Chapter 182: She Did a Sudden 180
Translator: Pluto Editor: Vermillion
Lin Sanjiu didn’t know if she had miscalculated, but this time the train arrived at the station in less than 20 minutes. Lin Sanjiu had already anticipated this. She grabbed the note tightly in her hand and did not move from her seat. She forced herself to turn her head around to look outside through the window. Without the feeling of the note in her hand, reminding her about the messy handwriting, Lin Sanjiu really wouldn’t be able to resist just rushing outside to free herself from this torture.
This time, the glass wall of the train station disappeared.
Without the glass wall, half of the train station had already merged with the elementary school building. The gates of the school and its fences were now, without reason, behind a bench in the train station. The signboard with the words “Mausoleum Elementary School” blocked the entire view of the station’s name.
That teacher and her students maintained the same postures and smiles. They had also moved forward about ten meters. That skin of the boy, whose face was squished by the glass wall, had a reddish mark. The female teacher, who seemed to have limitless patience, raised her hand and gestured once again for Lin Sanjiu to come to her.
Lin Sanjiu shifted her gaze away hastily, and her hands were trembling slightly. The people in front of this elementary school were really too strange. She had never met any people like them before. Though they didn’t attack her, they didn’t plan to let her go either…
“What… what are they?” She only noticed that she was stuttering after she said those words. It didn’t take long before the train door closed once again. The train resumed its march forward, rumbling, leaving the school far behind and entering a tunnel, embracing the same familiar darkness. Without looking at the map, Lin Sanjiu was 100% sure that the next station was still Mausoleum Elementary Station.
She took a few deep breaths consecutively, but she couldn’t calm herself down at all. Perhaps, the cold temperature caused all the pores on her skin to contract. She was cold from head to toe.
Lin Sanjiu had unconsciously crushed the note in her hand, so it was now quite tattered. This time the train would arrive at the station much quicker. She knew that she needed to think of something.
While Lin Sanjiu contemplated, she could feel a breeze of cold wind blowing from her back. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up at once. She turned her head behind sharply, feeling extremely nervous. There was still no one in the train carriages.
As the train was a little old, the cold wind could seep through the various cracks from the wear over the years. The wind became stronger and stronger each time. Lin Sanjiu exhaled and mocked herself for jumping at shadows. She touched the bandage on her neck. Feeling the hard choker on her neck, she felt a little less worried.
[In the worst case scenario, I’ll just fight!]
It didn’t matter if those were humans or duoluozhongs, they could still die, right?
She took a stand on that matter and made up her mind. After this, she felt more confident about her plan and that immediately reduced her feeling of helplessness. Estimating that the train would arrive at the station in another five to six minutes, Lin Sanjiu stood up and exercised her stiff limbs, which were numbed by the cold, preparing herself for the upcoming fight.
This time, the train drove into the train station soundlessly. When the train stopped, Lin Sanjiu wasn’t even aware because she was doing some back twisting exercises. When she faced straight again, she was so shocked that she took a step back and nearly fell.
The female teacher was now standing in front of the train door and was staring straight at her. The teacher’s eyes narrowed into two crescents and her smile was much, much… wider. The students stood very close behind her. All of them had the same smiling expression as they pressed their faces against the train doors. The gates of Mausoleum Elementary School were right behind them. The teacher and the students crowded the narrow gap between the doors of the train and the gates of the school. That is to say, they only had to take one step to enter the train carriage.
However, they did not enter the train. They simply stood outside quietly, without making a single sound. Lin Sanjiu found herself standing face-to-face with the female teacher. A weakness assaulted her and her body grew cold. For a few seconds, she couldn’t even make herself move.
In the end, the female teacher did not move either. She merely fixed her gaze on Lin Sanjiu and maintained her smile. The female teacher shook her own head slowly. Though her head moved, her eyes did not move in the same direction, instead, her pupils shifted in the opposite direction, till they were deep in the corners of her eyes. Her eyes never left Lin Sanjiu for even a second.
[What did she want to say? No. No… The question should be, can humans do something like that?]
“What are you—” this question was stuck in her throat. She thought she had already shouted, but she realized that she was scared that she couldn’t make a sound. She almost forgot that she was wearing her Pygmalion Choker. It took a few seconds before she came to her senses again. She retreated to the other end of the train carriage and took out her [Tape Recorder]. Just then, the door beeped twice. The sound pierced through the stale atmosphere.
Lin Sanjiu didn’t notice how nice it sounded before. She was covered in cold sweat and she felt as if she had barely escaped a certain death. She watched as the train doors shut and brushed past the female teacher’s nose.
The latter’s expression grew cold in a split second, almost as if she wasn’t smiling before. The smiles on the children’ faces had also evaporated. They stared at Lin Sanjiu with creepy eyes, as if they were staring at a dead person. Next, they all shook their heads in a uniform manner.
Even a few minutes after the train had left the station, Lin Sanjiu couldn’t erase the image of the mole on the female teacher’s face while that woman shook her head.
Nothing life-threatening happened, but her heart was racing. The feeling lasted for a long time, and she only regained a little of her composure when she noticed the sparse surroundings around her. This time, the train traveled for a long time but did not enter any tunnel. Lin Sanjiu didn’t know when she sat down on the floor of the train. She exhaled a long breath and decided not to get up. She stretched her neck and looked at the route map.
Finally, the next stop wasn’t Mausoleum Elementary Station. “Bamboo Grove Mountains Station…” she mumbled its name. The name of the station was considered normal but, at this moment, Lin Sanjiu’s nerves were tightly strung, and she hesitated before mumbling, “I think I better take a look at the situation before deciding if I should get off.”
[The strange group of children with their teacher was standing directly outside the train, but none of them stepped into the train—because they couldn’t enter? Does this mean that this train carriage has the ability to protect me? If that were the case, it would explain why someone would leave a note advising others not to alight…] Lin Sanjiu’s body felt limp. She lowered her head exhaustedly and let out a sigh. She could see the bottom of her previous seat from where she was right now.
Lin Sanjiu looked over and she froze.
Under the seat, she saw an emotioless face staring at her, and who knows how long it had been lying there!
Finally, Lin Sanjiu couldn’t control herself, letting out a cry and jumping up. She quickly took out her Vibroblade and held it tight. Yet, two seconds after she leaped up, Lin Sanjiu suddenly felt that something was wrong. Her brows knitted ever so slightly. She took two quick steps forward and bent down to look under the seat.
There was no one under the train seat.
It wasn’t an illusion—she did see a face just now, but it was a face printed on a newspaper.
“Huh. Why did I find this just now?” The newspaper seemed to have slipped from the crevice between the seat. Dangling from the crevice, it revealed a large headshot of a person on its front page. Due to the lighting under the seat, Lin Sanjiu mistook that photo for a person staring at her and that really scared her.
Lin Sanjiu stretched her arm under the seat and grabbed the newspaper. There was a missing part on the top-right corner of the front page. Lin Sanjiu swiftly unfolded the piece of crumpled note and tried to fit it in the missing spot. It fitted, both its texture and the shape of its torn edge.
[The person who wrote the note must have torn a corner of the newspaper and scribbled that warning before squishing it into the crevice. But… if the person planned to warn the future passengers of the train, why didn’t she write a bigger warning and place the newspaper out in the open? Wouldn’t that be more eye-catching?]
Lin Sanjiu thought about these perplexing questions for some time but couldn’t make sense of it. She flipped the newspaper, hoping to find clues about this weird world. When she reached the next section of the newspaper, her body froze.
Someone had obviously written a few words with very large characters.
“NO, I WAS WRONG. GET DOWN”
The ‘n’ was dragged to the edge of the paper before it was abruptly chopped off.
