Hell High School (14): Like him too much

Next to the claw machine was a self-service cotton candy machine. In the past, Tan Xiao had no interest in such an expensive cotton candy, preferring to make it himself and pay several times more.

But after dating Wen Yi, he couldn’t resist the all-pink machine: “This cotton candy machine has a dual mode, do you want to try it?”

Wen Yi didn’t directly answer whether to try it, first asking, “Have you ever made cotton candy with someone else before?”

Tan Xiao shook his head: “No.”

The latter immediately nodded: “Yes.”

The two of them caught a bag of stuffed toys at the mall, collaborated to make a huge pink cotton candy, and then took a bunch of silly photo booth pictures. It was very childish and silly behavior, but it seemed very natural and sweet for a young couple.

Checking the time, they still had some left, just enough to catch a movie. Tan Xiao knew nothing about the movies currently being played. As high school students, they hardly had any time to watch a few movies in a year, and he didn’t remember any of them.

Tan Xiao looked at the movie posters with words like thriller, horror, suspense, and bloody written on them, and wasn’t very interested: “It seems like the movies that have been released recently are all supernatural disaster films.”

Although couples usually choose romantic and supernatural films to watch together, Tan Xiao didn’t forget that the school was on break because of an incident. He didn’t really want to watch a supernatural film today, and of course, he wasn’t interested in those painful love stories. He just wanted to watch a sweet romantic film.

Tan Xiao looked around and discovered the cinema’s promotion: various sizes of private rooms, offering you an incredibly comfortable movie-watching experience. Perfect for company team-building or couples… They could play classic movies, with special rates for two-person rooms starting from 49.9 (not including currently showing films).

“This cinema has private rooms. How about we book one and watch a classic romance movie? If you prefer to watch a currently showing film, that’s fine too.”

Speaking of which, the film the art teacher showed was quite good; it was about a pure love story set in a school, very refreshing. However, the classroom environment couldn’t compare to a private room.

“Anything is fine.”

The audience in this world preferred thrilling and exciting things, so almost all the movies currently showing in theaters were horror films. He wasn’t interested in the movies currently playing; he just enjoyed the company of Tan Xiao while watching a film. A private room would naturally be better.

Tan Xiao walked to the front desk; the cheapest private room was 49.9, but there was also a couple’s room for 99. The larger rooms for company team-building events cost several hundred and could accommodate seven or eight people, with a movie duration of two hours.

Since it was just the two of them, they didn’t need such a large space. Tan Xiao glanced at the photos of different price ranges and didn’t mind spending his savings at all: “I’ll take the 99.”

49.9 didn’t feel very auspicious, but 99 felt luckier. He hoped their love would last forever.

Because they brought their own drinks, the two of them bought a popcorn and fries combo to enter. The 99 VIP room had a big screen, a coffee table for placing things, and a large leather sofa. The air was filled with a faint scent of aromatherapy. The design of the room was quite stylish, with pink ceilings and walls. Only a row of oil paintings hung on the walls, depicting scantily clad men and women in an impressionistic style.

“The designer has quite good taste.”

Although it was a couple’s private room, it wasn’t the kind filled with gaudy pink lights and roses. Tan Xiao tested the softness of the sofa, then sat down very satisfied: “I think we should have a movie room like this in our future home.”

Wen Yi nodded: “Hmm.”

He thought for a moment and added, “But I think we shouldn’t have this kind of sofa; we should have a pull-out sofa bed.”

Tan Xiao shot him a glance, thinking that Wen Yi was only superficially innocent, with a mind full of dirty thoughts.

“There are so many classic movies, let me take a look.”

Tan Xiao first searched online with keywords: “sweet, not sad, first love, pure love movie recommendations…”

Most of the recommended films were about heterosexual relationships. He thought for a moment and deleted the recommendation: “Boys’ love, pure, sweet, fresh.”

Tan Xiao quickly found a suitable romance film, with a runtime of one and a half hours, just right for the two-hour room reservation.

“Wen Yi, have you seen this one, ‘A Date with an Angel’? I saw that it has pretty high ratings.”

It was a movie about angels and humans, but looking at the actors, they were all quite good-looking male actors. The synopsis recommends it as a breathtaking love story that transcended species and gender, which sounded perfect for him and Wen Yi!

Wen Yi shook his head: “I haven’t seen it.”

Tan Xiao decisively said, “Then let’s watch this!”

The movie quickly started, and Tan Xiao set the snacks in place. Then, their hands naturally intertwined as they leaned against each other.

Tan Xiao occasionally fed Wen Yi popcorn, and the movie soon began. The male lead of “A Date with an Angel” appeared on a dim, rainy night. At the beginning of the film, the male lead appeared in a bar filled with neon lights and a hedonistic atmosphere. Living in a slum, he had a very tragic background: a sick mother, a younger brother who was still in school, and he himself had dropped out to work.

In order to make money, he had to work several jobs a day, endure the envy and bullying of others, and he longed for a beautiful love, but he didn’t believe he could ever have it.

Until one day, the coveted male protagonist was drugged and cornered in a dark alley. The cannon fodder character appeared—this cannon fodder man was tall and strong, but with dyed yellow hair, smoky makeup, and piercings in his ears and lips.

Although he knew the male lead should be fine, the camera work was really good, and the music created a tense atmosphere. When the male lead encountered a crisis, Tan Xiao tightly gripped Wen Yi’s hand: “Wen Yi, you must never go to such disreputable places alone. Bars are full of all sorts of people, it’s very dangerous.”

Wen Yi gently replied, “I won’t go.”

Tan Xiao pursed his lips and said, “I don’t mean to restrict you. If you’re really interested, I can go to that kind of bar with you. Of course, not at this stage; we can wait until after the college entrance exam.”

The male protagonist struggled desperately, grabbing an empty bottle left by a drunken person in the alley and hitting the thug hard with it. The blood and pain didn’t manage to take down the strong thug; instead, it plunged the male protagonist into even deeper trouble.

When the corner of his shirt was torn, a fluffy white object fell from the sky and hit the little thug, causing a rain of feathers to fall. In this dreamlike beginning, the thug was knocked out cold.

The male protagonist picked up the fallen angel and brought the injured angel, who had saved him, back to his narrow and shabby rental apartment. The next part of the story is simple: the male protagonist and the angel spark a romantic connection…

They embraced and kissed like an ordinary couple, then engaged in thrilling, deep exchanges.

The angel was powerful and beautiful, but emotionally, he was naive and innocent. The male protagonist, who lived in the mire, was captivated by the warmth brought by the angel’s feathers. Even though he knew that wasn’t the love he truly wanted, he couldn’t help but get deeply entangled in the mire.

The film’s content wasn’t particularly explicit; even the intimate scenes were shot in a very artistic and poetic way. However, when Tan Xiao was about to see a bathing scene, Wen Yi covered his eyes.

“Don’t look at it.”

Wen Yi’s possessiveness was evidently extraordinarily strong; even though the actors in the film were just performing, he didn’t want Tan Xiao to see another man’s bare body. Although the male protagonist in the film was wearing a bathrobe, the camera cleverly shot from below, giving an infinitely suggestive space for imagination.

In the film, during an intense kiss, Wen Yi on the sofa turned Tan Xiao’s head towards him and kissed those alluringly red lips.

Tan Xiao’s lips were relatively thin, but at the peak of his lips, there were very beautifully shaped lip beads, which made his lips appear more three-dimensional and kissable. Wen Yi skillfully licked the position of the lip beads.

However, when Wen Yi became more aroused and wanted to go deeper, Tan Xiao still pressed down on Wen Yi’s hand: “This isn’t appropriate, and there might be cameras in the private room.”

If it were a hotel, it would be fine, but this was just a private room in a cinema, with no bed, only a sofa.

Actually, with Wen Yi’s power, even if there were cameras, he could make anyone invisible, but Tan Xiao didn’t know that; he wouldn’t force his boyfriend.

Wen Yi didn’t continue; instead of sitting side by side and chatting, he straddled Tan Xiao’s lap. He wrapped his arms around Tan Xiao’s waist, resting his face on the other’s shoulder, breathing softly, slowly calming his emotions.

The film was still ongoing, and the angel and the male lead were deepening their feelings for each other. But no matter how beautiful the love, there would always be conflicts. The bustling human world was ultimately not suitable for the angel. Once he healed, he just wanted to return to the sky.

But the angel fell down suddenly, and once he went back, it meant he would never return to the human world.

The male protagonist felt very distressed; he wanted to keep the angel by force. He even flipped through some biographies, trying to turn the angel into a human.

The originally sweet love suddenly took a dark turn. The narrow rental room was turned into a small black room, the curtains blocking the little sunlight that came in, and the narrow single bed was now adorned with metal chains, locking the angel’s limbs.

The pure and flawless angel began to wither day by day, its feathers falling off, the pure white and sacred feathers slowly losing their luster.

However, the angel’s heart always longed for its homeland, and the male protagonist’s love could not restore the angel from its weakness. This segment of the film was very dull and oppressive.

Wen Yi’s pitch-black eyes looked at the camera, his emotions inexplicably sank, just like the angel and the male protagonist in the movie, him and Tan Xiao.

To him, Tan Xiao was the beam of light that arrived in the darkness. The only difference between them was that although the angel was deceived by the human, his love for humans was pure and shallow.

He was sure that Tan Xiao loved him, but would this love make Tan Xiao willing to give up everything and become an NPC in the game?

Tan Xiao had countless times envisioned their beautiful future together. Those future scenes were in college, in the company, in their future home, but not in the narrow little dormitory of Yuying High School.

Love and desire transformed into chains, capable of forcibly binding the angel’s body, but they could not make him give up his longing for freedom.

He was not as pathetic as the male protagonist, but he was just as indecisive and conflicted as the characters in the movie. He wanted to imprison Tan Xiao, yet feared his wilting.

Wen Yi asked Tan Xiao, “If you were an angel, would you be willing to stay for me?”

Tan Xiao looked at Wen Yi with some confusion, “Stay? I’m not an angel, don’t imagine things that aren’t there.”

“What if you had to repeat your senior year over and over again…”

Tan Xiao quickly shouted, “No, no, no, don’t say such horror stories, that’s just too terrifying, it’s like a dreadful curse!”

He had already gone through his senior year once, and this time there had been significant changes. But if he had to keep repeating this semester endlessly, Tan Xiao felt he would definitely break down.

At this point, the movie was nearing its end. In the final scene, the male protagonist finally broke the chains and said to the dying angel, “You are free.”

The angel left the small room where he was confined, and at the moment he confirmed his freedom, the light returned to the angel. He flapped his wings and left, not looking back at the male protagonist even once.

As the angel flew into the sky, the male protagonist jumped off the rooftop. The scene ended in a pool of blood, as if losing the angel had also made him lose his will to survive.

Seeing this scene, Tan Xiao widened his eyes. This time, it was his turn to cover Wen Yi’s eyes: “This is a terrible movie, don’t watch it!”

Those audience members were just doing it on purpose, where was the sweetness in this movie? Crazy.

Although the romance at the beginning was indeed quite nice, a hero saving a beauty, dreamy and beautiful, but the ending was just too terrible. Moreover, as the camera panned towards the end, it felt like the angel didn’t even like the male lead.

Tan Xiao recalled the question Wen Yi had asked before, worried that the other person would misinterpret: “Everyone is a unique existence, I’m not an angel, and you’re not the male lead who works in a bar.”

He pulled out his card and said, “If your tuition isn’t enough, I’ll lend you some!”

Considering Wen Yi’s pride, he didn’t say to just give it directly, but rather to lend it, after all, Wen Yi would definitely be able to pay it back.

“But you’re the top student in the whole school!” Tan Xiao said, “In the future, you’re definitely going to become an incredibly amazing person. Just think of it as me investing in you, and I’ll rely on you to support me in the future!”

He and Wen Yi wouldn’t be the troublesome couple in this movie, no, to be precise, he didn’t think the angel and the male lead were a couple: “The male lead relies on the angel, he sees the angel as a lifeline, that’s not love. Love is about making each other better, not just pure possessiveness.”

Tan Xiao analyzed the situation: “The angel has no love for the protagonist either; otherwise, he wouldn’t have left without looking back. Love is about making each other better, not hurting each other and leaving each other scarred. That’s a twisted relationship, not love.”

A twisted relationship may be exciting, but only a healthy love can last.

He said confidently, “They are completely different from us. We love each other! We want to make ourselves and each other better, and we will always love each other now and in the future!”

“Wait a minute.”

Tan Xiao suddenly placed the cotton candy between the two of them, took a bite, and the fluffy, soft strawberry cotton candy instantly turned into sweet strands of sugar.

When you’re feeling down, eating something sweet can lift your spirits

“Wen Yi, you eat the other side, we’ll each have half.”

Although Wen Yi didn’t understand, he obediently started eating the cotton candy. He took very small bites, after all, cotton candy is made with white sugar, and the strawberry flavor is just pink-colored essence.

Tan Xiao was munching on cotton candy, making “nom nom” sounds, and then kissed his boyfriend.

His mouth was still sticky with strands of sugar, and one bite stuck to Wen Yi’s lips, sweet and gooey.

They kissed for a long time until the sugar strands melted. Tan Xiao said, “Our relationship is just like the cotton candy we had today, sweet and stretchy, only sweet, no bitterness.”

Fearing that the other might overthink, Tan Xiao took the initiative to kiss Wen Yi’s rosy lips and said, “It’s getting late, let’s head back to school.”

It was better to return to the dormitory for some deeper communication. He would make sure that Wen Yi wouldn’t have the energy to think about that terrible movie.

After finishing his hard work, the diligent Tan Xiao embraced his lover in the warm blanket and fell into a deep sleep.

Wen Yi kept his eyes open in the dark for a long time, then gently placed a pure kiss on the other’s cheek, devoid of any desire.

Actually, Tan Xiao didn’t understand a lot, but there was one thing he said that was right: the male protagonist in the movie didn’t love the angel that much, but he definitely loved Tan Xiao.

He liked him so much, even more than he liked himself. So just imagining the sun-like person withering away, he couldn’t accept it.

Wen Yi couldn’t bear to see Tan Xiao suffer, so he hid all those terrible thoughts away. Even if it meant his heart would break when the time came, he still chose to let go.

Warmth slowly flowed through this small dormitory, while in other areas of the school, horror and thrillers unfolded.

To collect story fragments, players must engage with the plot, just like Xia Yizhen did yesterday.

So, they had to stage a chase with a skeleton in the laboratory building. This special “biology teacher” had a very bad temper and would pull out his own bones to hit people while running.

Players fled in a panic because if they got hit, they would lose health points.

The skeleton frame was actually the easiest to deal with because it had a physical body and could not leave the laboratory building.

The chemistry teacher was the real problem. The chemistry teacher’s IQ was obviously higher than the biology teacher’s, and their laboratory was like a miniature ghost domain. Once players were pulled into the illusion, they would be forced to repeatedly experience explosions, which greatly reduced their sanity points.

Previously, 16 players died, and these two instances in the laboratory building caused 3 players to be eliminated, 4 to be seriously injured, and 6 to be lightly injured. They paid a heavy price to keep their lives.

The ghost in the toilet horror story was the one with the fewest casualties; no player fell victim to the ghost. However, the contents of the toilet were quite disgusting, and the players all ended up vomiting for a long time after experiencing the story.

After successfully collecting four legendary storyline fragments, Dong Hu said, “Today we’ll tackle three stories. We’ll leave the Red-Clothed Ghost and the Mysterious Billboard for tomorrow; these two legends might be a bit more challenging. On the fifth day, we’ll do the Missing No. 14 storyline, so we can leave the instance. If we can leave half the time early, this instance will guarantee you at least a B-grade score.”

The players who initially had grievances regained their confidence. They preferred to take risks for a higher score rather than just survive until the tenth day.

The players’ every move in the storyline was known to Wen Yi, even if that point was not in the school.

As the instance progressed to the fourth day, the Red-Dressed ghost on the rooftop became even more ferocious than Dong Hu imagined, with strength comparable to the mini-boss he encountered in Qingshan Hospital.

This time, he lost quite a few precious items, and the players suffered even more severe casualties. Two more players who were severely injured on the third night died after returning, adding to the 16 players who had been eliminated earlier, making a total of 21 player deaths.

However, after the appearance of the Red-Dressed ghost, the player group was reduced by thirty.

Not all three hundred players were convinced by Dong Hu; some players were simply unwilling to take risks and just wanted to survive for ten days.

Of course, if Dong Hu and the others succeed, the remaining players also had a chance to be carried through.

Generally speaking, that was how story-based scenarios worked. If a big shot decrypted it in advance, as long as the survivors had a breath left, they could follow along to clear the stage, but those who were just coasting would get low scores.

Following Dong Hu’s command, about two-thirds of the player group were willing to take risks. None of the players who came today were injured, and all the players who were injured yesterday stayed in their dorms to recuperate.

However, despite these circumstances, the physically fit players directly lost 30 people, all of whom were male.

Xia Yizhen was also injured, but because she was a girl, the Red-Dressed ghost who harbored extreme hatred for men spared her life.

Someone wanted to back out: “Boss, do we really have to continue with this storyline? The Red-Dressed Ghost is already this dangerous, and that Bulletin Board and that number 14…”

Dong Hu said, “You all have put in so much effort. If you give up now, you won’t get any mission rewards at all, and your final score won’t be very high either. Besides, this is only the second instance. If you don’t take risks at the beginning, you’ll die even faster later on.”

He paused, “The bulletin board isn’t necessarily that dangerous. With the strength of the Red-Dressed Ghost, she might actually be the true BOSS of Hell High.”

After all, in an instance, those who wear red were extremely fierce evil spirits.

The Mysterious Bulletin Board indeed wasn’t as formidable as the Red-Dressed Ghost Sister. After a brief rest, on the fifth day, the team led by Dong Hu managed to get through the Mysterious Bulletin Board ghost story with only five casualties.

Out of 300 players, 240 remained alive, as nine players from other groups had also died.

An 80% survival rate sounded quite high for a normal difficulty supernatural instance.

As the story progressed to the sixth night, the Legend Plan got stuck because Dong Hu couldn’t extract detailed information about the seventh ghost story from the previous six.

“The missing number 14, who exactly is it?”