Scenario One: Painted Skin — 2

After eight or ten seconds, the darkness before his eyes receded.

Still badly shaken, Bu Jianhan came to his senses and discovered that he was still crouching on the toilet.

The same familiar bathroom, the same familiar kitchen diagonally across the hall. The familiar man in the apron, humming his familiar little tune with a cleaver in hand.

The scenario summary popped up in front of him again. Bu Jianhan dismissed it with a casual swipe and called up the system.

"Hello? System 301? System 301, are you there?"

The pleasant, flirtatious male voice answered at once. [Greetings, dear player. System 301 is at your service.]

"Dying in an instance won't make me drop any items, will it? There isn't some other kind of death penalty?" Bu Jianhan asked cautiously, not entirely certain. "Like mental damage after a certain number of failures, or an increase in difficulty?"

[The World Model game does not employ the concept of a death penalty. Players may participate with confidence and freely enjoy the entertainment the game provides.]

"Then is there a save function?" Bu Jianhan asked. "A safe room, a save point, something like that. Can you tell me in advance what form the save system takes?"

As he spoke, Bu Jianhan thought he heard something topple over upstairs again, followed by the apron man's hurried footsteps.

He paid it no mind and focused on waiting for the system's answer. As a rule, a game's initial spawn point was relatively safe. So long as you didn't court death by running around and triggering a fatal mechanic, monsters generally wouldn't come looking for trouble on their own.

[The World Model game does not currently include a save function. All game functions remain under development and will be improved incrementally. Please look forward to future updates. If you have any questions or suggestions, you may submit your valuable feedback to the "Producer Mailbox" in System Space after leaving this scenario. The recipient will respond within one business day.]

No save function? Bu Jianhan had a bad feeling about this. Didn't that mean he had to clear the whole thing in one life—and that if he died, he would be sent all the way back to the beginning to start over?

Unwilling to give up, he tried another question. "What happens if I make a mistake during the game and keep dying, so I can't clear the scenario?"

[If an operational error results in the player's death, the player will be returned to the beginning of the current scenario and the game will restart. This process will continue until the player successfully clears the scenario.]

So he had to keep dying until he managed a one-life clear?

Bu Jianhan's entire being was suddenly Not Okay.

What kind of goddamn scam of a game was this? The models were crude, the plot made no sense, half the features were missing, and the user experience was abysmal. He hadn't even been playing for ten minutes yet. Surely there was still time to quit and get a refund?

Bu Jianhan declared without hesitation, "I want to log out! Quit the game! Right now, immediately!"

Then came the real kicker.

[The World Model game does not currently include a logout function. All game functions remain under development and will be improved incrementally. Please look forward to future updates. If you have any questions or suggestions, you may submit your valuable feedback to the "Producer Mailbox" in System Space after leaving this scenario. The recipient will respond within one business day.]

No logout function?

Bu Jianhan screamed the name of a certain plant in his head. He stared in slack-jawed disbelief, so stunned that he did not even notice the apron man's heavy footsteps coming down the stairs.

They were seriously forcing him to buy the game and play it too?!

In the blink of an eye, Bu Jianhan had been trapped in a fatal deadlock: one wrong move meant death, death meant starting over, and logging out required a one-life clear. He even suspected that the game lacked a logout function solely to stop players from realizing what garbage it was and quitting for a refund after ten minutes.

But after combing through every inch of the interface, Bu Jianhan made a discovery.

There. Really. Was. No. Logout. Function.

For a moment, he wanted to report the game for unlawful imprisonment.

But even filing a report required him to clear the scenario first.

As he sat there numb with despair, two footsteps sounded outside. Someone walked up to the bathroom door and abruptly stopped.

Bu Jianhan looked up. Caught entirely off guard, he found himself face-to-face with his apron-clad friend, who had apparently come to answer nature's call. Their four eyes—no, their four hands—met.

Silence. Silence was Cambridge tonight.

In that split second, Bu Jianhan suddenly remembered, at the least appropriate possible time, the Current Objective displayed on the scenario summary.

[You have arrived at Lin Seven's villa. Give his family a friendly greeting.]

Had he been hacked to death on his previous run because he had failed to say hello?

Bu Jianhan slowly raised a hand and gave him a friendly, brittle smile. "Hi~"

The apron man slowly raised his bloodstained steel cleaver.

The second time he was hacked to death, Bu Jianhan could, to some extent, understand how the apron man felt.

After all, anyone in desperate need of the bathroom would fly into a rage if they suddenly found some guy with only two hands inside their house—no body whatsoever, yet still hogging the toilet without taking a "beep—."

His only remaining question was whether the game's creator had set out to make a horror game or an idiotic comedy.

After dying several times in a row, Bu Jianhan finally figured out the apron man's movement pattern and tested his way to the correct opening strategy.

Once the game began, a noise from upstairs would draw the apron man up to investigate. Bu Jianhan had to use that window to slip out of the bathroom, cross the living room, wrench open the villa's front door, and rush outside—then shut the door properly before the apron man came back downstairs and returned to the kitchen.

Next, he had to climb over the wall beside the front garden gate, ring the doorbell from outside, wait for the apron man to let him in, and greet him politely.

The whole sequence flowed with effortless precision, honed to a degree that was frankly heartbreaking.

Only then would the apron man welcome him into the villa as a visiting guest, rather than take him for a criminal trespassing on private property and hack him to death without a word.

So why not spawn me outside the front gate in the first place? Why spawn me in the bathroom?!

While roaring furiously inside, Bu Jianhan walked into the villa with a courteous smile on his face, then sat down on the living room sofa at the apron man's invitation.

[Current Objective: You have arrived at Lin Seven's villa. Give his family a friendly greeting. [Completed]]

[Current Objective: Find Lin Seven.]

The moment the greeting objective was complete, the Current Objective updated. Only when he saw this new and highly specific task did Bu Jianhan feel that the game's main plot had finally, officially begun.

"You're Seven's friend? My name is Lin Eight. I'm his younger brother." Meeting Bu Jianhan's puzzled gaze, the apron man who called himself Lin Eight launched into an enthusiastic account of his family situation. "I'm the youngest child in the family... Yes, there are eight brothers in all. Mom and Dad always wanted a daughter, but they never managed to have one. When even I turned out to be a boy, they finally gave up... Ha-ha, I'm getting off track. Did you come here today to see Seven?"

"Mm, yes. I need his help with something related to work," Bu Jianhan admitted, while trying to coax a few clues out of this NPC without being too obvious. "The truth is, I haven't been able to reach Lin Seven for a week. Have you seen him these past few days? Do you know where he went?"

"What? Seven comes home every day." Lin Eight looked surprised to hear that Lin Seven had been out of contact. "He only stays for a while each day, though. He doesn't always spend the night, and he hardly ever tells the family anything about his work, so I don't know where he's gone. Come to think of it, he hasn't been home yet today... It's almost dinnertime. How about you wait here and stay for dinner? He might be back before long."

Bu Jianhan nodded. "All right. Sorry to impose."

Lin Eight headed into the kitchen to continue preparing his lavish dinner. The moment he turned around, however, that pair of smooth, snowy, pert buttocks filled Bu Jianhan's entire field of vision again. Bu Jianhan sucked in a sharp breath and hurriedly covered his eyes.

Long story short, the half hour Lin Eight spent cooking soon passed.

All the while, the sounds of food sizzling in the wok drifted from the kitchen. The mouthwatering aroma of meat seeped through the doorway, making Bu Jianhan salivate uncontrollably. Plate after plate arrived on the dining table: sliced pork with green peppers, minced pork with celery, beef strips in black pepper sauce, tomato and pork casserole, red-braised pork belly, sliced pork with cilantro, grilled meat skewers... More than a dozen dishes in all, along with a small pot of richly fragrant pork-rib soup.

After setting the final dish on the table, Lin Eight called, "Dinner's ready!"

Bu Jianhan stood, but the sight of Lin Eight's oil- and blood-smeared apron—and the bare body beneath it—left him hesitating over what to say.

Lin Eight asked, "What is it?"

Bu Jianhan put it delicately. "Are you... not going to put on some clothes before we eat?"

Lin Eight looked down at his fully exposed body, as though only now realizing that aside from the apron, he was stark naked. Enlightenment dawned. He hastily apologized to Bu Jianhan. "I'm used to dressing like this when I'm home alone. It makes it easier for me to put my clothes on. Sorry, sorry. If it bothers you, I'll go use the bathroom upstairs and put on something fresh while I'm there."

With that, he did indeed head upstairs.

Bu Jianhan glanced at him again as he climbed the stairs. With Lin Eight's round buttocks blocked from view by the railing, the direct visual impact was less intense than it had been the first two times. Along with his muscular back, Bu Jianhan saw a long black mark, something like a scar, running down his spine all the way to his tailbone.

Maybe it was a tattoo. Bu Jianhan gave it no further thought and sprawled on the sofa to wait for Lin Eight to return in clothes.

Not long afterward, the villa's front door creaked open and someone entered.

The newcomer was startled to find Bu Jianhan sitting in the living room. "Huh? What are you doing here?"

Setting aside how the man had recognized Bu Jianhan from a pair of pickled chicken feet, Bu Jianhan sprang off the sofa, equally astonished.

The person who had just walked in was Lin Seven—the man who was supposed to be missing.