Chapter 8#
Chapter 8#
Clone
He was going tomurderthat smirky bastard.
If ^^ were standing there in person, Yu Qing would certainly have beat the living daylights out of him, tied him up, hung him in the lift, and pressed every button so that his pitiful display would be flaunted high and low on every floor.
Unfortunately, that guy was still occupying his body. Charging him as doubly guilty, Yu Qing stalked out of the lift.
The hotel was quite accommodating to those with OCD. The corridor was symmetrical, with the lift lobby in the middle of the floor, facing rooms 1812 and 1813. Yu Qing turned left, and it took him only a few steps to get to his room.
However, the moment he unlocked the door, he was met with yet another offensive sight.
The room still reeked of an overpowering floral fragrance, and the note he had left for ^^ was still on the table. But the large bed was no longer smooth—whoever it was had left in a hurry without making the bed. The sheets were rumpled. Strange water stains streaked down the ceiling and walls, whilst large clumps of hair were strewn across the carpet.
Everythingwas in complete disarray.
As cool-headed as Mr. Painted Skin was, even he felt his composure faltering, a sense of world-weariness setting in.
He refused to go anywhere near those stains, let alone touch them. He warned, “If you step on a single speck of dirt, I’ll sweep you out along with everything else,” frightening the little skeleton who’d just entered so much that its gait became uncoordinated.
He skirted around the mess to get to the table, then pinched a white-furred paw to press the ‘speakerphone’ and the ‘front desk’ buttons.
Xiaomi: “?”
Once the call connected, Yu Qing said frigidly, “Send cleaning staff up.”
The puffy-faced man’s voice came through the phone, sounding incredulous. “What did you say you wanted?”
“Housekeeping.”
“…”
“You don’t offer housekeeping?”
“We do,” the receptionist muttered, “It’s just a little unexpected. The cleaner will be there soon. Anything else you need? If not, I’m hanging up.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Dry cleaning.”
“Huh?”
Yu Qing was getting impatient. “You don’t offer that, either?”
“We do,” the receptionist grudgingly admitted after a pause, “but nobody’s ever used it.”
“Now somebody has.”
“Fine… Oh, right.” The receptionist added as an afterthought, “Dry cleaning is handled by the laundry staff. They’ll ring you in a jiffy to confirm the details. Anything else you need?”
Yu Qing stared contemplatively at the wrecked room.
Eventually, the receptionist could no longer contain himself. “You’re not going to ask for room service, are you?”
“No, I imagine it would taste awful,” Yu Qing said calmly.
The receptionist speechlessly slammed the phone down.
A moment later, the laundry staff rang to confirm the details. “Is this room 1811?”
“Yes.”
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After hanging up, Yu Qing, unable to stand it any longer, walked into the bathroom, which thankfully had escaped the pandemonium unscathed. The wardrobe even held an iron and an ironing board, though Mr. Painted Skin was unsure about how to use them. Uncle Yuan usually took care of such stuff.
Truth be told, with a little mana, his clothes could be cleaned and dried in a twinkling. However, he was a stickler for detail. It would get under his skin if his suit jacket were not thoroughly disinfected and pressed.
He scrubbed himself down and then put on a pristine white bathrobe from the wardrobe. After that, he tossed the skeletal kitten into the bathroom.
Just as he got out, the doorbell rang.
The tanned young man responsible for cleaning the guest rooms was used to the strange stains and went about cleaning the room with practised ease. “There’ll be a lot of dust when I clean the carpet,” he helpfully reminded the guest. “Please step aside.”
Yu Qing didn’t need the reminder. Even before the cleaner spoke up, he had already stepped out into the corridor.
All of a sudden, the lift chimed, and a young woman with a ponytail and carrying a laundry bag emerged. She turned right from the lobby, stopped in front of a door, and rang the bell. “Good evening, laundry service.”
Yu Qing’s brow drew together.
The young woman stood in front of the door for a while, then rang the bell again, raising her voice. “Good evening, is anyone in? Laundry service.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” Yu Qing cut in. “I’m the one who requested the laundry service.”
“Eh?” She looked over, then glanced down at the information she got. “I just confirmed by phone. The laundry service request is for 1811.”
Yu Qing tapped his doorplate. “It’s right here. 1811.”
She gave a start, then remembered something, hurrying over. “Oh! Sorry for getting mixed up. Please don’t hold it against me. How many items need dry cleaning? You can fill in the form and put them in this bag.”
“A suit and a shirt.” Yu Qing returned to his room to fetch the clothes. Just as he was about to put them in the laundry bag, he felt the trouser pocket bulging. “…”
What rubbish had that jerk stuffed into his pocket now?!
The first thing he pulled out was a slip of paper bearing the character ‘愿’ in intricate calligraphy. He recognised it. Many households on the island stocked such wishing slips. One could make a wish to their patron deity by lighting it before an altar.
The slip was as thin as a butterfly’s wing. It was light and yet exorbitant. Ordinary people had to fork out a considerable sum for it, though many still did so.
In contrast to other deities, Yu Qing didn’t receive many slips. First off, he had never had many devotees. On top of that… by the time his devotees made their wishes, they often had no time left to burn a slip. Therefore, he had a viridescent swallowtail butterfly constantly flitting through the city’s endless drizzle, listening on his behalf to the wishes his devotees didn’t have the time to voice.
It was a pity the butterfly hadn’t come along. It might have been a little help. While it couldn’t lift anything heavy, surely it could handle a bit of sniffing and snooping? As long as it spared him the effort, or so Mr. Painted Skin thought ruefully.
Yu Qing tucked the wishing slip away and pulled the next item out. Pinching a small corner, he examined the grimy object. It was a charred card that was only half-intact. The room number was missing, and the card smelt strange.
Others might not pick up on the scent, but Yu Qing instantly placed it. He had a lasting impression of it after being steeped in it all night—it matched the overpowering floral fragrance from his room.
Perhaps because he’d been pinching the card for a while, a hologram was triggered.
< Half of a Charred Room Key >
From the scattered remains of the ghosts, you discover a broken key card. A strange scent lingers on it. The toiletries provided by the hotel vary depending on room type. Please search carefully.
Yu Qing: “?”
Search for what? The room corresponding to the card???
Yu Qing: “…”
Too easy. Pinching the broken card, he disdainfully swiped it at his door. Another hologram popped up, which was also posted as a message on the party chat:
You appear to have located the origin of Half of a Charred Keycard! Gained Event Clue Shard x1. Please claim it and keep it safe. In the Beginner Dungeon, clue progress is shared. Party Clues 1/5.
ThreeKings sat up in shock: ???????
JustRude: Didn’t we just get that item????
However, Yu Qing didn’t catch their reactions. All he could see was that obtrusive hologram and the prompts that flashed non-stop. He tapped ‘Claim’, and the broken card in his hand was instantly restored. It bore the same photograph of the hotel, with the same number written on the reverse: 1811. The only difference was that its design was a mirror image of Yu Qing’s own.
Tapping the card also brought up a description.
< An Outdated Room Key >
Before that family of five turned into cold corpses, they too had once known warmth and enjoyed a few happy moments. Even in death, they seem unwilling to let go of those memories. So, they occasionally return to their old haunt. Be careful not to bump into them.
“Sir? Sir!” The laundry lady called out. Shaking his thoughts off, Yu Qing closed the hologram. She glanced at the card in his hand, reluctant to stay any longer. “Is that all the laundry? I’ll take it away.”
Yu Qing returned to his room.
The cleaner had already tidied it up. Mr. Painted Skin approved of how spotless it was.
As soon as the cleaner left, he fished Xiaomi out of the bathroom, roughly dried it, and grumbled, “You weren’t this much trouble when you weren’t mouldy.”
The kitten looked aggrieved.
The phone lying on the bed was buzzing with what should be a barrage of messages, but as far as Mr. Painted Skin was concerned, those were messes for ^^ to deal with, not him. He would never lift a finger over them.
Besides, he had already done that jerk a favour just now. At the very least, he’d turned half a room key into a whole one. Swiping a card also took a little effort, not to mention how grimy it was. ^^ should be grateful that he’d even deigned to touch it, so Yu Qing thought.
But an hour later, he still picked up that exasperating phone, because it wouldn’t stop buzzing. Just who was being so noisy?!
Yu Qing opened the messaging app. Bafflingly, the radio-silent party chat now had 99+ new messages. As soon as he tapped in, a flood of bizarre photos came rushing in, making his hand go numb from the vibration.
What was all the fuss about? He enlarged a few of them and gave them a quick scan. They showed the interior of a room with a layout nearly identical to the one he was staying in—to be precise, itwasidentical, except that everything was mirrored.
He scrolled up and read the chat history.
ThreeKings: We felt bad being carried, so we used the room key we got to explore a bit @SliceIntoSashimi @^^
JustRude: Yeah, nothing in the room stood out to us, but to make sure we didn’t miss anything, we took loads of photos.
ThreeKings: We photographed every corner. Not sure if it’ll be of any help. We’re stumped. Thoughts? If nothing works, we’ll pop back to 1811 again later. It’s near the lifts. Just turn right and you’re there. @SliceIntoSashimi @^^
Dull. Yu Qing had intended to power down the phone, but when he scrolled to the message mentioning his room number, he paused.
For a fleeting moment, he almost thought that they had broken into his room. But that was impossible, of course. He’d been in the entire time. That left one other explanation…
The floor had two rooms numbered 1811: the one where he was staying, and the other just to the right of the lifts. That was why the laundry lady had gone to the wrong room, and where his teammates had ended up.
The same room number?
The symmetrical corridor?
Mirrored layouts?
Yu Qing opened the photos again, examining them more closely, his brow furrowing the more he looked.
In one photo, he spotted somethingverystrange. The photo showed the table in the other room, yet with a familiar note resting on it. It was the very note that Yu Qing had left for ^^, threatening him to come out and sort out his mess.
The note was placed dead centre on the table, perfectly straight, but the writing on it was also flipped.
He went through a few more photos and noticed the towel hanging beside the washbasin in the bathroom. Ten minutes ago, he had used that very towel to dry Xiaomi’s fur. Only he’d placed it on the left, whereas in the photo it was on the right. It wasn’t just the layout; it was an exact clone of his room, down to the traces he had left behind.
If inanimate objects were cloned, then what of the living? Would there be a skeletal kitten? What about himself?
If there were another version of himself, what would his mirror image be?
Yu Qing had a key card that would open the other room. He was even on the same floor. He needed only to step out, walk past 1812 and 1813 in between, and he could check the situation out.
But he didn’t.
Because he hadn’t picked up his dry cleaning, and a bathrobe wasn’t presentable enough for him to go anywhere more than a metre away from his room.
After considering it, he walked over to the room phone. Like any other hotel, an internal intercom connected every room. He just had to dial the room number.
He gathered his dry hair into a half-up, then dialled 1811.Brrring—Brrring—Brrring.The phone rang for ages.
Just as he was beginning to think that nobody would answer, there was a click on the other end, and a voice came through. It should have been an unfamiliar voice, yet Yu Qing paused, getting a sense of deja vu. Then it hit him.
On the day he was about to die, he heard that voice just before stirring, not long before entering the dungeon.
It reminded him of the wind soughing through the cracks of his statue.
If he wasn’t mistaken, it belonged to the man who was occupying his body.
“Colour me surprised,” the voice on the other end of the line said, “I didn’t expect I could actually talk to you like this.”
t/n.Off-note that the Qing in Yu Qing’s name refers to a spectrum of colours between blue and green. For all intents and purposes, calling it viridescent to make the association easier. I’d assume anyqingmotif leans more green just because the light in his eyes and the gems on the pocket watch have been definitively called green. That said, the butterfly is specifically a common bluebottle (lit.qing-phoenix-butterfly).
Excerpt from WikiOld Chinese did not make a blue-green distinction, having a single verdant color (青, qīng) that encompassed both. The blue sky and green vegetables were considered shades of a single color which could even include black as its darkest hue in some contexts. Modern Standard Mandarin makes the blue-green distinction using lǜ (綠; 绿 ‘leafy’) for green and lán (藍; 蓝 ‘indigo’) for blue.Qīng was associated with health, prosperity, and harmony. It was used for the roof tiles and ornate interior of the Temple of Heaven and in other structures to represent Heaven. It is also the color of most jade as well as the greenware pottery that was developed to imitate it.In modern scientific contexts,qīngrefers to cyan as a narrow range of color in between blue and green, and the modern color names are used when referring to other shades of blue or of green.
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Escape From Rose Island(Chapter 8)
Translated by 🎏luckykoi
Please do not repost or re-translate.