Chapter 77: Got Carried Away Playing

Abel, now the focus of everyone's expectant gaze, looked a little nervous. He opened his mouth to begin his explanation, but Peter, apparently struck by a sudden thought, stood up and cut him off.

"Sorry, I have a question," Peter interrupted. "If this place is so dangerous, why didn't you guys just grab a vehicle and leave immediately? Why come into this haunted house in the first place?"

As soon as the words left Peter's mouth, all eyes swiveled towards him, silently admonishing him for interrupting yet again. Peter quickly clamped his mouth shut and gestured apologetically for Abel to continue.

Abel, seemingly unfazed by the interruption, gave a small wave. "No problem," he said politely. "First, to address the question you just raised about finding transportation to escape – Joan and the others who arrived before us did think of that." A shadow crossed Abel's face as he recalled something unpleasant. "However..."

Joan picked up the narrative, her expression grim. "Andy and Mike—two of our companions—managed to bribe the driver who originally brought us here. The three of them left very early one morning on the bus. But later that afternoon... the bus returned. By itself. Andy and Mike's bodies were inside." Her voice dropped lower. "And written on the window, in their blood, was a warning: something like 'Don't even think about escaping, or we'll kill you'."

Peter, unable to restrain himself, piped up again. "But we didn't see any other bus when we arrived earlier. And the manager and our driver seemed perfectly fine. Also, where were you guys when we first got here?"

Joan continued, "I don't know exactly when you arrived, or what happened to that bus with the bodies. Wright and I were the only two survivors from that initial group. When we saw what happened to Andy and Mike... we were terrified. We ran into this hotel and hid inside a closet in the lounge. We stayed hidden until Abel and the others arrived."

Saiki listened, internally rolling his eyes. Right. Her boyfriend must possess nerves of steel. One minute he's supposedly petrified, cowering in a closet; the next, as soon as more people show up, he suddenly feels brave enough to go take a shower, despite knowing there's a ghost wandering around? Could this story possibly be less logical? And yet, astonishingly, everyone else seemed to be swallowing this flimsy, hole-ridden narrative without a single question. If Saiki hadn't used his telepathy to expose Joan's true nature earlier, his own friends would probably be completely fooled too. Tsk. Why do I always feel like the only sober person in a room full of drunks? Could it be that his powers, by spoiling everything, were preventing him from truly immersing himself in this 'game'? Maybe he should just turn off his telepathy for a while? No, wait. Saiki caught himself. Why am I treating this like a game now? Damn it, it's all Pietro's fault for putting that ridiculous idea in my head.

Remembering the driver who had led him to the disconnected phone booth before mysteriously vanishing, Peter turned back to Abel. "What about that manager, the person you spoke with earlier?"

Abel's expression darkened once more. He shook his head grimly. "He agreed to let us leave. But he claimed it was lunchtime, and the driver needed a break. He told us to rest here in the hotel, and they would take us away in the afternoon. He seemed reasonable enough, so we agreed. He showed us to this lounge... but then Joan and Wright suddenly appeared, and our attention was diverted. By the time we thought to look for the manager again, he was already gone."

"So," Abel concluded, rubbing his face in weary despair, "unless we can find this killer... or this ghost... we have no way to leave. The enemy is hidden, while we're completely exposed. According to Joan, the only people who might have known anything about the ghost's origins—the couple who supposedly owned this hotel—were killed on the very first day. We have absolutely no leads."

Hearing this, Saiki instinctively focused his attention on Joan. Her surface thoughts were relatively quiet now, but he could sense a powerful undercurrent of pure, teeth-grinding hatred directed towards the female ghost. Combining this with her earlier calculated approach to his group, Saiki refined his hypothesis: Joan and the ghost are adversaries. Joan knew this place was haunted but had some compelling reason to come here anyway. She brought companions along as scapegoats, sacrificial lambs. However, she clearly underestimated the ghost's power; her sacrifices were eliminated, she achieved nothing, and now she's trapped herself, caught between a rock and a hard place.

However... Saiki recalled the mannequin in the bathroom. Perhaps those 'scapegoats' aren't all dead after all. He had initially suspected Joan faked Wright's death scene, but her current palpable fury towards the ghost suggested she didn't know the body was fake. Interesting.

Peter, meanwhile, was attempting to process the tangled mess of information provided by Abel and Joan. He voiced another question. "Does anyone know how you can actually touch a ghost? Like, make physical contact?"

"'Physical contact'?" Abel repeated, immediately misinterpreting Peter's intent. His mind clearly went somewhere inappropriate, and he gave Peter a very strange look.

Peter flushed beet red, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. "No, no! I mean, like you see on TV! Ghosts are supposed to be spirits, right? Ectoplasm, whatever. You can't touch them or grab them. So, if we want to fight her, we probably need to find a way to make her solid first!"

The rest of the group stared blankly, obviously having never contemplated the practicalities of spectral combat. Only the Black rapping man's eyes lit up with excitement. He eagerly pulled a worn-looking book out of his bag.

"I know! I know!" he exclaimed, his Mandarin still heavily accented. He quickly flipped to a dog-eared page and presented the book to Peter. "I read about this just few days ago!"

Peter glanced at the cover: "Teach You How to Efficiently Catch Ghosts". His internal reaction was immediate: (Symbol resembling a raised middle finger). Yeah, this looks totally reliable.

He turned to the page the man indicated, which was covered in dense, eye-straining black text. Forcing himself to read through it, Peter managed to grasp the gist: To physically interact with a ghost, one must burn a yellow talisman inscribed with the ghost's precise birth time and date (the 'Eight Characters') into ashes. These ashes must then be mixed with the urine of a virgin boy and the resulting concoction poured all over oneself. This method apparently also works on objects possessed by spirits.

What the actual hell? Peter thought incredulously. Did we just randomly switch channels from American horror tropes to extremely specific Chinese folklore? Also, that is genuinely disgusting. More pressingly, even if they wanted to try this bizarre, nauseating method, who on Earth would know the ghost's exact birth chart details?

He looked up, asking the room at large, "Does anyone here happen to know this female ghost's date and time of birth?"

Unsurprisingly, everyone shook their heads.

"Well, that's useless then," Peter sighed, handing the book back. He noticed the rapper carefully smoothing out the bent page corner, treating the book with reverence, as if it were a priceless artifact. Curiosity got the better of him.

"Sorry," Peter began hesitantly, "I have to ask... you being a Black man... oh, I don't mean that in a racist way at all! It's just... in movies and stuff, aren't Black people usually shown as, like, not believing in ghosts?"

The rapper nodded readily. "That's right, I don't believe. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading about this stuff," he stated matter-of-factly. "Besides," he continued, leaning in conspiratorially, "you know how it is in horror movies, right? And thrillers? The Black guy? Always the most pitiful one. Always dies first, usually in the most gruesome way. Man, if I want to survive, I have to betray my disbelief! I gotta study this stuff, learn the rules! Anything to hopefully live a little longer!"

"..." There was a moment of stunned silence. He makes perfect sense, Saiki noted internally. His logic is irrefutable.

Peter reached out and patted the man's shoulder sympathetically. "Hey man, don't worry. I've got a good feeling about you. I think you're gonna make it through this okay."

The rapper wiped away a genuine tear of bittersweet emotion. "Thanks, bro," he choked out gratefully.

"Uh... sorry," Abel interjected, looking exhausted from trying to keep the discussion focused. "Could I possibly interrupt this touching moment? Can we get back to the topic at hand?"

Peter nodded apologetically and turned back to Abel, his expression becoming serious again. "Okay," he said pragmatically. "So, it seems like confronting the female ghost directly isn't really a viable option right now. We need to focus all our energy on finding a way to get out of here."

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