At noon, Mrs. Caster was nowhere to be seen. There were only seven of them at the dining table.
Everyone was disappointed, having wanted to ask Mrs. Caster about Stock.
They had been unable to explore the villa yesterday because of Phil, and now Stock had disappeared. A sense of foreboding hung over them all.
Bailey strongly insisted that they search the villa thoroughly now rather than wait until night. He refused to believe a living person could be hidden so perfectly.
A few people supported him, but more of them wanted to wait and see.
After all, it was all speculation. Although the head chef was highly suspicious, Annie pointed out that if he really had done it, why would he admit it of his own accord? Wouldn't that be confessing without being pressed?
Annie was using a normal person's logic to guess what Xie Qi was thinking, and the others felt she had a point.
What murderer wouldn't keep the fact that they had killed someone well hidden? Unless they were mentally unstable, who would go around telling people they had done it?
"Even if he didn't kill him, he must know something about Stock's disappearance!"
Bailey had regained his composure. He pushed up his glasses, his gaze sharp.
He turned to the distracted Brussels. "It'll probably be very risky for you to meet him tonight. How about we follow behind you? If anything seems wrong, run immediately."
"What? You want me to run away?"
Brussels hadn't heard anything else, only the part about running away.
"Don't take me for a weakling like you. I could take on three guys like that chef by myself!"
Apparently, he had quietly assessed both sides' fighting strength, or he wouldn't have arrived at the number three.
Seeing that he wouldn't listen, Bailey was at a loss for words.
If this man wanted to court death, no one could stop him. They weren't close anyway, so there was no point saying more.
Ignoring the Black man who had nothing going for him but his physique, Bailey turned to Song Nan, who could keep up with his train of thought. "What should we do? Search the villa now, or wait until tonight and follow the head chef?"
Song Nan had been thinking it over too, her phoenix eyes calm as still water.
"Let's not rush. First, we need to determine whether Stock has disappeared or died. Given the amount of blood in that room upstairs, I lean toward him being dead. But why would anyone need to take a corpse away? And after taking it, why leave all that blood on the floor without cleaning it up? Even if they wanted to make it look like he'd disappeared, that pool of blood is far too conspicuous."
Saul chimed in. "I find it suspicious too. No matter how I look at it, I can't understand what the killer was trying to do."
"Maybe the killer just wants to make us suspicious and drive us into a panic?" Annie offered her view from a novelist's perspective.
"Huh? If that's true, the killer must be seriously twisted. How did you even come up with that?"
Seeing that Brussels disagreed with her and was even turning his suspicions on her,
Annie looked alarmed and clasped her hands to her chest. "I-I just thought of it all of a sudden..."
"That's enough! Don't scare her. Just because you have no brains, does that mean no one else is allowed to think?" Song Nan stepped forward, shielding Annie behind her.
"Who are you calling brainless, you bitch?"
Seeing that they were about to start arguing again, Bailey and Saul hurried forward to smooth things over.
Phil sat alone to one side. Because of what he had said during the game earlier, everyone was ostracizing him now.
Yet he looked completely at ease, as though they weren't ostracizing him, but he alone was ostracizing the whole group.
Phil's gaze swept over the six of them one by one, finally settling on Brussels.
He lowered his head and gave a short laugh. Who knew what he was thinking of?
Only Annie heard him laugh and turned to look at him.
Their eyes met only briefly. If the livestream hadn't had a replay function, even the viewers wouldn't have noticed.
[Something's off, something's off. There's something going on between those two.]
[Have they been on good terms from the start? I've seen them standing together several times.]
[I noticed ages ago. Didn't you see that this white-haired guy mouths off at everyone, even the head chef, but he's never mouthed off at this woman?]
[But he hasn't mouthed off at that short-haired woman either. That alone doesn't prove anything, does it?]
[Wow—a domineering rich second-generation heir and a two-faced witch of a novelist. I ship it!]
[Two-faced witch? What? Is there gossip that even I, a distinguished class B citizen, haven't heard?]
[I suggest switching the camera to Annie's room tonight. You'll get to see all kinds of ways to die. (doge)]
Everyone had their own thoughts, making it difficult to reach an agreement on anything.
Bailey still wanted to search the villa, but the others were afraid of alerting the enemy and didn't agree to start now.
He was also afraid of running into those strange servants alone, so he agreed that they would come out at night and follow Brussels together.
As for Brussels's protests, no one cared.
They weren't genuinely concerned for his life. It was just that each person they lost meant less fighting strength, and in this strange villa, it was best not to lose anyone else.
Before going back upstairs, Saul and Bailey spent a long time trying the front door and confirmed that it was locked. They couldn't open it with their own strength.
This cast another shadow over their already worried minds.
Xie Qi hadn't said when he would come for Brussels that night, so they agreed that someone had to stand guard by a door each hour, listening carefully for sounds in the corridor outside.
Once the head chef knocked on Brussels's door and was about to take him away, the person on guard would call the others out one by one.
They also told Brussels to shout if the head chef tried to hurt him, and they would immediately open their doors and rush out.
Feeling that he was being treated like a woman, Brussels looked displeased. He neither agreed nor refused, and the others assumed he was too proud to admit it.
With their plan of action settled, everyone went back to their rooms.
Time passed by, second by second.
During that time, each person stood guard by their door at the appointed time, and gradually it grew to ten o'clock.
Song Nan was on guard by her door now. With her ear pressed against it and her eyelids lowered, she stood as motionless as a statue.
Suddenly, she heard footsteps.
They fell in a steady rhythm. Tap, tap, tap—
The footsteps paused for a moment as they passed her door.
Song Nan's heart leaped, then began pounding furiously.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The rhythm of her heartbeat merged with the footsteps, though one grew louder while the other faded.
As the footsteps receded, Song Nan let out a long breath.
Only as she relaxed did she realize she had been holding her breath the whole time, and her back was covered in cold sweat.
A faint click of a lock came from diagonally across the corridor. Song Nan realized they had been wrong: the head chef had a key to every door and could catch them off guard without knocking.
She had thought opening the door like that would cause a confrontation between Brussels and the head chef, but things didn't go as Song Nan expected.
Brussels was like an obedient child. Before long, there were two people coming out.
Once the corridor fell quiet again, Song Nan steadied her heartbeat.
Suddenly, she remembered the carpet laid along the corridor.
Song Nan had tried it herself. People walking on it made almost no sound—
Then what had she heard?
After an unknown length of time, she slowly rose and opened the door.
She looked down at the spot in front of her door where the carpet didn't reach.
After a long silence, she began knocking on the doors one by one.