Leaving the teaching building, I hurried with the three kids toward the lab building.
It was impossible not to worry when a living person had disappeared right under our noses. Even though the disappearance was likely staged by them, as an adult, my first priority had to be Shen Meng's safety.
Because only I knew this school might really be haunted.
Ignoring the barrage of danmu from viewers, I followed the overgrown path to the lab building's entrance.
The building had six floors and looked much bigger than the teaching building.
"This is how Japanese elite education works — students only learn limited theory in classrooms. Most teaching happens here, in the labs. They focus more on practical skills," I explained.
"Damn, the Japanese puppet army still hasn't left!"
"Move out of my way! My grandpa sank a Japanese submarine with this grenade back in the day!"
"Floor's gone crazy," read a danmu comment.
The lab's main door was locked and sealed. I came closer to inspect. The seal was old but intact, meaning the door hadn't been opened since it was locked.
"In that case, there's no need to check inside. If no one can get in, then Shen Meng couldn't have been taken here."
"Streamer, look at this." As if fate was mocking me, Xiumu pointed at a window on the left side of the first floor. "You can get in from here!"
I approached. Every window was sealed and locked — except this one, which was half open.
It was as if someone had just slipped in here, deliberately leaving the window ajar. The breeze made the half-open window moan softly.
"You wait out here. I'll check inside first."
"No way. Shen Meng's my girlfriend. I have to go in."
"Let's all go together. More people means more strength," Xiumu said, a bit more subdued after nearly getting punched by Xue Fei earlier.
Since they insisted on coming, I couldn't leave Yingzi, the youngest, outside alone. "Alright, then we all go in. If anything dangerous happens, don't panic."
I raised the camera with one hand and stepped inside first.
This was clearly an art classroom. Old easels were piled in a corner. I flipped through a few; the paintings were faintly grotesque in color and shape.
"Art students really have a different taste." Closing one easel, I swung my phone light around — then suddenly froze at a blank, dull face staring back.
Startled, I approached — it was just a plastic mannequin.
"If a person with a weak psyche saw this late at night, they'd probably cry from fright."
The mannequin blocked the door. I tried to move it aside, but it wasn't hollow and surprisingly heavy — like carrying a real person.
I laid it down flat and examined its face. Someone had mischievously scribbled all over it in paint. On the mannequin's bare head was a name: Guo Junjie.
"Did Guo Junjie paint this?" I soon realized my mistake. Following the head downward, the mannequin's entire back was covered in insults.
"A poor kid."
Every class has one — quiet, unsociable kids who become scapegoats for bullying and isolation.
Though the insults were partially wiped off, new cruel words were scribbled densely on top, some overlapping the wiped areas.
I imagined the scene — a lonely kid desperately wiping the mannequin with their school uniform, while others laughed madly and painted hateful words right where the kid had just cleaned, even writing on the kid's clothes and skin.
They say children are innocent because sometimes even they don't realize how cruel their actions are.
I stroked the mannequin's head and thought of my own childhood: "There was a time when I was bullied a lot."
"What happened next?" Xiumu and Xue Fei crawled into the art room.
I smiled bitterly. "Then I hid a fruit knife in my backpack."
"No way! Streamer had such a fierce past? What happened after that?"
"After that, I got expelled. Suspended for a long time. In the end, I had no choice but to go to police academy." I looked a little weary. "If I had swallowed my pride back then, maybe now I'd be a lawyer or a doctor."
My hand touched the door. The lock had been violently torn off — the padlock lay on the easels.
"No tool marks. Looks like it was ripped off by brute force."
I cracked the door open. The hallway outside was pitch black, nothing visible.
"Let's go. We'll never find Shen Meng if we just hide here," Xiumu urged, but his eyes gleamed with excitement rather than concern.
"You three should hold hands and keep close to the wall. If anything supernatural happens, immediately turn back the way you came. Got it?" I repeated the warning, afraid another accident would happen.
"Worry about yourself first, you're so annoying," Xue Fei snapped. Shen Meng's disappearance had made him restless.
I said nothing, switched on the phone light, and moved slowly along the wall.
Bang! Something was kicked over — a faint noise, but loud in the silent lab building.
"Not us," the four of us stopped and checked the floor carefully.
Bang! The strange sound came again, not long after.
Xiumu tugged my sleeve: "Sounds like it's coming from deep on the first floor. Let's go check it out."
I originally planned to check every room one by one, but since he said that, I felt uneasy not following.
We passed two unknown labs and arrived at the stairs leading up to the second floor — twelve steps under the light.
"Hey, have you heard the story of the thirteenth step? Legend says that bad kids who come to school at midnight will find a thirteenth step added to the usual twelve, and stepping on it leads to another world," Xiumu whispered mysteriously.
"Can you shut up for once?" Xue Fei pinned Xiumu against the wall. "Stop telling those stories! Ghosts don't exist."
Watching them argue, I felt inexplicably annoyed.
"I heard that stepping on that step shows you your corpse, because the thirteenth step is your dead body."
I had heard this story before, and before coming here, I searched the web for different versions of it since the phrase appeared in the task hints of The Netherworld Live Show.
"Streamer, is that true?" both boys asked in unison. In the dark, I couldn't see their faces.
"It's definitely fake — just a made-up story. If you want, after we find Shen Meng, I'll tell you the full version for three days straight."
We followed the noise, stepping deeper into the first floor.
Bang, bang.
At last, we reached the farthest end of the lab building, where the noise stopped abruptly.
"Sounds like it came from here." The three guys exchanged glances — the deepest corner housed a restroom.
I raised the camera, eyes on my phone screen, hoping to capture anything unusual inside.
"I'll go first. You wait outside."
I pushed open the restroom door. No bad smell — it had been five years, after all.
Inside, the first thing I saw was the washbasin, above which hung a huge mirror, cracked and covered in dust.
In bright red paint, someone had written:
"Kill you all! Kill you all! Die! Die! Die!"
"That's some serious hatred."
I wiped the mirror with my palm. Because of the angle, my reflection was blurry, almost unrecognizable.
I twisted the taps — the first two didn't work. When I turned the third, the pipes gurgled, and soon thick, sticky liquid flowed out.
"No way... that can't be blood, right?"
I cupped some in my hand and brought it closer to my eyes.