Chapter 2: Meeting the Tasker Team?
Pulling open the door to the study room, Liu Rong saw six people already present around the array of tables arranged in a circular formation. A young woman with an aloof look on her face stood behind a chair on the opposite side of the room to the door. On her left, there was a man and woman that were surprisingly over the age of 18 and as such obviously not playing students if they were indeed Taskers as well. The man was tall but had a gentle scholarly look matching well with his slim wire-frame glasses, while the woman was only a bit shorter than him and dressed in a track-suit with her hair in a ponytail. They were likely to be playing teachers with the woman most likely being a gym teacher.
On the right of the young woman were three students in their uniforms - two second years and a third year student judging by their uniforms. The third year was a muscular young man with a thuggish look. The two second years seemed to know each other as the young woman with short hair and a bubbly attitude was elbowing the rather short young man wearing the darkest expression he'd ever seen on another person's face before. It seemed she was trying to tell her friend to look at the new students entering the room.
Liu Rong observed all of this in a glance before stepping inside and out of the way for Gao Yiqin to enter the study room as well. Seeing Gao Yiqin's lack of attention to the situation, Liu Rong stepped back to close the door and motioned for him to further enter the room.
"Ah, sorry," Gao Yiqin rubbed the back of his head sheepishly before stepping forward and tripping a bit over his feet. Laughing at himself, he said, "Is no one else having trouble with their younger bodies? It's just like when I went through a growth spurt again, trying to get around."
The three to the right of the young woman had various looks of disdain on their faces while the two on the left looked faintly resigned.
"You're likely to be the last two Taskers we're waiting for," the young woman said without bothering to answer Gao Yiqin's inquiry. "There are two students from each year as well as two teachers. That should provide us with all of the characters needed to solve the mystery."
Hearing this voice, Gao Yiqin and Liu Rong quickly recognized her as the one who had spoken over the intercom earlier to gather the Taskers together.
Gao Yiqin didn't take being ignored to heart and asked, "Ah, so usually Taskers are assigned based on characters needed to solve the mystery? I'm Gao Yiqin, by the way. My character is a first year student."
The young woman's face turned from aloof to plain cold at this character introduction. Seeing this, the woman to her left quickly decided to mediate the situation before it degenerated anymore.
"My name is Cai Wen. My character is a gym teacher, and this is my second task. We should quickly introduce ourselves so we can get on to making plans," she suggested brightly.
In response, the young woman's face softened slightly and she said, "I'm Luo Yanmei, a third year student. I'm on my second task as well."
Following her introduction, the scholarly man introduced himself as Zhu Hui, a history teacher on his first task. Next was the thuggish looking young man introduced as Gu Shirong, a third year student also on his first task. The bubbly young woman followed his introduction energetically as Meng Luli, second year student on her third task.
For a moment, it seemed as if the young man with a dark look on his face would not introduce himself, but Meng Luli quickly elbowed him with a cheerful smile that made him grunt out, "Xiao Yongrui, second year, fourth task," as shortly as possibly before glowering even more darkly as if the words had taken all of his willingness to interact with others.
Liu Rong then finished up the introductions by saying, "My name is Liu Rong, a first year student on my first task."
After this last introduction, Luo Yanmei seemed to want to collate the information gathered by the other Taskers and said, "The school flower's name is Li Hong. She supposedly committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the girl's dorm room. Did anyone gather any further information?"
The other third year student, Gu Shirong, said, "How would they? You just got lucky that our classmates were gossiping about her death today." His thuggish looks matched well with his lack of tact in dragging Luo Yanmei.
"I didn't get lucky. They were gossiping because I implied I saw a ghost," Luo Yanmei returned coldly, completely offended at Gu Shirong's insinuation towards her lack of ability.
"I didn't get any information yet. I was planning on checking the teacher's room and archives for files later," Cai Wen interjected in hopes of stopping a fight from breaking out.
Zhu Hui agreeably followed her lead by mentioning that he had not found any information yet either and would join her in searching for files later, while Meng Luli spoke for herself and Xiao Yongrui when she said that neither had found any relevant information yet.
Surprisingly, Gao Yiqin spoke next with some information, "Apparently, Li Hong's ghost had been killing students who send confession letters. Students now confess through face-to-face confessions only."
At the strange look from the others, Gao Yiqin hastily clarified, "I only know this because one of the girls sitting near me was complaining that having to confess face-to-face was too embarrassing and her friends were quick to tell her about the string of strange and accidental deaths anyone who sent a confession letter had."
Humming in thought, Liu Rong asked, "Did they mention what kinds of deaths or why students who sent confession letters were targeted?"
Immediately, Liu Rong became the new target of the others' strange looks. He had come here together with Gao Yiqin, so they should have been in the same classroom. Yet why did he not overhear the same conversation?
Seeing those strange looks, Gao Yiqin did not help his fellow classmate at all but condemned him with the faint praise of "Oh, you were brave enough to talk back to the teacher and had to stand in the hall, so you didn't hear anything." The automatic contempt triggered by this statement left Liu Rong hoping not to be thrown out of this little meeting.
"It seems the characters played have their own situations. It seems mine is a bad student, so the teacher told me to stand in the hall after I couldn't answer the question she asked," Liu Rong tried to explain. Unfortunately for this poor EQ student, this explanation only made him look stupid enough to be unable to answer a first year high school level question.
Luo Yanmei snorted and said, "If no one else has any information, then we should split into groups based on character and search for more clues. We can meet up after classes finish to compare information. Does that work for everybody?"
No one seemed to have any objections to her taking the role of leader or to her suggestions, so shortly after, they started to exit the room. Passing by Liu Rong still near the entrance, most of them sneered or ignored him. The only exception seemed to be the bubbly girl and glowering boy who gave him a quick look over before leaving.
Gao Yiqin caught Luo Yanmei at the door asking if there was no information for new Taskers, but he only got a glare of disdain and the short response of "For Taskers, your life is in your hands only. If you get lucky enough to team up with an experienced player, they might be kind enough to give you the basics."
This along with the disdainful looks from the rest of the Taskers proved to Liu Rong that doing tasks in the future would likely be an individual battle - unless he found himself a reliable team. With how easily he got information out of Gao Yiqin earlier and the damning comment on his bravery, it was doubtful that he would make a good teammate even for a temporary group search like suggested by Luo Yanmei.
Going along with his thoughts of pig-like teammates, Gao Yiqin soon commented, "Looks like there'll be no help from the senior Taskers… Well, you're good-looking enough, why don't you try and seduce some information out of those girls in our class? I'll point them out to you."
Continuing to smile even though he rather wanted to send the type of glower Xiao Yongrui had been wearing earlier towards his bean-stalk fellow first year, Liu Rong said, "I think we should split up to search for information. With how much of a bad student my character must be for that teacher to immediately go to sending me to the hall for not answering a question, I'm sure I'd intimidate any of those girls. Why don't you try to sound them out yourself? I'll try another avenue."
At this point, Gao Yiqin seemed to forget that he was back to being in the middle of his growth spurt and was, thus, not very attractive. He seemed very ready and willing to go and seduce those female classmates despite the obvious reasons not to do so. As expected of a pig-like teammate, he could even trip himself up.
Liu Rong watched this poor student head back towards the first year classrooms and sighed. It seemed as if he had wronged those poor female classmates.
Shaking his head, he turned to leave. This was the library, so there should be past years' yearbooks and school papers archived somewhere. Someone as famous as a first year managing to become the school flower would likely be somewhere inside of those. If not, that would raise other questions for him to follow up on.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
NicoReiShi
NicoReiShi Now that I've gotten the basic introductions out of the way, the real meat of the piece should start coming out. This is my first novel, so please give comments and reviews! There is going to be a fun twist in this mystery and hopefully in the rest to come, and the horror and gore to come should be fairly safe for young adults as long as they're not too sensitive.
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