The birthday present Lu Teng gave to Guan Ze was a pig made with plastic straws that the aunt at the welfare home taught him to make. It was quite ugly and Lin Yao couldn't tell at first glance whether it was a pig, a dog or something else. However, it was obvious that the little guy worked very hard on it and even drew a greeting card for Guan Ze.
Ever since getting in the car, Lu Teng has never stopped talking, and he would say "Happy birthday, Dad" every few minutes. Guan Ze held him in his arms and sat in the back seat, always responding with a smile.
"Lu Teng, we're going to the amusement park later. What do you want to play?" Lin Yao looked at Lu Teng in the rearview mirror. Children are always excited about birthdays, even if it's someone else's birthday.
He was like this when he was a child. He would get excited three days before Lin Zong's birthday. Even though Lin Zong kept saying, "What does my birthday have to do with you?" he still couldn't help but keep talking to Lin Zong, saying it was his birthday, he wanted to eat cake, and he had new clothes...
"I want to go to the haunted house." Lu Teng answered without thinking.
"You're not old enough," Lin Yao was happy. Every time he took him to the amusement park and asked what he wanted to play, Lu Teng would answer like this, "Anything else?"
"But today is Dad's birthday, can't there be an exception?" Lu Teng asked, "I really want to know what's in the haunted house."
"You can go when you grow up a few years. How about we go play bumper boats first?" Lin Yao thought for a while.
"Brother." Lu Teng called him while holding onto the backrest of the driver's seat.
"Call me uncle." Lin Yao corrected him.
"Uncle brother."
"Isn't this still my brother?"
"Brother uncle."
“…Okay, you’re my uncle after all, what’s the matter?” Lin Yao was a little helpless.
"What's in the haunted house?" Lu Teng seemed to have completely ignored the bumper boat suggestion and was still thinking about the haunted house.
"I don't know. I've never been in one." Lin Yao had no interest in haunted houses. He didn't believe in ghosts, but he felt that he might not be able to withstand a haunted house that existed intentionally to scare people.
"Aren't you old enough?" Lu Teng asked sympathetically.
Guan Ze laughed in the back seat, supporting his forehead with his fingers and looking at the two of them with great interest.
"I..." Lin Yao could see Lu Teng's eyes in the rearview mirror, "I didn't go, it's not because I'm not old enough to enter."
"Then can you help me go in and take a look? I just want to know what's inside, okay?" Lu Teng bit his lip, looked back at Guan Ze, then turned back and whispered in Lin Yao's ear, "Dad is brave. If he goes in with you, you won't be afraid, okay?"
"I'm not afraid!" Lin Yao patted the steering wheel and sighed, "Okay, I'll help you go in and take a look, okay?"
"Dad, are you with my brother?" Lu Teng turned around and threw himself on Guan Ze.
"No need! I'm not afraid!" Lin Yao roared.
"Go ahead," Guan Ze hugged Lu Teng and thought for a while, "I'm not worried about my brother being scared, I'm worried about him getting lost."
Standing at the entrance of the haunted house, Lin Yao looked back at Lu Teng, who was sitting on a bench in the rest area with a bunch of food. Lu Teng waved at him expectantly, and he waved back.
"I really don't need you to accompany me." Lin Yao glanced at Guan Ze who was standing next to him. When they were waiting in line before, Lu Teng shouted to him, "Brother, don't be afraid", which made the girls in front and behind him all stare at him and laugh, making him feel embarrassed.
"It's boring to go in alone," Guan Ze whispered, "and I want to go in and take a look. I've never been in there before."
"Really?" Lin Yao suddenly felt very energetic. "Are you scared? If you are, just hold my arm."
"Okay," Guan Ze looked at him with a smile, "Will you be scared if I suddenly hug your arm?"
"What a scare," Lin Yao waved his hands nonchalantly, and after thinking for a moment, he added, "Why don't you just hold him when you get in..."
The haunted house in the amusement park was not too big. Four or five people went in at a time. Lin Yao and Guan Ze followed a few girls and walked in from the entrance.
As soon as he entered, he saw a short corridor with dim lights. The walls were covered with something that looked like blood. Lin Yao even reached out and touched it: "Is it chicken blood? Or paint?"
"In a moment..." The little girl in front suddenly turned around and looked at the two of them, "Let's not get separated."
"Ah?" Lin Yao was stunned for a moment, and found the girl's nervous face a little funny. He nodded, "Okay."
"Then can you guys go ahead?" The other little girl stopped and leaned against the wall to make way for them.
“…Okay.” Lin Yao walked to the front of the group. He was not afraid at first, but after being tormented by these girls, he began to feel a little unsure. Fortunately, Guan Ze was right next to him.
The corridor ended in just a few steps and it was pitch black after turning a corner. Before Lin Yao could see clearly, the lights in the corridor behind him suddenly went out.
"Shit," Lin Yao muttered quietly, pulling out his phone from his pocket, "Take a picture, I can't see where I'm going."
Just when Lin Yao was about to turn on the screen, a strange sound suddenly came from the room. The sound was very low, like someone dragging their feet and walking very slowly, accompanied by heavy breathing.
“It’s out…” A little girl behind him said in a trembling voice with a hint of excitement.
"What..." Lin Yao was about to listen more carefully when the lights in the room suddenly flickered and went out again in an instant.
But in the blink of an eye, Lin Yao suddenly saw a man in white standing in front of him, only a few centimeters away from his face, half of his face was covered in blood, and he was staring at him.
"Ah—" Lin Yao was stunned for a second, then let out a scream and turned his head to avoid it.
"Ah—" The screams of several little girls were even more miserable than his.
Originally, when Lin Yao was halfway through shouting, he thought that this was a person pretending to be someone else, but before he could calm down, the screams of several little girls pushed him to the brink of terror again. He was so scared that he turned around and his nose hit the chin of Guan Ze behind him.
"Hey... This is only the first room," Guan Ze quickly hugged him and rubbed his back twice quickly, "Is your nose still there?"
"Yes." Lin Yao covered his nose for a long time before he recovered.
The girls fell silent after screaming. Lin Yao turned on his phone and shone a light into the room. Half of the face of the man in white was gone. The light from the phone was not very bright, but he could see an arrow on the wall beside him that looked like a bloodstain, pointing to a door, and a few crooked words: escape direction. Beyond the door was a very narrow passage, with dim light faintly visible at the end.
"This way." Guan Ze touched his chin and sighed that Lin Yao's nose was quite strong. It hit his chin and made it numb for a long time.
Guan Ze walked to the front. He didn't want to be bumped by Lin Yao a second time, so he walked a few steps along the wall. As soon as he walked out of the room, he heard a woman's laughter.
The laughter was quite frightening, sharp and strange, like the sound of fingernails scratching on glass. Just when Guan Ze was feeling a little nervous and wondering if someone would suddenly show up this time, he felt someone grabbing his trouser waist. His heart suddenly contracted and he was startled. He reflexively wanted to chop back, but fortunately he quickly realized that it was Lin Yao.
"Don't let go." Guan Ze pinched Lin Yao's wrist.
"Well," Lin Yao said in a low voice, "The beautiful lady behind me, don't let go. You're so scared that you want to go to the toilet when you grab me like this all of a sudden."
The woman's sinister laughter surrounded them, sometimes far away and sometimes near. No one said anything and followed Guan Ze to the next room.
The room was very small, and there was a lamp on the ceiling that seemed to be about to break, flickering on and off.
Guan Ze stopped, and Lin Yao followed him with his head down, using Guan Ze's body to block his sight to prevent himself from being scared by something that suddenly appeared. When he saw Guan Ze stopped, he raised his head and glanced into the room over Guan Ze's shoulder.
“I… fuck…” Lin Yao’s voice trembled as he glanced over.
There were only two doors in the room. One entered from this side and the other exited from the other side. There were several beds in the room that looked like operating tables. The white sheets on them had been stained blood, and several people were lying motionless on them, covered in blood, with blood even dripping from them. There were also several people huddled together in the corner, as thin as skeletons, also motionless.
"I don't dare to go over." The little girl who was holding Lin Yao's clothes kept shaking her hands, causing Lin Yao's clothes to blow cool wind on his body.
"They are all fake," Lin Yao comforted her, and pulled Guan Ze's waistband again, "Are you going over there?"
"Yeah." Guan Ze stared at the person lying on the operating table. He was not actually afraid of these things, but he would still be nervous in this kind of environment. Even if it was all fake, he couldn't estimate what would happen next.
"Then let's go, quickly." Lin Yao pushed Guan Ze. He really didn't want to stay here any longer. The faint laughter in his ears and the flickering lights made the bloody scene in front of him look particularly scary.
Several people slowly walked between the operating tables in the middle of the room. No one spoke, but the sound of nervous breathing could be heard.
Lin Yao felt that he was extremely bored. Even though he was obviously quite scared, he had to stare at these things carefully when passing by them. He wanted to study whether they were real people or props.
He thought they should be props, especially those people whose half of their bodies were chopped off... Thinking about it this way, he calmed down a lot.
After walking a few steps, he noticed a woman lying on the stage who seemed to be quite pretty. The props were so detailed? He was about to take a closer look, but before he could get closer, the woman's eyes, which had been closed, suddenly opened, and her empty eyes met Lin Yao's.
Lin Yao really didn't expect such a situation to happen. He was so scared that he almost knelt down in front of the woman. Even his scream was stuck in his throat and he just pointed in that direction and kept backing away.
The woman was wearing a hospital gown, her face and body covered in blood. She suddenly sat up from the platform, like a corpse, and stared at them.
"ah-"
“Oh my god—”
"Ah—help—"
Several girls turned around and saw this scene, screamed at the same time, and tried hard to squeeze towards Lin Yao and Guan Ze.
Lin Yao was originally moving backwards, and his center of gravity was unstable. The girls pushed him so hard that his feet slipped and he hit the table behind him. In the mess, he had to stretch his hands back to support himself, but he found that what he was supporting was not the table, but something soft.
All the hairs on his body stood up immediately. He quickly looked back and found that his hand was resting on the palm of a half-dead body on the table. He felt a chill in his heart and just as he raised his hand to dodge, the palm suddenly moved and grabbed his hand before he could react.
“Fuck you—” Lin Yao didn’t want to scream anymore. It would be fine if he screamed in front of Guan Ze, but the key point was that there were a few girls he didn’t know. He wanted to save some face, but the fact that half of the body could still move was beyond his imagination. At this moment, he still couldn’t hold it in. His voice was a little broken from howling. He fiercely shook off the hand, “Fuck you—”
The room suddenly became chaotic. Except for Guan Ze, everyone was howling and running out of the door.
The woman in the hospital gown jumped off the bed and approached them expressionlessly. She actually held a knife in her hand, the blade flashing in the dim light that kept flickering.
"Run!" Lin Yao felt that he could no longer tell where he was, and felt like he was in a real-life horror movie.
Guan Ze grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the door opposite.
Lin Yao probably has never run like this in his life. He followed Guan Ze without even looking at the road. His legs were spinning like a windmill, almost generating electricity. When he was a kid, his mother would say he was being chased by ghosts if he ran fast. He never expected that he could actually be chased by ghosts this time.
This door leads to a long corridor, the entire corridor is blood red, the red light illuminates the various mottled marks on it, and there are rooms with closed doors on both sides of the corridor.
As Guan Ze pulled him through, a door suddenly opened next to them and a person walking with shuffling feet rushed out.
"Fuck you!" Lin Yao was so scared that his hair almost flew out of his scalp. Without even bothering to run, he punched the man, hitting him right on the shoulder.
"Ah!" the man shouted, covering his shoulder and retreating back into the house.
Run to the end of the corridor, there are roads on both sides. The blood-red arrow pointing to the left on the wall says "leading to death", and the one pointing to the right says "seeing the light of day again".
"Is this credible?" Lin Yao pointed at the words "see the light of day again" and looked back while panting.
"I don't know," Guan Ze was a little out of breath from running, "Did those girls get lost?"
"Ah?" Lin Yao realized at this moment that they were the only two left, and the little girls were nowhere to be seen. "Damn it, I feel so sorry for them. They even told me not to get separated. What should I do? Should I go back and look for them? I'm a little scared, but if I run into them when I go out, I'll be so embarrassed that I won't even notice them running away."
“Then turn around…” Guan Ze looked back and stopped talking halfway through.
Lin Yao saw the expression on his face and was obviously stunned for a moment. The emotions that had just calmed down began to bubble up again. He turned his head to look at the corridor and immediately felt a little nervous. He lowered his voice and said, "Let's... let's see the light of day again..."
The doors on both sides of the corridor opened, and several people floated out of the room and slowly floated towards them.
That’s right, they were floating. The upper body postures were normal, but the lower bodies of several people looked very... floating, and their feet were completely empty, not touching the ground.
Without waiting for Guan Ze to answer, Lin Yao pulled him and rushed to the right.
Turning right was an empty room. The lights were still dim, but there was nothing scary. There was a closed door in the room with a sign on it that read "Escape Route".
"This is it," Lin Yao stood in front of the sign. Before he came in, the staff told him that if he couldn't stand it halfway, he could leave from here if he saw a door with such a sign. "Let's retreat. I can't stand being startled all the time."
"Whatever, go out then," Guan Ze said happily, "Is it that scary?"
"Fuck," Lin Yao looked back at him and pulled up his pants, "You don't know, I got fucking hard when that guy grabbed my hand."
"Knock on the door," Guan Ze laughed and leaned against the wall, "You are not as capable as Lu Teng."
"Shut up, I know why children can't enter. This is different from those haunted houses with a few fake bones. Children will definitely get scared if they enter," Lin Yao knocked on the door twice, "Help!"
The door didn't open, and no one responded. He was stunned: "What do you mean?"
Guan Ze walked up to him, reached out for the door handle and turned it. The door opened and the sun was shining brightly over there.
"Damn, I'm all sweaty." Lin Yao found that the back of his T-shirt was wet after he walked out of the haunted house.
"Sweating is normal. It will be gone after a bit of wind." Guan Ze hugged his shoulders. "It's more powerful when it's hard. Can I feel it?"
"Get lost!" Lin Yao pushed him away and walked towards the entrance, where little Lu Teng was still waiting for his report.
After walking two steps, he suddenly noticed three girls in front of him, patting their chests and looking frightened. He was stunned for a moment, then turned back to look at Guan Ze: "Are they the ones from before?"
"Yes," Guan Ze took a look, "It's embarrassing."
"Ah, handsome guys!" A girl saw them and shouted, "Is that you? You were the ones who got separated just now, hahaha..."
“Haha.” Lin Yao felt a little embarrassed by her laughter, so he just laughed twice, “You guys came out too? I ran halfway and found you guys missing.”
"Before we ran into the corridor, a man suddenly appeared from nowhere. We had no choice but to run in through the middle door. But when we saw the door, we were too scared to go on and walked out," another girl explained with a smile, pointing at Guan Ze, "I thought you could hold out longer with your boyfriend."
"My man..." Lin Yao looked at Guan Ze before realizing what the girl was talking about. His face immediately felt a little hot. This was the first time he had encountered someone pointing out their relationship so calmly as if this was his girlfriend. He didn't know how to respond.
"We are both timid." Guan Ze smiled.
After bringing Lu Teng out from the entrance, Guan Ze bought an ice cream for Lin Yao and Lu Teng: "You and Lu Teng can eat it together to calm your nerves."
"Brother, is it scary in there?" Lu Teng sat on the grass and looked up at him.
"Yeah, it's very scary, so children really can't go in there," Lin Yao squatted down and smiled at him, "There are ghosts floating around, and there are people who suddenly jump out, covered in blood, holding knives..."
"Are you hurt?" Lu Teng asked worriedly with his eyes wide open.
"No, your dad and I ran really fast, they couldn't catch up with us." Lin Yao took a bite of ice cream. He ran really fast, he didn't even notice he was lost.
"Brother Lin Yao also beat up a ghost," Guan Ze leaned against the tree next to him, and couldn't help laughing at the thought, "Are you brave or timid?"
"It was an accident. I was really scared. I was lucky that I didn't kick him." Lin Yao thought to himself and laughed. "It's not easy to work in this haunted house. I have to buy insurance."
"If there are two more people like you in a day, people will probably have to take time off."
"Guan Ze," Lin Yao took two bites and then stopped, "Let me ask you something."
"Um, what?"
"Tell me, you weren't scared just now, right? How come you didn't notice that those girls were gone?" Lin Yao was still a little depressed that he didn't even know that several living people had disappeared.
"I didn't have time to look at them. I was always afraid that you would fall because your lower body was unstable. Besides, I was in the situation very much and just wanted to pull you and run." Guan Ze smiled.
"You're really good at talking," Lin Yao was very satisfied with the answer. He sat down on the grass, leaning against Guan Ze's legs, "Give me a rub on the head, birthday boy."
Guan Ze reached out and gently grasped his head: "Are you comfortable, sir?"
"It's okay," Lin Yao closed his eyes, "The claws are not bad."
"Well, my claws are very powerful." Guan Ze smiled.
"Watch your words!" Lin Yao glanced at Lu Teng who was concentrating on eating ice cream next to him, "You dare to say anything in front of a child."
"I'm not a child," Lu Teng glanced at him, "not too young."
"Well, no," Lin Yao smiled and waved his hand, "Come here, I'll give you a head massage."
"Okay." Lu Teng immediately came over and sat in front of him and leaned against him.
Lin Yao gently pressed on Lu Teng's head: "Lu Teng, brother... Is uncle good to you?"
"Very good," Lu Teng nodded, "Just as good to me as my dad."
"Please don't call me brother from now on, okay?" Lin Yao pinched his face, "I don't want to be a generation gap between me and your father."
"Why? It's okay if it's not good enough," Lu Teng replied nonchalantly, "How about I call you Second Daddy from now on."
"What dad?" Lin Yao was stunned.
"two."
"Why? I'm just stupid!" Lin Yao had no objection to Lu Teng calling him dad, but he couldn't accept the meaning of "stupid".
"Because you are younger than dad, don't you understand that?" Lu Teng turned his head and looked at him.
"Anything else to discuss? Don't be stupid?" Lin Yao wanted to be called dad, but at the same time he didn't want to be stupid.
"Let me think about it," Lu Teng sighed and thought for a while, "Little Dad, is it okay?"
"Okay!" Lin Yao was happy, hugged Lu Teng and gave him a kiss, "This is much better than a brother, and better than an uncle."
"Little daddy." Lu Teng called again.