Schrödinger's Deduction

Red light flickered, bathing half of Yu Xing's arm in crimson. His gaze shifted, and by the candlelight, he saw a gaping wound in the abdomen of the corpse on the iron bed.

The long, bloody gash had been hastily stitched up with needle and thread. The wound looked gruesome.

"This one has one too..." Yu Xing moved to the other corpses and gave them a quick look, ignoring their eerie, following stares. "This one too... So Corpse Carnival means they all got together to slit their own stomachs."

It was a good thing the corpses couldn't move. Otherwise, they would've beaten this insufferable guy to death.

Recalling what the note said, Yu Xing understood. The bedroom key must have been stitched inside one of the corpses' stomachs.

One chance in twenty-three?

With that thought, Yu Xing began looking for any special markings on the corpses.

If there were none, then he could probably pick open every corpse's wound and search at his leisure. If there were, he would have to be careful not to choose the wrong one, or something could easily go wrong.

The note hadn't explained this. Yu Xing would have to keep an eye out for it himself.

He'd heard some people say that the death rate in Persona Mask assessment games was relatively low, only around 30%. Many puzzles had more than one solution. The system mainly used players' choices to determine their personality tendencies.

Take the water tank, for example. If he hadn't gotten the key from the microwave, he could've smashed it open with enough strength and still found the clues that followed.

Just as Yu Xing was studying the corpses, footsteps wandered past behind him.

He looked up and caught only a glimpse of a red candle darting by.

"Something that can move?" He turned and counted the red candles in the hall. There were still twenty-three, and they were all in the right places.

"So that extra one just now... was the killer."

Now that was strange.

The killer, who'd only appeared in the note but never in person, had finally decided to show himself?

Knock, knock.

Suddenly, the iron bed in front of him rapped twice.

Knock, knock, knock.

The sound came in a steady rhythm, as if someone were tapping on it.

Following the bed frame, Yu Xing turned his gaze beneath the bed...

There was no one there.

Only half a burnt-out candle lay quietly underneath.

"Another trick to scare me..." Yu Xing stared calmly at the candle for a while. After a long moment, he narrowed his eyes.

Something felt strange... His stomach was itchy.

And it felt as though something inside was pressing against him, making him uncomfortable.

"Oh, wow." He lifted the hem of his shirt. Sure enough, a horribly amateurish stitch wound had appeared on his abdomen.

It hadn't been there before... But it didn't hurt.

He reached out to touch it. The thread felt completely different from his skin, and a thoughtful look flashed in his eyes.

"The killer captured the Doctor but didn't kill him outright. He's making the Doctor play this game instead, so his goal must be more than just revenge."

"He keeps trying to make the Doctor afraid."

"For example, the key's sewn into a human body, but the killer never said whether it was sewn into a corpse or a living person. Now that a stitched wound has appeared on my stomach, isn't that a hint that the key is inside me?"

"You want me to mutilate myself?" Yu Xing sneered. "How naive."

From what he could feel, he was certain there really was a key inside his stomach. He could take it out whenever he wanted.

And he wasn't afraid of getting hurt.

But... he simply didn't want to do what the killer wanted.

Players were already at a disadvantage in deduction games. Forced injuries like "scripted deaths" didn't happen, so there had to be a way to solve this puzzle without getting hurt.

Ignoring the conspicuous wound on his abdomen, he used the scalpel to cut the stitches on the corpse in front of him. Before he could reach inside, the corpse abruptly sat up.

"Zombie alert?" Yu Xing stepped back and watched the corpse's movements with interest.

The corpse trembled all over, shaking its candle loose. Two drops of scalding red wax fell onto the floor.

Then the corpse rolled over and dropped to the floor with a dull thud. In the pose of Kayako from a classic Japanese horror movie, it crawled toward Yu Xing.

"Uh... Don't be mad. Why don't you lie still, and I'll sew you back up? I'd probably do a neater job than whoever did this." Yu Xing asked tentatively.

The corpse, naturally, didn't respond.

Because of rigor mortis, bending its limbs was extremely difficult. It was plenty creepy, but that also made it crawl at a painfully slow pace. Yu Xing figured he could walk backward faster than it.

"Tsk... Looks like the key isn't in this corpse. So this is the punishment for choosing wrong?"

Watching the thing crawl toward him, Yu Xing moved away and thought it over. He couldn't test them one by one, then. One was manageable, but if he got unlucky and chose wrong twenty-two times in a row, this place would turn into The Walking Dead.

He wondered how strong the corpse was, and if he could "beat the ghost out of it" by physical means. Yu Xing considered giving it a poke to find out.

Tap, tap, tap...

Footsteps passed by him again, disappearing without a trace in the blink of an eye. As they went by, it seemed they blew a cold breath against Yu Xing's neck.

Yu Xing raised an eyebrow. Was the killer taunting him?

He gave up on messing with the corpse and glanced elsewhere.

He remembered now. There was another place on the human body where it could be found.

This was a freebie.

Two minutes later, the power came back on. The lights in the hall, kitchen, toilet, and dissection room flickered to life, bathing the entire building in a "peaceful" glow.

Yu Xing looked at the frozen heart he'd cut in half, and at the golden key in its center. He felt a little wistful. "No hard feelings. I didn't mean to break your heart..."

The refrigerator door stood wide open, and the freezer had been pulled out. On the cutting board lay a pitifully dismembered large intestine. Yu Xing rolled up his sleeves and put the heart back in the freezer, keeping only the golden key in his hand.

He'd just thought that the dissection room and the refrigerator also contained "human bodies," and that the key could have been placed in either of them.

There were too many jars in the dissection room, and a corpse was crawling after him. It wasn't convenient, so he'd gone to the kitchen first.

Since the corpses outside all had wounds on their abdomens, he'd started with the large intestine. When he didn't find the key, he'd cut open the heart.

Sure enough...

He didn't need to be chased by more than twenty corpses or perform a self-disembowelment. He could pass without getting hurt. It all depended on whether the player thought of it.

The instant he saw the golden key, the power came back on. At the same time, the wound on his body and the strange feeling inside his stomach disappeared, as if they'd never been there.

This was a technique that could be used in some deduction games. Someone had mentioned it to him once or twice, saying the idea came from "Schrödinger's Cat."

—If he took the key from his own stomach, then there definitely wouldn't be a key in the heart.

If he knew there was a key in his stomach but didn't take it, then it was only a "possibility." It could be explained away as an illusion or by any number of other things, leaving open the chance that the heart contained the key.

If he left room for the system to act, it would help the player survive with a certain probability, depending on the purpose of the deduction. That probability was greatly magnified in Persona Mask assessment games, since the point of this deduction was assessment, not survival.

Yu Xing left the kitchen with the key. Once the lights were on, the hall looked just as it had at the beginning. There were no corpses, no candles, and not even the poor little thing crawling on the floor.

He headed for the locked door, passing the dissection room on the way. He went inside to check the time.

There was still plenty of time left on the countdown.

The bedroom was to the left of the hall. Its door was set into the wall and secured with a heavy lock.

Yu Xing inspected it carefully. The dark brown wooden door was thick and solid, its coldness radiating a subtle air of resistance.

He unlocked the door and pushed it open a crack—

In the gap, a person about as tall as him was pressed into the corner, staring at him without blinking!

"Oh, you must be—" Yu Xing hadn't finished his polite greeting when the figure vanished without a sound. When he tried to recall its features, its face seemed indistinct. He couldn't remember a single detail.

"Well, well~ You've brought me all the way home, and now you're shy?" Yu Xing put on a coy act, then used his leg to shove the door open with a clever bit of leverage, gripping the scalpel tightly in his right hand.

In case it was a classic door-opening attack—

Mm, no attack.

Unexpectedly, the bedroom looked completely different from the rest of the place. Its walls were white, the decorations were in understated metallic tones, and stylish knickknacks were scattered everywhere. A potted plant sat in the corner.

Most outrageous of all, there was a large window, covered by pale green curtains. A hint of sunlight shone through them.

The figure was gone.

Yu Xing turned around and closed the door before walking over to the window and pulling back the curtains. He immediately examined the frame.

He pushed on it, but it didn't budge. The window appeared to have been welded shut.

Only after confirming that the figure hadn't left through it did Yu Xing look outside.

There really was a view.

It looked like it was nearly noon. On the street outside, passersby in all kinds of clothes hurried along, while the shops lining both sides sold all sorts of things. There were clothing stores and gift shops; it was clearly an upscale neighborhood.

But the window kept all the sounds of the outside world out. The room remained silent.

Yu Xing soon noticed something wrong. He was standing by the window, looking out at a view that was somehow from above.

He estimated the height... The place where the killer was hiding had to be at least five stories up!

"The logic doesn't add up. I could accept this place being in the suburbs or underground, but it wouldn't make sense for it to be this high up." Yu Xing lowered his head in thought. The bedroom and its window had opened up a passage in what had been a closed-off environment. Putting that together with what he'd deduced about the killer's personality and state of mind, an idea came to him.

"If that's the case, this should be interesting." Yu Xing curled his lips and stepped away from the window, beginning to examine the bedroom carefully.

The bed was neatly made, and the wardrobe stood against the wall. Beside it was a bookshelf holding more than a hundred books with indistinct titles.

Yu Xing opened the wardrobe and took a look. It was empty.

"Looks like they won't leave me clues that point too obviously in one direction... But it doesn't matter. The lack of clues proves something too. I must be right."

He wasn't disappointed at all. He walked over to the desk, where a thick notebook with a pleasingly textured cover lay. It felt nice to the touch.

When he opened it, Yu Xing found that it was a diary, one with no dates written in it from beginning to end.

[Today, I just finished building this place, my morgue! My secret garden! No one can disturb me here. The thought of the days to come makes me tremble with excitement.]