Non-Human Seeking Re-employment

(Come out and play)

Edited by Silver Wind

Guo Guo's face was only so big; when the ice cream was shoved into her mouth with an audible slop, she was stuffed to brim. Let alone speaking, even her tears were blinked back.

Her current situation was exceedingly awkward because it felt like a lightbulb had been shoved into her mouth and she could not pull it out or swallow it down, so she could only wait for the ice cream to melt slowly.

The Long-skirted Lady whispered, "Isn't this going too far?"

After all, Guo Guo looked like a normal little girl who people would adore and praise as cute whenever they saw her.

In a moment's work, she received a few disdainful looks.

She was a NPC in the copy alright? If they were the slightest bit careless, they could want their lives, do you really think they are naïve and innocent children?

Long-skirted Lady closed her mouth in embarrassment.

Shen Dongqing reached over and hauled Guo Guo over. "Let's go in and take a look."

He ignored Guo Guo's soundless protest as he carried her into the classroom without giving a pause.

The way the room was decorated could be considered as tasteful.

Numerous handicrafts were pasted on the walls, a myriad of colours was used to jot down short information on the blackboard, and the tables and chairs were downsized, making it extremely cute overall.

Fang Qi shrank his head: "That's too horrifying."

The other players looked in the direction he was gesturing at, only to see that one face of the wall was printed with a lot of tiny handprints. This was probably an activity that the kindergarten had hosted where the children printed their palms on the surface, layering one over another. Of course, if they hadn't used scarlet paint, it might have looked more harmonious.

However, with what they knew now, it looked like a wall packed with bloodied handprints where children had slammed their hands against the wall because they had nowhere else to run.

When the other players conjured such an image in their minds, they could not help but shudder.

At this moment, clear and sharp voices rang out in the classroom.

"Hello Teachers—"

The children were seated on their small stools as they greeted them in an orderly fashion.

All of them had their little heads raised as they gazed at the new batch of teachers. Underneath their pure expressions, a certain scrutiny that was more befitting of an adult was concealed and they seemed to be judging how long these teachers could last.

The Blonde Lady said in a small voice: "Since the game requested it… we should get to know the students in the class at least?"

Long-skirted Lady agreed with her suggestion. Softening her voice, she asked the children: "Teacher wants to know your names, could you tell them to the teachers?"

But these children were not as cute as their appearances would make people believe.

After the Long-skirted Lady's voice landed, they turned their heads in unison to stare at the Long-skirted Lady, and they only started speaking when the Long-skirted Lady started feeling sweat form on her palms: "Teacher, can you accompany us to play?"

Long-skirted Lady replied subconsciously, "Ye……"

She had just spat out the first syllable when she forcibly stopped herself. After all, this was not real kindergarten but a scenario within the Infinite Nightmare Game, and no could be certain what sort of games they were referring to when they said "play".

However, she had reacted too slowly because the children below were already laughing as they clapped their hands, "Nice oh, Teacher wants to play with us, that's great!"

Long-skirted Lady's sweat rolled and fell.

The smiles the children wore were exactly the same, right down to the curvature of their lips and the sight of them had chills running down their backs.

"Teacher, let's go outside and play."

"Teacher you already promised us, you can't back out oh."

"Hurry up and bring us outside."

Bewildered, Long-skirted Lady tossed pleading looks towards the other players.

In reply to that, the players expressed that since she had courted her own death, so she should work hard and try her best to play with them.

In this game, whoever was deceived by the NPC's appearance deserved to die.

Thus, Long-skirted Lady was squeezed into the corner of the classroom by the group of children.

They might be small in stature but their strength was not lacking. They tugged and pulled on Long-skirted Lady's clothes, constantly pestering the Long-skirted Lady to bring them out to play.

After experiencing a long period of time where they did not garner her reply, the children ceased their insistent actions in lieu of raising their small heads to look at Long-skirted Lady with grins present on their face.

"Teacher lied to us oh."

"She's a bad teacher."

"What should we do 'bout the bad teacher?"

They paused for a beat before they used a saccharine sweet voice to say: "We should bury the bad teacher."

"Cut the bad teacher into three pieces."

"No, no, we should put the bad teacher in the wall!"

Needless to say, the Long-skirted Lady no longer found these children adorable. Upon seeing all these innocent faces surrounding her, she collapsed, wanting to extricate herself from them as soon as possible. "Help me, please save me!"

Aera jr atf mtlivgfc kfgf jybea ab qea atflg kbgvr lcab qgjmalmf, rbwfbcf xcbmxfv bc atf ajyif rboais.

Dong dong—

Pa kjr jr lo j rklamt tjv yffc oilqqfv yfmjerf atf mtlivgfc'r wbnfwfcar mfjrfv rlweiajcfberis jr atfs aegcfv atflg tfjvr ab ibbx bnfg.

Ljio-ifjclcu jujlcra atf qbvlew, Itbe Qfcsjc rajafv ijhlis, "Jijrr lr meggfcais lc rfrrlbc, sbe'gf cba jiibkfv ab ub bea."

The children stared at him: "You're not a teacher, we don't wanna listen to you."

Shen Dongqing looked around before he pulled Fang Qi and lifted his chin, saying: "The teachers are here."

Fang Qi was somewhat apprehensive but once he reiterated the fact that the two big bosses were behind him, he shook out his nerves and placed a hand on his hip as he said: "Class is in session, behave yourselves and go back to your seats now!"

The children exchanged looks before they went back to the seats obediently one by one.

It appeared that the children would listen to the words of their teachers.

Long-skirted Lady's legs softened and plopped straight to the ground.

Once his bravado faded, terror surged up again. "Big bosses, what should we do now?"

Zhou Wenyan swept a glance across the items on the podium before he reached for the attendance book and raised it. "Roll call."

Fang Qi flipped open the attendance book. All the children's names in the class were written in the book and he called out their names systematically from the top.

"Guo Guo."

Guo Guo had already pulled out the ice cream and she was nibbling on it with relish. With a voice muffled by the treat in her mouth, she said: "Here."

"Xiao Yu."

A little boy raised his hand up high: "Here."

"Tian Tian."

"Here."

……

Fang Qi continued to mark their attendance from top to bottom before he became stuck on a child by the name of "Yang Yang."

When he called out their name, no one replied to him.

That made Fang Qi survey the radish-looking heads below him as he asked: "Is Yang Yang here?"

The children seated at the front row revealed strange smiles that were not befitting of their age before they started speaking, each trying to get a word in.

"Yang Yang was not well behaved."

"Yang Yang was taken away."

"Yang Yang isn't here."

Despite the lurching of his heart, Fang Qi continued to call out the name of the next child on the list.

No one replied to him again.

He had called out two consecutive names and yet, no child answered him.

Zhou Wenyan said, "You don't need to continue."

Fang Qi put down the attendance book in spite of there being a string of names below that went unchecked.

Blonde Lady said: "There's still a lot of names that haven't been called."

Zhou Wenyan said faintly, "There's not enough children."

Everyone else glanced towards the children.

There were only ten children present in the classroom but there were more than thirty names listed on the attendance book, which evidently showed that it could not be matched up.

The game had asked them: "Whence did the children die?"

Was it the missing children from the name list or the children in front of them?

The players sank into deep contemplation.

Zhou Wenyan: "We'll take a look at the other places first."

Shen Dongqing nodded in acquiescence.

Before they could leave, the Uncle obstructed them. With his fierce facial features, he did not look like a person who should be provoked: "Hey, I think we should cooperate with one another first."

Every player assigned to a job and the Dean had given every role its own death condition.

The kindergarten teachers could not make the children cry, the chef could not let the children starve, the security personnel had to patrol the premises once every four hours and they had to be stationed at their post at all times, and the cleaners had to ensure that the kindergarten was clean.

Under such circumstances, most players were restricted to one area and without much free time on their hands, while the cleaners remained the sole exception because they had the freedom to move about.

That was why the Uncle stopped both of them. From his perspective, the pair of guys were frail and weak and their arms were not as thick as his, thus it was a matter of course that he had to threaten them to cooperate.

Zhou Wenyan's footsteps paused briefly before he strode past the Uncle directly.

Uncle: "Hey!"

Shen Dongqing followed behind him closely.

In the Uncle's eyes, these two were purely acting as pretentious pricks and there was not much mastery or skill behind how they stopped the little girl from crying. Now that he had been rejected, however, his anger boiled and he reached out, wanting to yack Shen Dongqing back.

Fang Qi gave him a pitying glance.

Before he even had the luxury of touching the corner of Shen Dongqing's shirt, he was smacked into the wall, and the younger man even saw fit to brush his hands against one another in distaste, "That scared me." Following that, he chased up to Zhou Wenyan on light feet.

The Uncle pushed himself off the wall and he had yet to fully recover from the shock. "What do you mean by this?!"

That made Zhou Wenyan come to a stop. "I'm not very fond of cooperating with dead people."

After receiving such a glance, the Uncle shrank back a little and he did not dare to yell or rant any longer. He waited until the two figures had disappeared before he started berating them: "They're pretending as if they're actually worth something, don't you think so?"

Fang Qi pretended that he was deaf to his words.

The other players did not want to stir up unnecessary trouble either.

Realising that it was meaningless to verbalise his resentment, the Uncle pulled the Yellow-haired Boy to go on their patrol.

The amount of land that the kindergarten took up was not large and it took the pair about an hour to view the entire premise.

As Shen Dongqing explored the entire area with Zhou Wenyan, they both came to realise that there was more than one class here; it was just that apart from the class they were in previously, the others were completely empty and devoid of people.

Pasting himself on the windowsill, Shen Dongqing glanced in and noticed that stationery items meant for cutting paper were still placed on the table. The handicrafts were only half-done, as if the people doing them had disappeared before they could complete it.

He tried to turn the door handle. Unexpectedly, the door was not locked.

However, despite going inside to inspect the classroom, he did not find any clues.

Zhou Wenyan muttered something to himself briefly before he said aloud: "Let's go to the Dean's office."

The Dean's office was located at the end of the second storey, demarcated by a pitch-black and heavy door as if it was locking away some kind of terrifying monster, which was utterly unsettling.

Shen Dongqing bounded over with large steps.

The door was similarly unlocked and it opened with a click.

However, it was rather heavy and it opened at a slow, gradual pace.

Shen Dongqing felt a dark and cold glance shooting in his direction. When he opened the door fully, he only saw a hung up black and white portrait that was directly facing the door, and it was the first thing one would notice upon entering the room.

The portrait was roughly half a person tall and the person featured was the Dean herself. Clad in a black dress, her hair was meticulously combed up and her eyes were staring coldly at the door as if she wanted to curse every person who stepped in.

Under her gaze, Shen Dongqing felt somewhat uncomfortable and he simply walked towards it and took it down before flipping it over so it faced the wall.

"That's better."

Zhou Wenyan stepped in as well to examine the Dean's office space.

The office space was decorated to imitate a retro style with one wall shelved to the brim with books, and her table was also piled with stacks of information.

It could be said that there were no other peculiarities apart from the portrait.

Shen Dongqing raised up the picture frame, saying, "Should we take it apart to check it?"

Zhou Wenyan: "Take it apart."

The strength and force that Shen Dongqing had was at its peak; he threw the picture to the ground which caused a loud noise, and it was followed by the glass on the picture frame shattering, distorting the Dean slightly as if she was in a fit of rage.

Shen Dongqing did not show the slightest care as he ripped down the portrait directly.

"There's nothing at all." He was a touch disappointed.

Zhou Wenyan stroked his haw, "Perhaps we came at the wrong time."

Shen Dongqing lowered his head to look at the mess on the ground before he promptly decided to roll up the painting and shove it into a corner.

As long as it was not discovered, it meant that nothing had happened!

Pretending as if nothing had occurred, Shen Dongqing folded his hands behind his back and uttered in a small voice, "Let's hurry up and leave then."

Daytime.

The kindergarten was exceedingly normal. Under the teacher's guidance, the children read out a children's story book, and each of them was cuter than the other, giving the impression that they hadn't been the ones to sprout out such vicious and poisonous words.

The Long-skirted Lady, however, no longer dared to give alms and she kept her sympathetic heart, choosing to hide in the corner as she sank into a trance, not even daring to look at the children.

Whereas the other three kindergarten teachers were unbearably tired after bringing the group of children to play for an entire afternoon, and they finally had some time to take a hard-earned breather when lunch arrived.

The Male Student, under the threat of death, performed above standards as he cooked two vegetable dishes and one soup mechanically without any attempts at originality, and he managed to push out the food right on time.

The children each held a bowl as they lined up for the food quietly.

The Male Student proceeded to portion out the food to each child and when he ladled out the last scoop, it happened to accommodate for the last child.

Taking care of children was in itself a physical activity and even though Fang Qi's eyes had gone blurry due to his hunger, he still waited for children to have their fill before he ate what was remaining. Unfortunately, there was none left and he could only voice his dissatisfaction: "You didn't make anything for us?"

The Male Student poured his grievances out loudly, "The kitchen doesn't have that much ingredients to begin with, and I estimate that it's not even enough to feed these children for seven days."

But Fang Qi was famished to the point where his brain was no longer functioning. "If it's insufficient, it's insufficient, just go and make something."

The Male Student was a little unwilling but he held the identity of a chef. Thus, he had no choice but to go back and cook up two more dishes and bring it over the classroom to eat.

Having seen the children gobble down the food, Fang Qi was initially under the assumption that the Male Student's kitchen skills were decent but when he raised a spoonful of the vegetables to taste it, he almost puked it out.

"These are vegetables?"

Male Student shrugged his shoulders, "Don't have to eat it if you don't want to."

Left without a better alternative, they could only hold back their tears and eat the pig food.

When he was halfway through with his food, Fang Qi suddenly thought of a question: "If there's not enough ingredients, what are we going to do about the last few days?"

The chef's task was to ensure that no child went hungry.

With much uncertainty, the Male Student replied, "New ingredients should be delivered over, right……"

Fringed Girl: "And what if it isn't delivered over?"

If the children were capable of wolfing down such terrible food, who could be certain about what they would eat in order to fill their stomachs once there was nothing left?

After experiencing so many games, the players bore the highest probability of becoming ingredients.

Once the players considered such a possibility, they shuddered, unable to keep down the food before them.

At that moment, Shen Dongqing and Zhou Wenyan came back and Fang Qi immediately expressed his loyalty upon seeing them: "Big bosses, I kept this for you specifically."

Shen Dongqing eyed it, shocked, "Why are all of you eating pig food?"

Tears were about to streak down Fang Qi's cheeks, "We don't have anything to eat apart from this."

Shen Dongqing casted a sympathetic glance towards the players eating pig food before he fished out a rice straw he just picked up.

Fang Qi was more shocked than he was, "Big boss, having to eat rice straws… Do you have to go that far?"

Shaking his head, Shen Dongqing lit up the rice straw before he muttered a string of dishes that sounded like an incantation to the rising smoke.

Everyone stared at him blankly.

What kind of operation was this?

Fringed Girl muttered, "Quenching his thirst by thinking of plums?"

Just as she finished speaking, they smelled a fragrance emerging from the smoke. When the smoke dispersed completely, plate after plate of dishes appeared from thin air, filling up half of the table.

Other players: !!!

Shen Dongqing pulled over a stool to sit down before he pulled off an emperor crab's leg, revealing the white and plump crab meat which made a red glint appear in everyone else's eyes.

Fang Qi: "Daddy, could you please give me some of the leftovers?"

A little was enough.

When it came to Shen Dongqing, food was not something he would arbitrarily give to anyone.

However, after looking between Fang Qi and his food, he gave Fang Qi some of the broccoli and strings of carrot used for garnish albeit unwilling, mostly because they were vegetables he did not like eating.

As Fang Qi chewed on the broccoli, he stared at the table of sumptuous dishes.

Life was hard; one side had pig food while the other had a luxurious feast, people really could not compare with other people……

After the meal concluded, the teachers coaxed the children to take their afternoon naps.

Thankfully, the children in the kindergarten had extremely accurate biological clocks because their heads drooped and they fell asleep the moment the clock struck twelve in the afternoon and it saved the teachers from additional troubles.

Having gained some quiet and freedom to arrange their time with much difficulty, the player discussed among themselves for a while before deciding that two people would stay to guard the class while the others went to other places to explore.

Truth to be told, the players were not very willing to stay here. In the end, it was still Shen Dongqing who expressed he wanted to take an afternoon nap, thus pulling Zhou Wenyan into the duty of staying in the class.

Meanwhile, the others formed their groups and went out to scope the area.

Long-skirted Lady tugged on the Blonde Lady's arm, "I need the restroom."

Blonde Lady was annoyed, "Go ahead then."

She did not possess any patience for players who had 'cannon fodder' written all over their faces.

Long-skirted Lady uttered, "I'm scared……"

The Blonde Lady was helpless, "I'll wait for you at the door."

Long-skirted Lady nodded before she slipped into the toilet in a hurry, using the fastest possible speed to solve her physiological problem. As she was about to push open the door, she suddenly heard someone crooning a song outside her door.

"Teacher, teacher, come out and play ah."

Stiffly, Long-skirted Lady lowered her head and saw that there was a pair of pitch-black eyes in the gap beneath the stall door.