Chapter 154 The Little Girl in the Cinema

Around 9:30, the five of them met up at the entrance of the puppet theater and went inside together.

A woman in a red vest greeted them at the door. "Are these tickets for Red Sleeve Pavilion? Go ahead, you can head in now."

She led them further inside, and the deeper they walked, the more puppets they began to see lining the walls.

The corridor was dimly lit, giving the whole place a faintly eerie, unsettling atmosphere.

Puppets hung along the walls on either side, their heads drooping forward and their limbs dangling limp at their sides.

The puppets came in every shape and size imaginable, dressed in all sorts of clothing and styles. Almost all of them, though, had their heads bowed low enough that their faces were hidden from view.

Lin Yun and the others didn’t have a particularly good impression of the puppet theater to begin with. Something about the atmosphere felt distinctly off — arguably even more unsettling than the name Red Sleeve Pavilion had led them to expect.

The woman in red eventually led the group to a door marked with a small sign reading "Red Sleeve Pavilion."

"Here we are. Go right on in."

Rather than opening the door for them, she simply stood off to the side and added, "By the way, if you need any food during the show, just press the call button on your seat and we’ll bring it over."

With that, she turned and walked off, leaving the five of them standing alone at the door.

"She just left, like that?" Song Xizheng turned to watch her retreating figure, a little bewildered — he’d assumed she would actually lead them inside.

Just as he was about to turn back around, he caught sight of a wooden puppet on the wall that seemed to twitch, ever so slightly.

The sight gave him a genuine fright.

"What’s wrong?" Lin Yun noticed his odd reaction right away and asked quickly.

Song Xizheng swallowed hard and pointed toward the puppet. "It looked like it shifted just now... I swear."

"Seriously?" Xiong Qi raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, and walked over to take a closer look.

Unafraid of puppets, he reached out, grabbed this one by the head, and lifted it up for inspection.

The puppet was no bigger than a forearm. Once Xiong Qi had it raised, they could all see clearly that its eyes were shut, perfectly still.

The others drifted over to gather around as well.

Song Zhenzhen reached out and tugged lightly at the puppet’s clothing. "Song Xizheng, are you sure you didn’t just imagine it?"

"I know what I saw. Its hand moved, just a little." Song Xizheng scratched the back of his head, a bit flustered — the movement had been so subtle that he’d only caught it by pure chance.

Lin Yun glanced at the puppet once or twice more before looking away, unbothered.

Taking in the rows of puppets along the walls, she found herself thinking: why not skip the puppet show and just turn this whole place into a haunted house instead? Swap out the corridor lighting, and it’d probably scare half the visitors senseless.

George stared at the puppet for a couple of seconds himself but didn’t notice anything unusual. "Forget it. Let’s just head inside before we end up caught doing something we shouldn’t."

Xiong Qi let go of the puppet and followed the others through the door into Red Sleeve Pavilion.

The layout inside resembled an ordinary movie theater, except for the large stage set at the front, currently hidden behind a heavy curtain that made it impossible to guess what lay behind it.

The lights inside the theater itself were fully on, a sharp contrast to the dim, shadowy corridor they’d just come from.

Lin Yun looked around once more — the five of them appeared to be the only people in the theater.

"Should we just sit in the last three rows?" George asked, glancing at the others for input.

When they’d purchased their tickets earlier, the staff in red vests hadn’t specified any particular seating arrangement, and the small tags they’d been given didn’t indicate assigned seats either.

Since that’s the case, might as well just pick wherever we like.

No one objected, and they settled into seats spread across the middle of the last three rows.

The theater’s door sat off to the left, behind the seating area. Xiong Qi ended up closest to it, followed by George, then Song Zhenzhen, then Song Xizheng, with Lin Yun seated at the far end.

Red Sleeve Pavilion wasn’t due to begin until ten o’clock. Lin Yun checked the time again — still twenty minutes to go.

She glanced around at their surroundings and was just reaching into her backpack to pull something out when she felt a light poke against her right side.

Startled, she instinctively raised her hand and swatted at whatever had touched her.

Something small hit the floor with a soft thud.

The others turned at the sound. "What was that?"

"Holy crap, where did this kid come from? Was there another kid in here the whole time and we just missed her?"

Song Xizheng, sitting closest to Lin Yun, was the first to spot the little girl now sitting on the ground.0

She sat there quietly, clutching a teddy bear tightly against her chest, staring up at them with wide, innocent eyes.

After a long pause, she finally spoke. "Sister, can I sit with you?"

She made no mention at all of having startled Lin Yun a moment ago or of having just been swatted away.

Lin Yun’s brow furrowed. They hadn’t noticed any little girl when they walked in, and the seats in front had clearly been empty. So where had she come from?

"Can I? Please?"

The girl shuffled forward on the floor and tugged insistently at the hem of Lin Yun’s trousers.

"No, sorry, that won’t work. We’re all together as a group, so it’s not really convenient."

Before Lin Yun could even respond herself, George cut in and turned the girl down on her behalf.

The child’s sudden appearance was strange enough on its own — nobody in their right mind was going to let her sit right next to them.

"Tell you what — why don’t you sit up front instead? You’ll actually get a better view of the stage that way." George quickly proposed an alternative.

The moment he finished speaking, Lin Yun stood up, scooped the little girl into her arms without ceremony, and deposited her into the row directly in front of them.

The little girl: ???

"There you go. You can sit right here. I need to keep my bag next to me, though, so there won’t be any spare seats over here for you."

Once she’d set the girl down, Lin Yun placed her backpack squarely on the seat beside her, sealing off any chance of company.

Song Zhenzhen quickly held out her own bag. "Hehe, mind if I toss mine in there too?"

Lin Yun took it without hesitation and set it down as well, leaving just enough space that the girl couldn’t argue her way into anything.

The group settled back into their seats, exchanging silent looks instead of words.

Xiong Qi shot the others a questioning glance: What just happened there? Where on earth did that kid come from?

Lin Yun answered with an equally blank expression: No idea. She just appeared out of nowhere and startled me.

George glanced toward the row in front of them. "We already checked earlier — that entire row was empty."

Song Xizheng, looking uneasy: Isn’t that basically a ghost? This is supposed to be a puppet show, not a haunted house!

Song Zhenzhen: Well, it’s not officially a haunted house, but honestly, it’s shaping up to be even better than one.

Song Xizheng leaned forward slightly to peek at the girl. "She has a shadow, though — that means she can’t be a ghost, right?"

Lin Yun: "Hard to say for sure. Better to stay cautious regardless."

Before the group could settle their quiet debate, the sound of the door opening cut through the room from the other side.

They all turned to look and saw several more people filing in.

Some of the newcomers scanned the rows, walked forward, and took seats near the front of the theater.

A few others chose to sit in the row directly behind Lin Yun and her group.

After a brief pause, Lin Yun wondered — would it even be possible for them to shift back to the very last row now?

Still, once seated, the newcomers simply struck up conversation with their companions, behaving exactly like any other ordinary tourists might.

But Lin Yun and the others knew better than to take that at face value — the tourists here were never quite as harmless as they appeared.

Under normal circumstances, these visitors seemed perfectly ordinary. But the moment they touched something, they stopped being tourists at all.