Chapter 2: Diary (1/2)

Once Bai Yan finished looking through the explanations, 30 seconds had already passed.

On the upper right-hand corner of the phone, an hourglass icon appeared, displaying a countdown beneath it.

30 minutes may seem like a lot of time, but the problem was that no one knew how many pieces were needed to complete the jigsaw puzzle.

Time was pressed, so Bai Yan did not try to strike up a conversation with the group of players he was randomly matched up with. He walked towards the desk behind him and pulled open a drawer to inspect.

Seeing someone leave, the other players also no longer had the heart to speak, and one after another, everyone left their seats, each finding their respective places to search through.

The desk Bai Yan was searching for had two drawers. He originally thought that these jigsaw puzzles were hard to find. But unexpectedly, when he opened the second drawer, he discovered an unsolved puzzle, silently laying inside the drawer.

“The game’s difficulty level was shown to be ‘Easy,’ but was it this easy?”

Bai Yan swept a look across the base of the puzzle. The one he found was a 7×9 jigsaw puzzle with a total of 63 pieces.

On top of the table, aside from the puzzle that he had just placed, was a messy pile of stationery.

Discarded drawings, broken pieces of oil pastels, and leftover food were piled on top of the desk.

Bai Yan picked up a piece of drawing paper to examine carefully and only saw a big majority of it colored black by a pencil. And at the center of the paper, four eerily smiling people were colored in with crayon.

“There are two people who are evidently taller than the other two. This is probably a drawing of  parents with their two children, a family of four?”

The stickmen on the paper looked clumsily drawn on as if a child had scrawled it.

Based on the outlines of the drawing, Bai Yan concluded that the drawing was done by an elementary student. He flipped the paper over and discovered two lines of words written on the back.

[First Grade Second Class, Xin Meng.]

“It really was by an elementary school student. Xin Meng. Judging by the name, she’s probably a girl.” He said to himself.

To make sure that he didn’t overlook any information, Bai Yan examined the other drawings. Seeing that the contents of the other drawings were more or less the same, he settled the drawings on the table and began to rummage through the schoolbag sitting on the chair in front of the desk.

The schoolbag on top of the chair was bright pink, even having cute cartoons printed on top of it.

Inside the bag were books on literature, mathematics, and other subjects, as well as a couple of workbooks.

Bai Yan roughly flipped through the books and found that aside from the textbooks having Xin Meng’s name written on them, they were completely pristine and clean without any traces of them being used.

In the end, Bai Yan had managed to find a diary hidden in the pocket of the school bag which also had Xin Meng’s big-name crookedly scribbled on the cover.

Judging from the bloodstains on the school bag, the little girl called Xin Meng had an inauspicious fate.

Since the person involved was already dead, their rights to privacy were null and void.

Thus, Bai Yan opened the diary and found events written in disjointed——

“April 16, Clear Weather, Today, Xiao Hua and Huan Huan did not come to class. Going to school was boring, I don’t want to go to school.”

“May 2, Cloudy Weather, Little brother disappeared. Father and mother are sad. I am also sad.”

“May 19, Cloudy Weather, We still haven’t found little brother. Father and mother are afraid that I would also go missing, so they want me to stay at home and not attend school, but I want to go to school to play with Xiao Hua and Huan Huan.”

“May 28, Cloudy Weather, Father and mother did not go to work. Their faces were twisted in a frown everyday, and when I asked them why, they would turn even more upset. Mother hugged me as she cried nonstop, she’s probably missing little brother. I am also missing little brother.”

“July 1, Cloudy Weather, Father had disappeared. Mother cried all day long. I had also been crying because I couldn’t find father anymore.”

“July 6, Clear Weather, Mother went off to buy some items, but she didn’t come back. Mother had also disappeared. I’m so scared, I don’t dare go out. I shut the door and decided to wait for mother.”

“July 7, Cloudy Weather, Mother hadn’t returned.”

“July 8, Cloudy Weather, Mother still hadn’t returned.”