XG 137 - We are a pretty good team, right, little princess?
There was no chance for her to speak out her request when Chen YiWen's voice filled the room from the speaker. "Xue Guo, you can put on the goggles now."
As this VR game was to force her to use her ability, she was not given a joystick to control her character's movement. After all, there was already one joystick accidentally being destroyed by a tester at the peak of their terror.
But how would she move around in the game without the joystick or the treadmill? Perhaps she was just going to watch a scary movie? It was only when she put on the VR goggles did she figure out someone was helping her move around.
Fuck! It better not be Kang Xunsu!
Like a true annoying 'elder brother', he would definitely mess with her. How many pits had she fallen into whenever she played games with him? Too many to count!
Standing still, she warily takes in the barely lit living room with a messy interior, a perfect setting of a horror place. If the researchers selected this setting to arouse the Awakened people's fear, they had picked the right environment.
"Xue Guo, you do not need to move physically," Chen YiWen said.
After he said that, her body went tense. With Chen YiWen's words, she became even more self-conscious and fought not to move.
As someone without control of her movement, she could only helplessly follow the controller's dictation and move around the house. It was not exactly creepy, but the darkness where the character only has a torchlight to look around makes things even scarier.
Suddenly, a long-haired figure jumped out of the corner and her character immediately died from the swing of an axe. Conditioned reflex had Wong Xue Guo moved out of the way, but the controller did nothing and let her get attacked.
Her movement ended with her arm pressed onto the wall as her VR screen became bloody from 'her' blood, with the word 'You Died' in the middle.
Working hard to calm down her heart, she did not move away from the wall and instead rested her entire back on it. That feeling helped to ground herself to reality and reduced the unsettling feeling.
The game restarted and she appeared back in the dark living room.
Okay, so the big boss will appear and I have to avoid her?
But the person controlling her character would never let her bypass the opportunity to greet the big boss! The only VR game she had played was the lightsaber game. It was an exciting, vigorous game, but it could never be compared to this stimulating thriller game!
After the third time of purposely greeting the big boss and dying, Wong Xue Guo wondered what was the goal of this game. Was the big boss a human or a ghost? What was the identity of the player?
Anyway, she would never need to know since she only needs to feel the excitement of being 'chased' and 'die' until her ability manifests.
She was not given a headphone to hear the game's sound so that she could hear any instructions from the monitoring room. As she was not stopped, it means her ability had not revealed itself, or that they do not have enough data about her ability yet.
Not wanting to spend a long time seeing the dry, mummy-like female boss, she actively used any means to conjure her ability.
The controller must have been too bored to actively seek death because her character started to retaliate, by looking around for lethal objects to use to smash the lady boss. Not so surprisingly, the lady boss was like an undefeatable cockroach, unable to die even when a large cupboard toppled over her.
Just how will this game be cleared?
Suddenly, the game stopped. Wong Xue Guo sighed in relief that the testing had ended. The game was no longer scary to her and started to get annoying.
Did her ability manifest upon her feelings of frustration?
She was about to remove the VR headset when the interface suddenly changed to another game.
It started so abruptly and there was not even a moment of preparation when she found herself jumping off a cliff. The sudden action and the vivid scene of falling stopped her heart for a moment until she dropped into the sea.
"Okay, that's it," Chen YiWen's voice pierced her mind. It took her a moment to move her hands to remove the goggles with a tense face.
This was the first time she experienced jumping off a cliff. It was truly exciting. So exciting that she had a sudden impulse of tossing the one that picked this game down the cliff to share her exciting experience.
Exiting the testing room, she entered the monitoring room next door, which was packed to the brim like canned tuna. Some onlookers that had seen what they wanted to see had discreetly left the monitoring room and she finally had the space to get in.
Wong Xue Guo's eyes immediately fell on Chen Yibo and she forced her legs not to follow her eyes. She went to Chen YiWen, who was near the monitor and saw Kang Xunsu putting down the joystick.
Hoho.
Knowing her for many years, how could Kang Xunsu not sense her mood? "I'm pretty good at playing VR games, so I volunteered myself. We are a pretty good team, right, little princess?"
Fuck your good team! You are the one that's driving and forcing me to go along with you!
Ignoring Kang Xunsu to avoid hurling insults at him, Wong Xue Guo asked Chen YiWen, "What is my ability?"
When the spontaneous reply did not come, she thought her ability was so awe-inspiring that no one could describe it well.
Chen YiWen had an indescribable expression. Next to him, Kang Xunsu's shoulder was shaking, trying to contain his laughter as he hid his face on L.L.'s broad shoulders.
...I got a bad feeling.
"From what I've observed, it seems to be shadow manipulation," Chin Chun was the one that answered.
"That's not so bad." Wong Xue Guo was relieved to hear that, but what was with Chen YiWen and Kang Xunsu's reaction? Could it be that her reaction when playing the VR was humorous?
"It's a rather cute shadow," Chen Yibo said, looking as if remembering something fondly.
The bad feeling came back again.
Instead of trying to explain, Chen YiWen just replayed the recorded video of her VR performance.
With dawning horror mixed with embarrassment, she watched herself being silly in the empty room. She only looked away from herself when Chen Yibo said, "Look at your shadow."
In the beginning, there was no strange movement from her shadow and it was attentively copying what her body does. But as the VR game continued on, the shadow started to move differently. It was trembling ever so softly, in a way a solid human body could never do. Then her shadow increasingly becomes more animated when she finds the wall, betraying the soul's true emotions.
Wong Xue Guo, who had trained herself to mask her expression well, was finally outed one day by her own shadow. Feeling her hard-earned reputation collapsing, she glanced over her shoulder to look at her shadow, only to see a very animated version that surpassed the recorded video. Her shadow was 'clutching' its head as it swayed back and forth, and she got the feeling it was screaming in horror.
What a dramatic shadow!