0713: You who shine in the parallel world

Knowing that she had ruined the terrifying atmosphere that the production team had painstakingly created through psychological suggestion, Yu Yu still smiled quite happily.

Obviously, the clown NPC hiding in the shadows wouldn't answer the question about whether he needed to imitate the off-key singing, and the production team couldn't possibly answer it via broadcast backstage. If they did respond, the already precarious atmosphere of the horror would completely collapse.

Therefore, after talking to her invisible self in the mirror, Yu Yu immediately started singing that eerie nursery rhyme from frame to frame—"A little boy, making friends with his shadow..."

In fact, under normal circumstances, the production team will provide accompaniment for the guest who starts singing to perform this task, in order to create a scary atmosphere.

As we all know, bathrooms have excellent acoustics, comparable to concert halls, making them natural recording studios. Most people become self-proclaimed kings and queens of pop in their bathrooms.

In such a natural sound field, the guests are surrounded by the all-around panoramic sound of the underworld background music. While watching the clown crawl out of the bathtub, they try their best to suppress their urge to scream and sing a terrifying nursery rhyme that is completely out of tune. Wouldn't that create a good show effect?

Unfortunately, the escape room production team never expected that they would have their own Yao Zhen today.

Unlike other guests who had to prepare themselves mentally and listen to the melody of the scary nursery rhymes several times before deciding to start singing, Yu Yu, who could write down the entire score after listening to it only once, didn't give the production team any preparation or reaction time before starting to sing. The production team couldn't even tell when Yu Yu was going to sing...

So Yu Yu had already finished singing the first line when the accompaniment finally started.

"Huh? This is only the beginning, doesn't the previous part count? It's really hard to tell when you want to hear a song, Mr. Clown. I suggest you let me know in advance next time, okay? When someone sings for you, you have to show some attitude of asking for a favor." Yu Yu complained.

Who informed whom here?! This escape room has been recorded several times, and you're the only one who starts with zero frames. Don't you need to mentally prepare yourself?! And who's begging whom here?! You're the one who can't get the quest item if you don't sing!

The clown teacher, lying in the bathtub, unable to make a sound and pretending not to exist, was in a state of impotent rage.

After casually teasing the NPC teacher who couldn't appear yet, Yu Yu sang that creepy nursery rhyme again, following the rhythm of the accompaniment.

This time, however, Yu Yu clearly used a different singing style compared to her first casual humming.

A kind of ethereal and otherworldly singing style that uses breathy vocal techniques to create a tangible and ethereal effect.

The voice, which was originally naturally warm, now carried an almost naive cruelty, like a ghost that never knew its own weight and did not understand how destructive it was to fragile lives. It tore away all the pretense and lay naked in the dark and narrow space, using an overly straightforward and bloody way to create unease and panic in the lyrics and melody.

At that moment, not only the clown teacher who was still lying in the bathtub, but even the production team behind the fixed camera position got goosebumps.

I've heard the nursery rhyme countless times, but now that Yu Yu is singing it, it just feels creepy.

"I didn't expect... that Teacher Yu Yu has quite a talent for singing this type of song? Haha." The director smiled awkwardly, twitching his lips to appear calm. "When the previous guests sang here, their voices were shaky and completely off-key, which provided quite a few laughs. How come when he sang this song, it turned into a horror movie?"

"He seems to have... changed the tone?" the assistant director replied uncertainly, silently turning down the volume, for which many people inwardly expressed their gratitude.

"Is that so? We can compare the melodies later," the director said. As for why not compare them now... I'm dying of laughter. I don't dare listen to any more now.

Well, let's pause for a second to mourn for the clown teacher who felt even more immersed in the story.

Yu Yu did make minor adjustments to the music, but not major changes. For original works like this on the show, the copyright is in the hands of the production team. Whether or not they can make changes is just a matter of their word. If they can't make changes, they can simply cut this part out.

Anyway, Yu Yu doesn't care about the number of shots.

He simply thought that if the nursery rhymes were so scary and the lyrics were so unsettling, then the melody had to be just as bad, right?

Yu Yu figured that the fact that there was no movement from the shower curtain side while he was singing meant he was singing correctly and well, and had won over the clown teacher. After all, the letter said that the clown liked this song, and that as long as the nursery rhyme was sung, the clown would consider the singer one of his own.

Of course, he didn't know that even if he sang, under normal circumstances in the previous episodes, the clown would still reveal a pale, terrifying face covered in paint from behind the shower curtain, slowly crawl out of the bathtub, come to the guest's side, throw down a box, and then leave with a wicked grin.

As for why Teacher Clown hasn't appeared yet, let's not delve too deeply into some questions, otherwise it would be impolite. Let's just assume he's listening to nursery rhymes and being lulled to sleep by Yu Yu.

Just as Yu Yu finished singing the last line and began to consider whether to do it again, there was finally movement from the bathtub.

With a "bang," a small box bearing a clown logo was thrown out of the bathtub by a hand, which then quickly retracted.

"That's it? I was wondering if the clown teacher here was the one we guys ambushed. Clown teacher, aren't you going to come out and say hello?" Yu Yu curiously peeked towards the bathtub, but unfortunately it was too dark to see anything clearly.

Regardless of whether it's the same teacher or not, both of the solo clown teachers on this floor have been persecuted by this brat Yu Yu.

Perhaps worried about his employee reporting a workplace injury, the creepy nursery rhyme in the background finally stopped. But this didn't deter Yu Yu from doing it again. He picked up the box, continued humming the nursery rhyme, and walked out cheerfully.

Of course, this time he changed the arrangement again, turning it into a cheerful little folk song. At first glance, it sounds as harmless as "Two Tigers," but once you understand what he is actually singing, the feeling is completely different.

There was a friend card in the box, unsurprisingly. On his way back, he also happened to run into Su Xing, Wang Yuexin, and Zhang Yuan, who had just completed their three-person mission.

"Oh, what a coincidence?" Su Xing said, still holding a life-size clown head model in his arms. "Young Master Yu seems quite happy. You really like this solo mission?"

"Not bad, even though it's all the same old routine." Yu Yu smiled and gestured to the head that Su Xing had tossed around like a ball. "Your mission looks more interesting, Allen. There are even souvenirs."

"What's so interesting about it? It's not interesting at all." Before Su Xing could reply, Zhang Yuan snorted and shook his head quickly, giving Su Xing a rather resentful and speechless look. "Don't play with this stuff. I can't stand it."

"It's just a model, Bird. It even looks a bit rough in the well-lit hallway," Su Xing teased, intending to wave the head in front of him. Zhang Yuan saw this and immediately called out, hiding behind Yu Yu.

"Why don't you just take this out as a souvenir after you're done? You'll behave yourself when you have it at home," Wang Yuexin teased.

The "honesty" he was referring to certainly didn't mean that Su Xing was startled when he woke up in the middle of the night by the clown head in the closet, but rather that if he dared to take that thing back as a decoration, Sister Chen would probably beat him up.

"Come on, after all these years, he hasn't thrown away a single one of those big shorts." Yu Yu shook her head.

Amidst Wang Yuexin and Zhang Yuan's mocking laughter, Su Xing couldn't help but widen her eyes and retort, "What's wrong with big shorts? Big shorts are comfortable to wear!"

Amidst their laughter and chatter, the four had already returned to the study. The three inside, having heard their commotion, emerged from the adjacent two-person mission room. It was normal for Chen Chusheng and Lu Hu to come out of the room, but why had Wang Zhengliang, who had just completed his mission, also run inside?

Yu Yu asked and found out that Wang Zhengliang had gone to the room to help them find the boxes, because there was only one box in the two-person mission room, but the map showed two boxes.

After everyone arrived and discussed it, Chen Chusheng and Lu Hu realized that the number of boxes drawn on the map did not represent the actual number, but rather the number of friend cards. As long as they had two cards, they were on the right track.

"What kind of mission is in that bathroom?" Wang Zhengliang looked at Yu Yu. He was afraid of that room, but that didn't stop him from being curious.

"It's pretty simple, it's related to our job, singing." Yu Yu shrugged.

This answer piqued the curiosity of the others, and Land Rover pressed further, "Singing? What kind of songs?"

"That kind of environment is actually for a singing assignment? That's a bathroom, and it's not even half the size of this study." Wang Zhengliang was also somewhat incredulous.

“Singing in the bathroom is quite reasonable. Everyone hums a few lines while taking a shower,” Yu Yu said seriously. “The melody of that song is quite simple, and the lyrics are easy to remember. It’s a children’s song, like ‘Mom and Dad go to work, I go to kindergarten.’”

Even scary nursery rhymes are still nursery rhymes and children's songs.

"A nursery rhyme?" Based on Chen Chusheng's understanding of Yu Yu, he might not be lying, but he must be plotting something bad right now.

Land Rover hadn't considered this possibility. He felt that he and Brother Sheng had been set up by the production team: "No, why are we being scared by clowns jumping out of the TV, while you're having a makka parlor in kindergarten?"

"I don't believe it either. Our clown teacher downstairs has already ripped his own head off. You think you can just sing a nursery rhyme and be done with it?" Zhang Yuan also found it unbelievable.

Yu Yu spread her hands: "If you don't believe me, I'll sing it for you, and you'll see. I feel that this solo task is really not difficult. With the average level of you excellent singers, you can complete the task by just singing a couple of lines."

As he spoke, he began to sing a lighthearted version of a scary nursery rhyme.

At first, the brothers didn't think anything of it, after all, the melody was indeed quite cheerful, and they even helped Yu Yu keep the beat. But as they listened, Zhang Yuan and Lu Hu gradually put their hands down from keeping the beat.

When Yu Yu sang "a red thread around the neck," Lu Hu immediately shouted to stop her. He and Zhang Yuan huddled together, each clutching the other's neck, looking at Yu Yu with accusatory expressions: "You call this a children's song??? Yu Yu, were all the children's songs you listened to when you were little like this?!"

“It’s a scary nursery rhyme, you can just change the lyrics, for example,” Yu Yu paused slightly, then turned around and suddenly started clapping to Chen Chusheng, “Happy birthday, brother, may joyful songs resound, may peace and prosperity last forever, may your heart always be burning brightly~~”

Chen Chusheng's eyes crinkled with laughter when Yu Yu sang the first line of the song in the same tune but with a different melody. He thanked his younger brother, whom he had known for nearly sixteen years, and put his arm around his shoulder. The others also sang the harmony in Yu Yu's revised lyrics and gathered around them.

In a study in the secret escape room, the seven of them embraced each other.

"Alright, alright, it's just a birthday party, do you have to be so mushy?" Su Xing was the first to complain, letting go and quickly walking towards the next room.