My Strange Tale Love Strategy Simulator

It was nearly 7 p.m., and the sky was gradually darkening. The security camera facing the conference room and corridor swung back and forth, scanning the entire area. The camera displayed rings of red dots, not glaring, but unsettling nonetheless.

Zhang Ying, leaning against the wall, was fully equipped. In order not to reveal his whereabouts, he not only wore black plastic gloves and black plastic shoe covers, but also wore a black plastic head covering to prevent his hair from falling out.

He and Xiao Hei are practically identical.

Xiao Hei broke free from Zhang Ying's shadow and floated towards the camera. The humanoid black phantom swayed in mid-air; if anyone below could see it, they would surely have a heart attack.

Floating to the camera, Xiao Hei enveloped it within its body, instantly rendering the camera unable to rotate. After a few slight twitches, the red dot circle on the camera went out, and it drooped limply downwards, completely frozen.

Upon seeing this, Zhang Ying immediately left the wall and instructed Xiao Hei to disable the camera facing the principal's office.

Xiao Hei detached itself from the camera facing the conference room and instead covered the camera facing the principal's office.

The camera facing the principal's office crashed, but after restarting, the camera facing the conference room shifted its view to the corridor.

Zhang Ying quickly took out a safety pin and a single hook, and inserted them into the single-pronged lock on the iron door of the principal's office. With the help of his Ghost Eye, the structure inside the prison was completely visible. He held the safety pin in one hand and manipulated the single hook in the other, and after flipping it a couple of times, four soft clicking sounds came from inside the prison.

He turned the pin, and the lock on the principal's office door immediately opened.

"Xiao Hei! Turn off the security camera in the principal's office!"

Xiao Hei immediately floated into the principal's office. Zhang Ying gripped the handle and observed the camera facing the principal's office without moving. The red dot inside the camera gradually lit up, indicating that it was about to be restored!

"Hurry up, Xiao Hei!" Zhang Ying urged towards the door.

Just as the low-hanging camera lifted, its view about to shift to the principal's office door, a line of black text appeared in front of Zhang Ying:

【OK】

Zhang Ying immediately pulled down the handle, opened the iron door a crack, and squeezed himself into the principal's office. Only when the camera was focused on the principal's office door did he narrowly close the iron door, making a loud thud.

"Fortunately, although it made a sound, it shouldn't be noticed for a while." Zhang Ying wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and turned to look into the principal's office.

The principal's office had two large windows that let in no light, making it pitch black. The only furnishings were a table, a chair, and a few glass cabinets for storing documents. The only things that could be considered useful were an old-fashioned computer and the small water dispenser commonly found in bar areas.

"The principal's office is really clean and honest. I just don't know where all the money in our cafeteria goes. They can even make dishes like last year's zongzi stir-fried with cured meat for the New Year."

Zhang Ying muttered a complaint under his breath, glancing at the surveillance camera in the corner. Thanks to Xiao Hei's blocking, the camera froze after moving to a position where the archives were no longer visible. After the camera moved, Xiao Hei had ample time to enter the archives.

He arrived at the door of the archives room, squatted down, and looked at the lock cylinder. His brow furrowed as he examined the lock's internal structure.

"Hiss~, why is it a cross lock? I only learned about flat locks in my tutorials!"

Zhang Ying felt a bit tricky, so he immediately took out his phone from his pocket, wanting to learn how to unlock the cross lock on the spot.

"I don't know if a safety pin and a single hook can unlock a cross lock."

He squatted on one knee in front of the archives room, placed his phone on his lap, and watched the instructional video while practicing the techniques.

Just as he was fiddling with the lock cylinder, a line of black characters appeared before his eyes.

[Hurry up, I'm covered by the camera, my body is so itchy, I can't hold on much longer]

"Hang in there a little longer! The tutorial's about to teach you how to unlock it!" Zhang Ying glanced at the keyhole with one eye and the tutorial with the other, then clicked his tongue. "Can you hurry up?! I really don't want to know the difference between a flat lock and a cross lock!"

Just as Zhang Ying was racking his brains to unlock the archive room door, the two security guards on night duty were handing over their duties.

A middle-aged security guard carried a cup of hot tea in a thermos into the security room. After taking a sip, he woke up the young security guard who was asleep on the monitoring table.

The young security guard rubbed his eyes and was startled to find himself asleep in the security room.

"Damn it, I didn't sleep much this morning, and I fell asleep as soon as I got to the security room. If the boss finds out, I'll get my pay docked again!"

The middle-aged security guard smiled slightly: "A young guy like you still lacks experience. If you want to sleep, why don't you sleep while you're on patrol? Wouldn't it be more comfortable to just find a blind spot in the surveillance cameras, lay out a mattress on the floor, and sleep there?"

"I'm not as daring as you," the young security guard chuckled. "Something's been acting strange in the teaching building lately. I'm on edge when I'm patrolling, let alone sleeping in there."

The middle-aged security guard filled out the handover form, handed it to the younger guard, and said with a smile, "There's nothing supernatural about it; it's all just fabrication. I've worked at this school for at least five or six years, and I've never bumped into anything dirty. I think you're just scaring yourself!"

"Go on, go on. I'll check the security room's surveillance footage later; the boss won't hold you responsible. Go on patrol now." The middle-aged security guard, sipping hot tea, sat in the chair at the surveillance table and urged the younger guard to hurry up and go on patrol.

The computer screen on the monitoring desk displayed footage from various surveillance cameras in the teaching building.

The middle-aged security guard moved the mouse, preparing to move the security room's surveillance camera to a corner, and then capture the entire scene of the young security guard falling asleep.

Turning to the fourth page of the surveillance footage, the middle-aged security guard frowned. The camera in the principal's office on the fourth page was displaying a distorted image, with the footage filled with floating black and white dots.

"No display, no disconnection, just a distorted screen? What's going on? I remember this camera was replaced only a few years ago, how come it's breaking down so quickly?" The middle-aged security guard muttered, turning on his walkie-talkie to ask the younger security guard to go to the principal's office to check what was wrong with the camera.

He then scrolled through the surveillance camera footage, trying to see when the problem occurred.

He scrolled through the surveillance footage, and the number of vases on the screen gradually decreased. At a certain point, the vases transformed into a scene with some flashing colored stripes, and then the footage returned to normal.

The interval between the appearance of colored stripes and the complete screen distortion is less than 1 second, followed by a full minute of screen distortion.

"Hmm, that's strange. This kind of situation hasn't appeared in the report of camera damage."

Driven by doubt, he repeatedly watched the footage when the colored stripes appeared, and with 0.5 seconds remaining before the vase, he abruptly pressed the pause button on the monitor.

The middle-aged security guard swallowed hard. He noticed that just as the surveillance footage was about to glitch, the door to the principal's office... seemed to move!

Instantly, a chill rose from his tailbone to the top of his head, and his scalp tingled.

"No way? You can't just slap me in the face like this after all the boasting I just made! I've been working the night shift for so many years, and I never thought I'd actually see something supernatural!"

"No, no! Maybe someone's up to something! Trying to steal something from the principal's office? I'd like to see who you are!"

The middle-aged security guard rallied himself, suppressing his pounding heart, and pulled up the surveillance footage from the principal's office corridor, rewinding the video.