Non-Human Seeking Re-employment

Class had begun.

It was self-study in the evening. The teacher-in-charge was seated at the podium, and it was hard to make out her appearance because she had her head lowered as she was working through the assignments.

Rows of students were positioned below her – instead of whispering to each other, the students had assiduously picked up their pens and started writing up their assignments, and only the sound of identical rustling of papers could be heard.

Shen Dongqing felt around his pockets and quietly stuffed the packet of gummy bears he had found into his mouth.

The soft candy had a sweet, fruity flavour.

While he chewed on his candy, he surveyed the room, and noticed there was still an empty spot.

Fang Qi muttered quietly: "I wonder what will happen to people who are late."

He was sitting on the right of Shen Dongqing. With the deliberate suppression of his voice and how he was leaning over, no one should have heard him. However, just as his voice fell, he saw the surrounding students look at him in unison.

Fang Qi turned his head back and his desk mate\'s face was basically inches away from his, causing him to wrack up a shiver in fright.

The students were expressionless; their eyes were depthless and dark, without a trace of extraneous emotion and their stares caused his hair to stand on its ends.

Fang Qi trembled and swallowed his scream, turning towards Shen Dongqing in a plea for help.

Swallowing his gummy bear, Shen Dongqing stared back at the students without a shred of weakness as he opened his mouth to say: "It\'s evening self-study right now, aren\'t you supposed to be self-studying? What are you looking at us for?"

His sentence seemed to have touched some switches as the students turned back one by one and continued to do their assignments at their desks.

After that incident, Fang Qi did not dare to speak again, and he chose to lay on his table like a quail.

The classroom was quiet.

Only the electric fan above was whirling with noise.

If it was not for the fact that their classmates might not be human, they might have been able to experience what it was like to have a campus life.

Bored and with nothing better to do, Shen Dongqing flipped through the school rules again.

The rules and regulation of Qinghai High School was very strict; grave and minor examples regarding all matters – big and small – like their style of dress to their diet and work and rest were all densely packed into one book.

Just as Shen Dongqing finished reading the first page, he saw a man dressed as a student run over and come to a stop at the door, panting. He poked his head in to scan the room before he walked towards the empty seat.

The player who did not look like a student in the least had just stepped his foot into the classroom when the teacher-in-charge at the podium raised her head: "You\'re late."

The tardy player did not sense that danger was approaching as he turned his head and tried to get back into her good books: "Teacher, I was in the toilet just now…"

His words stopped abruptly.

Previously, the teacher-in-charge had her head lowered and her appearance could not be perceived. But now that she had stood up, the fact that her face had been cut into several pieces was clear to see. Coarse hemp was used to stitch the seams together, and blood was still dripping from her wounds.

Caught completely off guard, the player stiffened when he encountered such a face and subconsciously took out a talisman and slapped it on her.

The yellow talisman affixed itself to the teacher-in-charge\'s forehead, and like a zombie in the films or television, she froze in place.

The player heaved a sigh of relief, only to hear something sound from his side.

"You\'re late."

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Crack—

A crisp sound.

The player\'s head flopped to side softly and he was totally bereft of life and breath. Following that, a thick noose was swung over the door frame, and his neck was hung onto it to serve as a warning that the consequence of being late was hanging on the door.

Fang Qi immediately withdrew his gaze after he had thrown it a quick glance. Since he did not dare to speak, he picked up his workbook and wrote a line on it before he passed it over.

"If we die in the game, will we really die?"

That question had never crossed Shen Dongqing\'s mind before; after being dead so long, he was no longer afraid of the demarcations between life and death like normal people were.

He did not know how to answer him.

While Shen Dongqing was staring at the book in a daze, a hand reached out from his side to take the book before he wrote a few words on it.

"You can try."

Done writing, Zhou Wenyan tossed the workbook back, and it landed in front of Fang Qi in a precise manner.

Fang Qi touched his head.

You only live once, who would dare to risk it without fear? He should not be negligent.

Now that the question was answered, Shen Dongqing went back to looking through the school rules.

Perhaps because the learning atmosphere was too pleasant, Shen Dongqing did not manage to make it through two pages before he dozed off on the table while using the thick book of rules as his pillow.

Zhou Wenyan was flipping through the school rules as well.

But he was a little absent-minded. His slender fingers were flipping page after page before he finally gave up looking, and he turned towards his desk mate.

Shen Dongqing was lying on the table and only half of his face was revealed. His nose was tall and straight and with a touch of delicateness, and his eyebrows were curled and dense, casting a small shadow on his cheek. With his lips parted slightly, a small and cute tiger tooth peeked through.

He did not seem afraid at all and he slept very soundly.

Zhou Wenyan continued to stare at him, slightly lost in a trance.

Until the bell signalled the end of class.

Awoken by the noise, Shen Dongqing lifted his head in confusion: "Is class over?"

Because he was lying on the table, one of his cheeks had been squashed red and his hair was sticking up in a charming way. His distinctive eyes were glimmering with water and it made him look extremely innocent and naïve.

"Class is over," Zhou Wenyan raised his hand to flatten his hair, "Let\'s go back."

The other students left the classroom one after another, and the player who had transgressed had long disappeared.

Shen Dongqing was still a little muddled, and he followed Zhou Wenyan out after mumbling an "Oh".

Upon returning back to the dormitory, the three other dorm mates they were sharing the room did not say a word as they laid down on their beds, postures reminiscent of corpses.

Fang Qi curled up on his bed and threw the quilt over himself. As he continued to flip through the school rules, he seemed pensive: "Honestly speaking, we should be able to survive these seven days safely as long as we followed the school rules."

Despite speaking, he did not receive a reply for a long time. Leaning his head out, he saw Shen Dongqing sitting on the upper bunk, swinging his legs as he happily ate away at the bag of potato chips tucked in his arm.

"Big boss, you\'re still eating potato chips at this time?" Fang Qi could not help but comment.

When Shen Dongqing heard what he said, he leaned down to offer the potato chips: "Do you want some?"

Fang Qi was speechless. "I don\'t want it."

Shen Dongqing took the potato chips back and offered it to the person on the next bed instead: "Do you want…"

Before he could utter the last word, the lights went out and the dorm was plunged into darkness.

After adapting to the darkness, Shen Dongqing managed to distinguish Zhou Wenyan\'s silhouette.

Shen Dongqing had always thought Zhou Wenyan to be a good person who even gave him a toffee to eat, and courtesy demanded reciprocity. As he was thinking that, he took out two potato chips and held it out to him.

He felt Zhou Wenyan hesitate for a moment in the darkness before he leaned over to bite down on the two potato chips.

Perhaps due to the inconvenience that the lack of light brought, touching was inevitable.

The corner of Zhou Wenyan\'s lips touched his fingertips and left a trace of wetness.

"Cough…" Zhou Wenyan covered it up with a cough, "Sleep."

Shen Dongqing did not feel anything about it. He wiped his hand and laid down.

However, Shen Dongqing did not feel like sleeping at all, and it might have had something to do with the fact that he had fallen asleep during self-study. His eyes were closed, and even after tossing around, he could not sleep.

And just as he was finally about to fall asleep, he felt something wrong on his side. Opening his eyes, he met a pair of eyes in the dark.

One of his dorm mates were standing by his bed which levelled him with Shen Dongqing in height by chance, and he was watching him quietly.

After meeting Shen Dongqing\'s gaze, the corners of his mouth hooked up awkwardly to reveal a stiff smile. In the instant where the smile was formed, his face seemed burdened by the expression as it cracked like porcelain, and he fractured into a sanguineous bloody man.

One of the school rules: Do not make any noise after lights out.

However, contrary to his expectations, Shen Dongqing had merely glanced at him before he flipped around, and he continued to sleep as if nothing had happened.

Red-eyed, the roommate continued to stare at Shen Dongqing for a long while. After confirming that he could not incite him into breaking the school rules, he turned to another target.

Unfortunately for him, Fang Qi did not acknowledge him at all, considering how he had fallen into deep sleep a while back and Zhou Wenyan did not even bother to look at him.

Thus, the roommate could only reluctantly lay back on his bed.

But after that particular encounter, Shen Dongqing no longer had any intentions to sleep.

That did not arise out fear; rather, he was so bored he even wanted to play with his phone.

However, his phone had died because it ran out of battery.

Opening his eyes, Shen Dongqing squinted them a little, wanting to entertain himself with the company of his roommate but the roommate did not see him. Instead, he saw another hand stretching towards his bed before it lifted his quilt to make space for another figure to drill under soundlessly.

The single bed in the school dormitory was narrow and it could barely accommodate two adult men.

With how closely plastered their bodies were, they could hear their overlapping heartbeats.

In an inaudible voice, Zhou Wenyan murmured: "Shall we go out and take a look?"

In this game, it was never the rule-abiding and well-behaved child who lived to the end. Even if an obedient player could survive through this copy, that might not necessarily be the case for the next copy.

While there have been players who survived through the Qinghai High School copy, it had never been completely cleared and there were many puzzles that have yet to be solved. According to what those players described this copy was related to the Campus\' Strange Talks.

Therefore, it was highly likely that the school rules were just a façade.

Zhou Wenyan had this thought: it\'s fine if he wasn\'t willing; he could help him win on his lonesome even if he was lying down.

However, he could only do so once; Shen Dongqing still had to grow up because it was not possible for him to do all the work while he was lying down.

He lowered his head and incidentally met a pair of shining eyes.

"Sure, sure." Shen Dongqing said in agreement, and his voice was tinged with some anticipation.

The two got out of bed one after another.

Their roommates continue to lie in their beds without showing any reaction.

A creak.

Their door opened gently, and the dim light from the corridor trickled in.

The corridor was dead silent.

It was as if there was no living person in the entire dormitory building apart from them; there were only rooms upon rooms of closed doors on both sides of the corridor the pair traversed, and it was like they were strolling through a morgue holding dead bodies with an accompanying, surging chill in the air.

Shen Dongqing was not affected in the least.

Reaching for the unfinished packet of gummy bears, he ransacked through it and grabbed out a handful. After popping two into his mouth, he offered it to Zhou Wenyan.

If you were acquainted with Zhou Wenyan, you would never associate him with sweet or greasy foods. Let alone trying, even glancing at it was out of the question.

Despite those assumptions, he was currently reaching over to take one before he bit down on that soft gummy bear.

Feeling the sweet taste diffuse in his mouth, a sudden, crooked thought arose in Zhou Wenyan\'s mind: Why did it feel like they were two high school students who were rebelling against the school rules as they snuck out in secret to go on a date?

Thankfully, this idea did not exist for long as they were interrupted by others.

At the corner, a shadow of a person was casted on the ground.

It was probably the dormitory administrator; she was currently cleaning the floor with a mop, and that mop looked rather large and extremely strenuous to use.

The two crept around the corner gingerly.

It was only then that they realised that the dormitory administrator was hunched over, and she was not holding a mop in her arms but a girl who lying still. The hair of her "mop" was very long and as she was being dragged along the floor, leaking a twisted streak of blood.

Despite that, she continued to mop diligently as if she was truly oblivious to the fact that she was making a bigger mess of the floor.

It was highly probable that this was one of the Strange Talks.

Zhou Wenyan contemplated as to how he should solve this Strange Talk.

Just then, the dormitory administrator straightened her back and let out a hoarse laugh: "I love unruly students the most, I can switch to a new mop now."

Upon hearing her words, the "mop" in her hands wrenched her eyes opened and it was brimming with schadenfreude.

Zhou Wenyan stepped forwardly calmly and shielded Shen Dongqing behind him.

Shen Dongqing remained completely unfazed, and he even had the time to fiddle with his own hair. He wondered: "Become a mop? But our hair isn\'t long enough, will we even be of use?"

The dormitory administrator glanced at both of them and sank into deep doubt.