Chapter 212: A Proper Hotel!
Early the next morning, Li Mu walked to the exam center with a group of classmates.
The hotel was about one kilometer from the test center, which only took around ten minutes to walk.
“Good luck!”
When she parted ways with Wang Ruoyan, that girl excitedly clenched her fist and made a cheering gesture.
“Mm.” Li Mu was so nervous her face showed no emotion. She just nodded coldly in response.
Yu Fan also stopped and turned to her.
“Wait for me at the exam center entrance after the test. Let’s have lunch together.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t be too nervous. You shouldn’t have much trouble with the subjects, except maybe English.”
She gave a small helpless smile and simply nodded before parting ways with him.
Once she entered the exam room, Li Mu slowly started to calm down.
She looked around. Other than the fact that it was one person per desk and the setting was unfamiliar, the exam wasn’t much different from the final exams at school.
The only difference was, this spring exam would decide what level of university she could attend in September.
…………………………………………
“How was it? Everything go smoothly?”
Yu Fan asked with curiosity on their way back to the hotel.
Li Mu was much more relaxed now. She nodded easily. “I didn’t expect the questions to be that simple.”
She thought the math exam was even easier than their usual practice tests.
Last night, she had struggled with a few hard problems and asked Chen Li for help. She went to sleep late and full of worry, only to find that those types of questions didn’t even show up on the test.
“Language and English shouldn’t be that hard either,” Yu Fan said with a grin. “So, where should we go hang out this afternoon?”
“Hang out? I need to study.”
Li Mu gave him a suspicious look. Was he trying to distract her on purpose? Who thinks about going on dates right before the college entrance exams?
“Okay, okay, I just thought you might be too nervous. Relaxing a bit is good too.”
“Now’s not the time to relax. I’ll just order some lunch and go back to review again.”
Yu Fan sighed and nodded, following Li Mu back to the hotel.
But as soon as they entered the lobby, they saw Uncle Chen Yi checking in at the front desk.
“Uncle, where’s Li Mu’s cousin?” Yu Fan walked over and asked casually.
“Something came up at home, so he couldn’t come,” Uncle Chen Yi replied with a helpless shake of his head. “No sense of professionalism at all.”
Li Mu also came over. Just last night, Yu Fan had called Uncle Chen Yi, and now he was already here. That was fast.
But then…
She looked up at the hotel staff behind the counter and noticed their expressions were a bit stiff.
“You two still have exams, so don’t worry about what’s happening here,” Chen Yi said in a relaxed tone, but Li Mu could sense something heavy in his voice.
After all, no one knew how many of the hotel staff were actually ghosts.
“Your guess was probably right,” Chen Yi glanced at Li Mu and sighed. “I didn’t expect a place like this to exist.”
Standing at the front desk, the three of them didn’t talk much more. Li Mu went back to her room, while Yu Fan followed Chen Yi to another room to discuss how to deal with the situation.
A big ghost den in the middle of a provincial capital city was like a ticking time bomb in a crowded subway. It made people feel extremely uneasy.
But Li Mu reminded herself she was just a student, not some high school hero from a Japanese anime here to save the world. So, she quietly went back to cramming for her next exam.
Her three roommates hadn’t returned from the test center. They had probably been dragged off by Wang Ruoyan to go have fun somewhere.
Li Mu was the first one back in the hotel room. She ordered some food delivery, then sat in a single armchair to read.
“What am I going to do about English…”
The English test in the afternoon made her feel especially anxious. On top of that, she had suddenly ended up in a haunted hotel, which kept her feeling nervous and restless the whole time.
She even thought about finding a ghost who was good at English to possess her and take the test for her. But ghosts were hard enough to find, let alone ones who were good at English.
However, she hadn’t been reading for long when someone knocked on the door.
“That was fast. Is that the food already?”
She was surprised and got up to open the door, thinking it was the delivery. But instead, there was a man in a suit pushing a food cart, like hotel staff.
“What is this…?”
“Your lunch,” the man said. His voice sounded familiar, like the one who knocked on her door last night.
Li Mu became alert right away. She quickly put the door chain on and only opened the door a little, staring at the man outside.
“There’s no need to be scared,” the man said with a helpless smile. “I’m the manager of this hotel. May I talk with you?”
Looks like they knew they’d been found out.
Li Mu frowned and instinctively wanted to say no.
“Chen Yi is already here, and with ‘Red Maiden’ by his side, we wouldn’t dare to cause trouble,”
the manager said with a smile, pushing his half-rim glasses. “Besides, the one inside you… we don’t want to mess with her.”
“Inside me?” Li Mu was stunned. She looked down and quietly asked, “Xiao Jing, have you done something amazing?”
“I’m just as confused as you!” Li Mu (Xiao Jing) answered out loud.
Then she realized, the "one inside her" must be the ghost that had quietly been sleeping inside her body for who knows how long.
“All right, let’s talk through the door.” She pressed her lips together and kept her big eyes locked on the man’s face.
Yu Fan and Chen Yi weren’t here. The window couldn’t be opened, and even if it could, they were on the fourth floor, jumping out would only get her badly hurt, if not worse.
Since she couldn’t escape, she might as well hear what the hotel manager had to say.
That mysterious ghost inside her gave her a small sense of safety. At least the manager seemed afraid of it.
“Aren’t you going to eat lunch?”
The manager glanced at the delicious food on the cart, then gave her a helpless smile through the door. “How about this, I’ll first tell you about us.”
“Okay.”
“This place is a home for the lost, a shelter for wandering ghosts… You probably already guessed. Many ghosts, right after death, don’t even realize they’ve died. Without someone to guide them, no one knows what they might do. Our main job is to take them in, kind of like a shelter for stray cats and dogs, but for confused and lost ghosts.”
It sounded a lot like what Chen Yi was doing.
When Chen Yi came across a newly dead ghost, he’d also try to take them in. Unless they couldn’t be reasoned with or the situation was too dangerous.
“Usually, ghosts only last for a week before their soul fades. But some become powerful evil spirits… Some lose their minds and are trapped by obsession, while others stay sane and wish to live a normal life. They hope to fulfill their regrets in human ways.”
“All of the staff here are ghosts who still have their minds. The hotel gives them a safe place and rules to follow, gives them bodies to live in, so they can walk under the sunlight. They have been ‘reborn’ and now live a new life.”
“I hope your arrival doesn’t ruin everything.”
Li Mu suddenly understood. “Ah… like that café in the anime Tokyo Ghoul?”
“Sorry, I don’t watch anime,” the manager said, then added, “The bodies we use were bought from hospitals and treated in a special way. The source may not be entirely legal, and the bodies can’t feel things like normal people. But please believe me, our hotel is very proper. We have a business license and all the legal paperwork. We’re a serious business, we even pay our taxes.”
Li Mu looked at the manager standing outside the door. She suddenly had a lot of sarcastic comments she didn’t know whether she should say.
What kind of “proper hotel” uses zombies as staff?!