EM CH11

Chapter 11: Conversing with the Yellow Jacket

“What do you mean by that?” Yu An met the consultant’s gaze, yet could not detect the slightest hint of warmth in her eyes. She merely grinned with exaggerated enthusiasm, as if wearing a mask fixed into a fake smile.

Just like the smiling security guard in the lobby on the first floor, a long scar crawled along her jawline. It seemed this face had originally belonged to someone else, stitched onto this woman for some unknown reason.

Yu An gradually began to sense danger creeping in. What did she mean by saying the price depended on the next customer’s needs? Did they intend to harvest organs from him to graft onto the next person?

Even so, he could only pretend to be calm. In such a bizarre environment, letting fear show was the quickest way to turn oneself into prey.

Another key reason he dared to walk straight into this office building was that he did not believe the interviewer would send him on an outright suicide mission. Toward the interviewer, he harbored a subtle suspicion, yet also a subtle trust.

“Um, is there a washroom here?” He looked for a chance to change the subject, buying as much time as possible to investigate the surrounding layout. His objective for this trip was to protect the hostage, the abducted obese patient Mr. Zhou, and to ferret out the Aberrant inside the beauty salon.

Protecting him… easier said than done. He would have to cross each bridge as he came to it. Worst case, he would simply fail his internship and get kicked out of the company, which wouldn’t be much of a loss anyway.

No, actually, it would be a loss.

The image of the interviewer curled up asleep in his pillow surfaced in Yu An’s mind, his bathrobe parted all the way down, the red marks across his skin still fresh.

The consultant gave a polite nod and asked him to turn left outside the door; the restroom was just a short distance away.

“Alright.”

Yu An slowed his steps, observing his surroundings out of the corner of his eye.

On the left side of the corridor were four white European-style wooden doors, labeled 701, 702, 703, and 704. Every door displayed advertisements for Xiliu Beauty Salon. It appeared the salon’s owner had leased the entire seventh floor of the building. The room where Yu An had just spoken with the consultant was 704.

To be fair, the decor here was as cozy as a young girl’s bedroom, looking no different from an ordinary beauty salon, with pale pink leather-grain wallpaper covering the walls on both sides.

The corridor was somewhat narrow, with the two walls standing close together.

The wallpaper at several corners was peeling away. Yu An carefully lifted a section and discovered another layer of wallpaper underneath. The bottom layer was filthy beyond measure, smeared with large swathes of grease from who knew where, flecked with fine streaks of blood, as if the place had once been leased to a slaughterhouse.

Could it be that whenever it got dirty, they simply pasted another layer of wallpaper over it to hide the mess, pasting layer upon layer until it squeezed the corridor narrow?

The washroom sat diagonally across from the doors. Stepping inside, directly facing the entrance was a row of sinks, topped by a wide, rectangular mirror that reflected Yu An’s figure and the doorframe behind him.

Yu An walked in, washing his hands absentmindedly before the mirror.

Under the masking effect of the Pure Black Hood, even he could not see his own face.

So how had that security guard seen it? While false advertising from the Midnight Merchant couldn’t be ruled out, the female consultant had pointed out right away that his left eye was injured and needed replacing. That made no sense at all.

“But… I’m not missing an eye.”

Yu An slowly pushed back his hood. He had not wrapped his left eye in bandages; rather, the moment he stepped onto the pedestrian street, he had embedded Monstrosity Core: Night Mosquito into the socket.

The Night Mosquito core had forged a link within his left eye socket, its chaotic patterns shifting to form a black pupil that swiveled smoothly, looking virtually indistinguishable from his right eye.

Considering the outfit’s product description stating “one’s face will never be seen by others,” could it be that the security guard and the consultant were not human?

Yu An was reluctant to return to that suffocating salon room. His best option was to climb out through the ceiling tiles in the stalls, avoiding another face-to-face encounter with that smiling consultant, whose status as living or dead remained unknown.

The washroom was relatively small, containing only two stalls. Yu An raised his hand to push the first door, but it didn’t budge.

The stall doors had no exterior handles and could only be locked from the inside, which meant someone was very likely crouching inside.

Yu An pulled his hand back, making no attempt to bend down and peer through the gap beneath the door. He had a nagging feeling his eyes might meet something horrifying.

He would enter the second one instead.

Resting his hand on the dagger’s hilt at his thigh, Yu An touched the door with his fingertips, pushing it inward inch by inch. Once it was cracked slightly open, he kicked it inward.

The door collided with something and rebounded, accompanied by a muffled groan from within.

It was a human voice. Drawing his dagger, Yu An barged inside, holding the blade straight across the person’s throat.

The man in the stall was terrified out of his wits. His eyes widened, yet he dared not cry out, raising both hands flat against the grimy stall partition.

Yu An regarded him coolly, raising a finger to his lips. Shh.

Panting heavily, the man nodded, still shaken to his core.

He was in his early twenties, not much older than Yu An, dressed in a trendy jacket with a holographic yellow finish, sporting wireless sports earbuds around his neck. He looked decent, though a bit on the short side.

“You’re not here for plastic surgery, are you? Are you an undercover journalist trying to expose them?” The yellow-jacketed man lowered his voice, sneaking a furtive glance outside before pulling the stall door shut. The latch was broken, so it could only remain loosely closed.

Yu An gave no answer either way. Not seeing that unnerving eight-tooth grin on this young man’s face was already a relief. He temporarily sheathed his dagger, keeping as much distance as possible from the man in the cramped space.

Yet the yellow-jacketed man leaned in close, whispering into Yu An’s ear: “Look above you.”

Yu An looked up to find a length of rope dangling from the ceiling over the neighboring stall. The rope was pulled taut, with something hanging on the other side hidden by the partition.

The yellow-jacketed man said in terror: “Someone hung themselves in there.”

“This place is too evil, too horrifying. I have to get out. Can you take me with you?”

“Can’t you just take the elevator down?” Yu An asked.

The man’s eyes went wide: “You can’t go down. I tried! The elevator display shows it going down, but when the doors open, you’re right back on this floor. Once you sign up for their procedures, you can’t leave without paying their fee.”

“I came here once before. I had an accident while streaming games and burned my face. In my line of work, we rely on our faces. If I got disfigured, my career would be finished, so my manager introduced me to this place.”

A gaming streamer. Yu An looked him over.

“I didn’t ask about the price back then. My viewership was always solid, so the agency would reimburse me anyway. The doctor who did my skin graft was undeniably skilled; right after surgery, you couldn’t see a single scar. But when I went to pay, they refused to take my money. Instead, they demanded that I bring them a handful of hair within seven days.”

Yu An offered his assessment: “A total bargain.”

Bloodshot lines filled the man’s eyes as he clawed at his cheeks in distress: “They wanted the scalp attached to it!”

Yu An raised an eyebrow. That accounted for the hair transplant procedure in cosmetic surgery.

“Fortunately, I had connections in the underworld who knew people at the crematorium. I paid them off to sneak out a piece to get by.”

“I admit, I took another gamble and came back. Next month, the streaming platform is hosting an offline fan meet. I’m not ugly, and with a filter on camera, I pass as an idol streamer, but my height is a serious flaw. Showing up like this could cost me a ton of followers. I came here for height-extension surgery.”

“I was supposed to go into the operating room right away, but my consultant suddenly got a message and told me that the payment required this time was a left eyeball.” The young man was panicked to the absolute limit, cold sweat beading at his temples and soaking his hair. “I thought I could just buy another one from the crematorium to fool them, but… but…”

Yu An had a strange premonition.

“She said it had to have 20/10 uncorrected vision!” The young man was on the verge of an emotional breakdown. “My eyes… my vision just happens to be 20/10!”

“…” Yu An scratched his head.

On a standard visual acuity chart, normal sharp vision was 20/20, corresponding to a test distance of five meters. People exceeding standard vision certainly existed, but they were rare. Finding one that met the criteria at a crematorium within seven days was practically impossible.

Yu An had only thrown out that demand to the consultant because he knew such eyes were rare. Had he known earlier, he would have asked for 20/5 instead.

“Can’t you just cancel the procedure?”

“If the consultant can’t find a matching match, you can leave. But if she finds one, the deal is locked in. If you can’t hand over the organ she wants within seven days, they force you to help them orchestrate the kidnapping of a fat person. If you fail that too, you’re dead for sure.”

“Your… your eyes… look pretty good too…” Utter terror caused the young man to lose his sanity. Grabbing Yu An by the shoulders, he clawed wildly toward Yu An’s face. “What’s your vision score! Give it to me, haha… give it to me…”

“Actually, my left eye can only see mosquito mosaic vision, all flickering pixels. If you don’t believe me, look.” Yu An raised his hand, popped the Aberrant Core out of his left socket, and held it out on his palm.

From the young streamer’s perspective, the aloof stranger in black had just gouged out his own eyeball right in front of him and rested it on his palm.

Having just been popped out, the core was still connected to his neural link, rolling around in his palm under the control of Yu An’s brain. The pupil swiveled toward the young man, bright and piercing.

Looking back at Yu An, beneath his left eyebrow was nothing more than a hollow socket. The young streamer let out a screech that shredded his vocal cords, rolled his eyes back, and fainted on the spot, collapsing onto the floor with one foot slipping into the toilet bowl.

“…” Yu An stood stunned. Perhaps because he played horror games all the time, he had subconsciously assumed the streamer’s courage would match that of a horror game player.

He quietly pushed the Aberrant Core back into his socket, pulling the black hood back up to conceal his face.

Outside the stall, through the vacant office building, the crisp clicking of high heels echoed down the corridor.

The sound approached from the direction of room 704, step by step, drawing closer to the washroom. It had likely been drawn by the streamer’s shriek.

The footsteps halted right at the washroom entrance.

Yu An nudged the unconscious streamer further into the corner with his foot. Resting his hand on the dagger’s hilt, he leaned his back against the stall partition and waited in silence.

She had stepped inside. This was the men’s room.

The high heels clicked against the marble tiles, tapping rhythmically as they neared the stalls.

She stopped in front of the neighboring stall, attempting to push the door, but it did not open.

Yu An held his breath.

Yet the woman outside suddenly went motionless, like an avatar disconnecting from a server.

After waiting a full minute, Yu An slowly crouched down, attempting to locate the woman through the gap beneath the stall partition.

When he lowered his body to look under, mere inches away, his eyes locked with a face bearing an eight-tooth smile.

The woman was bent double, peering under the partition straight at Yu An, her signature fake smile plastered across her face.

In that instant, Yu An distinctly felt the hairs on his back stand on end.

Fear could blind a person.

Yu An kicked out against the door with everything he had. The blow landed hard against the dilapidated wooden panel, snapping the rusted hinges with a loud crack. The entire door flew off, slamming into the woman and pinning her against the opposite wall.

Yu An had put all his weight behind that strike. An ordinary human would have been severely battered.

Yet the woman uttered not a single sound. Lying on the floor, she calmly lifted the door panel off herself. A section of her skull was caved in, but the smile on her face remained unchanged. Turning her neck toward Yu An, her eyes spun erratically in different directions like short-circuited gears.

Now Yu An was completely certain she wasn’t human. Gripping his dagger with both hands, he lunged forward and drove it down.

There was no spray of blood as Yu An had anticipated; only the dull sound of a blade slicing through plastic met his ears, accompanied by electrical hum from a speaker.

Only then did Yu An realize she wasn’t human at all, but rather a plastic mannequin like those used in clothing storefronts. The only real part was a human face stitched onto the head with terrifying precision.

Panting, he stood up, reversed his grip on the dagger, and slid it back into the thigh sheath.

Before he could steady his breathing, the handles on the four white doors opposite the washroom rattled. Three of the doors swung open: rooms 701, 702, and 703.

From each room emerged a smiling consultant, walking stiffly outward, each carrying a sterile tray.

The consultant from 701 carried an index finger on her tray.

The consultant from 702 carried a pair of long, slender calves.

The consultant from 703 carried an empty tray, though the label on its side read: “Eyeball.”

All three consultants turned right in unison, took several paces forward, and entered the neighboring rooms in sequence. The consultant from 701 walked into 702, the one from 702 into 703, and so forth.

Yu An dared not move a muscle, staring at them where he stood. He now understood the operational model of their cosmetic procedures completely: they harvested an index finger from the client in 701 to graft onto the client in 702, while taking a pair of calves from 702 to graft onto 703.

The client in 703 was undeniably the yellow-jacketed streamer passed out in the stall. Because he wanted to be taller, the salon had procured a pair of calves for him.

Room 704 belonged to Yu An. If they obtained the streamer’s eyeball for him, what would he be expected to surrender in return?

With a sharp snap, the consultant about to step into room 704 suddenly twisted her neck a full 180 degrees, fixing her eyes on Yu An hiding inside the washroom.

At the exact same time, the other two consultants twisted their necks as well, looking in Yu An’s direction with wide smiles.

He was spotted!

Yu An pivoted and bolted.

The Pure Black Hood made his movements far more agile. Darting out of the washroom as lightly as a cat, he fled in the opposite direction from the smiling consultants.

Yet his earlier scouting had confirmed that the office building was built in a square loop; running straight ahead would only mean circling around. Moreover, once past the corner, there were no lights, only an endless row of white doors beginning with the digit 7 lining the left-hand wall.

Everywhere Yu An ran past, door handles rattled, and more smiling consultants burst through the doorways without warning, swarming behind him in pursuit.

No light could be seen ahead, yet the path behind was thoroughly choked off by those monsters. Yu An could only grit his teeth and push forward in the dark, lacking even the time to retrieve his flashlight.

Suddenly, someone took hold of his hand.

Total darkness surrounded them, leaving Yu An blind to his surroundings, aware only of a warm, slender hand gripping his fingers and leading him forward in a sprint.

“Interviewer, is that you?” Pulled along through turn after turn, Yu An was on the verge of losing all sense of direction in the blackness. Yet the person holding him uttered not a word, his figure invisible, offering only a grounding reassurance that flowed through their clasped palms like steady heat.