Having the Same Name as the Demon Lord of the Abyss
Run away
Ye Zun knew that he had no right to speak in this family, not to mention that he was still mute, so he could only look at the little boy, hoping that he would understand what he was trying to get across.
The little boy stood there quietly the entire time, just listening to their quarrel with curiosity from the beginning to the end. Whether it was San-gugu accusing Er-gugu of murdering him, or accusing him of dying and being a ghost, he didn’t seem to understand how serious this matter was.
Almost all children behaved like this. They don’t understand the complexity of the adult world, and they consider everything to be normal.
At this moment, they were discussing whether Er-gugu and her husband would stay at the house. He saw the anxiety in Ye Zun’s eyes and he didn’t seem to understand why he cared about this kind of thing, as if it didn’t matter whether they stayed or left.
Gu-laolao, Er-gugu and her husband were still chatting.
Er-gugu said that she wanted to move out, and Gu-laolao also said to stay. But maybe it was because of what happened today that everyone had lingering fears. Gu-laolao was not very determined in persuading them to stay, and Er-gugu wanting to move out did not seem to be insincere.
So, without Ye Zun needing to do anything, it seemed that they were really going to move out.
Gu-laolao said a few words of comfort, and while being polite, she called the hired auntie to help Er-gugu and her husband to pack their luggages.
“Since you two have made up your mind, then I won’t force you.”
Er-gugu’s voice paused for a moment before she forced a smile and said yes, anyway, even if the family doesn’t live together, she will come back often to eat the meals Mum cooks.
The matter was resolved peacefully.
Everyone’s relationship still appeared the same as before. Although not very intimate, everyone was polite and courteous to each other, and there was no discord.
When Ye Zun also thought that the matter was settled like this, Er-gugu and her husband also finished packing their luggage and moved them downstairs, package after package.
However, when dinner time came, the husband and wife pair were still sitting at the table.
Seeing that they were still here, Gu-laolao’s expression froze slightly. “Stay for dinner before you leave. Although there is a car, the road is not safe. How come you were delayed so late?”
Er-gugu’s face was shy and obedient, a little embarrassed, but as if she was very discreet and thoughtful. “Everything has been packed and moved into the car, but San-mei is still at home. My husband said he was worried about you all.”
Gufu looked at Gu-laolao in worry with a gentle face. He has always been a kind and honest man. “We will leave after the workers from the hospital come to pick up San-mei. After all, she has violent tendencies.”
Gu-laolao was a little upset, but she didn’t show it. It’s just that her smile looked fake. “There are so many staff in the house. It’s alright, you two don’t need to worry.”
Their conversation had already reached this point so the couple immediately nodded in agreement. Er-gugu was a little downcast.
“We will leave after having dinner.”
“It’s what you said, this is your home too, you can come back anytime you want. How can I not welcome you? Wasn’t it you two that said you wanted to move out? I’m thinking that if you two change your environment, change your mood, and you can also have a child earlier. It’s also good to go out and avoid gossip.”
Gu-laolao smiled and added more food to her plate.
Ye Zun seemed to understand a little bit. Even if Gu-laolao liked Er-gugu, after hearing that she might be related to her son’s death, she would have a thorn in her heart.
Despite these matters being settled, and even though Er-gugu and her husband had said many times that they would leave, as long as they stayed here, Ye Zun felt uneasy.
As expected, they did not leave after dinner.
Ye Zun walked up to the little boy who didn’t seem to take these people seriously, and looked into his eyes.
——Can you, hold her back for me, don’t let her find me.
The little boy blinked, as if he didn’t understand what he wanted to do, but he would still do whatever he wanted. “Okay ah, whatever you want to do, just go and do it ba.”
When Ye Zun walked to San-gugu’s room, the little boy was talking to the second aunt and her husband in the stairwell, mainly to the second uncle. “Gufu, what is ‘mentally’? How can someone get sick mentally?”
Ye Zun walked inside and closed the door.
San-gugu, who was bound on the bed, looked lost and broken, as if she had lost all her thoughts. She had completely become a numbed-out mental patient.
Ye Zun walked up to her and gently helped her brush her hair with his fingers.
San-gugu saw him. Her gaze turned slightly, and a meaningless but small light in her soul revealed itself in her eyes.
That’s right ah, after all, Ye Zun was just a little mute, a child just over three years old. Her situation and the development of everything, it didn’t matter and it had no importance to him at all.
But when she saw that Ye Zun had found her phone, her eyes lit up.
Ye Zun showed her the keypad to unlock the screen. When his finger hovered over the correct pin number, she would blink hard.
With silent and swift cooperation, Ye Zun unlocked her phone and pulled up the recording interface in front of her.
San-gugu understood what he wanted to do and her eyes immediately became alive.
Ye Zun nodded to her, found a hiding spot, and hid himself.
Very soon after, there were footsteps outside the door, as well as muffled speaking.
“Is Er-gugu going to see San-gugu? I also want to see what a mental illness is.” There was the innocent voice of the little boy.
The second aunt’s voice was soft, carrying a smile. “Gugu is afraid she will hurt you, so Gugu will just go by herself. You and Gufu should stay here and play.”
The sound of high heels were unhurried, but did not move too slowly. The owner of those steps was in a good mood; things were going well and there had been no difficulties, which was why there were such footsteps.
The door opened then closed.
“San-mei, Jiejie is leaving. I’m here to bring you water. The ambulance will come to pick you up soon. Don’t be scared, cooperate with the treatment and you will be better soon.”
She walked in, put the water bottle in her hand next to her younger sister, twisted the water bottle open, then drank it herself.
After she finished, she slowly screwed on the cap.
Her tone was surprised. “What, you don’t want to drink? You’re worried that I poisoned it, you really…”
The voice she used in the beginning was raised slightly, so that the outside could hear her more or less.
And near the end, her voice suddenly lowered.
“…you really hurt Jiejie’s feelings.” At the end of her sentence, there was an unsuppressable smile in her tone.
Ye Zun, who was hiding in the dark, felt a dull pain in his heart. This was the first time he faced Er-gugu’s true face. All the horrors he had seen about her before were either from the dream-like past that he saw in the eyes of the ghost, or from San-gugu’s few words. They left him with the sense that it was an illusion, and a thought that perhaps everything may not be true.
She walked up to San-gugu on the bed and raised her hand.
San-gugu immediately closed her eyes and did all she could to turn her head, but failed as she was tied up.
The woman smiled sweetly and fakely whispered, “What, do you think Jijie is going to hit you? Honestly, Jiejie likes you so much, why would I do such a thing? Why do you always think of me like this?”
She gently and carefully smoothed out San-gugu’s hair and said with a smile, “You look just like a madman now, I’m so sad ah.”
After she straightened her hair, her eyes suddenly turned and she looked in Ye Zun’s direction.
Ye Zun’s heart sank.
The woman turned around and began to check her surroundings.
“Let me think, San-mei, what are you trying to do? Did you secretly hide a recording device? Or did you have Gu-laolao hide next door, wanting her to hear me say something strange? Oh ya*, I forgot that San-mei is so hateful, they won’t believe you and won’t cooperate with you. There is no way you can do the things you want, and you will never succeed.”
[T/N: like a surprised “oya?”]
She checked every door and drawer very carefully, and very quickly reached Ye Zun’s hiding spot.
The cabinet door opened. The woman paused slightly, the smile on her lips growing higher and higher.
She stretched out her hand. “Ya, found it.”
She held San-mei’s red cell phone and showed it to her with a regretful smile and a slight surprise. “When did you think of hiding your phone here? Although I don’t know the password or how long you’ve been recording, I will be taking the phone away, so you can record it if you want ba.”
Suddenly, she became suspicious again. “This isn’t a cover-up for other recording devices, right?”
She checked the remaining hiding spots one by one. This time she found nothing.
“Ai, San-mei, you really don’t have a brain at all. But if you were smarter, our game would’ve also been very fun. It’s not even difficult to deal with me ah, why haven’t you ever gained the upper hand once?”
She sat at San-gugu’s bedside, lying down next to her. Like talking to a sister just before going to bed, she whispered into her ear, intimate yet creepy.
“Can you guess what I’m going to do next? I’m going to send you to a mental hospital and turn you into a real madman, so that no one will believe your words. Are you going to do everything possible to escape? Then you just wait ba, as long as you dare to do this, you will find a picture of the whole family’s tragic deaths. The headlines in the media will all say that a mental patient escaped from the hospital to return home, taking revenge and massacring a family of three, the grandparent and children hahahahahaha…”
Her voice was very small, with the certainty that even if there was a recording device that slipped through the net, it would not be able to capture her. “I’ll tell you a secret, I am being driven away by that old thing on purpose, this way, I will have an alibi la. Meimei, you are so good, thank you. But, I didn’t do anything wrong ba, Baba’s money is my money, this house is mine, anyone who gets in my way is a robber. It’s only natural for the owner to kill the robber who breaks into the house ba.”
San-gugu made some wu wu sounds, looking terrified and wrathful.
Er-gugu stood up and straightened her clothes, looking at the mirror in the room and carefully touching the makeup on her face. Then she opened the water bottle and walked up to the third aunt. Her hand seemed to tremble suddenly and she splashed some water on her face. The rest was poured on San-gugu.
“Ah, San-mei, what are you doing?”
Seeing her face, San-gugu struggled like a crazed lunatic and tried to attack her, screaming ahhhhhh. But with her body restrained, she couldn’t do anything.
Very quickly, several people rushed in from outside the door.
It was Er-gufu and a few hired workers.
“What’s going on? What happened?”
Er-gugu looked like she was in shock, caressing her heart with lingering fears. “I wanted to help San-mei drink water, but she suddenly…”
San-gugu on the bed was enraged, glaring at her viciously like a mad dog biting a human.
Er-gugu frowned and leaned into the man’s arms in fear, with a smug and disdainful curl at the corners of her mouth and her eyes. Her voice seemed to be very sad as she said, “How did San-mei become like this? We were obviously very good when we were kids ah. She used to be better than me in everything, she studied better than me, looked better than me, her interactions with boys were also better than mine. You were even planning to go on a blind date with her at first. Since we got married, the way she looks at me has changed day by day. Could it be that she thinks I stole you from her?”
Her makeup-done appearance and body shape were very strong, clashing against her weak and pitiful look, but she pulled it off very well.
The man didn’t seem to notice it and hugged her to comfort him, but when he heard her mention him, he was slightly embarrassed. “There is nothing between her and I, don’t talk nonsense about these things at this time.”
The man let her free from his arms and started to make a call. “We can’t, she’s too aggressive, I should press the hospital first to send her away ba.”
“Yi, why isn’t Chengting here?” Er-gugu weaved around the crowd and suddenly brought this up.
The little boy at the door looked at her innocently. “Didi is sleepy, I let him go to sleep first. Does Gugu need him for something? Do you want me to go upstairs and wake him up?”
The second aunt smiled. “No need, no need.”
The little boy replied “oh”. He briefly looked at Gu-laolao and asked curiously, “San-gugu suddenly became sick, what did Er-gugu say to her? Everyone said that the patient should not be stimulated. Is Er-gugu stimulating the patient?”
The woman’s expression froze. There was no aggression, just an awkward embarrassment, like a vulnerable thing who knew that had done something wrong and was afraid. “I wanted to feed her water.”
Her attitude was as if she had taken the first step to be humble, like she had gotten no time to give an excuse before being accused by others. It made people feel bad about blaming her, and they would instead feel pity for her.
“Forget it,” Gu-laolao said, “it’s best if you don’t see her alone.”
The little boy looked at her innocently. “Gugu, are you two not leaving tonight?”
The woman looked at Gu-laolao, as if waiting for the other person to decide whether she should leave or stay. There was no embarrassment nor a blow to her self-esteem.
Gu-laolao avoided her eyes.
Gufu was a little embarrassed. “The ambulance will be here soon. We will leave as soon as it comes.”
This time, the hospital staff and the ambulance arrived quickly.
San-gugu’s reaction was very strong but she was injected with a sedative. With the help of the hired workers, she was sent to the ambulance downstairs.
“Er-gugu, goodbye.” The little boy waved obediently.
The woman said without thinking, “The one in the car is your San-gugu.”
“I know ah.”
Their heads turned. The workers brought the suitcases down.
The little boy blinked innocently. “After San-gugu left, it’s Er-gugu’s turn to leave.”
This time, Er-gufu didn’t say a word. Even the driver had driven out of the garage.
He said goodbye to the children and Gu-laolao politely, then opened the car door and gestured for his wife to get in the car.
The woman reluctantly got into the car. It seemed like she wanted to stay until the very last moment.
Ye Zun stood upstairs, watching the second aunt and uncle’s car leave the house.
It wasn’t until the black car slowly left his field of vision that Ye Zun felt the dark cloud over his head dissipate a little.
But he didn’t completely relax, because this woman must have a way to escape.
In order not to expose himself, Ye Zun had pushed the phone out in a hurry. However, once the woman went back and unlocked the phone, if she was smart enough to figure out when the recording started, it would not be difficult to work out that there was another person in the room at the time.
Sooner or later, her thoughts will also stop on Ye Zun.
Perhaps it was as she said, that those reluctant delays were all an act, and her original intention was to leave this place to create an alibi for herself.
He shouldn’t have let her be allowed to leave the house. If she wasn’t around, there would be more variables.
“Little mute, it’s time to sleep.”
The little boy stood behind Ye Zun with a faint gentleness.
Ye Zun walked up to him and briefly looked at their surroundings.
——Cameras.
“Already taken down.”
The little boy turned his head to motion behind him, and sure enough, he saw many hired workers walking around.
Ye Zun breathed a sigh of relief, but felt a heavier pressure weighing on his heart.
Maybe there was an advantage in not dismantling it. It was possible to check to see if someone had done bad things through surveillance. Monitoring was not a scary thing, what was scary is what the people behind the cameras want to do with the footage.
“The sky is almost dark, let’s go wash up and go to sleep ba.”
Ye Zun nodded, and when he looked up, he saw the twin little girls standing at the corner of the stairwell, the two of them holding hands. His blood instantly turned cold.
Gu-laolao was still talking to the hired aunt in the living room downstairs.
There were also workers walking around.
Two little girls stood in the shadow of the stairs behind the crowd. The older sister pursed her lips quietly, and the younger girl wore an innocent smile on her face. Against the pale face and the dreary background, this smile carried some deceit and evil.
A blink of an eye, and they ran upstairs.
“What are you looking at?” The little boy turned his head back and followed his gaze. It seemed as if he didn’t see anything, so he asked out of curiosity with a look of indifference.
Ye Zun shook his head.
The little boy’s fingers landed on his shoulder, caressing. “Don’t be scared, Fox-gege will protect you.”
Ye Zun pursed his lips, wanting to smile at him, but he couldn’t.
That night, instead of sleeping with the little boy, he went back to his room on the fifth floor.
Ye Zun waited for a while. As he suspected, a child’s voice came from outside the door.
Bouncing and jumping like playing hopscotch, an eerie laughter.
Five cards slipped in from under the door.
“The game has started, Gege, draw one ba.”
Ye Zun didn’t know what the little girl outside the door was. If she was the younger sister of the twins, then she would be the second aunt, but no matter how scary Er-gugu was, she was still a living person.
Or could it be, the younger sister of the twins died even earlier, and the current Er-gugu took her place?
Or perhaps, she is the embodied ghost of Er-gugu’s heart.
Ye Zun looked at the blood-red backs of the five cards and chose the first one.
He turned it over. On the card, there was a person hanging upside down on a cross. Beneath the person, there was a spiral staircase leading to an endless darkness.
“Ahhhhh!” The little girl screamed, although it also seemed like she was covering her mouth and snickering. “Someone’s gonna get killed, someone’s gonna get killed*! Shh! Shh! Don’t make a sound, you must not go out when the sky is dark.”
[T/N: 要杀人了, more literally, ‘(they’re) going to kill’, but you’ll see why I chose this wording in the future]
Ye Zun said, “Who are you? Who is she? What is your relationship with her?”
He opened the door. There was nothing outside, only darkness.
Ye Zun walked out of the room and all the way to the door of the little boy’s room. He knocked.
The door opened, and the little boy looked at him warmly.
Ye Zun pulled his hand and looked firmly into his eyes.
——Help me!
They went to the second floor together and knocked on Gu-laolao’s door.
Gu-laolao was awake and looked at them in surprise.
“Why isn’t Baobao sleeping yet? Do you want Nainai to stay with you?”
The little boy said, “I heard it, what San-gug said is true. Er-gugu told San-gugu that if she dares to escape from the hospital, she will kill the three of us, and put the blame on San-gugu. She also said that all the money in the family should belong to her alone, we are robbers, and we deserve to be killed.”
Gu-laolao looked at him fixedly. Her expression grew more shocked and complicated by the second.
Er-gugu was indeed poisonous and terrifying, but she really wasn’t impossible to deal with. San-gugu failed because she was too kind and too incompetent. She was deceived by that woman since she was a child, and was provoked into isolation from everyone with the woman’s words, and her personality was forced to become weird and excessively direct.
Everyone didn’t trust her and didn’t like her, but she knew the truth that everyone else didn’t know. The more she said that went against everyone’s perception, the less everyone would believe her.
However, as long as someone who is trusted by everyone else says the same thing, it will definitely arouse alarm.
The little boy looked at Gu-laolao, his clear eyes innocently watching. “Baba and Yeye were both killed by Er-gugu, is that true?”
Gu-laolao held both of their hands, her fingers cold and trembling.
“I don’t know, but that woman, I won’t let her even think about entering this home again!”
The little boy looked at their grandma and said what Ye Zun wanted to say, “Let’s not sleep tonight. Nainai, there is a ghost in the room.”
Having the Same Name as the Demon Lord of the Abyss
Run away
Ye Zun knew that he had no right to speak in this family, not to mention that he was still mute, so he could only look at the little boy, hoping that he would understand what he was trying to get across.
The little boy stood there quietly the entire time, just listening to their quarrel with curiosity from the beginning to the end. Whether it was San-gugu accusing Er-gugu of murdering him, or accusing him of dying and being a ghost, he didn’t seem to understand how serious this matter was.
Almost all children behaved like this. They don’t understand the complexity of the adult world, and they consider everything to be normal.
At this moment, they were discussing whether Er-gugu and her husband would stay at the house. He saw the anxiety in Ye Zun’s eyes and he didn’t seem to understand why he cared about this kind of thing, as if it didn’t matter whether they stayed or left.
Gu-laolao, Er-gugu and her husband were still chatting.
Er-gugu said that she wanted to move out, and Gu-laolao also said to stay. But maybe it was because of what happened today that everyone had lingering fears. Gu-laolao was not very determined in persuading them to stay, and Er-gugu wanting to move out did not seem to be insincere.
So, without Ye Zun needing to do anything, it seemed that they were really going to move out.
Gu-laolao said a few words of comfort, and while being polite, she called the hired auntie to help Er-gugu and her husband to pack their luggages.
“Since you two have made up your mind, then I won’t force you.”
Er-gugu’s voice paused for a moment before she forced a smile and said yes, anyway, even if the family doesn’t live together, she will come back often to eat the meals Mum cooks.
The matter was resolved peacefully.
Everyone’s relationship still appeared the same as before. Although not very intimate, everyone was polite and courteous to each other, and there was no discord.
When Ye Zun also thought that the matter was settled like this, Er-gugu and her husband also finished packing their luggage and moved them downstairs, package after package.
However, when dinner time came, the husband and wife pair were still sitting at the table.
Seeing that they were still here, Gu-laolao’s expression froze slightly. “Stay for dinner before you leave. Although there is a car, the road is not safe. How come you were delayed so late?”
Er-gugu’s face was shy and obedient, a little embarrassed, but as if she was very discreet and thoughtful. “Everything has been packed and moved into the car, but San-mei is still at home. My husband said he was worried about you all.”
Gufu looked at Gu-laolao in worry with a gentle face. He has always been a kind and honest man. “We will leave after the workers from the hospital come to pick up San-mei. After all, she has violent tendencies.”
Gu-laolao was a little upset, but she didn’t show it. It’s just that her smile looked fake. “There are so many staff in the house. It’s alright, you two don’t need to worry.”
Their conversation had already reached this point so the couple immediately nodded in agreement. Er-gugu was a little downcast.
“We will leave after having dinner.”
“It’s what you said, this is your home too, you can come back anytime you want. How can I not welcome you? Wasn’t it you two that said you wanted to move out? I’m thinking that if you two change your environment, change your mood, and you can also have a child earlier. It’s also good to go out and avoid gossip.”
Gu-laolao smiled and added more food to her plate.
Ye Zun seemed to understand a little bit. Even if Gu-laolao liked Er-gugu, after hearing that she might be related to her son’s death, she would have a thorn in her heart.
Despite these matters being settled, and even though Er-gugu and her husband had said many times that they would leave, as long as they stayed here, Ye Zun felt uneasy.
As expected, they did not leave after dinner.
Ye Zun walked up to the little boy who didn’t seem to take these people seriously, and looked into his eyes.
——Can you, hold her back for me, don’t let her find me.
The little boy blinked, as if he didn’t understand what he wanted to do, but he would still do whatever he wanted. “Okay ah, whatever you want to do, just go and do it ba.”
When Ye Zun walked to San-gugu’s room, the little boy was talking to the second aunt and her husband in the stairwell, mainly to the second uncle. “Gufu, what is ‘mentally’? How can someone get sick mentally?”
Ye Zun walked inside and closed the door.
San-gugu, who was bound on the bed, looked lost and broken, as if she had lost all her thoughts. She had completely become a numbed-out mental patient.
Ye Zun walked up to her and gently helped her brush her hair with his fingers.
San-gugu saw him. Her gaze turned slightly, and a meaningless but small light in her soul revealed itself in her eyes.
That’s right ah, after all, Ye Zun was just a little mute, a child just over three years old. Her situation and the development of everything, it didn’t matter and it had no importance to him at all.
But when she saw that Ye Zun had found her phone, her eyes lit up.
Ye Zun showed her the keypad to unlock the screen. When his finger hovered over the correct pin number, she would blink hard.
With silent and swift cooperation, Ye Zun unlocked her phone and pulled up the recording interface in front of her.
San-gugu understood what he wanted to do and her eyes immediately became alive.
Ye Zun nodded to her, found a hiding spot, and hid himself.
Very soon after, there were footsteps outside the door, as well as muffled speaking.
“Is Er-gugu going to see San-gugu? I also want to see what a mental illness is.” There was the innocent voice of the little boy.
The second aunt’s voice was soft, carrying a smile. “Gugu is afraid she will hurt you, so Gugu will just go by herself. You and Gufu should stay here and play.”
The sound of high heels were unhurried, but did not move too slowly. The owner of those steps was in a good mood; things were going well and there had been no difficulties, which was why there were such footsteps.
The door opened then closed.
“San-mei, Jiejie is leaving. I’m here to bring you water. The ambulance will come to pick you up soon. Don’t be scared, cooperate with the treatment and you will be better soon.”
She walked in, put the water bottle in her hand next to her younger sister, twisted the water bottle open, then drank it herself.
After she finished, she slowly screwed on the cap.
Her tone was surprised. “What, you don’t want to drink? You’re worried that I poisoned it, you really…”
The voice she used in the beginning was raised slightly, so that the outside could hear her more or less.
And near the end, her voice suddenly lowered.
“…you really hurt Jiejie’s feelings.” At the end of her sentence, there was an unsuppressable smile in her tone.
Ye Zun, who was hiding in the dark, felt a dull pain in his heart. This was the first time he faced Er-gugu’s true face. All the horrors he had seen about her before were either from the dream-like past that he saw in the eyes of the ghost, or from San-gugu’s few words. They left him with the sense that it was an illusion, and a thought that perhaps everything may not be true.
She walked up to San-gugu on the bed and raised her hand.
San-gugu immediately closed her eyes and did all she could to turn her head, but failed as she was tied up.
The woman smiled sweetly and fakely whispered, “What, do you think Jijie is going to hit you? Honestly, Jiejie likes you so much, why would I do such a thing? Why do you always think of me like this?”
She gently and carefully smoothed out San-gugu’s hair and said with a smile, “You look just like a madman now, I’m so sad ah.”
After she straightened her hair, her eyes suddenly turned and she looked in Ye Zun’s direction.
Ye Zun’s heart sank.
The woman turned around and began to check her surroundings.
“Let me think, San-mei, what are you trying to do? Did you secretly hide a recording device? Or did you have Gu-laolao hide next door, wanting her to hear me say something strange? Oh ya*, I forgot that San-mei is so hateful, they won’t believe you and won’t cooperate with you. There is no way you can do the things you want, and you will never succeed.”
[T/N: like a surprised “oya?”]
She checked every door and drawer very carefully, and very quickly reached Ye Zun’s hiding spot.
The cabinet door opened. The woman paused slightly, the smile on her lips growing higher and higher.
She stretched out her hand. “Ya, found it.”
She held San-mei’s red cell phone and showed it to her with a regretful smile and a slight surprise. “When did you think of hiding your phone here? Although I don’t know the password or how long you’ve been recording, I will be taking the phone away, so you can record it if you want ba.”
Suddenly, she became suspicious again. “This isn’t a cover-up for other recording devices, right?”
She checked the remaining hiding spots one by one. This time she found nothing.
“Ai, San-mei, you really don’t have a brain at all. But if you were smarter, our game would’ve also been very fun. It’s not even difficult to deal with me ah, why haven’t you ever gained the upper hand once?”
She sat at San-gugu’s bedside, lying down next to her. Like talking to a sister just before going to bed, she whispered into her ear, intimate yet creepy.
“Can you guess what I’m going to do next? I’m going to send you to a mental hospital and turn you into a real madman, so that no one will believe your words. Are you going to do everything possible to escape? Then you just wait ba, as long as you dare to do this, you will find a picture of the whole family’s tragic deaths. The headlines in the media will all say that a mental patient escaped from the hospital to return home, taking revenge and massacring a family of three, the grandparent and children hahahahahaha…”
Her voice was very small, with the certainty that even if there was a recording device that slipped through the net, it would not be able to capture her. “I’ll tell you a secret, I am being driven away by that old thing on purpose, this way, I will have an alibi la. Meimei, you are so good, thank you. But, I didn’t do anything wrong ba, Baba’s money is my money, this house is mine, anyone who gets in my way is a robber. It’s only natural for the owner to kill the robber who breaks into the house ba.”
San-gugu made some wu wu sounds, looking terrified and wrathful.
Er-gugu stood up and straightened her clothes, looking at the mirror in the room and carefully touching the makeup on her face. Then she opened the water bottle and walked up to the third aunt. Her hand seemed to tremble suddenly and she splashed some water on her face. The rest was poured on San-gugu.
“Ah, San-mei, what are you doing?”
Seeing her face, San-gugu struggled like a crazed lunatic and tried to attack her, screaming ahhhhhh. But with her body restrained, she couldn’t do anything.
Very quickly, several people rushed in from outside the door.
It was Er-gufu and a few hired workers.
“What’s going on? What happened?”
Er-gugu looked like she was in shock, caressing her heart with lingering fears. “I wanted to help San-mei drink water, but she suddenly…”
San-gugu on the bed was enraged, glaring at her viciously like a mad dog biting a human.
Er-gugu frowned and leaned into the man’s arms in fear, with a smug and disdainful curl at the corners of her mouth and her eyes. Her voice seemed to be very sad as she said, “How did San-mei become like this? We were obviously very good when we were kids ah. She used to be better than me in everything, she studied better than me, looked better than me, her interactions with boys were also better than mine. You were even planning to go on a blind date with her at first. Since we got married, the way she looks at me has changed day by day. Could it be that she thinks I stole you from her?”
Her makeup-done appearance and body shape were very strong, clashing against her weak and pitiful look, but she pulled it off very well.
The man didn’t seem to notice it and hugged her to comfort him, but when he heard her mention him, he was slightly embarrassed. “There is nothing between her and I, don’t talk nonsense about these things at this time.”
The man let her free from his arms and started to make a call. “We can’t, she’s too aggressive, I should press the hospital first to send her away ba.”
“Yi, why isn’t Chengting here?” Er-gugu weaved around the crowd and suddenly brought this up.
The little boy at the door looked at her innocently. “Didi is sleepy, I let him go to sleep first. Does Gugu need him for something? Do you want me to go upstairs and wake him up?”
The second aunt smiled. “No need, no need.”
The little boy replied “oh”. He briefly looked at Gu-laolao and asked curiously, “San-gugu suddenly became sick, what did Er-gugu say to her? Everyone said that the patient should not be stimulated. Is Er-gugu stimulating the patient?”
The woman’s expression froze. There was no aggression, just an awkward embarrassment, like a vulnerable thing who knew that had done something wrong and was afraid. “I wanted to feed her water.”
Her attitude was as if she had taken the first step to be humble, like she had gotten no time to give an excuse before being accused by others. It made people feel bad about blaming her, and they would instead feel pity for her.
“Forget it,” Gu-laolao said, “it’s best if you don’t see her alone.”
The little boy looked at her innocently. “Gugu, are you two not leaving tonight?”
The woman looked at Gu-laolao, as if waiting for the other person to decide whether she should leave or stay. There was no embarrassment nor a blow to her self-esteem.
Gu-laolao avoided her eyes.
Gufu was a little embarrassed. “The ambulance will be here soon. We will leave as soon as it comes.”
This time, the hospital staff and the ambulance arrived quickly.
San-gugu’s reaction was very strong but she was injected with a sedative. With the help of the hired workers, she was sent to the ambulance downstairs.
“Er-gugu, goodbye.” The little boy waved obediently.
The woman said without thinking, “The one in the car is your San-gugu.”
“I know ah.”
Their heads turned. The workers brought the suitcases down.
The little boy blinked innocently. “After San-gugu left, it’s Er-gugu’s turn to leave.”
This time, Er-gufu didn’t say a word. Even the driver had driven out of the garage.
He said goodbye to the children and Gu-laolao politely, then opened the car door and gestured for his wife to get in the car.
The woman reluctantly got into the car. It seemed like she wanted to stay until the very last moment.
Ye Zun stood upstairs, watching the second aunt and uncle’s car leave the house.
It wasn’t until the black car slowly left his field of vision that Ye Zun felt the dark cloud over his head dissipate a little.
But he didn’t completely relax, because this woman must have a way to escape.
In order not to expose himself, Ye Zun had pushed the phone out in a hurry. However, once the woman went back and unlocked the phone, if she was smart enough to figure out when the recording started, it would not be difficult to work out that there was another person in the room at the time.
Sooner or later, her thoughts will also stop on Ye Zun.
Perhaps it was as she said, that those reluctant delays were all an act, and her original intention was to leave this place to create an alibi for herself.
He shouldn’t have let her be allowed to leave the house. If she wasn’t around, there would be more variables.
“Little mute, it’s time to sleep.”
The little boy stood behind Ye Zun with a faint gentleness.
Ye Zun walked up to him and briefly looked at their surroundings.
——Cameras.
“Already taken down.”
The little boy turned his head to motion behind him, and sure enough, he saw many hired workers walking around.
Ye Zun breathed a sigh of relief, but felt a heavier pressure weighing on his heart.
Maybe there was an advantage in not dismantling it. It was possible to check to see if someone had done bad things through surveillance. Monitoring was not a scary thing, what was scary is what the people behind the cameras want to do with the footage.
“The sky is almost dark, let’s go wash up and go to sleep ba.”
Ye Zun nodded, and when he looked up, he saw the twin little girls standing at the corner of the stairwell, the two of them holding hands. His blood instantly turned cold.
Gu-laolao was still talking to the hired aunt in the living room downstairs.
There were also workers walking around.
Two little girls stood in the shadow of the stairs behind the crowd. The older sister pursed her lips quietly, and the younger girl wore an innocent smile on her face. Against the pale face and the dreary background, this smile carried some deceit and evil.
A blink of an eye, and they ran upstairs.
“What are you looking at?” The little boy turned his head back and followed his gaze. It seemed as if he didn’t see anything, so he asked out of curiosity with a look of indifference.
Ye Zun shook his head.
The little boy’s fingers landed on his shoulder, caressing. “Don’t be scared, Fox-gege will protect you.”
Ye Zun pursed his lips, wanting to smile at him, but he couldn’t.
That night, instead of sleeping with the little boy, he went back to his room on the fifth floor.
Ye Zun waited for a while. As he suspected, a child’s voice came from outside the door.
Bouncing and jumping like playing hopscotch, an eerie laughter.
Five cards slipped in from under the door.
“The game has started, Gege, draw one ba.”
Ye Zun didn’t know what the little girl outside the door was. If she was the younger sister of the twins, then she would be the second aunt, but no matter how scary Er-gugu was, she was still a living person.
Or could it be, the younger sister of the twins died even earlier, and the current Er-gugu took her place?
Or perhaps, she is the embodied ghost of Er-gugu’s heart.
Ye Zun looked at the blood-red backs of the five cards and chose the first one.
He turned it over. On the card, there was a person hanging upside down on a cross. Beneath the person, there was a spiral staircase leading to an endless darkness.
“Ahhhhh!” The little girl screamed, although it also seemed like she was covering her mouth and snickering. “Someone’s gonna get killed, someone’s gonna get killed*! Shh! Shh! Don’t make a sound, you must not go out when the sky is dark.”
[T/N: 要杀人了, more literally, ‘(they’re) going to kill’, but you’ll see why I chose this wording in the future]
Ye Zun said, “Who are you? Who is she? What is your relationship with her?”
He opened the door. There was nothing outside, only darkness.
Ye Zun walked out of the room and all the way to the door of the little boy’s room. He knocked.
The door opened, and the little boy looked at him warmly.
Ye Zun pulled his hand and looked firmly into his eyes.
——Help me!
They went to the second floor together and knocked on Gu-laolao’s door.
Gu-laolao was awake and looked at them in surprise.
“Why isn’t Baobao sleeping yet? Do you want Nainai to stay with you?”
The little boy said, “I heard it, what San-gug said is true. Er-gugu told San-gugu that if she dares to escape from the hospital, she will kill the three of us, and put the blame on San-gugu. She also said that all the money in the family should belong to her alone, we are robbers, and we deserve to be killed.”
Gu-laolao looked at him fixedly. Her expression grew more shocked and complicated by the second.
Er-gugu was indeed poisonous and terrifying, but she really wasn’t impossible to deal with. San-gugu failed because she was too kind and too incompetent. She was deceived by that woman since she was a child, and was provoked into isolation from everyone with the woman’s words, and her personality was forced to become weird and excessively direct.
Everyone didn’t trust her and didn’t like her, but she knew the truth that everyone else didn’t know. The more she said that went against everyone’s perception, the less everyone would believe her.
However, as long as someone who is trusted by everyone else says the same thing, it will definitely arouse alarm.
The little boy looked at Gu-laolao, his clear eyes innocently watching. “Baba and Yeye were both killed by Er-gugu, is that true?”
Gu-laolao held both of their hands, her fingers cold and trembling.
“I don’t know, but that woman, I won’t let her even think about entering this home again!”
The little boy looked at their grandma and said what Ye Zun wanted to say, “Let’s not sleep tonight. Nainai, there is a ghost in the room.”
