-Yu Nian's head.
Chu Qingjiu's expression changed when he saw the head. Yu Nian's body had clearly been taken away in a police car, so how had it ended up in Auntie Wang's hands?
"...Ingredients for next week?"
Chu Qingjiu sat on the living room sofa, idly fiddling with the fingertips of his right hand as he muttered to himself.
When he had met Auntie Wang by the elevator, she had said she was going out to buy ingredients for next week. She had also said they were cheaper at that hour.
Yu Nian's body should have been at the police station, yet her head had ended up in Chu Qingjiu's hands, given to him by Auntie Wang.
Did that mean corpses were the ingredients used by Happy Community's residents?
"No, the corpses shouldn't be for the residents to eat. They should be for 'it.'"
Chu Qingjiu quickly dismissed his initial guess, because Auntie Wang had told him that as long as he left the head outside his door, "it" would not come for him.
So the corpses were really meant for "it." It was like paying to ward off disaster: once "it" ate the food the residents prepared, it could no longer trouble them.
When Auntie Wang said, "We're almost out of this week's supply," she must have meant that the food for "it" was running out. That was why she had gone out so late to buy next week's ingredients, maintaining an arrangement in which one side provided food and the other did no harm.
What kind of thing ate corpses?
As Chu Qingjiu pondered this, he stood and walked toward the front door, stopping a meter away.
He lowered his head and shifted his gaze to the gap beneath the door. A little of the corridor's red