Chapter 67: The Unfinished Confession

The movie theater at Slanelt School is a standalone, two-story building, its minimalist interior visible through massive floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

In the evening, the entire building glows brightly and transparently.

Wen Xiao stood at the entrance, turned his head to look at Huo Zhanyan, who was still lingering outside the glass door, hesitant to come in, and said with a suppressed smile, "Didn't you say you wanted to watch a movie? Or are you scared?"

"Who says I'm scared!" Hearing this, Huo Zhanyan marched right in and stood next to Wen Xiao.

He scratched his red hair, glanced at the ticket in his hand, and frowned, "You didn't mention it was a horror movie. But even if I knew, I wouldn't be scared."

"Well, now you know, and you can still choose not to go in."

No matter how many times he saw it, Wen Xiao still found it slightly amusing. Huo Zhanyan acted as if he feared nothing in the world, yet he was terrified of ghosts.

Even so, he forced himself to come anyway. When it came to putting up a tough front, if Huo Zhanyan claimed second place, probably no one else could claim first.

"Why wouldn't I watch it?" Huo Zhanyan glanced at the expressionless Wei Nanxing, then looked at Song Jingbai, who seemed to be enjoying his joke, thinking to himself that he simply had to hold his ground this time.

Wen Xiao hadn't originally planned to come to the movies, and his later decision to go wasn't entirely to shake off Huo Zhanyan. Because he knew that given Huo Zhanyan's personality, he would come even if he knew it was a horror movie.

Afraid of ghosts, but stubborn to the death never to admit it.

"Don't go getting your legs so weak with fright later that no one can carry you back."

Song Jingbai remarked from the side as he selected juice from the vending machine nearby, then turned to Wen Xiao and asked, "Xiaoxiao, what do you want to drink? Grape or strawberry?"

Wen Xiao casually replied, "Strawberry." He liked both grapes and strawberries anyway.

When Song Jingbai handed him the juice, Wen Xiao frowned slightly. "Why is it warm?"

"You're coming down with a cold, you can't have iced drinks." Song Jingbai took Wen Xiao's hand and pressed the juice into it.

He narrowed his eyes slightly into a faint smile, his voice as soft as if he were coaxing a child, "Be a good boy."

Wen Xiao took the juice and couldn't help saying, "Stop treating me like a kid."

Huo Zhanyan directly grabbed a bottle of iced juice, glared at Song Jingbai, and said, "Xiaoxiao isn't as fragile as you think. What's wrong with drinking something cold? Song Jingbai, are you an old mother nagging so much? Let Xiaoxiao drink whatever he likes!"

Song Jingbai glanced at him, smiling without a shred of warmth, "Huo Zhanyan, do you have to pick a fight with me?"

"Don't be so narcissistic, who's picking a fight with you? Xiaoxiao wants an iced drink, and you're the only one making a fuss over nothing." Huo Zhanyan almost rolled his eyes.

"Drinking iced things makes it easy to catch a cold, absolutely not." Song Jingbai was exceptionally persistent.

Wei Nanxing stood behind Wen Xiao, went to the counter himself, and picked up a bottle of strawberry juice, exactly the same as Wen Xiao's.

Wen Xiao noticed that the students currently standing in the lobby were suddenly looking toward the entrance. He turned his head and saw a blond-haired youth pushing open the door and walking toward them.

Ignoring the surrounding gazes, the youth walked straight up to Wen Xiao and said in a low voice, "I'm late."

"Not late." Wen Xiao checked the time. "The movie starts in ten minutes, going in now is just right."

Seeing that the others were all coming, Wen Xiao had casually asked Leng Shucheng if he wanted to join. Expecting Leng Shucheng to dislike such gatherings, Wen Xiao was surprised when the other replied instantly in the affirmative.

Because this group of them was standing together, Wen Xiao constantly felt faint, lingering glances drifting in their direction.

He looked up at Song Jingbai and the others. Each of them wore a different expression, their presences formidable and yet somehow feeling entirely repellent to one another's magnetic fields, and yet they stubbornly stood together.

Wen Xiao suddenly thought that perhaps the few of them were just bickering verbally and didn't genuinely hate each other as much as they appeared to.

And reborn as he was, being able to walk this stretch of the Slanelt School journey with them meant he would have things to cherish in memory, even many years later.

If it was all a dream, then after these ten years passed, what remained would still be a beautiful dream.

Only a few lights were on in the theater, making it appear somewhat dim, though the aisles and seats were clearly visible.

When they entered, the noisy theater fell quiet for a brief moment, immediately followed by whispers before returning to normal.

Wen Xiao found a seat closer to the middle. Just as he was about to sit down, he saw Huo Zhanyan stride over and squeeze toward the seat beside him, only to be stopped by Leng Shucheng raising a hand.

It looked as though the two were about to argue over the seating—though it was probably a one-sided effort by Huo Zhanyan.

Wen Xiao simply yielded his spot and chose an aisle seat instead.

"Stop fighting, I'll leave the middle seats to you." Wen Xiao had already sat down first. Song Jingbai sat beside him, tilting his head to let out a soft laugh at Huo Zhanyan.

"I didn't..." Huo Zhanyan opened his mouth, then sat down with a depressed expression.

He didn't want to sit in the middle; he just wanted to sit next to Wen Xiao.

Feling that Leng Shucheng was deliberately fighting him for it, he let out a cold snort, "Whenever we watched movies before, I always sat next to Wen Xiao."

Now, Leng Shucheng and Song Jingbai were wedged between him and Wen Xiao, and he was beyond furious.

Leng Shucheng gave him an emotionless look, having no desire to entertain Huo Zhanyan, though the air pressure around him dipped slightly, making him look equally displeased.

Seeing Leng Shucheng ignore him, Huo Zhanyan curled his lips into a smile and said, "Ah right, I almost forgot, you've never watched a movie with Xiaoxiao before."

Hearing this, Leng Shucheng tightened his fists resting on his thighs slightly, though his face remained a mask of utter detachment.

Huo Zhanyan's voice wasn't particularly quiet, and Wen Xiao caught it faintly. He leaned forward slightly to look at Huo Zhanyan and said, "Can you keep it down for a couple of sentences?"

Song Jingbai smiled and said, "He probably won't be able to laugh in a minute."

Wen Xiao only understood what Song Jingbai meant later. Once the surrounding lights went completely dark and only the screen's imagery remained visible, Huo Zhanyan fell completely silent.

Uncharacteristically well-behaved.

They were seated in the middle-back rows, with many empty seats remaining in the rows further back.

The surroundings were pitch black, save for the glow of the massive screen. As Wen Xiao looked at the darkness of the theater, he suddenly thought of Song Jingbai and wondered if he was afraid of the dark.

The moment the thought crossed his mind, a hand grabbed his.

On screen, the protagonist had just pushed open the door to an abandoned classroom when their flashlight suddenly flickered out.

The protagonist pulled out a spare flashlight, and just as they reached for the switch, their hand was pressed down by another icy hand.

Wen Xiao's heart skipped a beat. The next second, a disheveled female corpse appeared on the screen, filling almost the entire display, and a collective gasp echoed through the theater.

"Xiaoxiao, it's me." A low voice murmured beside his ear—it was Song Jingbai.

Wen Xiao couldn't tell if he felt a sense of relief, but he couldn't help turning his head to whisper, "Do you know that doing things like this is terrifying?"

Song Jingbai merely gripped his hand tighter, the warmth of his palm transmitting steadily through their locked fingers.

Wen Xiao didn't pull his hand away, simply letting him hold it; it actually provided a surprising sense of security in a moment like this.

Various images flashed before his eyes, and every time he was about to be sucked into the manufactured horror atmosphere, the pressure from the hand holding his kept pulling his mind away.

Suddenly, his right hand was also grabbed. Wen Xiao knew Wei Nanxing was sitting to his right.

"Are you scared?" Wen Xiao whispered. Through the dim glow of the screen, he could see Wei Nanxing watching the display with intense concentration, looking nothing like someone who was afraid.

Wei Nanxing glanced at him abruptly, thinking to himself: I just want to hold your hand.

If acting scared means I can rightfully hold your hand, then let's pretend I'm terrified.

He stared at the screen, watching the flickering images without a single ripple in his heart.

He thought to himself: If people don't turn into stars after death, but exist in another form instead, then no matter what he became—human or ghost—he would probably follow Wen Xiao everywhere.

And if Wen Xiao was afraid of him, he would simply never appear before him again.

Wen Xiao felt that if those two hands hadn't been gripping his, he might have been able to appreciate the movie a bit more.

After all, the film was a campus-themed horror movie, making it far more immersive than other genres.

Whether it was the murmuring voices echoing from empty classrooms, the flashing shadows in narrow corridors, or the bloody water flowing from a restroom faucet, everything felt as though it could happen in reality the very next moment.

The plot primarily centered around a malevolent spirit possessing people and wreaking havoc on campus.

Near the climax, the film looped back to the very beginning: the protagonist had just started school and realized all previous events hadn't happened—they were merely hallucinations.

Wen Xiao could already hear people in the front rows cursing the film for being a terrible cliché.

However, he hadn't watched many horror movies, though he had heard that many liked to rationalize horror elements at the end, chalking them up to dreams, misunderstandings, or nothing happening at all.

Suddenly, on screen, the protagonist—who had just exhaled in relief as if waking from a nightmare—passed by a mirror and caught a reflection of themselves.

With disheveled hair, a deathly pale face, and long, black fingernails, the reflection smiled back at him.

The screen cut to black right there.

Wen Xiao admitted that he had been genuinely startled by the final scene.

This blurred boundary between dream and reality left the protagonist unable to discern which side was real. The terror lingered like a shadow, serving as the final lingering impression left for the audience.

And Wen Xiao figured he was perhaps the one person who could truly understand that feeling. When the overhead lights finally flickered back on, Wen Xiao felt as though he were snapping out of a trance.

Song Jingbai looked at him, leaning in closer. The eyes that usually held a lingering smile were now completely devoid of amusement, carrying a heavy weight instead.

"Xiaoxiao?"

Recovering his senses, Wen Xiao said, "I'm going to the restroom."

Huo Zhanyan couldn't sit still any longer either. He stood up immediately and told Wen Xiao, "I'm coming too, I was about to burst."

As the group walked out together, some students passing by them were still discussing the plot of the movie they had just watched.