The boy had returned to normal. He held the ‘dismembered’ puppet and sat on the cold floor. Han Fei didn’t dare to approach the boy recklessly. The boy looked normal on the surface but an extremely scary monster lived inside his heart. After experiencing so many things, Han Fei finally understood what mutation meant. Instead of calling it mutation, it was more like the monsters had shed their disguise to become what the altar owner remembered them to be.
The sun showered into the room. The boy lifted his head in confusion. His young face was filled with tears. Then he crawled over to his mother’s side and started to cry.
‘For now, the mutation will only occur in the dark and sunlight can return them to normal.’ Han Fei frowned. He remembered the diary that the altar owner had left behind. ‘The date I entered the memory world is 1st December. As the month progresses, the weather will get colder and the day shorter.’
Han Fei had no idea what kind of danger he would face. However, to have the world around him slowly collapse, that was not a good feeling.
“Please don’t cry, your mother will be fine.” After consoling the boy, Han Fei planned to visit the landlady, hoping that she and her husband could help look after the boy. Han Fei carried the rucksack to the stairs. As he was about to walk downwards, he felt a chill from his finger. The landlord’s ring gave him a warning. ‘Upstairs?’
Han Fei turned around to look and happened to see a woman in white walking up the stairs. ‘Isn’t that the tenant from the 3rd floor?’ Han Fei gave chase immediately. He saw the woman open one of the doors and entered it. ‘Wait, that room is…’ Han Fei stopped at the 3rd floor corridor. The woman had entered room 13, the room where someone had committed suicide.
‘The sun is already up, why is this corridor still so gloomy?’ Han Fei slowly nudged his way to Room 13. He realized with a shock that the room door was left half open as if welcoming him. With a shiver, Han Fei slowly pulled the door open. This was the second time Han Fei entered Room 13. But different from last time, this time he was alone. “Is anyone home?”
Holding a full rucksack in one hand and a hilt in another, Han Fei’s every nerve was pulled taut.
Suddenly the sound of glass crashing came from the kitchen and then a rat scurried from between the shards. “There are living creatures in this room?” Just as Han Fei said that, the rat started to convulse like it had been poisoned. Its beady eyes leaked with blood and then it collapsed among the glass shards.
“You can hear me? I know you’re here!” Han Fei slowly retreated. He felt like he had stepped on something but he remembered clearly that there was nothing near the door. The floor was supposed to be clean. Resisting the urge to look down, Han Fei continued to retreat. The previously open door had been closed. The rusted lock was stuck and Han Fei was trapped.
‘The tenant died several months ago and nothing happened for a long time. This means that she is not a vicious ghost who goes after innocent people.’ When you run into supernatural events, do not panic. If the other party still has traces of humanity, try to communicate with them. If the other party was fully dominated by murderous intention, then you have to be even calmer to figure out how to die in the least painful way. Many thoughts bounced in his mind. Han Fei knew the door was locked so in that case, he walked forward.
“I heard you were once a worker at the mall too? So technically you are my senior. I’ve encountered many strange events at the mall, so I can understand why you have made the choice you did… Honestly, I share your views, the mall boss is a devil in human skin. He is fake and crazy, he has me cornered already.” Han Fei was trapped by the ghost in Room 13 but the words he said made it sound like he visited Room 13 on purpose. “I have no other option, no one in this world believes me. Everyone sees the mall boss as a philanthropist but I have seen the real person under the mask!” Han Fei shook the rucksack he was holding. “The devil’s hands are bloody from the sins he has committed. Every item here represents a soul he has claimed.”
The bloody red sweater, several photographs and a paper plane folded from a love letter fell to the ground. When the paper plane touched the living room floor, the temperature started to dip.
“Is this paper plane yours?” Han Fei picked up the paper plane with shaking hands. Actually when Han Fei saw the paper plane in the storeroom, he decided to take it with him because the paper plane looked similar to the paper planes the 3rd floor woman threw out the window. It merely was made from different materials. At the time, Han Fei believed the paper plane was connected to the woman on the 3rd floor. It was why he had carried the rucksack home.
The bathroom door was pushed open and toilet paper rolls tumbled out. Moments later, a scorched palm grabbed the edge of the door. It appeared like the ghost in Room 13 was about to show herself soon.
Holding the paper plane, Han Fei slowly approached the arm scorched by flames. “I believe I’ve seen you in the illusions. I was confused why the underground storeroom would have a paper plane. Then I realized you have been staring at me in my illusions. I have received a paper plane from you.”
Han Fei used Soul-depth touch and felt intense pain, hatred and regret from the scorched hands. “I am in deep regret but it is too late now. I am being targeted by the mall boss, I am his next prey. I know I am not long for this world. In these last few days, I want to help you.” Han Fei’s real meaning was, ‘please don’t kill me, I am almost a walking dead. Allowing me to live is going to be more helpful for you.’ The same meaning uttered in a different phrase and combine that with some acting, it would have a completely different impact, that was the power of language.
The ghost in Room 13 didn’t exit the bathroom. The hands grabbed the paper plane from Han Fei and crumpled it up into a ball. The burn marks started to flake and melted into the love letter. The promises of love were slowly replaced by burnt skin. The loving words now looked so disgusting.
“The love letter brings you so much pain? Who is the writer? After I leave, I will bring him to you!” Han Fei gave his promise. However, to complete that promise, he had to be alive. The sun rose but the temperature in Room 13 continued to fall. With a shrill scream, Han Fei was shoved away by the hands.
The waste paper inside the bathroom fluttered about. A flickering woman was howling. Her neck was hung on the window frame. Her scorched hands tore at the waste paper on the ground. The sun slowly shone into the room and the woman’s face blurred. Before she disappeared, a paper plane folded from a love letter floated out from the bathroom. The temperature slowly returned to normal. Han Fei looked at the blood-stained paper plane and carefully unfolded it.
The previous words were blotted out and only a sentence written by finger remained. “Truth is a monster, it has a mouth which can’t speak. Whenever the philanthropist leaves his house, he would lock Truth at home, trapping it with Conscience.”
There were a few large words written on the back of the letter—Can you help me piece it back?
“Piece what back?” Han Fei lifted his head and he realized there was a pair of eyes watching him from the gap among the waste paper. “You want me to use the patterned waste paper in the bathroom to piece together a complete picture?” Even though Han Fei had solved the human jigsaw case, he was not that good at solving puzzles. ‘If only Wei Youfu was here, he liked puzzles when he was alive.’
Thinking about his neighbours, Han Fei took a deep breath. He didn’t expect that there would come a day where he would miss them. The home for him was not the rental in real life but the scariest haunted house at Happiness Neighbourhood. ‘They have cured me. If I can walk out from the memory world alive, I should see if I can bring this ‘puzzle’ with me. It’ll be a great present for Wei Youfu.’
Resisting the urge to sleep, Han Fei sat in the bathroom and studied the pieces of waste paper on the ground. He didn’t play puzzles that often but Han Fei had extraordinary memory and observational skill. Normal people couldn’t make heads or tails of the strange symbols but Han Fei noticed the small differences immediately. As Han Fei was getting into his groove, footsteps came from the corridor.
The landlady and her husband rushed to Room 13. When they saw Han Fei sitting inside the bathroom, working on their puzzle, their faces were white. Perhaps it was too scary, the couple only dared to enter the room after grabbing the mop and broom.
“Has the kid lost his mind from pressure? I already told you not to pressure him with the rent, see, now you have turned him into a madman.”
“Shush!” The landlady entered the living room with the mop, her husband followed closely behind her.
“Could he be possessed by that hanging girl? Why else would he come to mess with these papers so early in the morning? And is he smiling?”
“Shut up!” The landlady picked up speed. Han Fei turned to look at him.
“Uncle, Auntie? What are you doing here?” Patting the dust from his body, Han Fei climbed up from the ground.
“What, what are you doing here? Who opened the door for you? Did you print another key for yourself?”
“You might not believe me but when I came home from work, I saw a woman standing before the boy’s room on the 2nd floor. Her hands were burnt and she looked pitiable. However, she was very kind. She told me that the boy’s mother was trapped in the bedroom and hoped that I could go save her.” Han Fei said sincerely. No sign of lying could be seen on his face.
“And then?”
“So I went into the boy’s room to take a look. I did find his mother trapped inside the bedroom and she was covered in drips! I was so scared so I immediately called the hospital.” Han Fei explained colorfully, the landlady and her husband felt like they were there with him.
“Wait, you were scared?” The couple looked at Han Fei in confusion.
“After saving the boy’s mother, I came out and saw the girl walking upstairs. So I chased after her trying to thank her.”
“So you followed her right into Room 13?” The couple was shaken. They had experienced similar ‘supernatural’ events in the past.
“Indeed, the girl was sad. There was something curious about her death and I suspect it has to do with these waste papers in the toilet.” Han Fei showed them the different symbols on the paper. “If you piece them together, you can see the rough shape of a well. There is something written on the side. I believe I can tell what the message is after I piece the papers together.”
The landlady was about to say something when the ambulance arrived. The boy downstairs was still crying so the couple hurried downstairs.
“Being the landlady and landlord is not easy, especially when you have a tenant like me.”
After the couple left, Han Fei resumed his work on the puzzle. He needed to decipher the girl’s message as soon as possible. Puzzles were hardest at the beginning. After 40 minutes, Han Fei spread the shredded waste paper all over the room and he made an important discovery. When all the waste paper was pieced together, they formed a well and many strange funeral cultures were written around it.
Han Fei didn’t understand these things, but not too long ago, Huang Yin did mention something to him. There was an old man who studied history that died in Perfect Life. The biggest discovery he made in the game was that the NPC would observe a different set of funeral culture after they died. The culture was completely different from the ones in real life. It was like there was a completely different deity that governed the matters of death in the game.
Memorizing all the strange symbols, Han Fei was almost done with the puzzle. He didn’t understand the symbol but he did grasp the rough meaning of some of the pictures.
“The legend is that once you toss something important into the well, you will get blessing and good luck. Someone has built an altar for the well. Buying into the legend, people started to throw their most important ‘things’ like their family and friends into the well.”
