Chapter 40: Suicide Note (1/2)

*Disclaimer: This chapter has strong themes that may trigger you when you read it. Please read with caution.*

The scraps of paper with writings on them were torn to shreds, as though someone had deliberately ripped them up and didn’t want anyone to find out what was written on it.

Bai Yan wasted some time to put together the pieces of paper.

Luckily, although there were a lot of pieces, it didn’t affect the legibility of the content on the paper. When the pieces were completely assembled into one full sheet, Bai Yan finally realized that this was a suicide note.

‘My greatest crime was being alive.’

‘I shouldn’t have lived. I shouldn’t be back. When I became aware of this, it was already far too late. Even if I’ve already decided to die, it won’t solve things.’

‘Kind-hearted person, I don’t know who you are, but when you set your eyes upon this letter, I have long been dead. May I trouble you to help me handle my corpse or simply notify the police. I’m still bothering others even after my death and could only bring everyone more misery. My life is a complete and utter joke.’

‘Even after death, people like me have endless troubles. Please settle my estate according to this will. I have a haunted house in my name, please help me sort out my employees’ wages and ask them to find new jobs. As for my other worldly possessions, please make sure that they will all be donated to charity. Don’t set anything aside for my parents or brother. If you want to inherit my things, then you can take as much as you like. But, I must warn you, being involved with me isn’t a good thing.’

“I see your point, but it may not necessarily be correct. The lady boss wants to donate her assets to charity, but her family might not agree with her decision.”

Bai Yan intentionally refrained from calling out her name in the room where Du Zhaodi died, to not stir the fire and get burnt, “I have another scenario in mind. Since she asked the person who found the suicide note to leave the country, this strange prophetic warning sounds like it came from a cult. She mentioned that nothing good could come from getting involved with her, so could it be that she was the source of this curse?”

“Her surname ‘Du’ sounds like it values men more than women, so she must have encountered some misfortune within her family that may have partially led to her commit suicide.” Su Yize swallowed the woman’s name down his throat, thinking bitterly and then frowning, “But no matter how she died, the suicide note must be carrying the curse with it, and since we’re clearly going against a dead person’s wishes, like continuing to open the haunted house, we may suffer a terrible fate in here.”

“Perhaps.” But, Bai Yan still believed that this wasn’t the case.

However, even though the suicide note implied a lot of things, they still didn’t know much about the situation, so there was only so much that they could decipher.

There was one thing for sure, Du Zhoadi was a woman who kept a room full of secrets. She harbored away numerous terrifying mysteries that could even affect the game’s current world.

Nevertheless, Bai Yan and Su Yize had nothing to do with this. They were players. They didn’t need to be involved with the matters of life and death in this world. Both of them only needed to survive this level using the game’s clues and leave. Du Zhaodi’s story was barely a story in their eyes. If it didn’t help them escape the haunted house, it didn’t hold any value.

They left the suicide note on the table and didn’t want to touch it again.

When they were laying out the suicide note, Wang Ziwen and Xu Xiaojing found a plastic mannequin under the bed, leading for Xu Xiaojing to make a big fuss over nothing.

Although the two men had a deep understanding of the girl’s timidity, this was still the room where Du Zhaodi died, so they insisted on looking at what they found and walked towards the bed. As they were walking closer, they could see Wang Ziwen drag the plastic mannequin out.

“I say… This doesn’t look good. With just a glance, I can already tell that the boss was just a profiteer and invested all of his money on the female ghost at the entrance.” Wang Ziwen ridiculed, “This plastic mannequin’s eyes aren’t even painted on. Besides the blood on the body, who would be scared by this? Of course, Xiaojing, you’re an exception. You’re the type that haunted house owners love the most.”

Ghosts from haunted houses that suddenly pop out of nowhere will give anyone a good scare. But now that she could clearly see the plastic mannequin, Xu Xiaojing wasn’t frightened anymore. She lowered her head, feeling completely embarrassed due to the two strangers in front of her.

“Anyway, what did you find over there? Xiaojing and I didn’t see a key by the bed area. We even took out the pillows from the pillow cases and lifted the mattress but still didn’t find anything. There was nothing outside nor inside the landscape painting as well.” Wu Ziwen said, “Adding together both rooms, we only have 20 minutes to solve them. Right now, we’ve already used up 7 minutes. If you found any clues, tell us. I don’t want the guide to come in here and help solve the puzzle, that would only ruin the experience of the game.”

“We saw a suicide note that was torn apart, but there wasn’t anything written about the location of the key.” Bai Yan tried to urge Wang Ziwen to take a look at the suicide note. Maybe a born and bred NPC like her would know something, “The suicide note is on the table. You can take a look if you want and spot some clues while you’re at it.”

“A torn up suicide note? There’s no way someone really died in this room.” Wang Ziwen’s eyes opened wide, “When I was rummaging through the bed, I found some crushed insect eggs as well as some maggots crawling about. At first, I thought that the staff was just neglecting their cleaning responsibilities, but now that I look at it, this bed seems as though it belonged to a dead person. The fly eggs on it haven’t even been cleaned up yet.”