Chapter 1 A Life-or-Death Gamble Adventure!

11:55.

The second hand of the wall clock ticked away, like the drumbeat of death.

"Submit it now before it's too late! Midnight deadline! Keep stalling, and the system will shut down the registration portal!"

The librarian sitting across from them, Harper Anderson, was glaring at Celeste Phillips and Scarlett Lewis with bitter eyes. Harper's withered fingers were already resting on the main circuit breaker.

Celeste stood behind Scarlett, her palms drenched in cold sweat.

Celeste was eighteen, fresh out of high school.

In this rundown town where even birds wouldn't stop, graduation meant unemployment.

Scarlett was Celeste's good friend. She was always like this—bold, daring to take crazy risks, always dragging Celeste into these ridiculous schemes.

"Scarlett, forget it." Celeste lowered her voice, trembling. "What kind of legit job posting would be hidden in a garbled link at the very bottom of a public bulletin site?"

"Shut up, Celeste! You want to spend your whole life smelling gasoline at Ralph's gas station and end up rotting in a trailer park like your drunk dad?" Scarlett said without looking back.

The webpage finally loaded with difficulty.

Several blood-red words jumped onto the screen: [Blackthorn Asylum · Short-term Care Program].

"Three months, room and board included, pay is a full twenty thousand dollars!" Scarlett's voice was shrill with excitement. "With this money, we can rent an apartment downtown, buy a used car, and get out of this hellhole for good!"

Twenty thousand dollars.

In this town, it's enough to buy two lives.

And this broken town—the lumber mill on the east side had shut down two years ago. All that was left were those crumbling motels along the highway, convenience stores selling cheap fast food, and fast-food joints with pathetic hourly wages.

Young people who didn't make it to college either spent their days drinking cheap beer on street corners or wasted away their youth behind cash registers.

Both Celeste and Scarlett came from poor families.

Celeste lived in a leaky trailer park, worrying about the meager monthly rent.

Scarlett wasn't much better off, with a stepfather at home who only knew how to drink.

Leaving here was their only obsession.

But that was a mental hospital...

"Have you forgotten? What do people in town say about that place? That asylum is built in the deepest part of Nightthicket. Even delivery trucks won't go that way."

"Last month, that big guy Tom, who worked at the convenience store, went there as a security guard. He quit in less than two weeks. I saw him on the street the other day—he was so thin he looked like a different person, staring blankly, couldn't even speak clearly!"

"Tom was always a coward. He probably just pissed his pants after getting scared by a few crazy patients."

Scarlett shrugged dismissively and quickly typed on the keyboard, starting to fill in Celeste's personal information.

"Celeste, listen. High pay always comes with high risk—that's how the world works. They need on-site residence, require signing a lifetime confidentiality agreement, and you have to deal with high-risk patients. That's why no locals dare to go. This is our chance!"

"Look at us now—wearing secondhand clothes from charity, the coins in our pockets can't even buy a burger. Stay in this town, and life will slowly trap us to death. We'll never get out. Instead of rotting here slowly, why not take a gamble!"

Celeste looked at Scarlett, her throat feeling blocked.

Celeste knew Scarlett was right. The fear of poverty was sometimes more suffocating than those vague urban legends.

"Quick, take a picture!"

Scarlett didn't give Celeste much time to hesitate. She grabbed Celeste and pulled out her old phone with a screen cracked like a spiderweb from her pocket, opening the front camera.

"What? Use this for an ID photo?" Celeste was stunned.

"The library's crappy computer doesn't even have a camera. This'll have to do. Smile!"

The flash went off, illuminating their two pale, tense faces.

Scarlett quickly transferred the photo to the computer, roughly cropped it, and uploaded it directly to the registration system's attachment section.

The time had reached 11:58.

The librarian had already stood up from her chair and was walking toward them step by step.

"Two minutes left, girls."

The final step appeared on the screen: a liability waiver and confidentiality agreement, dozens of pages long.

Dense black text scrolled across the screen. Celeste vaguely caught a few words: "personal injury," "irreversible mental damage," "waiver of prosecution rights," "lifetime silence."

"Wait, Scarlett, these terms look really wrong. Maybe we should read them carefully..."

Celeste's heart pounded wildly. Instinctive fear made her want to reach for the computer's power button.

This didn't look like an employment contract at all—it was more like a death warrant.

"No time!"

Scarlett slapped Celeste's hand away and, without hesitation, dragged the mouse straight to the bottom.

She didn't even glance at those terrifying risk clauses. She simply clicked the small box in front of "I have read and agree to all confidentiality agreements and liability waivers," then heavily hit the enter key.

A green circle appeared in the center of the screen and began to slowly spin.

11:59.

Harper had walked up behind them. She reached out, ready to pull the network cable directly.

The page jumped, and a line of prominent red text appeared in the center of the screen: [Application successfully submitted. Please keep your communication open and await acceptance notification.]

"Done!"

Scarlett jumped up from her chair and pumped her fist hard.

The clock struck midnight. They grabbed their worn canvas bags from the table and, like two startled stray cats, rushed out of the library with their heads down.

Behind them, the glass door was locked shut with a dull thud.

Half the streetlights on the midnight highway were broken, and the remaining few flickered on and off.

"We did it, Celeste!" Scarlett walked beside Celeste, her steps light, even her back radiating barely contained excitement.

She turned around and walked backward, gesturing excitedly in the air with both hands.

"As soon as the notification comes, we can leave this hellhole! Twenty thousand dollars! God, I've even decided what color car to buy!"

Celeste looked at Scarlett and forced a smile, but couldn't manage to laugh.

High pay means high risk!

Scarlett stood under the streetlight, pulling her oversized secondhand jacket tight, and made a phone gesture to Celeste.

"Remember, turn your phone volume all the way up and check your email every five minutes to see if there's any news, okay?"