Kaleidoscope of Death

Chapter 100: Zhu Ruyuan

"We were all scared to death. We were too afraid to even meet." With a pained laugh, Ai Wenrui continued, "if Xiao He and the other guys weren't in the same class as me, I wouldn't have even wanted to see their faces."

At the mention of Xiao He, Ai Wenrui's spirit dimmed again. He seemed to have linked Xiao He's death to his own future.

If they didn't take care of this matter quickly, Ai Wenrui's death too was only a matter of time.

"Let's go look for her," Lin Qiushi said. "She must be a key character. Also..." He pulled the group photo from his pocket. "Do you know the people in the picture?"

"Sure," Ai Wenrui answered after a glance. "They...They were the first three to bleed on the dolls."

"This last person didn't play along?" Lin Qiushi recalled there was a lucky survivor among the group.

"He didn't." At this, Ai Wenrui seemed to sense something was odd as well. "That's not right...He was the person closest to Xuejie. He was there too, but why didn't he play?" He scratched his head in confusion. "And I didn't even notice..."

Lin Qiushi looked at the time. The last class of the day was about to end, and evening was upon them. At night, they weren't going anywhere. So Lin Qiushi said, "take us to find this Xuejie. I want to talk to her."

Ai Wenrui nodded.

Xuejie, like them, was a sculpting major. She was in her fourth year. This class was hosted right beside the exercise field, and they got there without much walking.

Outside the classroom, Lin Qiushi heard the school bell go off. Then, students began to pour outside.

Ai Wenrui stuck his head out to peer inside, but after a while, still could not find whom he was looking for. A bit puzzled, he muttered, "is she skipping class? Or did something happen..."

Lin Qiushi said, "find a student to ask."

"Mh." With a nod, Ai Wenrui stopped a student heading out. "Hey, do you know Zhu Ruyuan?"

Zhu Ruyuan was Xuejie's name.

"Who?" The student looked completely clueless. "I don't know."

Ai Wenrui startled.

"You don't know her?"

With an ominous feeling, he rushed to stop the next student, asking whether or not he knew Zhu Ruyuan.

But, after asking four students, five students who were exiting the room, every single one of them shook their heads to Ai Wenrui's question. They indicated that in their class, there wasn't a female student named Zhu Ruyuan at all.

This got Ai Wenrui completely frazzled, goosebumps appearing all over his body. He seemed a bit wrecked: "What—How could they not know her, she's been in class with these people!"

Lin Qiushi gave this some thought, then walked inside the classroom to stop the teacher. He asked if the teacher knew Zhu Ruyuan.

At the mention of the name, however, the teacher's expression changed. He asked, "who are you people? Coming to our school and asking questions like this, what do you want!"

"We were hired by the school to investigate the deaths on campus," Lin Qiushi explained. The identities given to them by the NPC sure was helpful at times like this. "You know who Zhu Ruyuan is, correct? Will you tell us what happened with her?"

The teacher looked hesitant, saying, "she... What happened to her was actually...pretty well-known on campus. But because of the class turnovers, people just gradually stopped knowing."