Chapter 211: The Hotel Problem
After dinner, a group of students walked along the bright and noisy street.
Compared to the small and rough streets in their hometown, the roads here were smoother and wider. During dinner time, the sidewalks were so crowded it was hard to walk.
Seven or eight students strolled slowly through the crowd, chatting and joking, laughing loudly, as if they didn’t care at all about the spring entrance exam tomorrow.
Wu Lei and Zhao Pan glanced at Li Mu from time to time. The two of them were carefully keeping her secret, worried that something unexpected might happen.
Even though Li Mu was wearing boys’ clothes, she didn’t look like a boy. Instead, she looked like a pretty girl with a gender-neutral style. Also, her relationship with Yu Fan seemed too close.
“Do you think they’re really a couple?” Wu Lei whispered to Zhao Pan.
Before, even though he often saw Yu Fan hanging out with Li Mu after class, and the two of them were always together, he never really thought too much about it.
“Looks like it,” Zhao Pan said with concern. “Aren’t they afraid the other classmates will find out?”
“Most people wouldn’t even think of that. Only we know she’s actually a girl, so we see it differently.”
Wu Lei paused, then sighed with regret, “If I had known earlier that Li Mu was a girl… and we even sit next to each other every day!”
“Don’t get your hopes up. She wouldn’t be into you.”
“Stop it, man. That hurts.”
Some classmates went off in small groups to have fun. By the time they returned to the hotel, only Li Mu, Yu Fan, and Chen Li were left.
After Chen Li went upstairs first, Yu Fan finally had the chance to ask Li Mu.
“You said just now that there’s something wrong with the hotel?”
They sat down on a couch in the hotel lobby. Yu Fan looked around at the hotel staff but couldn’t see anything strange.
“It’s the staff,” Li Mu said quietly near his ear. “They all seem to be like Xiao Jing, like corpses.”
Yu Fan was shocked by her words. “Are you serious?!”
“Keep your voice down!”
Yu Fan quickly lowered his voice. “So you’re saying the hotel staff are all ghosts?”
“I don’t know for sure. Maybe a few of them are still normal people,” Li Mu frowned, her face serious. “Their makeup is really good. Or maybe their bodies were specially treated to look normal.”
“How did you notice?”
“There’s a smell of preservative in the cleaning room, kind of like the stuff I used to bathe Xiao Jing,” she said, thinking for a moment before adding, “Maybe it’s for something else. Maybe I’m just overthinking it. But I’ve been around Xiao Jing a lot. I can recognize that kind of feeling from them.”
She sighed in frustration. “I just came for the spring exam. Why am I running into something like this?”
“Just pretend we don’t know anything. Maybe tell Chen Yi to come check it out in a few days? You might be worrying too much.”
“Okay.”
Li Mu stood up with Yu Fan, but she still looked uneasy.
Seeing that she was still nervous, Yu Fan added, “Come on, this is the provincial capital. Even if something really weird is going on, they wouldn’t dare do anything crazy. Relax.”
Not knowing the truth was fine. But now that she knew, Li Mu felt like she was stuck in a ghost nest.
There were so many ghosts in the hotel, what if they came out at night?
Feeling worried, she went back to her room.
Inside, Chen Li had already showered, changed into pajamas, and was sitting on the bed reading.
Hearing Li Mu come in, she looked up and asked, “Why do you and Yu Fan seem so secretive?”
“It’s just something I needed to talk to him about,” Li Mu yawned as she went to the bathroom to wash her face. When she came out, she asked Chen Li, “Why haven’t Ruoyan and Yuanyuan come back yet?”
“They’re probably having too much fun.”
Li Mu also climbed into bed. The room had two double beds placed together, so it was big enough for four people to sleep comfortably. But she had never shared a bed with other girls before, so she quickly picked a corner to lie down.
She wanted to keep reading, but then reminded Chen Li, “Don’t go out again tonight. Even if you have to, make sure someone goes with you.”
“Huh? Why?”
Chen Li paused, then remembered what Li Mu said earlier. “Wait, are you saying this place is actually haunted?”
“Not really.”
Even though there were ghosts here, nothing bad seemed to have happened yet.
At least, there hadn’t been any recent news reports, and she had even asked the shop owner nearby when they came back. He hadn’t heard anything about ghosts either.
So... maybe it was safe?
Like Yu Fan said, if the ghosts really wanted to hurt people, something would’ve happened already. This was a big city where news spread fast, and police could arrive in ten minutes. It wasn’t like those remote mountain areas where, if something scary happened, no one could help you.
Trying to calm herself down, Li Mu turned her attention back to last-minute studying.
But after just a few minutes, there was a sudden knock on the door.
“Hello, do you need cleaning service?”
“No, thanks,” Chen Li replied.
“Okay then. Just to let you know, there’s a free late-night buffet on the second-floor lobby for hotel guests. Just show your room card. It lasts until midnight.”
“We got it, thanks.”
After answering, Chen Li turned to Li Mu, looking confused. “Why didn’t we hear anything about a buffet before?”
“Maybe Yang Ye missed it?” Li Mu mumbled. “Also, don’t hotels usually only offer breakfast? Why does this one have a midnight buffet too?”
Because of the strange things going on at the hotel, Li Mu couldn’t help but think more about it.
Could it be that the ghosts had noticed her?
She was sure the booking info online didn’t say anything about a late-night buffet.
Her mind felt a bit messy.
“What are you thinking about?” Chen Li asked, crawling slowly across the bed toward Li Mu on her knees.
“Just thinking about tomorrow’s exam…”
“Boo!”
Chen Li suddenly jumped and shouted at Li Mu with her hands out like claws.
But Li Mu just looked at her with a straight face, completely calm.
Even though she didn’t expect that, her strong guts, thanks to dealing with ghosts, weren’t shaken by such a small scare.
And honestly… wasn’t Chen Li’s “boo” kind of cute?
“You’re not scared at all?”
“I’m not even scared of real ghosts,” Li Mu said, looking back down at her book.
“Then I’ll turn on a ghost movie on the TV!”
“Go ahead.”
Chen Li tilted her head and mumbled, “I didn’t know you were this brave. I thought you were like me.”
She hadn’t talked much with Li Mu in the dorm before. She always thought Li Mu looked cold on the outside but was warm inside. But now it seemed like she was also really brave.
“And you’re not scared of ghosts at all…”
Most people don’t believe in ghosts, but they still feel a little afraid. Li Mu, on the other hand, didn’t seem worried at all.
“Well, I have one at home… a dumb ghost.”
“Pfft! Li Mu, you’re so cute when you make jokes with a serious face~”
Saying that, she pounced on Li Mu, trying to pinch her cheeks. But Li Mu caught her hand and pushed her down in one move.
Even though Li Mu wasn’t as strong as she used to be, handling a girl like Chen Li was no problem at all!