Weird Game: I brought an old version bug

The gates of the orphanage were open.

Jiang Chen stood at the door, not in a hurry to go in.

He shone his flashlight above the door frame, where a wooden sign hung that read:

[Old Calendar Orphanage, Branch No. 37]

The lettering on the wooden sign has faded, but there is a line of smaller characters at the bottom, which looks like they were carved with a knife:

They will not forgive you.

Jiang Chen finished reading the words and stepped over the threshold. His foot creaked softly on the floor.

The hall was unusually quiet; there was no wind, no insects chirping, and even one's own breathing sounded exceptionally clear.

To the left is a corridor with several doors on both sides, labeled "Medical Room," "Archives," and "Storage Room."

To the right is the staircase leading to the second floor. At the corner of the staircase stands a grandfather clock, its pendulum already stopped.

At the front of the lobby is a reception desk with an open registration book on it.

Jiang Chen walked over and shone his flashlight on the contents of the register.

The list above contains the last batch of children at the orphanage, including their names, ages, dates of admission, and notes.

Most of the notes section says "normal adoption" or "transfer to another hospital," but a few children's notes section is empty, with only a line of small red text:

[Deleted]

He counted and found that there were thirteen children marked as "deleted".

He turned to the last page and saw something different.

It wasn't a list, but a handwritten note with very messy handwriting:

Those children weren't adopted; they were taken to the basement. I secretly went to check once; there was only a locked iron door with a sign that read: "No Entry." (Archived)

The note was signed without a name, only with the date: "[Year 47 of the Lunar Calendar, Frost's Descent]"

Jiang Chen folded the note and put it in his pocket. Just as he straightened up, he heard a soft sound behind him.

Click.

It looked like something had been knocked over.

He turned around abruptly, the beam of his flashlight sweeping across the hall, but there was nothing there.

The empty hall was as quiet as a tomb.

But the registration book on the front desk had turned to another page.

He remembered that he had just turned to the last page, but now the register was on a page in the middle—on that page, a name was circled in red.

Lin Xiaohe, female, 7 years old

Check-in Date: Spring Equinox, 45th year of the lunar calendar

[Note: Deleted]

Jiang Chen remembered the little girl on the train, wearing a floral dress, her hair messy, who silently said two words to him:

——【Don't go】

He activated his reconnaissance skills.

A pale golden light penetrated the floor, revealing a hollow space beneath the wooden floor with a mezzanine level about half a meter high.

There was a thin layer of ash in the interlayer, and a few small footprints—children's footprints.

The footprints extended from a corner of the hall, crossed the corridor, and disappeared into the depths.

The reconnaissance report indicated that the footprints were not old, but recent, made no more than two hours ago.

He opened his eyes and followed the footprints. The footprints led to a door at the end of the corridor, with a label that read "Archives".

The door was unlocked.

Jiang Chen pushed open the door, and the hinges made a sharp scraping sound.

The archive room was small, with three walls lined with floor-to-ceiling metal cabinets filled with kraft paper file folders.

A table lamp sits on a wooden table in the center, and an open document lies beneath it.

He walked over and took a look—it was a personal file.

The photo on the cover of the file is of a little girl with a ponytail and a bright smile—it is Lin Xiaohe.

The file records her life in the orphanage: lively, fond of drawing, and fond of planting flowers in the yard. But on the last page of the file, there is a completely different record.

[Year 47 of the Lunar Calendar, Frost's Descent, Day 3]

Lin Xiaohe was spotted at the basement entrance. When asked why she went there, she said she didn't remember.

The next day, Lin Xiaohe reappeared at the basement door, holding a key in her hand.

The origin of the key is unknown. When asked where it came from, she said, "The director gave it to me"—but the director had left the orphanage on a business trip the day before and couldn't have given her the key.

[Year 47 of the Lunar Calendar, Frost's Descent, Day 5]

Lin Xiaohe has gone missing. A search of the entire building yielded no results. The basement iron door is intact, and the lock is undamaged. A painting was left at Lin Xiaohe's bedside.

Jiang Chen turned to the last page and saw a copy of the painting.

The painting depicts a little girl standing in front of a huge iron gate, which is open, with darkness behind it.

The little girl was holding a key and was about to hand it to a hand that reached out from the darkness.

The hand was large and pale, like the hand of an adult.

In the lower right corner of the drawing, a line of small, crooked words was written in pencil:

The dean said he would let me see my mother if I gave him the key.

Jiang Chen closed the file and placed it back on the desk. "Lin Xiaohe, are you still there?"

The archives were completely silent.

Then, a slight noise came from the corner, as if something had moved in the pile of papers.

He shone his flashlight toward the source of the sound. In the innermost corner of the archives, the door of a metal cabinet was not closed tightly, and a corner of floral fabric was sticking out of the gap.

He walked over, squatted down, and reached out to open the cabinet door.

There were no documents in the cabinet, only a drawing. The drawing depicted a little girl squatting in a corner, hugging her knees with her hands and burying her head between her legs.

She was surrounded by darkness. Above the drawing, a line of words was written in crooked red crayon:

I'm still here.

Jiang Chen turned the painting over to the back, where there was another line of text, the characters even smaller and more forceful, as if carved with a fingernail:

He doesn't want the key; he wants me. The key is under the flower bed. Don't let him find you.

Jiang Chen folded the painting and put it in his pocket. He stood up, turned around to leave, and then saw someone.

A woman stood in the doorway of the archives room. She was wearing a white nurse's uniform, a gentle smile on her face, and carrying a tray with a glass of water and a few pills on it.

"You're the new caregiver, right?" Her voice was gentle. "I told you, the director should hire more people. This orphanage is so big, I can't manage it all by myself."

She took a step forward and handed the tray to Jiang Chen. "You look exhausted. Drink some water, take some medicine, and rest. I'll take care of the rest of the work."

Jiang Chen looked at the glass of water, then at the woman.

Her smile was perfect, her tone gentle, but on the collar of her nurse's uniform was a small badge with a number engraved on it:

【OBS-07-DEL-01-SYS】

She is the system's agent in this instance.

"No, thank you, I'm not thirsty," Jiang Chen said.

The woman's smile remained unchanged, but her eyes changed, turning cold, as if the true nature was being revealed behind some kind of gentle mask.

"Are you sure? If you don't drink water, you won't make it through the night. This instance isn't as simple as you think."

Jiang Chen walked past her and left the archives.

The woman didn't chase after him, but her voice pierced his mind like a thorn.

If you don't drink water, you won't make it through the night.

He walked through the hall and entered the orphanage's garden through a side door.

The garden had been abandoned for a long time; the plants in the flower beds had long since withered, leaving only dry branches and weeds.

He found the center of the flower bed, squatted down, and used his hands to brush away the fallen leaves and soil. After digging about ten centimeters deep, his fingers touched something hard.

A key. An old-fashioned brass key, its surface rusted, with a number engraved on the handle—[07].

[Item Obtained: Basement Iron Door Key (Item No. 07)]

Jiang Chen held the keys in his hand and stood up.

A soft laugh came from behind me, the laughter of a child.

He turned around and saw a little girl sitting on the garden wall, wearing a floral dress, with messy hair, barefoot, and her ankles covered in mud.

"You've found the key," she said softly, "but it's not the key to the dean's office."

"Where is the key to the dean's office?"

The little girl tilted her head. "The key is with the headmaster. But the headmaster isn't in his office; he's in the basement."

After saying that, she jumped off the wall.

Jiang Chen strode to the wall and looked down. There was nothing there, only a patch of overgrown grass stretching into the depths of the mist. The little girl had vanished into thin air, leaving not even a footprint.

Jiang Chen turned around and walked towards the stairs leading to the basement.

The staircase was narrow, allowing only one person to pass at a time. Large patches of white paint had peeled off the walls, revealing the underlying cement layer with dark marks—fingernail marks.

Someone was once dragged down this staircase, their fingernails scratching frantically at the wall, leaving these deep grooves.

At the end of the stairs was an iron door with a brand-new lock. Against the backdrop of dust and rust, the lock looked out of place, as if it had been recently replaced.

Jiang Chen took out the copper key numbered 07 and inserted it into the lock.

Click—the lock opened.

Behind the iron gate was a corridor with rooms on both sides, each door labeled with a number—B01, B02, B03… all the way up to B13. Thirteen rooms, thirteen children marked "deleted".

At the end of the corridor, there was an even larger door with a sign hanging on it—[Dean's Office - Underground Branch]

Jiang Chen didn't rush forward. He squatted down and shone his flashlight on the ground. The corridor floor was covered in dust, with fresh footprints in the dust.

The footprints were very small, the size of a child's, starting from room B01, extending to the end of the corridor, then turning back, extending there again, and then turning back again.

The same footprints were repeated many times along this corridor, as if on patrol.

He stood up and walked down the corridor.

As I passed B01, a faint ray of light shone through the crack in the door.

He peered through the crack in the door. The room was small, with only a bed. A child was sitting on the bed, head down, knees drawn up, quietly counting.

"...Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty...forty days...When is Mom coming to pick me up...?"

From the crack in the door of B02, another voice could be heard—a girl singing: "Little swallow, wearing a flowery dress... Spring here is locked up."

B03, B04, B05—each room has a child.

Every child is spending their time trapped here in a different way.

Some people were counting, some were singing, some were talking to themselves, and some were crying quietly.

Jiang Chen walked to the end of the corridor and stood in front of the dean's office.

The door was ajar, and he reached out and pushed it open.

The office was dark, with only a desk lamp casting a faint yellow light.

Behind the desk sat a middle-aged man in a black suit, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, with his hair neatly combed and a gentle smile on his face.

"You've come." His voice was calm, as if he had known Jiang Chen would come all along. "I've been waiting for you for a long time, test subject number 074. Please have a seat."

Jiang Chen didn't sit down; he stood in the doorway, gripping a dagger. "Are you the dean?"

"I am." The director smiled and nodded. "I am the director of this orphanage, and also the [administrator] of this instance."

I know what you're looking for; you want the key to my office. I can give it to you.

He opened the drawer, took out a silver key, and placed it on the table.

"But before that, I want to ask you a question: do you know why this orphanage was deleted?"

Jiang Chen remained silent.

The dean smiled, stood up, and walked to the window.

"Because those children discovered the truth: they were not real people; their memories and pain were fabricated data."

They started asking "why," but the system couldn't answer, so it deleted them.

He turned around and looked at Jiang Chen.

"But deletion is not the same as disappearance. Their data is still here, locked in, forever repeating the memory of the last day before it was deleted."

Do you know what that feels like?

"I know." Jiang Chen looked at the dean, his voice calm. "But you're an NPC too, right? You're one of the deleted data. Your pain is the same as theirs."

The dean's smile froze for a moment.

Then he laughed, a laugh tinged with bitterness and self-mockery.

"You're right, I was also among the deleted data."

But I am the director of this orphanage, and it is my responsibility to take good care of these children.

Even after they're deleted, I want to make sure they don't suffer.

He walked to the desk, picked up the silver key, and handed it to Jiang Chen.

"Here you go, this is what you wanted: the key to the dean's office and the pass to the next floor."

But I have a request: if you can get to the core of the system, please tell it.

The old data wasn't garbage. Those children weren't bugs. Their suffering was real.

Jiang Chen took the key and held it in his hand.

"I will."

He turned to leave.

"Wait a minute." The dean's voice came from behind. "There's one more thing. The little girl who gave you the key—Lin Xiaohe."

She wasn't deleted; she was the only child who escaped from the orphanage.

She escaped to the Forgotten Station, boarded that train, and became its "eternal passenger."

She was waiting for someone to take her away.

Did she say something to you when you got on the bus?

Jiang Chen recalled the little girl's lip movements—[Don't go]

She said not to go.

The dean nodded.

"She told you not to come because she knows that if you come, you'll be trapped here too."

But she also hopes you can come. Because you're the only one who might break this cycle.

Jiang Chen gripped the keys and walked out of the dean's office.

As he walked back down the corridor, the sounds from rooms B01, B02, and B03 all stopped.

The corridor was silent, with only the sound of his footsteps echoing in the empty space.

Then he heard a sound. It wasn't coming from inside the room, but from the ceiling.

A small, childish voice seemed to come from a very far place:

"Thank you."

Jiang Chen didn't turn around and continued walking forward.

He walked out of the basement, across the hall, and back to the platform. A new train was waiting for him on the platform.

The number on the car door has changed.

【FR-01】→【FR-02】

First stop, passed.

He boarded the train, and the doors closed behind him.

Inside the carriage, it was the same passengers, with the same empty expressions.

But the little girl in the floral dress in the last row is gone.

On her seat sat a flower, a wildflower, its roots still covered in soil, as if it had just been picked from the garden.

Jiang Chen picked up the flower and sat down in her seat.

The train slowly started moving and disappeared into the darkness.

[First stop: Old Calendar Orphanage, completed]

[Customs Clearance Rating: Grade A]

[Rewards: Rule Fragment (Unnamed) x1, Old Version Memory Fragment (Lin Xiaohe) x1]

[Next stop: Jingzhong Hospital]

Site ID: OBS-07-DEL-02

[Danger Level: S]

[Hint: At the Mirror Hospital, you can never be sure—that the person in the mirror is actually yourself.]