Although the man in the suit sounded as if he were mourning, his words were like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing any lingering hope in the hearts of the invitees, including Byrne.
Byrne clenched his fists, his face beneath the silver mask filled with shock. During the ten minutes before the vote, he had repeatedly analyzed Sixteen's flaw. The conflict between her incense allergy and the sandalwood-scented environment was seemingly undeniable—how could it be wrong?
Damn it. Who exactly is the hidden liar?
However, the man gave them no time to think; the cold sentence was carried out immediately.
"According to the rules, everyone except the liar will be eliminated."
As he spoke, the man raised his right hand, pointing his finger-gun at the people below one by one.
The first to be hit was Number Sixteen, who was closest to the desiccated corpse of Seventeen. Before she could even speak, life instantly drained from her body. Her skin shriveled and collapsed at a visible speed, her professional suit hanging loosely over withered bones. Her silver mask hit the floor with a clank, revealing a bloodless, skeletal face.
Next came Number One, Number Two, Number Four, Number Six, Number Seven...
One by one, the invitees fell, until finally, the man pointed at Byrne.
"Bang!"
With a soft sound, Byrne's body jerked backward. Before he died, only one thought remained in his mind.
Why... why is everyone dead?
...
Monday. X Community, Building 4, Apartment 404.
Outside, the night was thick. A sliver of cold moonlight spilled through the gap in the curtains, illuminating the digital clock on the bedside table. It was 10:17 PM.
The moment Byrne died, time was rewound twenty-four hours to the moment he had just laid down to sleep. Right now, Byrne was lying in bed, his back arched and his entire body twitching like a live shrimp dropped into a steamer. The pain of having one's life force drained and the body turning into a husk was simply beyond words.
It took ten minutes for the agonizing pain, which felt like being sliced a thousand times, to gradually fade. Byrne sat up abruptly, gasping for air, his back completely soaked in sweat.
The numbers on the digital clock were still ticking; it was now 10:28 PM. There were still over nine hours before Bryce would come to borrow salt on Tuesday, and a full day before the invitation to the Red Maple Theater.
Supporting himself with trembling knees, Byrne got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. He turned on the faucet and splashed water onto his face over and over again. The tap water in early spring was quite cold. The icy sensation gradually cleared his chaotic mind.
Byrne looked up at his reflection in the mirror. His face was pale, and his eyes were bloodshot. During the second vote, he thought he had found the key to breaking the deadlock, yet it still ended with everyone being killed. This meant he had misunderstood the man's hint from the very beginning and had likely missed the most core clue.
Everyone except the liar will be eliminated...
Two choices in a row were wrong. What on earth did I miss?
Byrne closed his eyes again, replaying every detail of the gathering in his mind like a movie. Seventeen's shriveled body, the tragic deaths of the six voters, and the man's unrestrained laughter when everyone finally perished...
Frame after frame shifted until the image froze at the moment of Byrne's death. Before the rewind, during that final vote, Byrne had confidently believed he had found the answer. But he was wrong, and the result was total annihilation.
This proved he had misinterpreted the hint about "Scene Adaptation."
Could it be that the adaptation mentioned by the man wasn't about real-world logic, nor the theater environment, but the adaptation to the gathering's rules themselves?
Byrne remembered that his suspicion of Sixteen was based on the conflict between her incense allergy and the sandalwood scent. But thinking about it now, that sandalwood scent was part of the Rules—an environment that all invitees were forced to endure. Since it was part of the Rules, there would be no exceptions based on individual physical traits.
Just as no one could see each other's faces after putting on the masks, and just as the chairs automatically arranged themselves into a circle, these rules were forcibly imposed on everyone. Naturally, an incense allergy would be temporarily suppressed by the Rules.
If the eighteen invitees present were all telling the truth, then the question remained: who was the liar?
Unable to find the answer, Byrne temporarily set aside his doubts. He changed his bedsheets, took another shower, and went back to sleep.
The night passed in silence. At 7:00 AM, Byrne was woken by his alarm. He got up and washed. He specifically paid attention to the activity in Apartment 403 next door but found nothing; he guessed it wasn't time yet.
This time, Byrne didn't cook Western food but made a bowl of noodles instead. He was halfway through eating when the knock came at the door. The process that followed was exactly the same as before the rewind.
After seeing off Bryce, Byrne sat on the sofa and waited quietly. Before long, a black invitation appeared out of thin air on the coffee table. Byrne took it and examined it carefully; both the cover and the inside pages were identical to what he remembered. After checking it, he left the invitation on the table, took his laptop bag, and went to work.
Soon, it was 6:30 PM. Upon returning home from work, Byrne saw the black paper box on the shoe cabinet. After thinking for an entire day, he had considered a possibility: there was a nineteenth person present at the gathering.
To verify his hypothesis, he decided to arrive early this time. Although he couldn't see their faces, he remembered the clothing of every participant clearly. Byrne ate a quick meal, took the invitation and mask, and headed out.
It was only 7:30 PM when his taxi arrived near the Red Maple Theater. He stopped about a hundred meters away from the theater, looked around, and found a relatively hidden spot to hide.
The dusk deepened as the streetlights of the old district flickered on. The dim yellow light barely dispelled the haze and failed to illuminate the blind spots around the theater. Hidden in the shadows, Byrne kept his eyes on the iron gate of the Red Maple Theater and waited patiently. He wanted to see for himself if a nineteenth invitee truly existed as he suspected.
An hour passed. During this time, the familiar invitees arrived one after another. Each person's clothing matched the image in Byrne's memory. Their expressions were either nervous or wary as they walked toward the iron gate alone. No one came in pairs, and no one spoke.
Byrne counted them one by one. By 8:30 PM, there were eighteen invitees, including himself—not one more, not one less. When it reached 8:50 PM, the time he had arrived before the rewind, a nineteenth person still hadn't appeared.
Heh. It seems I overthought things.
Byrne gave a self-deprecating smile and was about to step out of the shadows. Just then, an unexpected figure appeared.