CHAPTER SEVEN
“Wow, I can tell you’ve got a lot on your plate, Leah.”
Oliver doubles over laughing at his own joke, almost knocking into the elderly woman trying to squeeze her way through to the bamboo steamers behind him. Even though it’s only been open for half an hour, the breakfast buffet is already swarming with people. Tourists and smart-looking businesswomen and students from our own group wander between all the different counters, opening and shutting the large metal lids, reaching awkwardly around one another for the tongs while balancing their half-filled plates.
I give Oliver an unimpressed look as I follow him over to our table for four by the floor-to-ceiling windows. There are more diners seated on the outdoor patio under the pale, sleepy sunlight. One man in the corner is alternating between long puffs of his cigarette and bites of his cucumber salad. “That’s hilarious,” I tell Oliver. “You’re hilarious.”
“I know,” he crows, setting his plate down across from me. It’s stacked with bacon and hash browns and scrambled eggs, which he scoops onto his toast. While everyone else took some time finding their way around the cold meats and porridge sections, I saw him make a beeline for the right counter in the back with the familiarity of someone who frequently eats at five-star hotels. “Hey, no judgment or anything. The food here is pretty great—not Michelin star level, of course, but, like, decent.”
I roll my eyes, but I honestly don’t care if he is judging. I’m too eager to sink my teeth into everything: the sautéed beans with minced beef; the silky tofu pudding piled with chili and coriander and chopped mushrooms; the blueberry pastries; the slices of scallion pancakes; the fried pork buns sprinkled with sesame and wobbling soup dumplings.
Back when I was traveling for my modeling gigs, I was always too scared to eat what I wanted. At breakfast, I would spend ages eyeing the cinnamon swirls and crisp strips of bacon, my mouth watering, and then settle for a few cubes of watermelon.
It was strange, because nobody had ever explicitly told me that I needed to watch my diet. But so much of the pressure I felt was silent, unspoken, like being trapped inside a submarine thousands of miles underwater and feeling the oxygen slowly run out. I hadn’t even realized how hungry I was—how hunger had become my usual state—until the day after I parted ways with my modeling agency, when I walked to the closest In-N-Out and wolfed down two whole cheeseburgers. That was one of the most immediate, tangible joys of quitting modeling: the realization that food wasn’t meant to be an enemy or a rare treat or some kind of twisted test. And with every full meal I’ve had since, I can feel my body replenishing itself. My hair is so much shinier, and walking long distances is so much easier, and now, at a buffet like this, I don’t have to think about anything except how rich the food tastes.
“So. How’s your first night with the roommate?” Oliver asks, already moving on to his second slice of toast. “You’re with Daisy, right? She’s pretty quiet, isn’t she? I was, like, kind of concerned she just wasn’t going to talk to me at all, but she’s actually been chill. She even helped take photos of me yesterday—but you should’ve seen her face when I started singing on our way back to the hotel. She literally turned red and ducked behind a wall because a few people were staring at me in admiration …”
I let him talk until he’s physically forced to take a breath. “Be nice to her,” I warn him, jabbing my chopsticks in his direction like they’re a weapon. It’s hard not to feel a little protective of my new roommate, who’s currently waiting in line for the congee. Every time someone shows up, she steps aside and smiles to let them go first. I think she’s been in the same spot for the past ten minutes; she might have actually moved farther back in the line.
Oliver follows my gaze and snorts. “Well, she’s definitely nice. A bit too nice, I would even say—a problem that my roommate doesn’t have.”
I bite carefully into the top of my soup dumpling, sipping the hot, savory juice until only the minced meat filling is left. “How’s that going, by the way?”
“Amazing. Spectacular,” Oliver replies, flicking his dark brown hair out of his eyes. “He told me his whole life story and we cried over a movie about a dog together and woke up early to watch the sunrise. We’re practically best friends now.”
“Please don’t spread such appalling lies.”
We both glance up to see Cyrus standing there, brows faintly furrowed, a glass of water in one hand, his plate in the other. His breakfast is as healthy as I would’ve expected: fresh fruit, shredded lettuce, whole wheat bread, sliced chicken and ham in perfect proportions. It could literally be used as a model of the food pyramid.
“Ah. There he is,” Oliver says with a wide, exaggerated grin, and yanks back the chair next to him. “My best friend. Please, come join us.”
Cyrus eyes the chair warily, like he thinks it might be pulled out from under him at any second, but then he catches me staring and sits, rolling up the long sleeves of his white hoodie. “Good morning,” he tells me, his voice quiet and still slightly thick with sleep.
Oliver’s eyebrows shoot up. “He didn’t say good morning to me , and I greeted him, like, twenty times.”
“You woke me up by jumping on my bed like it was a trampoline,” Cyrus says without looking at him. He spears his fork through a single piece of spinach. “That immediately disqualified the morning from being a good one.”
“Okay, bro, in my defense, you were completely still. Like, I’ve never seen someone sleep in such an uncomfortable position before without moving an inch. I was starting to think you were dead.”
“In the event that I do die in the middle of the night, I beg of you to not react by jumping up and down around my corpse,” Cyrus says flatly.
Oliver heaves a long sigh. “See what I have to put up with?” he asks me, pointing at Cyrus with a piece of bacon. “I don’t know how you hooked up with him. He doesn’t even seem like he’d be open to a high five, much less a fling.”
I feel my brain malfunction for three solid seconds before I remember my little white lie from the airport. With feigned calm, I reply, “Well, his attitude was a lot better when we were making out.”
Cyrus chokes on his water.
I smile as Cyrus continues coughing violently into his elbow, his whole face flushed. “He was actually really thoughtful. Eager to please …” I’m ready to go on inventing the sort of sweet words Cyrus whispered in my ear, the way he held me close like I was the only person who mattered, when I see Daisy wandering around nearby, her wide eyes uncertain as she looks between the crowded tables like a kid on her first day of school. I stand up and wave her over. “Daisy! Come join us.”
Her face melts with relief as she hurries toward us. “Hi, hi. Oops—sorry,” she mumbles, flustered, raising her plate high to avoid bumping into anybody on her way to the seat.
“Now that we’re all here,” Oliver says, leaning forward in a conspiratorial fashion, his hand shielding his mouth as if there are professional lip-readers squatting behind the potted plants just to spy on our conversation, “I have the inside scoop on the first part of the competition today.”
“Aren’t we competing against each other?” I point out.
“It can’t hurt to form an alliance, can it?” Oliver says. “We can take down all the other groups first—”
“I don’t want to take anyone down,” Daisy says quickly.
“Are you interested in the inside scoop or not?” Oliver demands.
I nod for him to go on.
“ So ,” he says, “I hear it’s going to be an escape room. Haunted teahouse themed.”
“Wait. Really?” I’d been afraid that all the activities would be like the test Wang Laoshi gave us last night, but an escape room—that sounds infinitely more fun, not to mention more manageable. I feel a thrum of anticipation, my feet itching to get on the bus and begin the competition. It’s been so long since I was looking forward to something instead of dreading it that the sensation is almost foreign to me.
Daisy doesn’t appear to share my excitement. “Haunted?” she echoes, her shoulders tensing. “Why—why does it have to be haunted?”
“I mean, it’s an escape room,” Oliver tells her, popping the last of the bacon into his mouth. “If it were a room filled with flowers and puppies, you wouldn’t be very motivated to escape, would you?”
“Don’t worry, it can’t be that scary,” I reassure her. “The ghosts from the escape rooms I’ve been in before were pretty polite. And they’re legally not allowed to hurt you.”
“And if they do ,” Oliver adds, “I’ll fend them off for you. My dad made me take a bunch of self-defense classes when I was a kid—I’m honestly kind of upset that nobody has ever tried to start a fight with me before. I feel like my martial arts skills are going to waste, so if I get to punch a ghost—”
“Which isn’t going to happen,” I emphasize. “Nobody’s punching anyone.”
“Right,” Oliver says, holding out his hands in a placating gesture. “It’ll be very peaceful. Nothing to be nervous about. I bet the ghosts will even be all talkative and friendly.”
“Um, I don’t want to make small talk with them either,” Daisy says, looking faintly alarmed. “I’m awful at small talk.”
“The ghosts will be mildly friendly,” I settle on. “And Oliver will look out for you.”
Daisy swallows but sinks back in her seat.
“Just how accurate is this information?” Cyrus asks.
Oliver winks at him. “You’ll see, won’t you?”
***
Shockingly, Oliver proves to be pretty reliable.
Two stone lions snarl at us from the gates as we follow Wang Laoshi in, weaving our way around the red-painted, zigzagging bridge, over the ponds swimming with koi fish and lotus flowers. The teahouse stands just ahead of us on slender stilts, creating the illusion that the grand, multitiered building is floating above the water.
“… used to function as an actual teahouse,” Wang Laoshi is explaining over his shoulder, waving to the glossy pillars and gleaming tiles like he built the place with his own hands. “It was only recently that they decided to renovate it and repurpose it as an escape room, but they’ve preserved much of the original architecture, and inside, you can find a wealth of information on the importance of teahouses—and tea itself—in Chinese culture. We’ve booked multiple rooms, so more than one group will be able to go in at once. At the end of it, you’ll be ranked according to how long it takes you to escape, and the winners will receive two stunning tea gift sets of their choosing …”
“Are you ready?” Cyrus asks me as the rest of the group scatters into private conversations and preparations, the buzz of competition building in the air.
“Obviously,” I say, smoothing out my bangs. “Not sure if I’m more ready than Lydia though.”
We both glance at the girl, who’s quite literally bouncing on the balls of her feet, as if she’s planning on sprinting inside the second they open the doors.
“To be fair, I don’t think anyone can be more ready than Lydia,” Cyrus remarks. “That doesn’t mean she’s going to win though. We will.”
I sneak a curious glance in his direction: Everything about him is serious, sharp, severe, from the hard set of his jaw to the crisp lines of his pushed-up sleeves. This new version of him is so self-reliant and self-possessed, like a lone cottage on a remote island, that he leaves no room for anyone else to come close. What’s changed? The question nags at my mind. What changed you?
I can’t stop myself from studying him as he’s beckoned over by the teacher, and returns with two blindfolds.
“We’re meant to wear these when we enter, apparently,” he says.
“These?” I raise a skeptical brow as I assess the thin scraps of fabric in his hand. “Will they even do anything? I swear I have dresses made from this exact material and those things are, like, fully see-through.”
Cyrus blinks fast. “Why do you own dresses that are see-through? Does that not defeat the very purpose of clothing?”
“The same reason I own anything in my closet: because it looks good,” I say. Then, unable to resist a chance to fluster him, I add in an offhand tone: “I even brought one of the dresses with me. Want to see me wear it?”
He freezes, blood rushing to his face, the look in his eyes almost panicked. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing until I burst out laughing.
“Don’t worry, I won’t show you just yet. I can’t have you going into shock before the competition is over.”
“I—” He clears his throat. “I wouldn’t go into shock —”
“You almost went into shock just now at my mere suggestion. Also, wait, can you help me put this on?” I nod at the blindfold.
“Yes. Sure,” he says, moving behind me. I expect him to be quick with it, the way the others are—out of the corner of my eye, I see Oliver tying the blindfold so carelessly that it ends up sliding down to Daisy’s chin—but Cyrus’s movements are like him: deliberate, precise. As the world goes dark, I feel his fingers in my hair fastening the ends of the blindfold, taking care not to mess up my bangs.
The world stays dark for the next few minutes while I’m led forward by a hand at my elbow. In the beginning, I try to keep track of where we’re going, the places where the smooth stone underfoot transitions into uneven wooden boards, where I hear the creak of a door opening and closing behind us, where the air turns colder, more compact, and the floral notes of tea waft up to my nose. But then we make one turn after another after another, and my head is spinning by the time we come to an abrupt stop.
There’s a soft click , a lock snapping into place.
Cyrus’s voice sounds from my right. “I think we can remove our blindfolds now.”
I let the fabric fall and squint around the room. The details register in pieces: stainless steel counters, woks left on stoves, blunt cleavers lying on cutting boards, bottles of vinegar and soy sauce, more pots hanging in a neat row like clothes on a laundry line, flickering lights. A kitchen. It looks like the back of any restaurant, except for the fake blood splashed everywhere.
“So that’s where the haunted part comes in,” I say, leaning over with mild curiosity to inspect the dark red liquid dripping down the closest wall. “Looks like someone was murdered in here. Daisy’s not going to enjoy this very much.”
“We should look for a password of some kind” Cyrus is saying, businesslike. The bulbs above us flash off for three seconds, throwing us briefly into darkness, and creaking can be heard from somewhere deeper in the teahouse, like a rusted seesaw. I’m not sure if all of it succeeds at making the atmosphere eerier, but it certainly does add an element of danger; I almost knock my chin against Cyrus’s shoulder as I fumble my way forward. “Any numbers or letters or diagrams,” Cyrus continues when the lights come on again, like nothing happened. “Any objects that look like they’ve been moved—”
“There’s something here,” I say, pointing at the keypad lock on the back door. The numbers are already starting to fade in places. “It requires a code.”
“Let me see.” Cyrus steps forward and starts punching in a few numbers.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “We don’t know the password yet.”
“Testing to see how many numbers we need,” he replies over the beeping. “Look. It only lets you enter up to six numbers. And it should involve some combination of …” He shifts a little closer, running his hand over the digits that have been carved into the metal. “Two, five, seven, and nine. You can tell those are the main numbers people have pressed in the past because they’ve been worn away the most. Of course, there’s always a chance that the staff here figured it was obvious and have changed the passcode since, but I doubt they do it very frequently because it would require them to update all the clues.”
“Right. That makes sense,” I say, grudgingly impressed.
“Of course it makes sense, qin ai de,” Cyrus says, craning his neck to inspect the dangling pots.
I narrow my eyes at him. “What did you call me just now?”
“Hm?”
“Qin ai de, or whatever that was,” I say. “It sounded like an insult.”
“It means my worst enemy ,” he says casually without even turning around, and proceeds to pull open the drawers beneath the stove one by one. “There’s nothing here. Nothing in here either— Oh.” He pauses.
“You found something?”
“Just a severed hand.” He picks up the prop and waves lazily at me with it. “What do you think the story is here? They murdered one of the guests, then cut off his hand out of spite?”
“Or they cut off his hand first and then murdered him,” I say, rifling through the cabinet behind Cyrus, revealing thick cakes of black tea leaves and dried tendrils of brown and green stored inside jars. There are little square notes stuck beneath each jar, all typed out in Chinese. I attempt to read them myself before giving up and turning to Cyrus. “What do these say? Are they clues?”
He sets the hand back down and reads over my shoulder. “Hard to tell—it’s about the tea itself. There are six main types of Chinese tea: green tea, black tea, oolong tea, white tea, pu’er tea, and yellow tea. Then it dives into the history and health benefits of each …”
“Keep reading,” I suggest. “It could be relevant.”
He goes through the notes, translating each one patiently and thoroughly like a scholar showcasing his life’s work, and by the end of it I can’t identify anything that could help us leave the room faster, but I do now know that black tea is apparently super rich in antioxidants, and that according to some legends, Shennong, the second emperor of China, discovered green tea by accident when a leaf fell into his boiling pot of water.
It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t usually pay attention to if I were lectured about it in a classroom, but there’s something compelling about Cyrus’s voice that draws you in and keeps you hooked. I’m almost disappointed when he finishes reading the last note.
“Okay, so maybe we’re still not looking in the right place,” I conclude. I flip open the menu lying on the counter, thumbing the laminated pages, which separate with an unpleasant sticky noise. Bloodied fingerprints have been smeared over the list of cold dishes too. “They really went wild with the blood. It’s on, like, every second page.”
“Hang on.” Cyrus crosses over to my side in a single stride and studies the menu, waiting as the lights plunge us into darkness again before spluttering back on. “I think there’s a pattern here. Look, there’s blood on page two, but page three and four are completely clean. And then there’s blood on page five, but none on page six—if it had been spilt naturally, then at least some of it would have gotten on the next page. These are markers.”
“It’s not just blood though. It’s fingerprints,” I realize. “There are two fingerprints on the fifth page, but four on the first page. That’s not natural either; you wouldn’t be grabbing the menu with just two fingers.”
Cyrus’s eyes light up. “That might be the order of the numbers.”
“And it fits the length of the passcode,” I say, catching on, excitement fizzing through me. “Wait, I’ll read the pages out—”
He’s already waiting by the door, his fingers poised over the lock.
“Five …” I almost drop the menu in my eagerness to turn the page. “Nine … two … seven … one.”
I hold my breath as he enters the final number. There’s a beat of perfect silence, both of us staring hard at the door as if we can somehow unlock it with our minds, and just as doubt starts to creep in, the lock buzzes.
“Oh my god, we are so good at this,” I say, grinning wide as I spin around and lift my hand in the air for a high five.
He blinks in surprise. Then he high-fives me back, and for only a moment, I see an alternative history sprawled out between us, where we might have been childhood friends instead of enemies, playing made-up games under the shade of an old oak. Where he hadn’t devoted his life to making mine miserable. Where he hadn’t lied and destroyed everything.
The whine of the door snaps through my thoughts.
I can’t see where it leads. It’s pitch-black on the other side; if I weren’t factoring in the escape room’s limited budget, and all the potential lawsuits such a setup would invite, I’d think there was a gaping void waiting for us to fall straight in.
“Let’s go,” Cyrus calls. “Stick close to me—”
But he’s barely spoken when something leaps out at us from the darkness.