“Alright.”
The handcuffs opened smoothly, and Zhou Ziheng, having accomplished his mission, looked up and met Xia Xiqing’s direct gaze without any guard. He instinctively furrowed his brows, looked away, and coughed once. He exerted force on his wrist, flinging the open handcuffs aside, and placed them with a clap on the wooden cabinet next to him.
Xia Xiqing smiled, touched his wrist, and whispered a thank you. He remembered Zhou Ziheng’s expression when he had just finished decoding it. “You noticed it was Morse code too, right?”
Zhou Ziheng nodded and reached into his pocket to check the time. “But I don’t remember the specific Morse code correspondences very well, so it was a bit difficult to decode. I had to guess.”
Xia Xiqing played the paused music again and explained along with the melody, “It starts with a long pause, followed by three short pauses. After the short pauses, the music resumes. [Long, short, short, short] corresponds to the letter B, followed by [short, long, short], which is the letter R.” The music continued to play, interspersed with the pre-programmed pauses. “[Short]—the letter E… [Short, long]—the letter A… [Long, short, long]—the letter K…”
BREAK—break
“Break the mirror.” Before Xia Xiqing could finish explaining the next two words, Zhou Ziheng had already given the answer.
“That’s right.” Xia Xiqing laughed, and this laugh seemed different from before, with a sense of cheerfulness.
It was probably just an illusion, Zhou Ziheng thought.
“Why are you so familiar with Morse code?” Zhou Ziheng walked over, turned off the music, and picked up the vinyl record he hadn’t examined closely before, narrowing his eyes slightly.
“My math teacher mentioned it when I was in middle school. I found it interesting and even used it to pass answers to others during exams. After I switched to the liberal arts track in high school, I didn’t use it anymore. It took me a moment to remember it just now.“ Xia Xiqing’s shoe tip tapped lightly on the ground. ”But isn’t the program too difficult? If you don’t happen to know this kind of knowledge, you can’t solve it at all.”
“Actually, they thought it through very carefully.” Zhou Ziheng handed Xia Xiqing the vinyl record, which had the name of the suite, “Mirror,” written on it. “When I was putting together the notes just now, you played this piano piece. If you’re familiar with classical music like you are, you can immediately recognize it as the Mirror Suite and then associate it with the mirror next to the phonograph. If you don’t know about it, you can find it by looking at the vinyl record, so associating it with the mirror is inevitable.”
“If one were to associate it with breaking a mirror…” Xia Xiqing thought of the bookmark from the previous book, “Whatever I touch breaks.”
Zhou Ziheng nodded, “I guess the fragments of the sticky notes are also a clue. So the production team arranged several lines of thinking, and you chose the most direct one.”
“But it has the highest intellectual cost.” Xia Xiqing shrugged slightly, “But compared to the efficiency of the association effect, mathematics is much more precise and faster.”
Zhou Ziheng was puzzled—how could someone studying art be so skilled at math? Xia Xiqing, however, had already shifted his attention to the note he had pieced together earlier. “That gibberish is probably another set of codes, but it might have a different solution.” He walked over and picked up the paper. “Maybe the password to our door is hidden here.”
This idea coincided with Zhou Ziheng’s own thoughts, but besides the sticky note, he felt there were many other pieces of information in the room. He just couldn’t find a good way to distinguish between useful information and distractions.
The two of them looked at the broken and then repaired sticky note again.
Xia Xiqing flipped the sticky note over to the side with the writing on it and examined it carefully. He then took out the bookmark from the book and suddenly said something that didn’t seem very useful at the moment.
“Don’t you think the handwriting on these two pieces of paper is a bit different?”
Zhou Ziheng also noticed this. The writing on the bookmark looked more bold and masculine, while the writing on the sticky note was much more delicate. Although the difference wasn’t huge, judging from the thickness of the strokes, it was clear that they weren’t written by the same person.
He pointed to the bookmark and said, “I think this is the writing of the owner of the study.”
In fact, Xia Xiqing agreed with this viewpoint, but for the sake of the show’s effect and audience acceptance, he still asked in good faith, “What if this book was borrowed by the room’s owner? The bookmark inside might not be his own.”
Zhou Ziheng shook his head and pointed to a row of bookshelves beside him, “The first six books from left to right on the third shelf are all part of the same series as this novel, and this one is the final volume. Besides this series, there are many other series of books on the shelves. I don’t think someone with a collecting obsession would borrow books to read, let alone the final volume.”
Xia Xiqing made a fan-like expression, “Wow, our Hengheng would be wasted if he didn’t star in a crime drama.”
Our Hengheng??? Although such phrasing was commonplace on Zhou Ziying’s fan-filled Weibo, hearing it come out of this person’s mouth nearly caused his usually impeccable emotional control to slip.
Seeing the genuine admiration on Xia Xiqing’s face, Zhou Ziying couldn’t help but retort in his heart.
[You’re wasting your talent by not acting either.]
After all, it was a TV show, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to be too cold to this “fan” in front of him, so Zhou Ziying cleared his throat and said gloomily, “I might act.”
For some reason, Xia Xiqing found Zhou Ziheng a little cute at that moment.
He shook his head in his mind, thinking he must be losing his mind.
Seeing Xia Xiqing’s foot about to step on the broken pieces of the vase he had shattered earlier, Zhou Ziheng couldn’t help but reach out and pull his arm, “Be careful.”
Xia Xiqing also realized it, looked down, and said, “Ha, so the vase was broken from the start. I almost forgot. The theme of this room is probably ‘fragments,’ right?”
As he casually mentioned this, Xia Xiqing felt something was off. If Zhou Ziheng’s theory about “breakage” was indeed a pre-planned clue by the production team, then shouldn’t the vase—another fragile item—also have clues that could be obtained after being broken?
Zhou Ziheng seemed to have gained insight from Xia Xiqing’s words, and the two of them crouched down almost simultaneously, in perfect harmony.
The ground was littered with broken pieces of the vase and a bunch of white chrysanthemums scattered on the floor. Xia Xiqing used a white chrysanthemum stem to stir the broken pieces on the ground and indeed discovered a paper strip rolled into a thin tube. “There’s a clue after all.”
He couldn’t help but complain inwardly that the scriptwriter of this escape room game was truly meticulous, hiding so many clues in every nook and cranny. If he hadn’t thought of the theme of “fragments,” the vase might not have been broken.
No, that’s not right. He quickly dismissed the thought.
Zhou Ziheng suddenly spoke up, “So the production team tied us up with ropes but didn’t provide any sharp objects, only a vase used as decoration, and placed it within my reach—all to make us break it, right?”
His thoughts were in sync with his own. Xia Xiqing was a bit surprised but quickly responded, “Yeah, that’s probably it. We just had our attention diverted at first and didn’t notice the clues in the vase.”
It was like the game Snake: no matter where you start eating or how you move, you have to eat all the fruits that exist at the beginning of the game, or else it’s Game Over.
He suddenly felt a bit of admiration for the screenwriter—a clever person who didn’t restrict the show to a game that had to be played in a specific order, as that would have greatly reduced its playability. The steps don’t matter, the order doesn’t matter, and even the problem-solving approaches are set in multiple ways. Plus, adding a dark character like the “killer” to the escape room turned a pure puzzle game into a battle of intelligence and psychology.
Interesting.
The two opened the note, which contained a short poem.
We were once one.
Destiny tore you from my body, from my bones, my flesh, my heart, and roughly pieced together these now meaningless organs.
Buried together with you, who was also torn apart and reconstructed, one before the other.
Buried beneath this fence adorned with lush roses.
Only by dismantling it again,
returning you to me, returning me to you,
from top to bottom, connected to each other,
can everything regain its meaning.]
It looked like a somewhat gothic poem, but Xia Xiqing felt something was off. He flipped the paper over and found something written on it.
[2 you.]
Zhou Ziheng’s brows were furrowed as he stared intently, seemingly deep in thought about the little poem.
“That was fast,” Xia Xiqing looked around, smiled, and put the phone back, his face innocent yet relieved. “But it seems he didn’t enter our room. If this person is the killer, randomly entering someone’s room… This show is so scary.”
Zhou Ziheng countered, “What if he’s an ordinary player who entered the killer’s room?”
Xia Xiqing turned her face toward him, choosing an angle that avoided the closest close-up camera, raised her hand, pretended to adjust her collar to cover the microphone, lazily curled the corners of her mouth, revealing a smile that fully revealed her wicked nature, and mocked him with her mouth.
“A sheep entering the tiger’s mouth—isn’t that more exciting?”
Author’s Note: Zhou Ziheng: You’re an art student—how come you’re so good at math?
Uncle Xia: The Xia family genes—good-looking, tall, and good at math.
Your friend Xia Zhixu refuses to be called out.
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