Little Pink Starfish

Within just a few seconds, the entire venue returned to its lively state.

It was as if nothing had happened at all.

The place was bustling, noisy, full of laughter and chatter, as if it had been yanked straight from hell back into the human world.

Gao Ling stood frozen, completely stunned by what had just happened.

In a daze, she got to her feet. Looking around at the smiling, laughing crowd, she suddenly felt like she no longer belonged to their world.

They were the living.

And she… she was just a ghost.

That feeling only lasted a moment—soon, Gao Ling’s mind started working again.

She quickly wiped the tears off her face and turned around, just in time to see that boy helping to prop the “boss” up, trying his best to make it seem like the boss was still conscious.

“How’s the boss?” Gao Ling asked.

“Boss…” Liu An glanced at Yuan Yuanyuan and hesitated, “I’ll get him to rest a bit first.”

“Alright…” Gao Ling said, watching Liu An support the boss and slowly disappear into the crowd toward a quieter corner of the hall.

“The boss should be fine, right?” Gao Ling thought worriedly.

But she didn’t have much time to worry about that now. She quickly ran toward the pillar backstage where the others had been thrown.

Luckily, there was no program on stage at the moment, and the area was deserted.

When Gao Ling got there, she saw that the captured group had all gotten up. Outwardly, they looked just like the other attendees—completely normal.

But Gao Ling’s sharp eyes noticed deep red marks around their wrists—left by the ropes that had bound them.

“Boss…” the girl who had been crying on stage saw Gao Ling rushing over and immediately burst into tears again.

Gao Ling hugged her quickly, clamping a hand over her mouth to keep her from crying too loudly. A few nearby con-goers turned and looked curiously, puzzled by someone crying so miserably at a convention.

“Sorry, sorry…” Gao Ling whispered to the bystanders, “The blackout just scared her. Sorry about that.”

They regrouped behind the pillar, each one of them visibly trembling. After the lights came back on, many people were too scared to stay, afraid another blackout might happen.

Gao Ling led her group through the bustling crowd. Compared to the cheerful faces around them, their terror was obvious.

Adults could usually control their expressions, but Gao Ling knew she couldn’t right now—and neither could the others.

For the first time, she truly understood the meaning of “scared out of one’s wits.”

They moved carefully toward the exit as the large venue doors were opened. People were filing through the narrow passageway, the corridor illuminated brightly. Faces lit up by the glow of phone screens.

“Honestly, after what happened, I’ve realized just how much security phones provide in this era,” Gao Ling thought, remembering the terrifying moment when her phone wouldn’t turn on.

Wow… I really thought the world was ending just then.

“Are we just leaving now?” the girl, still crying, asked.

“Let’s… wait a bit,” Gao Ling said hesitantly, glancing toward the exit. After hesitating a few times, she added, “Let’s go wash our faces first.”

The girl froze, then sniffled awkwardly. Her eyes were bloodshot, her makeup ruined.

No one objected. So Gao Ling led them toward the restroom.

Honestly, everyone knew why Gao Ling had suggested it.

She could smell a faint, unpleasant scent in the air—someone had truly been so terrified that they’d wet themselves.

“So… that wasn’t a joke earlier,” Gao Ling thought, recalling the boy’s words about being scared to the point of peeing.

---

At the entrance to the bathroom, a dim light was on.

Since the venue itself didn’t have a restroom, attendees were using a nearby hotel’s facilities.

The hotel’s bathroom was nicely decorated but poorly lit—only one light was on, the others off due to the low foot traffic at this late hour.

Gao Ling stood at the doorway. For some reason, she suddenly didn’t want to go in.

When she turned around, she saw that everyone else was also hesitating.

It was the most ridiculous scene—grown adults standing frozen at the bathroom entrance, each looking more frightened than the next.

“Good grief, what are we gonna do, die of a full bladder?” Gao Ling thought irritably. She clapped her hands and said, “Let’s just all go in together.”

“Yeah, together!” everyone agreed immediately.

Someone coughed awkwardly and said, “You know, just in case… something… happens again.”

The others pretended not to hear and marched stiffly into the restroom, two of the girls even holding hands.

---

The restroom had marble counters, large and spacious, with a somewhat gaudy golden-framed mirror—typical for a hotel bathroom.

Plastic bags and costume props were scattered everywhere, likely left behind by cosplayers who had changed earlier.

Gao Ling wove through the mess to the sinks, where she grabbed a box of tissues and tossed it to one of the boys.

His face flushed red, and he hurried into a stall without saying a word.

Gao Ling watched him bolt, a wry smile pulling at her lips, but she couldn’t even finish it.

“So it was him who forgot the charm,” she thought, sighing inwardly.

She splashed water onto her face.

The others filtered into stalls, the girls going hand-in-hand, the boys handling their own issues—likely still terrified.

Someone was still quietly crying. Gao Ling found it annoying but refrained from scolding.

Then she heard a boy’s voice from the stalls, “Stop crying. You’re safe now. There’s an old saying: if you survive a great disaster, you’ll have good fortune afterward.”

“Yeah,” another boy chimed in, trying to lighten the mood, “You even said you envied the boss before we came, right? Now you’re part of the legend too—you’ll have an epic story to tell.”

Gao Ling twisted the faucet harder and scrubbed her face.

Another boy came to the sink beside her, also washing up. Gao Ling didn’t even bother looking—it didn’t matter who it was.

Her eyes and nose were already red and sore, but she scrubbed anyway, as if trying to wash away the whole nightmare.

The boy beside her also opened the tap, water rushing alongside hers.

Inside the stalls, the conversation continued, lightening the atmosphere bit by bit. Even the girl who had been crying seemed to be recovering.

“Did anyone see where that dagger came from?” one of the girls asked.

“No…” said a boy who had been closest to it. “It just flew out of nowhere—scared the hell out of me.”

“I didn’t see who threw it either,” another boy said, his voice excited. “But that dagger… the material looked amazing! It looked just like the one Yuan uses in the manga.”

Gao Ling looked up at herself in the mirror.

Her eyes and nose were still red, her expression strangely serious—and cold.

---

“God… when I realized Yuan might be nearby, I could barely breathe. I almost screamed.”

“You could still scream? I nearly passed out,” another boy joked. “And weren’t you the one who said you’d read smutty fanfiction to his face if you met him? What happened to that?”

“Go to hell!” the girl retorted, sparking laughter from both the boys’ and girls’ sides of the restroom.

The atmosphere relaxed—just a little.

At least it wasn’t as terrible as before.

Gao Ling stared at her reflection, feeling like she didn’t recognize herself.

She tried to force a smile—the result was a stiff, awkward grimace.

“I’ve never… felt like this before,” a brave girl said. “Tonight, I really thought I was going to die. I used to think if I met a hot demon, maybe I’d date him… haha… but now… demons are terrifying. You could die at any moment.”

“They’re like terrorists,” someone said. “Killing for fun, constant infighting… God, who could survive in that world?”

“And the guy who saved us is the head terrorist,” another boy joked.

They burst into laughter again.

“Seriously… if Yuan could survive in that mess, he must be terrifying.”

“No kidding… He’s way stronger than he looks in the manga.”

“Honestly,” a girl said, “if I ever ran into him in real life, I wouldn’t even dare speak.”

---

While they joked, Gao Ling suddenly noticed something strange.

The boy beside her… seemed unusually tall.

In the dim light, his black clothes, the way he stood silently, hair falling over his face…

At first glance, he looked a lot like the boss—if the boss had taken off his winter coat.

“Boss?” Gao Ling thought nervously, peering closer. “When did you recover?”

But something felt wrong.

She turned her head fully—and saw the reflection in the mirror.

The young man in black had blood stains around his chin.

His pale hands in the mirror were covered in bruises—as if he had been violently grabbed.

The reflection and the real figure didn’t match at all.

It was like the mirror had split reality in two: heaven on one side, hell on the other.

Gao Ling took a step back instinctively.

“This… is NOT the boss!”

---

The boy, still calmly washing his hands, coughed softly—blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

He wiped it away with another tissue, tossing it into the trash.

“Hey, are you still out there? Why haven’t you come back yet?” a girl called from the stalls.

She pulled aside the curtain—and froze.

So did Gao Ling.

They stood there, paralyzed with terror, saying nothing.

The boy continued washing his hands. The water in the sink turned red, but he didn’t even flinch.

The boys’ voices could be heard from the restroom as they started to come out.

They sounded relaxed now, laughing and joking, as if nothing had ever happened.

Gao Ling, however, stood frozen, drenched in cold sweat.

She had never, ever felt such intense fear.

At that moment, all she wished was for the boys to not come out — if they could just somehow delay, get stuck inside, or anything.

The boy at the sink calmly picked up the tissues scattered around the marble counter, neatly threw them into the trash, then shoved his hands into his pockets and walked away.

He walked past them — brushing so close that Gao Ling could smell a faint metallic tang of blood.

As he left, the two girls remained standing, motionless, staring at each other with wide eyes.

When the boys finally emerged from the stalls, they found the two girls rooted there like statues, faces pale, as if they had just seen a ghost.

“What’s wrong? You two… standing here like you’re being punished?” one of the boys joked.

Neither girl answered.

They just stood there, cold sweat soaking through their clothes.