Paintings of Terror

Chapter 47: Moving into the Tube-Shaped Apartment

Translated by Eve

Edited by EB

The Spring Bamboo Apartment had six floors in total. Except for the first floor, which was a commercial district, the other five floors were residential. Every level contained sixteen units.

If this was a rectangular tube-shaped apartment, the communal washrooms and stairs would be located at each of? the four corners. Since this was a round building, the washrooms and stairs were simply placed at four equidistant points along the circle. There were exactly four units in-between each washroom.

Brick-red railings lined the communal balconies that faced inwards. If one was to lean against the railings, one could see the circular atrium downstairs as well as the residential units above. Everything was arranged in a circular manner.

The thirteen people who came from the world outside the painting were all assigned to units on the third and fourth level, except for Zhu Haowen and Wei Dong, They were assigned to the last room on the sixth floor, 616.

Ke Xun unlocked the door to unit 411. Because the building was circular, the doors outside were placed very close together. Inside, the rooms opened up in a fan-like fashion.

These were suite-style apartments. At most, they were fifty square metres in area. Closest to the entrance, there was a tiny living room. Inside the living room, there was an antiquated chiffonier, a glass coffee table and a small sofa with wooden armrests.

The inner room only contained a bed on an old-fashioned bed frame, a desk and a bookcase. The bookcase was filled with books pertaining to art.

Ke Xun pulled the curtains open. It was stiflingly dark outside. The night sky was deep and oppressive.

In contrast, the warm orange light of the room brought peace of mind.

Sometimes, the decorations and furnishing of a home is enough to give people insight into the lives of the previous owners.

“Do you feel anything strange after entering this painting?” Mu Yiran placed his light luggage down on the desk.

Ke Xun hadn’t thought about this all that much. “Now that you mention it, I feel better than I did in the last two paintings. But it did start to become harder to breathe after entering this building.”? Ke Xun also set his backpack down onto the desk. “Right. I brought toilet paper this time. If you need to use it, feel free to take some.”

Mu Yiran: “I also brought some.”

Seems like everyone had suffered from that.

Mu Yiran meticulously inspected every corner of the room. He took a look at the foot of the bed and his brows furrowed slightly.

There was a pair of plastic red slippers—appearing to be of female size—by the foot of the bed. They were positioned so that one was more forwards than the other. It looked like whoever was wearing the shoes was about to take a step forward.

Ke Xun also noticed the slippers. At first, he simply thought that leaving the slippers there was frightening, so he picked them up. But he didn’t know where he should put them.

“The NPC didn’t say that we couldn’t touch the things here.” Ke Xun comforted himself as he walked around the room with the slippers in hand. In the end, he simply set them down on the simple shoe rack near the entrance. Since these slippers didn’t belong to him, it wouldn’t be good to throw them away. The shoe rack was probably the most appropriate place to put them.

The shoe rack had originally been empty. With the red slippers on them, it looked like a woman currently lived here.

Ke Xun looked at his hand. He felt like they were kind of dirty.

“You can wash your hands in the bathroom.” Mu Yiran pulled out a travel-sized bar of soap from his backpack.

Ke Xun had never received such treatment from Mu Yiran before. He accepted the cool, aloof-looking soap and happily went on his way to the bathroom.

The communal washrooms also doubled as the communal water rooms. The long cement sink was glossy and clean. Ke Xun was in a pretty good mood—all of the displeasure from seeing the pair of red slippers was swept away. He washed his hands twice. Mu Yiran’s soap smelt like coconut, making Ke Xun tempted to take a bite out of it.

It was a white bar of soap but the bubbles that came out of it were a light pink. Who knew where the other man got such a maidenly bar of soap….

A second later, Sha Liu also walked in with travel-sized toiletries to wash up. When she noticed Ke Xun, she asked, “Is there anything strange in your apartment?”

Ke Xun didn’t intend to hide things from her. “There was a pair of red slippers near the bed. Does that count?”

Sha Liu’s expression was gloomy. “Both our rooms are filled with books. There are two full giant bookcases. There are even books piled up along the bed. Under the bed, there are boxes of books too.”

Ke Xun hadn’t brought a towel so he simply flicked his coconut-smelling hands dry. “Sounds like the previous landlord or tenant really loved to read. Maybe they were a scholar.”

“No. They’re all romance novels.”

“……”

“It’s the kind that was super popular in the eighties and nineties. There are novels by Chiung Yao, Cen Kailun, Xi Juan, Yu Qing….” Sha Liu frowned. She was too embarrassed to talk about the rest. Aside from these, she had also found forbidden romance novels (erotic novels) by the bedside.

Ke Xun was about to leave the bathroom with his soap. As he left, he said, “Sounds like the previous tenant owned a book shop.”

Sha Liu stood in the bathroom alone, staring at the slightly murky, slightly rusty water. In the end, she reluctantly used that water to wash up.

The romance novels in her room—Room 410—weren’t scary in and of itself, but combined with the obvious signs of life all around the apartment, it felt weird.

There were also two spittoons, one large and one small. She didn’t know what they were for.

However, considering they were in a residence that only had communal washrooms, Sha Liu figured it was probably used by the resident when they got up at night. They were probably chamber pots.

Furthermore, the large spittoon was really big. It was as big as a modern day toilet. There was even a lid on top with a hole cut into it. It definitely looked like a crude toilet.

But what kind of person would want to defecate in their own room? There were communal washrooms available.

The room also had a royal-style vanity table. For some reason, the mirror had been removed. Sha Liu had found facial oils, perfume, baby powder, a bottle of massage cream for dry skin, a tube of unknown ointment, and a wide tooth comb. There were several strands of extremely long white hair on the comb. From the looks of it, the owner of this hair probably had hair that reached their waist.

While the length itself wasn’t all that strange, the fact that it was white and this long was strange.

Sha Liu was lost in her thoughts. Suddenly, she realized that she was the only one left in the bathroom. She looked up at the pale, dim white light emitted by the incandescent tubular light bulb. Her body went cold and she hastily made her exit.

As she passed Room 412—the room closest to the bathroom she was in—she saw an old lady sitting by the door, fanning herself. The old lady was wearing a floral shirt characteristic of grannies. The shirt had a white background and was filled with little red flowers.

When Sha Liu passed by, the old lady suddenly stopped fanning herself and said, “It’s really hot today.”

Sha Liu subconsciously slowed down. She figured that she might be able to find out more about the situation they were in from the old lady. As such, she smiled back at her. “Yeah. It’s still so hot despite it already being night time. It should be lights out soon, right?”

The gatekeeper uncle didn’t talk a lot about lights out. Sha Liu wanted to know if turning the lights off was something that would just happen, or if they would have to do it themselves.

As expected, the old lady told her, “The electricity will be cut off at eleven.”

The electricity will be cut off? Sha Liu really wanted to ask if that included the communal washrooms. Unexpectedly, the old lady spoke up before she could. “Young lady, did you just move here?”

Sha Liu nodded. She then braced herself: “Auntie, who lived in 410 before me?”

“Yafen,” The old lady gave her a name. “Yafen lived here for more than a decade. Now, she lives comfortably with her parents in a new apartment downtown! I heard that there’s even an elevator!”

“Oh, that sounds nice.” Sha Liu grinned. She then headed back to her own unit. After all, who knew what would happen if she talked to a NPC for too long? It was safer to end things here.

Back in her apartment, she saw Qiu Lu reading one of the romance novels on the sofa. Sha Liu frowned. She didn’t want to touch anything in this room, personally.

Qiu Lu was holding up a book called Cloud of Romance. She then dimmed the lamp. “I heard your conversation just now.” She then glanced at the pink clock on the wall. “There’s still half an hour until eleven o’clock.”

Sha Liu felt a gust of cold air blow in. Turns out, Qiu Liu had turned on the electric fan. “Say, do you think that what they said is true? That we’re inside a painting? What a romantic lie.”

Sha Liu glanced at the poet and felt a bit empathetic. All she could do was smile right now. “Whether or not this is actually romantic, we’ll find out tonight.”

Qiu Lu twisted the lamp’s knob again, turning it brighter. She continued to read her novel.

This was the first time Sha Liu had seen such a carefree person. She herself was restless. She hadn’t been able to sleep last night. As ‘usual’, she would only be able to sleep a little after the ‘danger’ had passed at night.

Sha Liu tried to listen for movements from the inhabitants of 411 next door. She could faintly make out Ke Xun’s voice. Occasionally, Mu Yiran would reply in his low voice. However, she couldn’t make out any details.

The Spring Bamboo Apartments weren’t quiet. It was lively, as compounds that consisted of many families living together tended to be. Sha Liu lifted the curtain slightly and saw the people sitting outside, cooling off in the shade. There were also a few young children who didn’t want to go to bed yet. They were running around happily outside on the balconies.

Some units had their televisions turned on way too loud. From above them, she heard the theme song of some old television show play: The world is boundless, everywhere is my home! The world is boundless, what words should I leave behind!....

The old lady Sha Liu had spoken to earlier had returned to her apartment at some unknown point in time.

Right at this moment, a group of girls passed by her window. They chatted, completely unconcerned. “Chor Lau-heung? When was this released? Did it come out before Young Justice Bao?”

“My Fair Princess isn’t out yet! Can you imagine? These people are like, prehistoric!” The girls who were talking were the three long-legged beauties from before. They each held a Popsicle in their hands. “The stuff here is so cheap too!”

“Don’t listen to those people who were just trying to scare us. We probably transmigrated! What painting? Let’s go buy lottery tickets tomorrow. We should also buy houses while they’re cheap. I have quite a bit of money left in my card!” The three simple-headed girls became increasingly more excited as they talked. They were just itching to change the world.

Sha Liu watched them hostilely from her dark corner. She thought back to how she had found two good ‘comrades’ at the Rhino and Elephant Art Gallery. Unexpectedly, these three girls budded in front of her and ‘comrades’, entering before they could.

The numbers had been all messed up after that. Sha Liu had run the calculations in her head. Twelve people had already entered, which meant that there was only room for one more. That one person could only be herself….

Everything suddenly went dark. The three girls outside all shrieked. One of the neighbours then shouted, “What are you screaming for? The lights are out, that’s all. Hurry up and go back to your rooms!”

The three girls quieted down. There was still some light emanating from the communal washrooms. The three girls thus groped their way through the dark and returned to their own apartment: Room 402.

In contrast, Qiu Lu was very calm. She even chuckled. “This reminds me of my days in university. While you’re reading, the lights would suddenly shut off!”

Sha Liu didn’t know what to do with Qiu Lu. She thought that it would be better if the other was a little more timid. If that was the case, she would be able to analyze the situation with her. But the other just so happened to be an idiot. Hehe.

Sha Liu watched the three girls enter 402. She then turned away from the window. Qiu Lu was currently using her cell phone for lighting. Her face appeared extremely terrifying under the dim light. Sha Liu was startled. It made her a bit angry.

The two of them laid down next to each other on the not-so-big bed. Sha Liu wasn’t sleepy in the least but she didn’t speak.

Qiu Lu tried to start a conversation with her. “You look young. Have you ever dated anyone?”

“No.”

“What a pity to not date while in university!”

“….”

“Who do you think is better between Shou Zhu and Zhi Shao?”

Sha Liu didn’t want to talk. She stared at the two different-sized spittoons—or to be more precise, chamber pots—in the room for a while. The longer she stared, the more she felt like they were like those wooden figurines used in ancient burials. It felt like they were staring back at her. She quickly averted her gaze.

Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she sensed that the entire apartment complex had settled down. It was like no one lived here, like it was an empty building, standing still in the dark night.

One hour later, frantic knocking echoed through the building.

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