Chapter 203: The Chapter With Sounds

The room looked the same, except for the two missing humans. Everything seemed normal—be it the living room, bedrooms and bathroom. Lin Sanjiu had searched the entire apartment but she couldn"t find the siblings.

"Even if they were dead, I should see their corpses or they should have become duoluozhongs." Lin Sanjiu couldn"t make sense of the current situation. "If they wanted to leave the living room, they would need to walk through the corridors. Yet, I was in the corridors."

Each floor had two L shaped corridors, one to each side of the elevator. It might be possible to miss someone if one person was in the left corridor and the other in the right. However, sounds easily echoed through the corridors there, so Lin Sanjiu would definitely notice if someone came out from the apartment. The only exception would be the case where the siblings used some sort of method to secretly escape without telling her. Lin Sanjiu couldn"t understand how they could have just disappeared.

"They did mention yesterday that they would bring a few nameless visas with them whenever they were traveling, just as a precautionary measure. Didn"t they say they could give me one so that I could meet them at Red Nautilus?" Lin Sanjiu mumbled to herself. "It isn"t logical that they would just suddenly leave..."

But, if they didn"t leave based on their own intentions, that would mean that some external force caused them to disappear. However, the alarms did not make any sound. Mrs. Manas was also stumped by this puzzle. Even though they discussed for some time, they were unable to come up with any good conclusions.

"I think I"ll go search for them. Maybe, upstairs and downstairs..." Lin Sanjiu said in her head while she slipped out of the door again. She didn"t only see the two kids as her guaranteed ticket to Twelve Worlds Centrum, but in this extremely lonely world, they were also her cherished companions.

If the siblings were in danger, Lin Sanjiu was the only person they could count on now. However, when she entered the corridors once again, there wasn"t anything unusual. She could still see that faded 15 under the dim yellow lights. Lin Sanjiu looked at the elevator and immediately decided against using it. She turned and headed to the entrance of the stairway. The stairway of any residential building older than three months were nightmares. As people would only go there to throw their trash, the stairways were poorly maintained. The lights were usually never replaced and the stairs were crazily steep. In the darkness, the stairways looked narrower than they really were. Even the brain, which floated down the stairs, felt uncomfortable.

Perhaps, there was even a stench from the trash, but thankfully, her higher consciousness form did not provide her with the sense of smell. As she could scan the area with her higher consciousness, she only needed a few seconds to check each floor. Furthermore, it didn"t take much time to go down 15 stories to reach the ground floor, since she was flying. Unfortunately, she didn"t see the siblings even after checking through each floor to the elevator lobby on the ground floor.

"Mrs Manas, if those two children are playing pranks," Lin Sanjiu grumbled as she flew toward the elevator and decided to take a different route this time, "I will knock their nose into their skulls."

The elevator was still on the 15th floor. Lin Sanjiu pressed the b.u.t.ton to call the elevator down and it slowly traveled downward. "There must be something wrong with this elevator..." Lin Sanjiu thought to herself as she floated on the spot.

Previously, when they were in the elevator, she had pressed a row of b.u.t.tons. The 15th floor was the first stop, but, she was sure that b.u.t.tons 16, 17 and the others also lit up. Under normal circ.u.mstances, the elevator should continue upward after they got out. Yet, evidently, the elevator did not move after they got out. It remained on the 15th floor.

While she pondered about it, the elevator arrived with a "ding". The doors opened, revealing the elevator with its white light. The brain drifted into the elevator and a small finger-like tip pressed on the b.u.t.ton "16". The elevator traveled upward after the door closed.

As the numbers increased in a normal sequential order, nothing happened, even though Lin Sanjiu was expecting some sort of abnormal occurrence. It acted like a normal elevator and stopped with a "ding".

However, the number on the wall was 15.

There was someone on the 15th floor!

Lin Sanjiu raised her guard and gathered her higher consciousness. She quickly floated to the top corner of the elevator and watched nervously as the doors opened.

"Huh?"

Lin Sanjiu noticed a sparkling pink wig as the elevator doors cracked open. Next, Rena"s eyes widened while Reno remarked loudly, "Hey! Look, isn"t she here?!" This immediately played out in the image that Lin Sanjiu saw in her head. 

"Where did you run off to?!" Rena jumped into the elevator, she was ready to poke the brain with her fingers covered with colorful nail polish. "Weren"t you supposed to check the noise? Why didn"t you come back? We thought something happened to you. So, you just went downstairs to play!"

Lin Sanjiu, who took quite a while to understand what the girl meant, was so frustrated that she could vomit blood. When she saw Reno nodding his head in agreement, she furiously spelled the words: "I was looking for you both. You two disappeared". This was the first time Lin Sanjiu spelled so many words. 

"No, you were the one who disappeared! Aren"t we standing here?!" Rena didn"t stop attempting to poke Lin Sanjiu, forcing the brain to evade her while hiding in the corner of the elevator, "I didn"t see you so I asked my brother to look for you!"

Lin Sanjiu sighed a breath of relief but was still puzzled by all this. She wondered if she lost track of time and incidentally missed the siblings. But why didn"t she hear them walking out?

After a difficult time avoiding Rena"s sharp fingernails, Lin Sanjiu followed behind the siblings and returned to the apartment unit, still feeling very perplexed. The apartment unit was exactly the same as when she left.

"It"s just a false alarm," Reno commented as he lay comfortably in his bed but was pulled up by his sister.

"It"s your s.h.i.+ft now!"

He only remembered that after being reminded, and then dragged his feet and sat on the chair under the grayish brain. By the looks of it, nothing had changed. After Lin Sanjiu asked Reno "how long did you wait for me", she couldn"t concentrate on her training any longer because this incident did not make sense.

"Since you are just a brain, we thought nothing would happen to you, so we started playing cards. Erm... I can"t really tell how long we waited for you exactly. But, we waited for at least an hour," Reno replied. Even though she might have lost track of time, Lin Sanjiu was sure she was only outside for less than half an hour.

"Is there some sort of time warp in Kisaragi Station World? Could we be in a pocket dimension?"

But if this was a pocket dimension, it was too quiet. Lin Sanjiu thought for a long time, but she couldn"t come up with an explanation. The living room became silent again. The night in this world seemed to last for a long time, as if dawn would never come.

When Reno could no longer endure his sleepiness, he fell asleep in his chair. Lin Sanjiu, the only one who was still wide awake, couldn"t help wandering in and out of the apartment unit. She harra.s.sed Mrs. Manas in her mind, trying to understand the entire situation. However, they weren"t able to come up with anything even after their discussions. In the end, Mrs. Manas had been pestered too much and started acting dead. After she stopped replying to Lin Sanjiu, the latter entered the bathroom moodily and switched on the light.

Anyway, she found the siblings, so it didn"t really matter if she couldn"t figure out what had happened. Lin Sanjiu thought about it for a little longer and decided to give up. She flew straight into the bathtub and converted her corpse back into its original form. She moved to the tap. As she had nothing to do now, she decided to wash her corpse.

If she thought about it optimistically, she would still need to use that body in the future. She gathered her higher consciousness and turned into a shape of a thumb and an index finger. It was harder than spelling words. After some effort, Lin Sanjiu placed the two weird-looking fingers on the tap. Suddenly, she heard a flus.h.i.+ng sound from the bathroom upstairs.