Livestream: While Others Flirt, I Catch Ghosts - Chapter 14
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Chapter 14: Hide-and-Seek
[Translation By Divinity]
Instead of climbing directly over the main gate, I decided to walk around the hospital to familiarize myself with the surroundings. A better understanding of the layout would help me escape later.
The hospital was surrounded by overgrown weeds. Soon, I found an area with no cover and plunged into the wilderness, struggling to make my way forward. Before long, a sign caught my eye.
KEEP OUT!
The warning sign had been ripped off and discarded in the mud, with a few faint bloody handprints still visible on it.
I bent down, picked it up, and re-hung it, feeling more certain than ever: ‘There’s definitely something unusual inside.’
Pushing aside the weeds, I continued towards the hospital. If I had looked back at that moment, I would have seen the warning sign I had just re-hung swinging on its own without any wind, then falling back into the mud with a thud.
As I fully entered the hospital grounds, the familiar voice sounded in my head again.
[Ding! Main quest activated!]
[Main Quest 1: Find the missing patient. Quest completion reward: 500 exchange points! Mission failure: Obliteration!]
[Main Quest 2: Escape from the Third Hospital! Quest completion reward: 1000 exchange points! Mission failure: Obliteration!]
Remembering something, Dong Jianren took out his phone and opened his live stream.
Because he hadn’t streamed in a while, the once-packed audience was now sparse. But soon, viewers who had heard the news started pouring back into the stream.
– Wild West Pimp joined your live stream.
– Open the Door, Honey, It’s Lao Wang joined your live stream.
– I’m a Cavalryman, Not an Infantryman joined your live stream.
– Essential Oil Back Rub Eighty-One joined your live stream.
…
These viewers immediately grasped Dong Jianren’s situation and the stream erupted in excitement.
– Thick Black Liu Half-Immortal: “Holy crap, the streamer is alive! Great!”
– Two-Faced Black Tiger Pure Love Boiling Sheep: “Streamer, where are you?”
– Open the Door, Honey, It’s Lao Wang: “Streamer, we thought you were already pushing up daisies. We even ordered a wreath!”
– Mountain Monkey with the Reddest Butt: “Where are you going to die tonight? Unit One is on standby, ready to call the police!”
Looking at these familiar and unfamiliar IDs, the streamer’s spirit within Dong Jianren ignited.
“Good evening, everyone. I’m your streamer, Dong Jianren. Welcome to my live stream. Tonight’s location is the Third Mental Hospital!”
Dong Jianren, his shoulder still in a cast, whispered into the live stream.
As the time drew closer to 10 p.m., Dong Jianren briefly chatted with his viewers before continuing forward.
The Third Mental Hospital was large, and it would take a long time to explore it all. To be safe, he decided to search one building at a time, hoping to find something.
After careful consideration, he chose to enter the inpatient building closest to him.
This building wasn’t too tall, only three floors.
Due to the previous fire, the hospital didn’t have many patients left, and the remaining seven or eight were all in this building.
There were four wards on each floor of the inpatient building, with the patients’ names on the doors. There were two exits on each side, and the stairs and walls bore burn marks from the fire. Most of the handrails were missing, leaving bare walls. It would be easy to fall if one wasn’t careful.
‘Looking at this, the online reports weren’t baseless. The fire was most likely real.’
He walked along the first-floor corridor, approaching several wards, only to find them all locked.
The wards were dark inside. A figure lay on one of the beds, but even pressing his face against the window, he couldn’t see clearly.
To Dong Jianren’s extreme unease, every ward on the first floor was locked from the outside, and the duty room was pitch black, with no medical staff on duty.
‘Even if this hospital is on the brink of bankruptcy, the doctors are too unethical, locking the patients in and leaving them unattended?’
Hugging the fire-damaged wall, he made his way to the second floor.
After exploring the second floor, the situation remained the same, and he began to doubt his judgment.
‘Although the doctors in this hospital lack ethics, all the patients seem to be well-contained. So where does the ‘missing patient’ in the mission come from?’
Dong Jianren had found a patient registry in the duty room on the first floor. While checking the wards on the first and second floors, he had cross-referenced the names on the locked ward doors, and all eight patients matched the eight locked wards.
Lost in thought with his back to the stairs, Dong Jianren suddenly noticed another towering shadow beside his own on the floor. Cold sweat instantly broke out. He turned his head with difficulty, his body slowly inching away from the stairs.
An old man in a hospital gown stood at the third-floor landing, staring at him expressionlessly. Dong Jianren’s lips trembled; he wanted to speak, but his chattering teeth made it impossible.
Suddenly, the old man opened his mouth, revealing yellowed teeth, and said with a wide smile, “Brother, do you want to play hide-and-seek with me?”
“Huh?”
“Brother, don’t you want to play with me? Uncle Dean loves to play with us!”
The unexpected question left Dong Jianren bewildered. What made him even more uncomfortable was the old man’s voice—soft and sweet, like a little girl’s, jarring with his appearance.
Not wanting to engage with this seemingly abnormal man, Dong Jianren just wanted to get rid of him.
“Okay, we can play. You hide first, and I’ll come find you later.”
The old man’s face lit up with childlike delight.
“Okay, okay!”
But the old man’s next words sent a shiver down Dong Jianren’s spine.
“Brother, if you catch me, I can also give you a gift, just like how I gave my kidney to Uncle Dean!”
With that, he turned and ran.
A tinkling laughter echoed through the empty hallway.
“Hide-and-seek, hide-and-seek, whoever gets caught has their eyes gouged out! Hurry and hide! Hurry and hide! Don’t tell him, quick, quick, hide! Quick, quick, hide!” A once cheerful nursery rhyme now sounded chilling.
Dong Jianren easily recognized the old man’s mental instability. But it was precisely this that made many “normal” people fear being discovered when doing certain things.
‘Gave his kidney to the dean?’
Dong Jianren suddenly doubted the official story about the hospital fire. Perhaps it wasn’t an accident but a deliberate act to cover up some dark truth.