The morgue was about ten square meters in size. Chi Qing and Xie Lin stood between rows of cadavers. The body Chi Qing had accidentally touched lay straight on an iron bed. It was visibly male, lean, and about 178cm tall.
The man’s body was shriveled and rigid. Most of the skin tissue had been meticulously removed, leaving only the skeleton and muscle tissue. The frame was complete, with strands of dark-red muscle wrapped densely around the bones.
“It” was different from the simulation props found in typical escape rooms. Rather than a prop, it resembled a human specimen used in anatomy classes. Creating such a specimen involves cleaning the body, soaking it, and carefully removing the parts most prone to decay.
In the darkness of the escape room, Chi Qing and Xie Lin locked eyes, reading the same conclusion in each other’s gaze.
Then, the man’s distorted voice sounded in his mind:
[This shouldn’t be a prop.]
[This is a real corpse.]
If it had been any other customer, they might not have noticed anything amiss. But the two of them were far too familiar with death—they were much more experienced in distinguishing real bodies from fakes than the average person.
Furthermore, the fingernail that had fallen off, coated in scarlet rot-fluid, exposed the fact that this human specimen had not been processed thoroughly; the parts of the body prone to decay hadn’t been fully removed. The stench in the air wasn’t a result of the owner’s meticulous attention to “immersive experience,” but the odor of a real, decaying human body.
The escape room had been open for years, hosting countless customers. Day after day, these people were ushered in by the owner, completely unaware that the “prop” was an actual human corpse. One could only wonder how many people had stood where they were now, less than half a step away from a dead man.
Xie Lin subtly looked up at the security camera in the room, which was pointed directly at them.
[If this is a corpse, whose is it? Who killed them, and why hide the body in an escape room in this manner? What role is the owner playing?]
The questions Xie Lin asked were exactly what Chi Qing was thinking.
In the surveillance room outside, the owner sat in front of the monitors. The screen was sliced into 12 segments, each grey square representing a different room and angle. His calloused fingers tapped rhythmically against the left mouse button, though he didn’t actually click. He sat in silence, watching the two people on the feed.
A moment later, the walkie-talkie in Xie Lin’s hand emitted a faint crackle of static.
Then, the owner’s slightly weathered voice came through: “Are you encountering any problems?”
He added, “If you need, you can ask for help. I can give you some hints.”
Xie Lin spoke into the walkie-talkie with a calm, lighthearted tone: “This room is a bit difficult, but we don’t need hints just yet. We’re going to head back to the previous two rooms to see if we missed any clues… Also, your props are made too realistically—you scared my boyfriend half to death.”
There was another silence on the other end, as if the owner were trying to discern the truth of Xie Lin’s statement. But Xie Lin’s speaking pace was slow and even, and he had even chuckled lightly at the end. Moreover, the two of them hadn’t spoken a single word out loud the entire time.
…
After a long pause, the person in the surveillance room replied: “Then I won’t disturb you further.”
From the surveillance footage, it was impossible to tell if they were talking, but in truth, the “scared” Chi Qing had been hearing Xie Lin’s voice non-stop. At first, Xie Lin’s comments centered on the corpse, but within a few sentences, his topic shifted.
Chi Qing was currently rigid, feeling “contaminated” by what had touched his hand. His mysophobia was flaring up; he had no interest in standing in this room anymore and wanted to end the date immediately to go home and wash his hands a hundred times.
Just then, he heard Xie Lin say:
[Give me your hand.]
Chi Qing looked up.
[Hurry up. It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?]
Chi Qing watched as Xie Lin pulled a pack of wet wipes from his coat pocket. He hadn’t known Xie Lin was carrying them—he hadn’t seen him take them out when they stored their belongings. Most importantly, as someone with mysophobia, Chi Qing himself had forgotten to bring tissues that day. He couldn’t describe what he felt; he was stunned for a moment, and then something inside him began to float upward, like wind brushing against soft cotton.
Chi Qing: “How do you have these?”
Xie Lin gripped Chi Qing’s wrist gently with one hand and tore open the package with the other. The wipes were antibacterial, and the smell of alcohol—which Chi Qing happened to like—overwhelmed the scent of rot in the air.
Xie Lin worked with both hands, pressing the wipe down to carefully clean the substance off Chi Qing’s fingertips. He pulled out another wipe to scrub them thoroughly once more, continuing in the voice only they could hear: [Can’t help it. Since I chose a boyfriend with mysophobia, if he goes out with me and accidentally touches something, he’ll just end up crying in front of me.]
Chi Qing wanted to say he had never cried in his life and to stop spreading rumors.
Xie Lin added: [I thought that with me by your side, this pack of wipes wouldn’t need to be used.]
The disinfectant wipe felt cool against Chi Qing’s fingers. Chi Qing watched the man’s brows and eyes under the dim light, seeing how intently he was cleaning.
“…Thank you.”
Once Xie Lin had cleaned everything off his fingers, Chi Qing moved to pull his hand back, but Xie Lin held his wrist firmly. Xie Lin knew how severe Chi Qing’s mysophobia was; wipes alone might not be enough to make him feel truly “clean.”
So, he lowered his head and, quite suddenly, placed a kiss on the fingertip that still carried the scent of alcohol.
The cool alcohol evaporated into the air, replaced by the warmth transmitted from the man’s lips.
[There. That should make it feel better.]
In the surveillance room, the owner stared at the screen, unblinking. The two had been standing still. Then, he watched as they stood by the “corpse”… and one kissed the other’s finger.
Zzzzt.
The walkie-talkie crackled again. It was the owner: “What are you two doing?”
“In the honeymoon phase, flirting,” Xie Lin replied. “It’s not very polite for you to keep interrupting us like this, Boss. Can you give the players some privacy?”
Owner: “…”
The walkie-talkie went completely silent. Even the static vanished.
After settling Chi Qing’s mysophobia, the two returned to the previous rooms to review the plot. The reason was simple: the corpse was the “older brother,” and given the owner’s reaction, he was almost certainly the murderer. The reason for the murder was likely hidden within the story.
[The body was turned into a specimen many years ago,] Xie Lin guessed. [Some murderers, after a long period of not being discovered, develop a strange fixation.]
[A desire to show off.]
[They are proud of creating the perfect crime, and disappointed that no one managed to discover it. Over time, they develop an urge to show it to others.]
…
An oil lamp flickered on the desk in the first room, casting the shadows of the two men against the beige wall.
“I am twins with my brother. Our family was poor. My brother dropped out of school at 13. To bear the family’s expenses and pay for my education, our parents arranged for him to work in a factory after he dropped out.”
The broken diary recorded everything about the brother. In its pages, the brother had a dream of studying, but he was forced to give it up due to poverty, eventually going to a mine and never returning. The younger brother, however, believed the disappearance was far more complex.
The reason there were so many corpses in the third room was that the story progressed to the point where the “brother,” at age 30, went to work in the mine to continue subsidizing the family, and a mining accident killed a dozen people. His brother was among them.
“There’s something strange,” Chi Qing said. “If the brother died in a mining accident, would his body remain so intact?” The corpse he had touched had no broken bones, no missing limbs, and not a single scratch on its entire body.
Xie Lin slowly raised an eyebrow. An image of the owner’s limping gait flashed through his mind, and another hypothesis emerged.
[If we reverse the story…]
Xie Lin replaced the words in the diary one by one: [I am twins with my brother. Our family was poor. I dropped out at 13. To bear the family’s expenses and pay for my brother’s education, I dropped out and was arranged by our parents to work in a factory.]
A man who had to subsidize his family until he was 30 meant that his younger brother had never worked.
[If that’s the premise, the story is likely—I survived the mining accident, and I hated my brother, who forced me to sacrifice my entire life and existence.]
So, the theme likely wasn’t “Finding the Brother,” but “The Brother’s Confession.”
In the afternoon, the weather was gloomy. Ji Mingrui sat in the police station, feeling a tightness in his chest. He had just finished a call consoling an elderly person living alone, and less than two minutes later, he received another one.
“Hello,” Ji Mingrui glanced at the heavy, oppressive sky outside and gathered his spirits. “This is—”
He didn’t even get to finish his opening line before a smiling voice on the other end interrupted: “No need for introductions. I’m quite familiar with your station.”
“?”
Ji Mingrui: “Mr. …Xie?”
There were no major cases in the city recently, and the police station was peaceful. Xie Lin wouldn’t just call to chat.
On the other end of the line, Xie Lin said in a casual tone: “I happened to stumble upon a case. Bring a few people over. Please be quick—I have other very important things to do.”
