Night.
All around was desolate and silent, still as a pool of stagnant water.
Aside from the pale moonlight and the monotonous expanse of stone tiles, there was nothing but the dark, inky shadows beneath her feet.
Bai Youwei sat alone in the plaza, cheek resting in her hand, quietly turning the voting situation over in her mind.
Ogata Kei’s elimination had been within her calculations. But Ogata Kei not being the X-Guest — that had genuinely caught her off guard.
Nine players remained in the game now.
Among the red-eyes: the short-haired woman, a pale-skinned man, and herself.
Among the yellow-eyes: three of the doctor’s followers, led by the glasses-wearing man.
Among the blue-eyes: Fang Yu and Yu Chaohui, plus the man in the suit who had always believed himself to be a red-eye.
3:3:3. Nine people.
Either five people won together, or only the X-Guest won alone.
The X-Guest — who on earth was it? To survive round after round of voting and make it to the very end… somehow the X-Guest’s conditions for winning felt even more demanding than everyone else’s.
Hmm… well, maybe not.
On the surface it seemed very difficult, but thinking about it more carefully — the X-Guest, just like all the other players, was simply competing for one of the final five spots.
The only difference was that they needed to identify the X-Guest, while the X-Guest… didn’t have to do anything at all.
Footsteps sounded from behind her. Bai Youwei turned to look. It was the short-haired woman, slowly walking over from a distance.
Her boots scraped against the stone slabs, making a muffled sound — much like her mood at this moment.
The short-haired woman stopped about ten paces away from Bai Youwei and asked: “Are you… actually the X-Guest or not?”
Bai Youwei looked at her with curiosity and turned the question around: “Do you think I am?”
The short-haired woman hesitated: “Not… probably?”
Bai Youwei let out a soft laugh. “You can drop the ‘probably.'”
Hearing that, the short-haired woman let out a breath of relief. She came closer and said: “You can still laugh? Right now everyone thinks you’re the X-Guest, and the real X-Guest is still hiding in the shadows, probably gloating away.”
She sighed again, tilted her head back, and looked up at the moon: “Sigh… this cursed game. It’s always finding new ways to drive people mad.”
Bai Youwei tilted her head and studied her. “You believe me?”
“I suppose……” The short-haired woman’s tone wasn’t very certain.
Bai Youwei smiled, said nothing.
The short-haired woman looked down at her, was silent a moment, then repeated her answer: “I believe you.”
This time there was no “suppose.”
“Why?” Bai Youwei asked with a smile. “What have I done or said that makes you think I’m not?”
“It’s just a feeling……” the short-haired woman said. “Sometimes feelings are more reliable than logic. When I can’t think my way through a problem, I trust my instincts.”
The smile on Bai Youwei’s lips deepened, and there was now a thread of genuine warmth in it: “Then trust your instincts and tell me — among everyone still left, who do you think the X-Guest is?”
The question gave the short-haired woman a headache.
“This god-forsaken game……” she muttered under her breath, her voice low and sullen. “Other than the two of us, I find every single one of those seven people suspicious.”
Bai Youwei said: “I haven’t got much in the way of leads either. How about we talk it through — each of us names who we suspect. Maybe we’ll come up with some new ideas.”
The short-haired woman thought it over and agreed: “Alright. Shall I go first?”
Bai Youwei nodded: “Go ahead.”
“Although I think everyone has their suspicious points, there are two people I’m most suspicious of.” The short-haired woman said: “The first is that dark-skinned, wiry man in the blue-eyes group — he wears combat gear and has a square face……”
“Fang Yu,” Bai Youwei supplied. “That man’s name is Fang Yu.”
The short-haired woman wrinkled her nose: “Fang Yu? No wonder his face is so square… Isn’t he strange? Earlier when we wanted to work with the blue-eyes, his attitude was terrible.”
“His bad attitude was probably because Ogata Kei’s words got to him……” Bai Youwei said.
The short-haired woman shook her head: “Maybe. But there’s another possibility — like, he’s the X-Guest, and of course he’d be glad to join forces with Ogata Kei to go after you!”
—
