death tinged the air.

Nevertheless, the only response she got was one of absolute stillness.

Ke Xun still wanted to peek out the window, but Mu Yiran had a tight hold on his arm. The other’s voice echoed in his ear: “She broke the painting’s rules.”

Ke Xun froze. That’s right. They violated the rule the gatekeeper uncle had told them, the prohibition against visiting other units after lights out. Knocking on someone’s door was the precursor to paying a visit.

The lights flickered outside. It seemed to be the light from someone’s phone. The light glanced over Ke Xun’s room’s window before everything went dark.

The knocking gradually quieted down but the girl continued to wail. “What should I do…. Is there no one inside this building…?”

Another female voice chimed in: “It’s already past midnight. Let’s go back to our room. We can move out tomorrow!”

The two girls’ shadows flickered against the curtains, their figures illuminated by the phone’s flashlight. Their shadows quivered strangely as they moved with the light.

The two girls passed Ke Xun’s window and the light gradually disappeared. Their voices were very distinct in the stillness of the night, however, “It’s a good thing we bought candles. We can light them up tonight.”

….

Ke Xun and Mu Yiran were quiet for a very long time. Ke Xun still sat at the edge of the bed while Mu Yiran was still lying down.

It was so dark one couldn’t even see one’s own fingers if one were to stretch out a hand. In darkness like this, one became especially sensitive to light. The window on the other side of them lit up and emitted a warm, orange light. It was the room the girls were assigned: Room 402.

“There are three of them in their team. One person was left alone.” Mu Yiran’s voice was still lowered.

That’s right. Only two girls had run out to seek help.

“I guess they might have broken more than one rule.” Ke Xun laid back down. He felt like the participants in this painting were different from the ones in the past. However, they would soon succumb to the painting’s rules all the same. In the face of death, people would inevitably realize that they were, in fact, not infallible.

Their room was not as dark as it was earlier due to the illumination from the room across. Ke Xun laid on his side and traced Mu Yiran’s silhouette with his eyes. “Mu Yiran, did you notice that everyone inside this apartment complex calls this place the Spring Bamboo Dormitory?”

Ke Xun had said ‘Mu’ really quietly, so it sounded like he had simply called the other ‘Yiran.’

Mu Yiran ignored the fact that the other had dropped his last name. He focused on the latter part of the sentence: “Dormitory is usually used in reference to workplaces or schools. It is where people who belong to the same group live.”

“That’s an old term though. We used to call it student dormitories but now, universities refer to their residences as student apartments.” Ke Xun used his arm as a pillow. “It seems like the Spring Bamboo Apartments used to be called the Spring Bamboo Dormitory. Does that mean that the people living in the Spring Bamboo Apartments used to belong to the same group?”

Mu Yiran thought the same. “The elderly people downstairs seem to know each other well. they don’t seem like they are ordinary neighbours.”

“So what you’re saying is that those elderly folks used to be coworkers? That they’re not just neighbours, but former colleagues?”

If that was the case, then the relationship between these residents was not as simple as he had first thought.

These people were a group. By default, they would exclude or reject them—the new tenants—to some degree.

It was like they were a little village of their own. Inevitably, they would feel some hostility to outsiders.

“There are quite a few outsiders around. Most of the accents I heard downstairs in the commercial area were from out-of-town.” Mu Yiran’s voice clearly transmitted over the pillow. Although there was quite a bit of distance between their pillows, it made Ke Xun feel warm and comfortable.

“Mn. For example, Wu Mei from the restaurant. There’s also the red-clothed lady from the Wenzhou hair salon.” The images of the people Ke Xun saw that evening flashed through his mind. Despite the fact that it was the middle of summer, he shivered. “Have you noticed that there’s a common feature to all of their clothing?”

Mu Yiran didn’t give him an immediate answer. A moment later, he said, “Let’s discuss this tomorrow.”

Ever since Ke Xun noticed the common feature of the residents’ clothing, he had felt an ill premonition. Upon hearing Mu Yiran speak like this, he realized that it probably wouldn’t be good to speak of it at night. After all, night time was the most dangerous time inside the painting. The things hidden in the dark might end up overhearing their conversation should they speak of it now.

But the more they talked about this place, the weirder the apartment complex became. Ke Xun couldn’t stop himself from scooting closer to Mu Yiran. “Did you inspect the building closely when we first arrived?”

Mu Yiran was extremely quiet. “It looks like a fortified tower from outside.”

So it wasn’t just him. But if it was a fortified tower, it shouldn’t have a lot of outward facing windows. However, these rooms all had windows that faced the road!

Why couldn’t they see these windows from outside? Just where did these windows open to?

Ke Xun thought about the darkness he had seen through the outward-facing window the first time he had entered the unit. An idea started to form in his mind.

There were certain things that weren’t appropriate to discuss during the night.

Thus, Ke Xun let out a yawn and said, “Let’s sleep. We have to head to the restaurant early tomorrow.”

“Mn.”

Ke Xun flipped on his back. “Goodnight?”

“Goodnight.”

Although they had said goodnight, Ke Xun couldn’t sleep right away. The people he saw today flickered through his mind: the hair salon lady in the red skirt, Wu Mei from the restaurant who wore black leggings and a white t-shirt emblazoned with large, red maple leaves and a line of text that read “The Passion of Maple Leaves”....

There was also the man who wore the hurdles tank top and the old lady in Room 409. The old lady also had on a shirt that was decorated with red flowers….

Everyone here had red on their clothing. This was absolutely not a coincidence.

In Chinese culture, red was a festive colour. But now that these people were all wearing red clothes during the night in this strange building, the red suddenly felt like a bad omen.

The night was extremely quiet. There seemed to be no signs of danger—or rather, perhaps the danger was hidden too well and would not appear right at this moment.

The light in Room 402, where the girls who had violated the painting’s rules resided, was still on….

Ke Xun eventually fell asleep without realizing it. He slept very deeply and only woke up the next morning when Mu Yiran woke him up. “Something’s happened outside.”

Something has happened. Inside a painting, that meant that someone had died.

Ke Xun sat up. He felt like the room was still really dark. The door and the small window facing the inside of the complex were both obviously bright but the bed still felt like it was submerged in darkness.

Ke Xun turned to look at the large window that faced the street. Unexpectedly, no light came through this window. Mu Yiran went over to draw the curtains. To their surprise, what they saw was dark grey cement. The cement was less than half an arm away from their window.

No wonder the building looked like a fortified tower from outside. You couldn’t see the windows from the outside at all! Someone had decided to surround the building with a cement wall! People inside the building were only exposed to the world within the complex. They could not see nor hear the world outside.

Ke Xun didn’t know who had created this artificial barrier and isolated the people of this building from the outside world. Regardless, it probably wasn’t the residents of this building.

Ke Xun had no time to dwell on this. He got up and left the unit with Mu Yiran. Standing in the corridor outside, he saw that the atrium was filled with people. There were also two corpses covered by white cloth.

Sha Liu and Qiu Lu were standing by the railing, peering down on the scene. Sha Liu had probably known that there would be a death today as well. Her eyes were calm behind her glasses. Nevertheless, her body couldn’t help but tremble anyway.

Qiu Lu was paralyzed. “What…happened?”

“Let’s go downstairs and take a look.” Mu Yiran led the way, heading towards the staircase. The others followed after him with solemn expressions.

By the time they made their way downstairs, the crowd had already dispersed. The majority of the people left at the scene were members of their party. Some people looked afraid, some people looked aggrieved, and some were simply numb. In any case, no one had a pleasant expression on.

Qin Ci lifted one of the white cloths up and saw that the corpse was charred black. The other corpse was in a similar condition.

The surviving girl of the group of three, Xin Miao, was white as a sheet of paper. She shook profusely. “I told them…that it was really dangerous to keep candles lit all night…but they didn’t listen….”

Qin Ci frowned. “There was a fire in your apartment last night?”

“I…think so.” Xin Miao’s lips trembled. She couldn’t form a full sentence.

Qiu Lu asked, “You were in the same apartment as them. How could you not know whether or not there was a fire?”

Xin Miao shook her head vigorously. “I slept all through the night. I had felt a bit suffocated in the middle of the night and coughed a bit but I had thought that Tina was just smoking again. I didn’t feel any fires…. It wasn’t until morning that I discovered that they were….”

Xin Miao’s eyes widened and she trembled hard. It seemed like she couldn’t bear to recall her memories of this morning—the fact that she had slept next to two charred corpses.

The gatekeeper uncle brought a few people to take the corpses away. Today, he was wearing a faded red hurdles tank top. He then waved the large ring of keys in his hand. “Go have breakfast at Wu Mei’s Restaurant at eight o’clock.”

The main entrance was opened and the corpses were carried out.

Xin Miao suddenly broke out into a frenzy. She made a dash for the outside world, eyes wide. “Let me out! Let me out! This is not a place for humans! Don’t you dare stop me! I’m going to call the police! I’m going to report you for unlawful detainment!”

In the end, she was stopped by the efforts of several people. Sha Liu’s sharp gaze pierced through her lenses. “You’ll only die faster by going outside!”

Xin Miao twitched in desperation several times. “What’s going on? Who can tell me just what the heck is going on?!”

Mu Yiran glanced at the watch on his wrist. “It’s seven right now. Let’s go examine the death scene.” As he spoke, his gaze shifted to Xin Miao, “I would recommend that you calm down and try to tell us everything you remember. Maybe we can prevent another tragedy from happening.”

Xin Miao’s eyes were empty. She murmured: “They were still alive yesterday. But by this morning, they’ve? turned into charred….The room is filled with the black ashes from their bodies…it’s everywhere….”

Ke Xun turned to look at Sha Liu: “You stay and try to talk to her. We’ll head up first.”

Ke Xun believed in Sha Liu’s ability to comfort and persuade other people.

Sha Liu nodded and pulled Xin Miao over to the side. “That was because they broke the rules. They knocked on someone else’s door after lights out. That was an indication of wanting to visit someone.”

Xin Miao opened her mouth, sucking in a deep breath. She looked like a fish out of water, on its dying breath. “Right…they went to knock on the door of 410….” Xin Miao’s voice suddenly rose as she glared at Sha Liu. “Weren’t you in Room 410? Why didn’t you let them in?!”

Sha Liu’s expression was ice-cold. “If I had opened the door, I would have been the one who was burned to death.”

Sha Liu then asked, “What about you? What were you doing when they were knocking on my door?”

Eve: Spoiler alert (?) for anyone who hasn’t seen the Sixth Sense, but all the red reminds me of that movie and now I suddenly want to re-watch it. A really good movie.