Ch 15: I Run a Food Shop in an Escape Game

Hot Spring Bathhouse (3)

There were no other exits in the indoor hot spring hall. Only several doors had been built into one side wall, leading to sauna rooms, heated stone rooms, and restrooms.

Yi Han briefly swept his gaze across the teammates soaking in the pools and walked straight over.

“Did anyone see someone come in just now?” he asked.

“No?”

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

Although they all looked like tourists, these players still remembered they were inside a Hard Mode instance. Hearing the seriousness in Yi Han’s tone, they immediately became alert.

“I saw someone come in near the entrance just now, then disappear,” Yi Han said. He did not mention what had happened in the dining area, only briefly describing the figure as a somewhat skinny man.

Clearly someone had entered, yet not a single person had noticed. And now, scanning the entire room, there was no extra person in sight.

Everyone instantly felt as if they were facing a great enemy.

“Even though none of us saw anyone come in, we really weren’t staring at the entrance the whole time…”

“Maybe someone slipped in while we weren’t paying attention. Sneaking around like that definitely means bad intentions.”

“There’s only one main entrance here. Doesn’t that mean the person is still somewhere inside this room?”

The teammates all started talking over one another, throwing everyone into panic. The seven of them immediately climbed out of the pools and gathered together.

“There should still be quite a few NPCs in this stage, but so far we’ve only seen one in the lobby,” Yi Han said. “The rest are definitely hiding in the dark.”

As he spoke, he observed the seven teammates before him.

None of them really matched the figure he had just seen.

But something about that person had felt familiar. He just could not remember where he had seen them before.

The sodas and beers the group had taken earlier from the restaurant refrigerator were still sitting beside the pools, all partially drunk, their bottles covered with condensation from the heat in the room.

There was definitely something wrong with that refrigerator.

These people had drunk the beverages from inside it. There was no telling whether something might happen to them later.

Though these teammates were extremely laid-back, they were not troublemakers dragging everyone down. Original translation at HololoNovels dot com. After all, with ghosts hiding in the shadows, none of them could truly relax and enjoy themselves.

So after hearing Yi Han’s words, they all nodded in support.

“Then let’s search together. More people means more strength,” one of the girls from the pair of best friends volunteered. “We’ll search the sauna rooms over there.”

“Then we’ll look around the main hall.”

“We’ll search from the other side.”

Everyone quickly divided the work.

Yi Han then said, “Then I’ll go with you two to the sauna rooms.”

The two volunteers were both girls, and the sauna rooms were separate enclosed spaces, making them easy places to hide someone. If they really encountered a ghost, it would indeed be dangerous.

Although Yi Han mainly said this for exploration percentage purposes, no one felt there was anything strange about it.

Unexpectedly…

“Sure.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

The two girls spoke at the same time.

Then they both looked at each other in surprise.

“I… I mean, the main hall area is bigger. It needs more manpower,” the girl who had objected nervously waved her hands as she spoke.

Ever since climbing out of the pool earlier, she had wrapped herself tightly in a huge bath towel that almost completely covered her body.

Her long wet hair clung to her face, revealing only a somewhat pale bluish complexion.

And her expression…

She seemed to be avoiding Yi Han’s gaze.

Wait.

Had there been a girl like this in the group earlier?

Yi Han had mainly focused on observing the male teammates before, so he truly had not paid much attention to this somewhat strange girl.

Her acting was obviously not very good.

Before she explained herself, nobody had thought too much about it.

But once she spoke, everyone’s attention turned toward her instead.

“Yanyan… ever since you came back from the sauna room just now, you’ve been acting weird…” the other girl looked confused, as though she had forgotten something. She hesitantly examined her best friend, almost like she suddenly no longer recognized her.

She had gone to the sauna room earlier.

And now she did not want unrelated people going near the sauna room.

If there was not something suspicious about this, nobody would believe it.

Yi Han raised an eyebrow and turned to walk directly toward that side.

“Ah…?” The girl seemed like she still wanted to explain something, but seeing how firm he was, she did not say another word.

The sauna room door appeared to be locked.

Pushing it normally did nothing.

But in reality, this type of door did not even have a lock. Its current condition was absolutely abnormal.

Yi Han increased the force of his push.

The door still did not move at all.

So Yi Han once again pulled out his iron pot.

Aiming at the wooden door panel, he swung hard.

Boom.

The S-class iron pot instantly smashed a huge hole through the wooden door.

At that moment, the remaining teammates also nervously gathered around.

Everyone immediately felt the scorching heat blasting outward.

Who knew how long this door had been sealed shut.

Yi Han smashed it several more times before it finally burst open completely.

“Help… sob…!”

The instant the door opened, it was as though some invisible barrier had shattered.

A weak female cry for help finally emerged from inside.

Then everyone finally saw it.

A girl was slumped against the sauna room doorway, her entire face flushed red, breathing weakly, clearly on the verge of suffocating and passing out from lack of oxygen.

“Yanyan?!” one of the best friends who had spoken earlier immediately cried out.

Only then did everyone realize that the girl on the floor was the real teammate from their group.

But when they hurriedly turned back to look again, the fake “Yanyan” with the terrible acting had already disappeared.

Everyone immediately rushed forward and carried the trapped girl out of the sauna room, settling her onto a nearby chair and fanning her.

“We were soaking in the hot spring just now, and Yanyan suddenly said she wanted to go to the sauna. I said I’d go with her, but she refused, and then less than two minutes later she came back…” the unconscious girl’s best friend said dazedly.

Now that she thought about it, the person who had returned back then had already not been her best friend.

The original girl had been swapped out, and she had not noticed a thing.

“The person just now, from appearance to personality, was completely different from Yanyan. Why didn’t I feel anything strange at all…” the girl’s face filled with horror.

Not just her.

Once the other teammates thought back carefully, they also realized that the stranger who had mixed into their group had obviously been completely different from everyone else from head to toe.

Yet not a single person had sensed anything wrong.

It was like they had all been drugged.

So it really was those drinks.

Yi Han thought to himself.

These sightseeing players had previously received a system prompt saying the food inside the stage was safe.

The food was safe.

But that did not mean the drinks were safe too…

This kind of cunning wordplay really was exactly the system’s style.

Yi Han sighed, just about to say something else, when suddenly:

Click.

The door to the hot spring area had been locked by something unknown.

Everyone was shocked and immediately turned around.

Behind the frosted glass, there was vaguely the silhouette of a woman standing there.

It was exactly the same person who had blended into the players earlier before disappearing after being exposed.

The figure seemed to grin at them through the blurry glass.

Creeeak—

From another direction came the slow sound of a door opening.

It was the restroom.

Perhaps for architectural consistency, nearly all the doors in this hot spring bathhouse were wooden doors coated with waterproof material.

And now, behind the restroom door…

Something seemed to be slowly pushing it open.

The motion was deliberately slowed, as if intentionally torturing the players’ taut nerves.

Even though the hall was filled with the faint sounds of flowing hot spring water, it still could not drown out the sound of the wooden door creaking open.

The players huddled together beside their companions. Original translation at HololoNovels dot com. None of them dared split their attention to keep watching the silhouette at the main entrance anymore. All eyes were fixed on the restroom.

The atmosphere was unbearably tense.

Yet Yi Han once again felt that strange sense of familiarity…

“Did the woman pretending to be your friend have any obvious characteristics?” Yi Han asked in a low voice.

The girl was still immersed in panic. Yi Han had to ask a second time before she realized he was speaking to her.

“I… I don’t really remember…” the girl trembled. But she also understood that if Yi Han was asking now, he might have thought of something, so she forced herself to think harder. “Ah… I think… her wrists and calves had bruises.”

Such obvious abnormalities.

Yet at the time it had been like their awareness had been distorted. Nobody had noticed anything.

Thinking back to how she had seemed completely mesmerized earlier, the girl shuddered again.

After hearing the answer, however, Yi Han’s expression turned rather strange.

The skinny male ghost outside the restaurant who had looked oddly familiar…

The female ghost with strange bruises around her wrists and ankles…

The slow-moving ghost inside the room deliberately opening the door bit by bit to scare people…

This combination…

Emmmmm.

Yi Han’s mood suddenly became complicated.

Gripping his iron pot, he walked straight forward.

“Be careful!” the teammates all cried out in alarm.

Yi Han waved a hand to reassure them and then stopped beside the restroom door.

The wooden door had already been pushed open slightly, revealing behind it a head covered with long hair.

The strands were soaking wet, droplets still dripping from the ends.

The owner of the head made meaningless muffled noises from her mouth.

Seeing this, the players immediately could not help letting out sharp screams, clutching one another in terror.

Then they watched as Yi Han lifted his foot and kicked.

Bang.

The restroom door slammed shut again directly against the female ghost’s forehead.

The players’ eyes widened.

The female ghost behind the door let out furious huffing noises!

“So it really is you…” In the middle of this horrifying scene, Yi Han actually felt a trace of familiarity and warmth.

This familiar slowness.

This familiar way of opening doors.

This familiar furious reaction after getting smashed in the head…

Wasn’t this the same slow-moving female ghost from the podium in the beginner stage? The one who had stubbornly guarded the recipe and refused to move aside, only to get the door slammed into her repeatedly by Yi Han before ultimately suffering an iron pot to the head and being mortgaged for ten points.

And that female ghost with bruises on her wrists and ankles was the unlucky ghost who had hidden in the bathroom stall trying to scare him, only to end up sacrificed for Yi Han’s benefit, earning him that bankrupt shop.

Which meant the one outside the restaurant entrance had definitely been the fake teammate male ghost from back then.

“So you guys still haven’t been fired by the game company…” Yi Han sighed internally.

Not only had they not been fired, despite completing their tasks so terribly, they had actually risen from beginner-stage NPCs to Hard Mode NPCs in just a few days…

Was it because that crushing defeat at Yi Han’s hands had been too humiliating, and they could not swallow the anger, so they had worked tirelessly for promotion out of sheer determination…?