My Interview Started With a Suicide

Xiao Chang: “Only you can do this.”

Su Lai: “Stop. Don’t gaslight me.” This kind of “no one else but you” talk was
emotional blackmail. Su Lai wasn’t buying it.

Xiao Chang smiled helplessly. He didn’t seem surprised by Su Lai’s reaction.
“Fine. Then it’s because you’re poor.” “Don’t you want to make money? Taking
delivery orders in instances is much faster.”

Su Lai: “…” Mention money, and Su Lai had nothing to say. He was easily handled.

Xiao Chang: “I gave you protection money. If you take someone’s money, you have
to solve their problems. You need to protect me.”

“Both today and before.” Xiao Chang reminded Su Lai. “Ah Lai, the human species
has a very poor memory. And they love dreaming. You should stop being human.”
Xiao Chang said jokingly. “Time’s running out. See you later.”

Su Lai still had many questions for Xiao Chang. What exactly were contaminants?

When the deceased Chen Po mentioned, “The pollution is so heavy these days, and
there are so many strange rules,” what did she mean? Would the real world and
the instance world interfere with each other…

But Xiao Chang always appeared and left in a hurry, never leaving enough time
for questions.

Su Lai actually regretted it a bit. Charging only twenty for protection money
was too cheap.

He returned to his little e-bike and put on his helmet. Before leaving, he
reached out and touched the black cat plushie hanging on the handlebars. “He
said your name is Chu Qi.” “Chu Qi comes right after Chu Liu. Little thing,
you’ll obediently be my Chu Liu’s little brother.”

The battered little e-bike slowly rode out. Su Lai circled the area a few more
times. He neither found Wang Chunying’s wonton shop nor saw the village
committee office he had visited multiple times.

The contaminants had left no trace of any clues in this area. He didn’t know if,
in the already terminated instance, Wang Chunying’s wonton shop had continued
operating well, if Uncle Wang had put down that sticky watermelon knife, learned
to chop meat filling and wrap wontons, and help Wang Chunying with the business.

Too bad he had left the instance in a hurry and hadn’t had time to ask Wang
Chunying for her wonton recipe. If he opened a same-flavored wonton shop in the
real world, business would surely explode.

This time, he had earned tens of thousands in the instance. It could temporarily
ease the family’s financial crisis and let him send more living expenses to Ah
Yin, who was studying in another city.

With the twenty yuan he had earned from Xiao Chang in his pocket, Su Lai figured
that on the way, passing the market, it would be just enough to buy a couple of
pork kidneys.

Thinking aimlessly, Su Lai turned his bike and headed home.

As he approached the market, his eyelids started twitching wildly again. Unlike
last time, both his left and right eyes were twitching this time.

Su Lai remembered the old saying: left eye twitches for wealth, right eye
twitches for disaster. He silently pressed his twitching right eyelid. “I’ll
take care of the disaster. Don’t let the wealth get away.”

It was time for the noon market to close. The familiar butcher at the meat stall
greeted him enthusiastically. “Ah Lai, come look at the meat. Half price for
you.”

Su Lai pointed at the crimson kidneys in the basin. “Cut them into flower slices
for me, and wrap them up.”

“Sure thing. Here’s half a tongue. On the house. Fresh. Good for plain boiled
eating.” The owner, wanting to close up early, gave the remaining odds and ends
to regulars.

The meat stall lighting was dim. The owner, slicing the knife, glanced up. “Ah
Lai, haven’t you been resting well lately?” “Here, a bit dark.” He used his
hand, smeared with blood foam, to point at his own forehead.

The noon market at the market was winding down, but the crowd continued. Rotting
vegetable leaves mixed with the bloody water from the meat stalls, red and green
together, emitting a rotting stench. The fish stall’s water pump was broken. The
oxygen-starved fish floated to the surface, their gills still, exposing their
blue-gray bellies in droves.

An indescribable eeriness enveloped him. Just as Su Lai raised his hand to touch
his own forehead, the phone in his pocket vibrated.

Another text message from an unknown number——

[Congratulations on entering our company’s interview phase. Please arrive at
Fortuitous Retribution Plaza within half an hour and complete the interview
registration at the front desk.]

Attached to the message was the interviewer’s contact number and a link to the
company address.

Su Lai was puzzled. When had he submitted a resume? The message didn’t specify
what company it was, nor what position he was applying for.

Besides, the name “Fortuitous Retribution Plaza” sounded really ominous.

The eeriness grew thicker, like the rotting smell fermenting in the market. The
longer it lasted, the denser it became, completely covering the senses.

Su Lai suspected this was the so-called contaminants at work again. Although the
system hadn’t given him player status, Xiao Chang seemed to have used his own
methods to connect him to the contaminants.

He believed Xiao Chang’s phrase “see you later” wasn’t just empty politeness.

Su Lai directly dialed the contact number on the message. The first two attempts
didn’t go through. The third time, finally, a “beep——” sounded.

The other party answered quickly. “Mr. Wang, hello. Congratulations on passing
our initial resume screening and entering the interview phase. Please arrive at
our company headquarters, Fortuitous Retribution Plaza, by 12:30 PM for
interview registration.”

Su Lai asked. “What company?”

The person on the other end was slightly confused by his question. “Is this your
own application? Mr. Wang Xiaosi, is this you?”

Su Lai suddenly understood. “Oh. Yes. It’s me.” He was now certain that the
contaminants had come knocking again. The identity of Wang Xiaosi was being
reused.

“Please bring your identification documents and resume to register for the
interview on time.”

The person on the other end spoke rapidly, as if at double speed. After giving
the instructions, the other party hurriedly hung up, as if afraid of wasting a
single second of phone fees.

“Your kidneys and tongue. Total ten kuai.” The butcher handed over the processed
meat.

Su Lai gave the butcher one of the bills he had earned from Xiao Chang. The
butcher clicked his tongue. “Ah Lai, why are you giving me paper money?”

“Huh?” Su Lai looked closely. The ten-yuan bill in the butcher’s hand had turned
into a yellow paper spirit note.

Xiao Chang had fooled him with paper money and used an illusion.

“Sorry, boss. Good luck, good fortune.” Su Lai quickly regained his composure
and handed over 16.66 yuan instead, for good luck.

The butcher, an old acquaintance of his grandmother, waved his hand and didn’t
charge extra. “Ah Lai, have your grandmother find a master to take a look at you
when you get home.”

Su Lai’s mind was all on the bizarre interview invitation. He nodded
perfunctorily, carried the bag of pork kidneys and tongue, and looked around.

He was a delivery guy. He didn’t even own formal wear. Now he was at the market.
All they sold were pajamas and flip-flops. Where was he supposed to get a suit?

It was too late to go to a department store. The contaminants were accelerating
their invasion. The fish in the tank with their bellies up started making sharp
laughing sounds. The pig head on the meat stall opened its eyes, rolling its
pupils to stare at Su Lai, who was carrying its kidneys and tongue.

Everything in sight was beginning to mutate. Soon, the instance world would
completely cover his perception.

In a flash, Su Lai rushed into the funeral supplies shop across from the meat
stall. He figured, since the NPCs in the contaminants were all dead things, then
dead people’s formal wear should be burial clothes!

The host on “Spring Breeze Live Report” also wore burial clothes, looking
peacefully blessed, as if dying of old age. So weren’t burial clothes the
equivalent of suits in the living world? The more he thought about it, the more
sense it made. Su Lai’s thinking had suddenly opened up.

He picked out a particularly flashy burial suit at the funeral shop. “Boss, do
you have this model in XXL?”

Su Lai was 1.84 meters tall, with longer legs than standard sizes. Pants often
didn’t cover his ankles.

The owner paused, watching Su Lai hold the burial suit up against himself. He
hesitated before speaking. “You… who is this for?”

“Myself.” Su Lai answered directly.

He had never been superstitious about life and death. Dead or alive, everyone
had 206 bones. The difference was that a dead person’s bones were burned to a
pot of ash, while a living person’s bones were covered with flesh and skin.

“Huh? Why would someone so young want burial clothes?” The owner had sold
funeral supplies for decades and had never encountered such a demand.

Su Lai told the truth. “To wear for an interview.”

The owner was stunned. “The company you’re interviewing with is so shady?”

Su Lai: “Not sure if it’s shady or not. But the interviewer requested formal
attire.”

“So you young people are into this kind of formal wear now…” The owner muttered,
seeming to sense a new business opportunity. He quickly promoted. “Ah Lai, you
have good taste. We’re old neighbors, I wouldn’t lie to you. This burial suit is
very formal. Everyone who wears it basically has a good death. Your interview
will definitely be fine.”

The phrase “good death” suited Su Lai perfectly. “Deal. This one.”

“We don’t have XXL, though. Could you make do?” The owner asked. “How about
this? Since we’re neighbors, I feel bad not having your size. Buy one, get one
free. How about that? You can switch them out for work.”

Even with burial clothes, Su Lai couldn’t resist a buy-one-get-one-free deal. He
figured time was short and nodded. “Fine. I just need the jackets. Wrap them up
for me.”

“If you like them, remember to promote my shop to your colleagues and leaders.
Neighbors referred by Ah Lai get a discount.” The owner puffed out his chest.

Su Lai: “Definitely.”

“Good luck with the interview.” The owner was beaming.

Su Lai paid happily, put his two sets of “formal wear” on the back seat, put on
his helmet, and restarted the little e-bike.

The moment he rode out of the market, his phone signal completely disappeared.

He looked back. The funeral shop and meat stall he had just visited had vanished
into thick fog. The crowd was completely swallowed by the heavy fog. But he
could faintly hear countless sharp, fragmented sounds, like fingernails scraping
a chalkboard, or someone incessantly scratching their scalp.

Su Lai could imagine the carp in the fish tank, their bellies up, now grinning
with their teeth wide open, laughing creakily.

With his experience from entering the urban village, he was not at all panicked.
He knew he had entered the contaminant barrier.

A new game had begun.

Good thing he had been quick and bought burial clothes as formal wear.
Otherwise, showing up for an interview in shorts and flip-flops would not have
looked professional. Even contaminants needed face.

The receding street view became blurry, like a layer of plastic film covering
it, making it unreal.

Fog surrounded them. The pedestrians on the street disappeared. The streets were
no longer familiar. Everything became murky and strange. The real world was
already behind frosted glass, blurry, impossible to see or touch clearly.

His phone, without signal, couldn’t open the map for navigation. But by clicking
the link in the interview text message, he could see the route to Fortuitous
Retribution Plaza.

The navigation showed the distance from his current location was two kilometers.
Twenty-five minutes left. Plenty of time. And in the contaminant barrier, there
were no living people, no traffic cops to catch violations, no cameras. The
roads were easy to ride. Su Lai could floor the accelerator.

Just as he was speeding up, his phone vibrated again. A new message: [The system
will announce the following notes for your attention. For your driving safety,
please put on earphones.]

Su Lai’s earphones were broken. But mechanical failure didn’t seem to affect the
contaminants’ operations. He put on the earphones. After a brief crackle, the
system’s mechanical voice spoke——

[Wang Xiaosi, hello. Due to your outstanding performance in the 「Spring Breeze
Community」 instance livestream, high audience demand, and the influence of
uncontrollable ** factors, the system has decided to add 「Wang Xiaosi」 to the
temporary player list.]

Even with its official, business-like tone, Su Lai could hear the system’s
reluctance.

“Oh.” Su Lai focused on driving, looking straight ahead, his tone flat. “You
finally deigned to give me a title.” “Even if it’s just temporary.”

Temporary player was fine. Su Lai never cared about such empty things. As long
as the money he earned was real.

[Please adapt to your temporary player status as soon as possible, actively
complete the tasks assigned by the instance, and present an even more wonderful
interview performance.] [Time remaining for interview registration: 23 minutes.]

The system, like a trashy guy, hung up after hurriedly explaining a few words.
The broken earphones only had the sound of rustling static.

Su Lai pondered the system’s words. Since it emphasized a “more wonderful
interview performance,” it definitely wasn’t an ordinary interview.

And these contaminant viewers watching the instance were probably all
masochists. In the 「Spring Breeze Community」 instance, he had smashed the
「Entertain to Death」 livestream, essentially unplugging their screens. Yet the
system said he was in high demand among them.

Seems like they needed a good lesson.

Su Lai decided, for the sake of the money, to give the viewers what they wanted
and give them a real good lesson.

The closer he got to Fortuitous Retribution Plaza, the colder it felt. Clouds
obscured the afternoon sun. In the middle of summer, the wind on his face was
bone-chilling.

Su Lai, wearing shorts and flip-flops, shivered. But he had a strong
constitution, able to take cold showers in the winter. He could grit his teeth
and bear this level of cold.

Before long, through the thick fog, a towering plaza appeared in his field of
vision.

In the heavy fog, the sharp-edged building looked like a monster crouching on
the horizon, camouflaged by a shell of reinforced concrete, waiting for the
hurried commuting people to enter its body on their own, helping it maintain its
daily operations.

The sky was dim. The four characters “Fortuitous Retribution Plaza” lit up,
their light diffusing through the thick fog, becoming hazy.

Su Lai rode his little e-bike closer to the plaza. When doing deliveries, he
often went to similar office buildings to drop off documents and food. The
buildings were cold, the security guards’ faces as cold as the building’s walls,
turning away visitors without ID badges, especially delivery guys like him.

Just then, a dull thud came from above the building entrance. Su Lai’s eyelids
jumped. At the fastest speed possible, he turned the handlebars before the
falling object hit his head.

The sound of tires screeching against the ground was sharp and piercing. Then, a
huge THUD.

A limp object fell from a height, slamming hard onto the tiled ground in front
of the building entrance. crimson liquid splashed everywhere.

Less than two meters from Su Lai, the fallen object twitched in a twisted
position for a moment, then fell silent without a sound.

Only the crimson liquid, mixed with white, viscous matter, flowed in the damp
fog.

The four characters “Fortuitous Retribution Plaza” flickered, growing brighter
in the thick fog.

Su Lai took off his blood-splattered helmet and looked at the motionless fallen
object.

The shattered object on the ground was a person. More precisely, a dead person.

Someone had jumped off the building.

The sound of a person hitting the ground from a height was very loud. Even the
plaza’s glass doors shook. But the security guard inside just glanced through
the door with a numb, unsurprised look.

There were no screams of surprise, no emergency calls for help, not even any
onlookers.

The jumper had died in silence amidst a loud bang.

The order of Fortuitous Retribution Plaza didn’t seem to have been disrupted at
all by someone jumping to their death.

The crimson blood and sticky white brain matter flowed together, forming a
stream from the higher ground down to the bottom of the plaza steps, soaking the
white tiles red.

Su Lai used the burial suit from his delivery box to wipe the blood off himself.
He immediately walked to the front of the fallen man, thinking maybe he could
still be saved.

But reality proved he was overthinking. The jumper lay on his back on the
ground, limbs twisted, blood and brain matter oozing from his orifices. His
pupils, staring sightlessly at the sky, had already dilated.

Su Lai confirmed that his phone had no signal, so he couldn’t call an ambulance.
The jumper was indeed dead. Beyond saving.

Just as Su Lai was about to get up and leave, the corpse on the ground suddenly
opened its eyes. Its dilated pupils violently trembled, staring at Su Lai with
the fierce glare of someone looking for a replacement.

Its fingers, broken during the fall, had crawled on their own and were now
tightly gripping Su Lai’s ankle.

The corpse grinned, its lips splitting wider and wider, reaching its ears,
showing Su Lai a distorted smile.

Su Lai, with the corpse gripping his ankle, was unmoved.

He didn’t forcibly break free from the bloody fingers. Instead, he looked calmly
at the foot, at the corpse making an effort to be terrifying. Then he sighed.
“Buddy, not long ago, an old lady tried to pull this same scam on me.”

Although the corpse didn’t speak, its trembling pupils seemed full of curiosity.

Su Lai even deliberately teased. “Guess what happened next?”

The curiosity on the corpse’s face grew stronger.

Su Lai narrowed his eyes. “I just ran her over and shattered her. Her corpse
scattered all over the ground.”

“I was afraid the street cleaner would have a hard time cleaning up, so I kindly
picked up her body parts one by one, put them in my delivery box, and took them
home. Gave them to my mom as decorations.” As he spoke, he pointed to the back
seat of his little e-bike. “See? Right there.”

The corpse’s gaze followed Su Lai’s pointing. The smile froze on its face,
turning from distorted to tense.

“I have a question.” Su Lai asked sincerely. Sincerity was a good quality that
neither humans nor ghosts could refuse. “Why do dead people always love grabbing
living people’s ankles?”

This question had bothered him for a long time. Ghost movies always showed the
same thing.

Couldn’t ghosts shake the label of being “foot fetishists”?

Su Lai’s words disrupted the corpse’s performance. Being asked this, the corpse
was also stunned. It didn’t know how to react.

Its fingers on Su Lai’s ankle didn’t know whether to loosen or tighten.
Suddenly, it was very awkward.

But its blood-soaked eyeballs were still wide open, rolling incessantly, trying
to lower his mental stability through ghostly staring. This jumping ghost was
quite dedicated.

Su Lai stared back unblinkingly. “Don’t look at me like that. You almost killed
me. You should be compensating me. “Even if you died pretty horribly, you’re
still basically falling from height debris.”