Alice misA--白色城堡桌

Chapter 10, Five Dust Escape Room★Part 10

Part 10. Tulip

Toosb's Room:

Toosb tightly grasped the corner of the blanket with his right hand, held his breath, and lifted the blanket, revealing his father's emaciated body. At this moment, the sound of a heartbeat from the monitor intensified, and his father on the hospital bed burst into mad laughter once again. Toosb clenched his nose, preparing himself: "Alright, get ready..."

As he released his hand, the stench of a decaying corpse mixed with the smell of heroin assaulted his senses. Toosb endured the foul odor and tried to smell the other end of the bed: "Hold on... Dad is fragrant, it's the fragrance, yes, Dad smells really nice... is there actually a scent?"

Toosb noticed that his father's hair was emitting a scent of a certain brand of shampoo: "This is... the tulip shampoo that my mother's hair salon often uses."

In his memories, his parents had met at the hair salon where his mother worked. His father, who used to be a drummer in a band, had a great sense of humor and would often drum and dance with a tambourine, at least before he fell into drug addiction. The atmosphere in the salon was always filled with laughter when he was around.

Toosb gently touched his father's head, and the man's manic laughter stopped, replaced by tears streaming down his emaciated face. Perhaps his father still hoped for the return of his family.

"It turns out... you've been using it all along." Tulips might not only refer to visible flowers; they could also represent intangible scents. The scent of tulip shampoo emanating from his father's hair gradually condensed from intangible to visible, forming a key. A door appeared not far away. Toosb picked up the key, tears of gratitude in his wet eyes: "Thank you for remembering us, Dad."

Jasky's Room:

Two fragrances of perfume wafted in. His mother's silhouette was still there, in the midst of a collapsing and chaotic scene of fighting over his father's magic props. The argument between his parents grew more intense.

In Jasky 's recollection, his father had never used violence against his mother. Yet, the shadow of his father in this scene had his hand raised, poised to slap his mother. That slap was the trigger for their divorce, even though he knew it was just a projection of his mind, he didn't want it to happen. Just as he was about to rush out from behind the wall to stop it, he caught a whiff of a familiar fragrance coming from the kitchen.

"This scent is..." Walking over, he saw a cake and a freshly brewed latte on the counter. He realized that his mother had just prepared them in the kitchen.

"Though she isn't good at expressing herself, my mother actually supported my father. She always prepared snacks and coffee for him while he was studying magic..." Jasky completed the unfinished actions of his mother as he placed the latte into two mugs, ready to serve the coffee and cake on a tray. As he walked toward the living room, he was struck by an idea: "Could it be that the tulip is..."

When his father couldn't bear to raise his hand, the familiar scent of desserts and coffee reached him. His parents both turned their heads toward the coffee and cake on the table, where the foam of the latte had been formed into a tulip pattern. With the scent of tulips filling the air, they both sat down and began to enjoy the snacks and coffee, successfully preventing the violence from unfolding.

"Indeed." The moment he placed the tray on the table, another key materialized silently in the corner. Jasky picked up the key and silently left the living room. His intuition led him to the front door, the exit from the house. He couldn't help but think: 'If I had managed to stop that slap, would they have not gotten divorced?'

Amisa's Room:

Perhaps due to the conversations in the topsy-turvy house, when Amisa saw the crumpled paper and the chaotic desk and blackboard again, she didn't feel the same fear as when she had first entered the room. She endured the smell and carefully searched for the key. However, time dragged on, and with only 7 minutes remaining, the stench of garbage intensified, yet there was no sign of any keys.