My Healing Games

Chapter 213 His acting skills were like a sharpened knife
The dim light illuminated the faces of the people, and the ticking of the clocks represented the passage of time.

When the hands crossed again, everything seemed to return to many years ago, and all the dead, carrying memories and pain, began anew this journey destined for an end.

"Every butterfly is the ghost of a flower from the past, returning to find itself."

The reader closed the book in her hands, leaned back on the sofa, and looked listlessly at the person next to her.

She rarely attends such gatherings, and the only reason she came this time was because her favorite author had invited her.

My gaze secretly swept over the writer sitting in the corner; the man was as quiet and silent as ever.

"I don't understand why we have to come to this dump just because of a letter?" The student crossed his arms in front of his knees and took off his headphones. "I'm not interested in whether ghosts exist or not. If you want to prove it, then stay here and prove it yourselves."

“There are no ghosts in the world, only people who pretend to be ghosts.” The thug stood at the door, his broad, strong back leaning against the door: “No one is allowed to leave this building until that person is caught.”

"It wants to kill me, what are you all panicking about?" The doctor stubbed out his cigarette, a hint of gloom and displeasure hidden in his eyes: "I don't know if ghosts exist in this world. If there are no ghosts in this world, then the person who wants to kill me should be in the house, among the eight of you."

"But why would it want to kill you?" Uncle Li didn't even look up, staring at the medicine bottle in his hand. "Did you do something behind our backs?"

"I just want to cure you all." The doctor stared at Uncle Li, seemingly trying to confirm whether he was the murderer.

"Everyone should stay away from this building for a while. It's really not safe here." The teacher's voice was gentle, but there was also a hint of unease and deep-seated fear in it. "I've heard from the neighbors that this place is haunted. Many people have died mysteriously, and people from other places also like to come here to commit suicide. It feels like this building is a black hole that keeps attracting the dead."

She tried her best to persuade everyone not to wander around. She preferred that everyone stay in the safe house, away from danger: "Those deaths were probably not simple accidents. There are many particularly scary stories circulating in this building, such as monsters with pig faces, a stench in the stairwell that no cleaning agent can wash away, suicide victims whose bodies were torn apart but still went upstairs, and so on. In short, whether ghosts exist or not, we should all be careful."

“It’s not like we’re the only living people in this building. Aren’t all the other residents living perfectly well?” The student walked to the door, but the thugs refused to move aside. The student wasn’t afraid of ghosts or monsters, but he was somewhat afraid of the thugs.

Regarding the question of whether ghosts exist in the world, the people in the room had different answers, and none of them could convince the other. After arguing for a long time, the doctor suddenly looked at the writer who had been silent.

"Writer, you were the first person to see the letter, and you were also the one who accepted the invitation. Do you think the person who wrote to you was a ghost or a human?"

The doctor was a very intelligent person, and every word he said seemed to contain a special meaning.

Although it wasn't explicitly stated, everyone present gleaned something from the doctor's words; the doctor seemed to suspect the writer.

The lights inside flickered a few times, seemingly due to unstable voltage.

Everyone looked at the writer sitting in the corner. Compared to the others in the room, he possessed a unique aura that was difficult to describe.

It was as if a rope, a mixture of reason and madness, was hanging around his neck, descending from heaven and slowly tightening, threatening to hang him while simultaneously bringing him closer to the answer.

The writer looked up at the doctor, and his gaze made the doctor instinctively look away.

“If I were to kill you, the eight of us should be sitting around a corpse right now, discussing why you committed suicide.”

Without unnecessary elaboration, it is full of persuasiveness, and there seems to be no reason to refute it.

"I accepted the invitation simply to finish writing my book; this place is perfect for ending my story."

The lights inside the room began to flicker again. As the writer began to speak, footsteps could be faintly heard in the hallway outside the door. A faint, fishy smell seeped in through the crack in the door. It seemed that all the abnormalities only appeared when the writer spoke.

The doctor stared at the writer for a long time, his facial expression changing several times before finally returning to normal.

He changed the subject as if nothing had happened: "My experience serves as a warning to everyone. The killer is using all sorts of terrifying rumors to commit murder. After you leave here, stay quietly in your rooms and don't go out before dawn no matter what..."

Before the doctor could finish speaking, a strange sound came from the living room door, as if someone was scratching the door with their fingernails. Then everyone heard the sound of wind chimes, and the eerie sound seemed to be coming from room 401.

As the wind chimes rang, a pungent stench emanated from every corner of the room. No one knew what was emitting the stench, as if the room itself were a corpse.

The students began to gag, the teachers and readers frowned, and A-Meng covered her mouth and nose. Only the doctor, the writer, and Uncle Li remained calm in the room.

The discussion about the vengeful ghost and the murderer yielded no results. The physical discomfort gradually became more pronounced. The students looked around, trying to find the source of the stench. A-Meng put down her pen, her face turning bright red.

Unable to bear the stench any longer, the student pushed the thugs away, saying, "Do what you want to do yourselves, don't drag me into this. I'm going back to my room."

The student grabbed the doorknob, and as he prepared to open the door, his other hand pressed down on the door panel.

Puzzled, the student followed the arm and saw that the writer had walked to the doorway at some point.

He was about to push the writer away, but his hand stopped just before it touched the writer's shoulder. He saw the writer's face.

Deep within his calm eyes lies a world completely detached from reality. Hallucinations, delusions, and delusions—these most destructive positive symptoms of schizophrenia—are commonplace for the writer, for whom the boundaries of reality have become extremely blurred.

"If you go out, you might die."

Silently watching the living people in the room, the writer gently pressed his temples, listening to all sorts of noises around him.

He was trying his best to control his behavior. He had worked hard to suppress the urge to scream, bang his head against the wall, and tear everything apart, but every word he uttered still made the whole room feel oppressive. His emotions seemed to be able to infect all his alternate personalities.

The writer, whose mind was in a state of extreme inner conflict, reached out his hand to the student, clearly wanting to hold onto him and prevent him from leaving.

But reality was different from the script. The student instinctively dodged the writer's hand, pushed open the door, and ran outside!

These are almost all instinctive reactions of the body when it encounters danger. The student had forgotten what he was supposed to say next; he just didn't want to be targeted by the writer in front of him.

"return!"

When the door was opened, the stench inside dissipated considerably, and the oppressive atmosphere lessened. Several actors looked at Han Fei and even breathed a sigh of relief.

Han Fei plays a writer, a supporting character, but he truly seems like the main character. His emotions can affect everyone in the room, and his terrifying ability to control the situation even made Bai Xian, who plays the doctor, secretly startled: "The acting skills of young people these days are really good."

"It's more than just good." Li Huaiming, whose expression remained unaffected by the stench or other events, took out a bottle of medicine from his pocket, poured out two pills, and swallowed them. "His acting is like a sharpened knife, very sharp, able to cut through appearances and pierce directly into the audience's hearts. He can infect everyone with his emotions and control them with ease. However, I worry that he might be affected by the characters he plays, since the roles he portrays are relatively dangerous."

The two veteran actors both recognized Han Fei's talent, and they got to know each other. Just as they were about to have a chat with Han Fei, a scream suddenly came from the corridor.

The events that didn't happen in the script completely pulled all the actors back to reality, and they all ran out of room 404.

They saw the child playing a student slumped on the stairs. The steps leading to the third floor were littered with the carcasses of many birds, some of which had been dead for a long time, their feathers and blood congealed together.

"What happened?" Hearing the screams, the door on the third floor opened, and Director Zhang and his crew rushed over. They also saw the bird carcass on the stairs: "Who did this? It's a prop! Where's the prop?!"

"Director Zhang, this wasn't our doing!" The props staff rushed over: "Didn't you tell us to all leave the fourth floor and give the actors some time to rehearse on their own?"

"You didn't do this?" Director Zhang had his men quickly clean up the bird carcass, then ran up to the fourth floor: "Is everyone alright?"

"It's nothing." The actors were also a little puzzled: "Why haven't you guys come to the fourth floor?"

"Yes! We've been watching you from the third floor via a broadcast system. Your performance was fantastic."

"What's with that sudden stench and scratching at the door?" Bai Xian was taken aback; he had previously assumed it was part of the director's plan.

"A foul smell?" Director Zhang sniffed the hallway, but there was no strange smell. However, he did not refute Bai Xian: "It's probably the work of the other neighbors in the building. We have already paid them a lot of money, but there are still a small number of people who do not want us to film here."

(End of this chapter)