Clown Game
Chapter 164 - 164 156 Numbers 102

Chapter 164: Chapter 156 Numbers 102 Chapter 164: Chapter 156 Numbers 102 …

…

At that moment, the three of them stood side by side in the hallway outside the restroom, which was similar to the “mild zone” where Dr. Zhang was; the “severe zone” hallway also ran from one end to the other, with hospital rooms on one side and a wall on the other, and a staircase and a window at each end of the hallway.

…

“Finally out. I don’t want to stay around shit forever!” Liu Yi said.

Dr. Zhang sighed. He didn’t want to deal with this guy at all, his mind was completely occupied by the new patient with a scar on his mouth.

“It’s him. This is all that bastard’s doing!!!” he viciously muttered to himself. For some reason, from the moment he first saw that guy’s photo, he felt an extreme aversion… no, not just aversion but hatred, rage…

Just then,

“Hehehe~”

A strange laughter echoed from the other end of the hallway.

“Th-This… this laughter!” Liu Yi’s face contorted in panic, pointing in the direction the sound came from, “This is the laughter I heard!”

Jia Renliang also nervously said, “This voice… this person is the one who locked me in the restroom!”

…

…

In fact, right when it happened, Dr. Zhang’s eyes were already blazing with fury; even before Liu Yi and Jia Renliang recognized the voice, he had identified it as the laughter he had heard when he dialed that phone number… He also knew that it was the voice of the new patient.

Of course… it all had to do with him!

“Let’s go!” Dr. Zhang almost instantly dashed out, “We must catch that bastard!” he shouted.

Liu Yi and Jia Renliang glanced at each other and quickly followed him.

…

The hallway wasn’t long, and within a minute, the three of them reached the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

And the sound came just right from above…

“Damn… that’s really annoying!” Dr. Zhang looked up with a look of disgust on his face, then sprinted upstairs again.

He climbed to the second floor, then to the third, one floor after another. He lost count of how many floors he had ascended; at this moment, his mind was completely overtaken by that bizarre rage, as he frantically pursued the laughter upward.

He had not considered why such a piercing laughter could penetrate so many floors to reach his own ears, nor had he thought about why throughout the night, apart from the two guys following him, he hadn’t seen a single person in the entire hospital.

And those two weird chairs, those unopenable doors, again and again waking up from nightmares, and those numbers he didn’t know the purpose of, he had now cast them to the back of his mind.

…

This all made no logical sense… just like waking from a dream, but still being within a dream.

…

…

Finally, after climbing countless stairs, Dr. Zhang reached the end of the staircase, a height well beyond what the hospital should have been.

But he no longer cared about such absurdities; the deeper one is trapped in a dream, the less they notice them. Just as a person in a dream cannot distinguish reality from illusion. He hadn’t even noticed that the two people who had just been behind him had disappeared without a trace now.

In front of him now, was a row of huge iron gates made of welded bars.

He knew this was the fence separating the activity area of the dangerous psychiatric patients, also what the patient named “Liu Yi” had described to him from his first dream experience of the hallway. And on one side of the gate, there was a keypad, which had numbers from 1 to 0, with 0 in the middle of the bottom row and also “*” “#” on the sides…

Dr. Zhang took a brisk step forward. The code for the lock was “74123”; he knew because Liu Yi had told him before.

After several electronic “beep beep” sounds, “clack,” the iron gate opened in response.

Dr. Zhang pulled open the iron gate, in front of him was a narrow corridor, walls on both sides, extending forward into darkness, the light bulbs overhead flickering, the sound of steel rubbing against each other echoing through the corridor.

He ran frantically into it… because the sharp laughter had risen again.

He ran for a long time, yet felt no fatigue, and finally, he saw a door at the end of the corridor.

This was a door, entirely white, with a small window towards the top.

It was exactly like the door to a mental hospital ward.

Dr. Zhang furrowed his brow; he felt as if the door was incredibly familiar, yet could not recall why.

So, he gave up thinking.

At that moment, his thoughts were consumed by a bizarre emotion. He disliked the new patient, disliked him extremely, profoundly—loathed, jealous, hateful, angry, and even…

wanted to kill him.

“Right… I want to kill him,” Dr. Zhang thought.

His expression gradually became fierce, baring his teeth.

…

Just like a patient suffering from mania.

He then pushed open the door to the ward.

But… the new patient he hated wasn’t there.

What stood before Dr. Zhang now was a hospital bed, a very small table, and a chair, with a phone placed on the table…

This scene, he found eerily familiar… as if he had lived in this ward, for many years… many years…

Dr. Zhang furrowed his brow again; it was as if his actions had suddenly escaped the control of his consciousness.

As if possessed, he snatched up the phone before him.

“8~1~3~1~6~2~0”

He began pressing the buttons on the phone, muttering the numbers quietly as he did so.

But inexplicably… his hand started to tremble, followed by his whole body.

Soon, he finished dialing all the numbers; as his finger left the last button…

“Buzz—Buzz—”

The busy tone of the phone sounded.

Then, the call connected, and on the other end of the line, a female voice spoke.

“Hello… this is xx Municipal Mental Hospital… How may I help you? Appointment booking, medical inquiry, physician guidance…”

The voice on the phone was gentle, pleasant to hear, even giving the impression that the operator was a very attractive young woman, but Dr. Zhang hardly heard any of it, and for some unknown reason, tears welled up in his eyes.

…

At that moment,

his surroundings began to shift.

The mental hospital room had vanished, replaced by a civilian home, two bedrooms and one living room, warmly decorated, sunlight filtering through the curtain gaps, casting a warm glow over a picture frame on the table. The frame contained a photo of a man and a woman, embracing each other, their smiles incredibly sweet.

However, at the bottom left corner of the frame, a drop of blood was starkly present…

Following the trail of blood downward, one would find more blood on the coffee table. The trail extended down to the floor, pooling into a patch, gleaming as it spread towards the living room… eventually forming a long drag mark.

At its end… lay a girl, quietly prone on the floor, still dressed in the clothes from the photo, only now, beneath her, the blood had spread, staining her clothing crimson.

Oh, and that boy in the photo… looked very much like Dr. Zhang.

Only much younger…

Dr. Zhang had unknowingly hung up the phone he held, staring blankly at his surroundings.

Suddenly, he seemed to notice two wet trails sliding down his face, and instinctively wiped them with his free hand.

Immediately, a scent of blood rushed into his nostrils.

He looked down and was horrified to see his body, hands, and shoes covered in bloodstains… and next to his feet on the floor, a knife lay quietly, its tip smeared with blood…