He opened his eyes to a set of double arches.
They loomed overhead like ribs, tall and elegant, all sharp points and spiky edges. Very fancy, with a gothic style of architecture. It made Ah'Ming feel rather small. He had to squash the impulse to climb on top of the arches to prove his superiority. It didn't have a sign on the outside like the egg tart emporium had had, but since the doors were see-through, it was very clear what the content was within.
Ah'Ming turned away from the shelves upon shelves of books, running things over in his mind. Interestingly enough, the system had been rather kind to him this time. Last time, it had just spat him out on the ground like a pit seed, while this time he actually landed on his feet! Improvements. "Huh," he muttered. "Growth." Maybe it was because he'd gotten a lot better ratings, with a lot more viewers. More viewers, better treatment, just like those red carpet Oscar receivers. He filed that bit of information away for later exploitation. Either way, still, he wasn't about to kick a gift horse in the mouth, especially when it had finally decided not to trample him.
His mood turned somber, as he thought of something more important, and equally darker.
Yuanyuan.
The kid's face surfaced uninvited in his mind. The way he'd clutched that book. The way his voice had sounded when he spoke, thin and hopeful and already half gone. The way the librarian had tried to suffocate him like a promise that had rotted from the inside.
The thinness of his voice, stretched tight with hope that didn't know he was already dead. Perhaps he had known, and was trying to pose as less of a disturbance to others.
Hmm.
Ah'Ming's jaw tightened.
"…Damn it."
He'll… he'll try to find out more about the kid. It was that decision that led to his irritation stalling out, sputtering like a car running out of fuel. Still, he didn't see any more of his teammates. Nobody was lingering, or loitering around. Must be nice, having a purpose and a place to go. He took the hint though, and decided to leave before he encountered a player from the same sub-story. Or worse, Tamer.
He still didn't know if Tamer had seen through the NPC's disguise. What use would keeping a snake in the grass have? It only made sense if you were confident it wouldn't bite you first, and that was a stretch at best. If it was only for the audience's entertainment, then the man was a lot stupider than Ah'Ming had originally assumed.
He had seemed rather interested in the macabre. Maybe it was a pre-disposition he'd arrived with, maybe it was something the broadcast cultivated. Either way, Ah'Ming just didn't like his face.
With one last glance at the glass doors and the silent books beyond them, Ah'Ming turned and walked away, boots echoing softly as the arches watched him go.
He sighed, remembering his original motive. He wanted to rest. He wanted to go relax and kick up his feet in his resort room, which should be great to match with the indignities he'd suffered thus far.
Should he take the elevator? What if it brought him to a random place again? It very likely would lead to a one way trip to somewhere deeply inconvenient. A lava pit. A haunted pantry. A boss fight themed around escalator etiquette.
You know what, there was a perfectly suitable, available alternative nearby.
Namely, stairs.
Trying to find them was difficult, though. The place unfolded like a dream with no sense of scale, corridors bending into each other, balconies opening into plazas that definitely hadn't been there a minute ago. He passed clusters of people and things that were probably people once. He still didn't ask them for any help to navigate, since he couldn't tell from a distance who was an NPC. Partially due to him being very bad at identifying people, but also since the people here were… less people looking. They had fantastical mutations and traits, all of which wouldn't be out of place in a movie or something.
NPC or player. Player or NPC. Wrong guess either way could get awkward, real fast.
When he finally found his elusive stairs, tucked away behind a statue that may or may not have been breathing, he was slightly worried he might get pulled into something. They looked… normal, which made it worse. Wasn't there some sort of story where if you accidentally counted the steps when you walked, you'd get trapped in the 13th step world forever? Or was it if you didn't count?
The first option seemed more credible, since numbers always caused problems.
This led to his brilliant solution of not counting while he walked, by singing.
He didn't sing anything in particular. Just a tuneless, meandering hum that drifted off-key almost immediately. He climbed, boots tapping stone with a nice drum-beat, voice wobbling through half-remembered melodies and nonsense syllables. If the stairs were listening, they were going to have to work very hard to keep track. Some hit singles, some catchy songs that fell off fast, even some romantic ballads that strangely merged into rock songs too.
Step by step, song by song, he went on, refusing to count, refusing to think too hard, and absolutely refusing to get trapped in some thirteen-step nonsense world on his day (or hour) off.
In the shadows, where he was too lazy to look, a bunch of gargoyle-looking creatures shivered, and covered their ears. Not only did a monster need to walk near them and frighten them to death, it also needed to rot their ears off with this horrible warbling.
Some were almost tempted to strike their ears off with rocks.