"Birthday Deathday": Death Strikes Again

[What's that on the bed...??]

[A corpse that's been dead for who knows how many days. Are you blind?]

[Looks like the stench of the corpse really hit this newbie hard.]

[The person above, go find a corpse that's been lying around for ages and give it a sniff. Then you'll know. You really can't stand it.]

[? Did something sneak in here?]

As the bullet comments bantered, Xu Xi clamped a hand over his nose and mouth and approached the large bed in the middle of the room, fighting the overwhelming urge to vomit.

If this had been him when he first entered the instance, he might have turned and fled in terror—or, more likely, his legs would have given out and left him sprawled on the floor.

But his mental resilience had clearly improved considerably. At least he could now examine the corpse closely, even though it had rotted beyond recognition.

Though its face was unrecognizable, the swollen purple ligature mark around its neck stood out.

Without a doubt, this was Dad Tong's real corpse.

A large wedding photo hung on the wall opposite the bed. The faces of the husband and wife were still blurred as though they had been pixelated.

The question now was, Dad Tong had been found, but where had Mom Tong and Tong Binbin gone?

So far, two rules were clearly known: first, he must not look or turn around; second, he had to knock before opening a door.

The strange noise from the ceiling fan had also been explained. The only remaining mystery seemed to be the sound of chopping in the kitchen.

Now that he had an idea, Xu Xi didn't want to spend another second in the master bedroom. In just a short while, he felt as though the stench had almost marinated him through.

He hurried out of the master bedroom and pulled the door shut behind him. Breathing freely again, he headed to the kitchen, following his train of thought.

He stood in front of the refrigerator, and sure enough, before long, the sound of chopping rang out behind him.

Having experienced this once before, Xu Xi bent over without hesitation and looked back through the gap between his legs. After all, it seemed he could only see the true scene from Tong Binbin's perspective.

As though a scene from the past were replaying, a boy of eight or nine stood on a stool, expressionlessly chopping meat on the cutting board with a boning knife. As he chopped, he murmured, "Hungry... so hungry..."

Thinking of the meat in the refrigerator and the missing Mom Tong, Xu Xi couldn't help swallowing as a stomach-turning guess occurred to him—

Surely all that meat in the refrigerator couldn't be Mom Tong? Had Tong Binbin chopped up his mother and eaten her??

The meat really had smelled strangely foul.

Shuddering, Xu Xi slowly straightened up. Not daring to turn around directly, he could only back out of the kitchen.

Tong Binbin's figure disappeared, and the sound of chopping vanished with him. The kitchen returned to normal.

Xu Xi plopped down on a chair beside the dining table and leaned back, starting to sort through all the clues and his thoughts from beginning to end.

The clues were scattered and jumbled, so he could only sort through them one by one.

First was the strange scribbled picture in the drawing book under the pillow.

The fierce red-faced man represented Dad Tong, who drank heavily and committed domestic violence. The hanging stick figure also represented Dad Tong, who had been hanged from the ceiling fan in the living room.

Next was the conversation between Auntie Wang and Mom Tong at the front door.

Auntie Wang had mentioned hearing the couple making a commotion time and again. She had also pointed out the injury on Mom Tong's forehead and suspected Dad Tong had hit her, but Mom Tong had brushed it off with a denial.

Xu Xi went over the conversation several times and vaguely sensed that something was off.

Later, Auntie Wang had brought up the excessively loud television. Mom Tong said Tong Binbin was watching cartoons and quickly fobbed Auntie Wang off.

He hadn't paid much attention to those two exchanges before, but thinking about it now, was the loud television... covering something up?

All the clues suggested that Dad Tong tended to drink heavily and commit domestic violence, so Xu Xi had always thought Mom Tong was the weaker party. He hadn't connected many things to her.

What if... Mom Tong had actually killed Dad Tong?

That would explain a lot.

He ventured a bold guess.

That day had been Tong Binbin's ninth birthday, but for some unknown reason, the couple had quarreled and even come to blows. In the end, Mom Tong had accidentally—or perhaps deliberately—killed Dad Tong and hanged him from the ceiling fan. For now, Xu Xi assumed she had done it to make it look as though Dad Tong had hanged himself.

But young Tong Binbin had seen it all. Taking the caption into account, Mom Tong had probably offered Tong Binbin a halfhearted reassurance that Dad was only resting because he was tired from work, then told her son she had to go out and would be back soon. In reality, she might have been preparing to flee after killing someone.

Next... came the sight of Tong Binbin chopping meat in the kitchen.

Xu Xi was actually still a little doubtful. Was the meat Tong Binbin had chopped, and the lump of meat in the refrigerator, really Mom Tong?

Assuming it was, Mom Tong's corpse had been found too, though it had been chopped into pieces and stewed into soup.

He didn't know why Tong Binbin had killed Mom Tong or how he had done it. One question remained: where had Tong Binbin gone? Was he dead? If he was, where was his corpse?

He had managed to piece together the instance's background, more or less. As for how to clear it...

Xu Xi still felt that his earlier line of thinking had been right.

The birthday definitely had to be celebrated; he just hadn't fully put himself in a child's perspective.

It was only after seeing Dad Tong's corpse and what he suspected was Mom Tong's that Xu Xi realized what he had overlooked.

What was the point of spending a birthday alone? Of course family had to be there to celebrate it together!

Dad, Mom, and "me."

He really was a genius! Xu Xi thought narcissistically, completely forgetting that it had taken him six deaths to reach this conclusion.

Fighting the overpowering stench and the urge to vomit, Xu Xi carried the corpse from the bedroom and the stew pot holding the frozen meat from the refrigerator out and placed them on chairs beside the dining table.

After shaking off his goosebumps, he repeated the previous steps.

To Xu Xi's astonishment, however, the familiar weakness still came over him after he blew out the candles.

The eighth time.

He was numb.

Xu Xi ruffled his hair in frustration.

Wait, what on earth was still missing?!

What else had he overlooked?

Xu Xi couldn't figure it out, no matter how hard he thought.

He had died of weakness again. Four of his seven deaths had been from the same cause. Could there be something to it?

Sensing that this had to be important, Xu Xi thought back carefully and suddenly realized that the weakness was like being hungry for a long time, with no strength in his body and his vision going dark.

Though he had died many times in this instance, when he summed it up, there had actually only been three ways he had died.

First, he had been crushed to death by the ceiling fan, and Dad Tong had been hanged from that very fan.

Second, he had died by decapitation, while Mom Tong had been chopped into pieces.

Third, he had died of weakness.

Xu Xi made a reasonable guess: could that be how Tong Binbin had died?

In the kitchen, he had heard Tong Binbin's figure murmuring about being hungry. Tong Binbin had probably starved to death!

He had a rough idea of what was still missing from the birthday proceedings.

Eager to verify his guess, Xu Xi climbed out of bed.

This time, he ignored the clues that were no longer useful to him and headed straight for the master bedroom.