The liquid crystal screen on the door displayed a name: James Collier.

It seemed the rooms were not open for players to choose freely — they were assigned by the system, directing each player to a designated room.

Bai Youwei moved her wheelchair with a puzzled frown and continued searching ahead. She found it strange — why would the game be designed this way? Were the rooms different from one another?

If they were all identical, then which room you ended up in shouldn’t make any difference, should it?

She pressed on, searching for her own. Moving along the circular path, she passed seven or eight of the cylindrical houses — some already occupied, some still empty. Every door displayed a name: English, Russian, French, Spanish… all kinds of languages.

Then at last she spotted Chinese characters: 绪方贺.

What a strange name this person had…

Bai Youwei turned it over in her mind for a moment before it clicked. This was probably a Japanese name.

She was still thinking it over when, from some distance away, she caught the sound of a young man’s voice:

“Dr. Ogata, your room is this way — please follow me… Being sorted into the same game as the Doctor, and even the same faction — what luck! With Dr. Ogata here, I’m sure we’ll make it through this ordeal…”

Then a woman’s voice asked: “Dr. Ogata, in your assessment, what should our next move be?”

The voices cut off the moment their owners spotted Bai Youwei.

Bai Youwei looked at them.

Two men and one woman.

The man at the front was the middle-aged man known by the nickname “the Doctor.” The other two — a young man in glasses and a young woman in a silk scarf — were presumably the Subjects he had recruited.

All three of them had yellow eyes.

A plan formed quickly in Bai Youwei’s mind. She smiled and greeted them: “Oh, wonderful — I’m a Yellow Eye too. Can I join your group?”

The woman froze, staring straight at her.

The man raised an eyebrow instead of answering. “Who told you that you’re yellow?”

Bai Youwei blinked and replied without hesitation: “I ran into someone just now on the path — a James Collier — and he said my eyes were yellow. Is something wrong? Did he lie to me? What color are my eyes actually?”

She was small and delicate-looking, and her air of innocent bewilderment made it genuinely hard to tell whether she was putting on an act.

Dr. Ogata said warmly, “Your eyes are indeed yellow. We’re planning to unite all the Yellow Eye players — come join us when the time comes.”

“Of course.” Bai Youwei nodded earnestly. “Let me find my room first, and then I’ll come help. We all need to work together — if we don’t, the Blue Eyes and Red Eyes will vote us out.”

The Doctor smiled and gave a slight bow of his head. “Exactly. In this game, unity is everything. Only by standing together do we have a way forward.”

“Right!” Bai Youwei nodded vigorously once more.

She said her goodbyes to the three of them and wheeled away. Once she’d put a little distance between them, she glanced back.

The lush foliage of the forest had already swallowed up that grey-white cylindrical house.

She had been certain they wouldn’t turn her away.

Because if she was genuinely a Yellow Eye, she was undeniably an asset to their side. And if she was actually a Red Eye — all the better. That meant they would gain an extra vote in their favor, while the Red Eye faction lost one. From either angle, the Yellow Eyes had no reason to eliminate her in the first round. And neither did the Red Eyes.

Bai Youwei turned this over in her head — and then stopped short.

Wait, something wasn’t right…

The crux of this game wasn’t eye color. It was the numbers.

If she didn’t know the numbers of players from opposing factions, how was she supposed to vote?

Blind guessing?

—