Varnish

Li Xian frowned, his fingers brushing over the marks before coming to rest at another corner of the desk.

A line of words had been carved there too:

"I'm Dolly, I'm Dolly, I'm Dolly..."

The words repeated over and over, the grooves growing shallower with each repetition until they disappeared beneath a patch of dark red blood.

"Dolly..."

Li Xian murmured the name.

This wasn't the first time the name had appeared. Although the Mistress always called herself "Dolly," the painting she admired every afternoon bore the name "Du Sha."

What was the relationship between these two people? And had the Mistress carved these words?

"There's a newspaper here!"

Liang Pei interrupted Li Xian's thoughts from the other side of the room.

Li Xian walked over and saw Liang Pei taking the newspaper out of a drawer.

Although Liang Pei had called it "a newspaper," it was actually a collection of torn newspaper scraps. It had been ripped into tiny pieces, and the two spent some time piecing it together before reading its contents.

"On September 9, 1998, a fire broke out at a shopping mall, resulting in multiple deaths."

"The sole survivor was a woman surnamed Du, who was near an exit when the incident occurred. However, the intensity of the blaze left Miss Du with extensive burns to her face and body. Her family rushed to the hospital, overcome with grief, stating that today was Miss Du's birthday and that they had never expected such a tragedy..."

There were other reports and advertisements in the newspaper, but none seemed important. The account of the fire took up the most space, its large black headline prominently occupying the center of the page.

The two committed the key details to memory. Liang Pei put the newspaper back into the drawer, and they continued searching the room for useful clues.

Yet no matter how much they rummaged around after that, they found nothing useful. Clothes, pillows, and even bedsheets lay strewn all over the room. There seemed to be nothing else.

The longer they stayed, the more anxious Liang Pei grew. Just as he was about to give up, Li Xian found something in a corner beneath the bed.

It was a clear bottle filled with a colorless liquid. The label near the top had begun to flake and peel, and a thick layer of dust coated the bottle. It seemed to have been left there without even the room's owner noticing it.

Li Xian tried to make out the writing on it, but Liang Pei stopped him. "We're running out of time. We'd better get out of here."

So Li Xian tucked the bottle inside his clothes and took it out of the room.

They shut the iron gate leading to the fourth floor and had just breathed a sigh of relief when familiar footsteps reached their ears-

For the first time, the Mistress had come up to the third floor and appeared before them.

Although she said nothing and even wore her usual perfect smile, the oppressive air around her was unlike anything they had felt before.

Liang Pei shuddered and cautiously addressed the Mistress:

"W-what brings you upstairs?"

"I came to see whether any little rats had slipped somewhere they shouldn't while I was away..."

The Mistress stared intently at Li Xian, a hint of excitement and feverish eagerness in her eyes.

"Why are you holding your hands behind your back? Have you taken something... something you shouldn't have?"

The Mistress suddenly grabbed Li Xian's arm and wrenched it out from behind his back!

Caught off guard, Li Xian stumbled under her pull. But the palm she had forced into view...

Was empty.

The Mistress narrowed her eyes and slowly circled Li Xian, her fingers occasionally brushing his waist and pockets.

Still, she found nothing.

She turned her gaze to Liang Pei.

Liang Pei swallowed, tense as he felt the Mistress circling him.

Again, there was nothing.

A crack appeared in the Mistress's smile. Barely maintaining her composure, she said, "My sincerest apologies. It seems I misunderstood my two guests."

"It's all right."

Li Xian remained perfectly calm.

In the end, the Mistress could only cast one last reluctant glance at Li Xian before turning and going downstairs.

Once he was certain she had left, Li Xian crouched and reached through the iron bars-

He retrieved the bottle of liquid from the corner behind them.

[Holy shit, that was close.]

[When the Mistress was circling the streamer, all she had to do was turn her head and she'd have seen the bottle in the corner.]

[Good thing she was so focused on them that she never glanced behind the bars.]

In truth, Li Xian hadn't been confident either. But with no time to spare, he could only hide the bottle there. Only after it went undiscovered did he breathe a sigh of relief.

The two went to Li Xian's room, intending to start sorting through their clues.

To Liang Pei's surprise, Song Qingzhang was already there.

Song Qingzhang greeted them. "Everything okay?"

Li Xian said, "We're fine. Did you find anything?"

Song Qingzhang nodded and pulled a small brush out from inside his clothes.

Liang Pei had been bewildered ever since he entered the room. "Where... where did you find that?"

"Li Xian said he had something to do today and couldn't take me along, so he told me to find a chance to take down the paintings on this floor one by one and check whether there was anything behind them. I found this brush behind a painting."

Although Song Qingzhang hadn't known what Li Xian was going to do, he had agreed anyway. Li Xian had also specifically told him not to look into the portraits' eyes while taking them down.

"And you actually did it?" Liang Pei asked, stunned.

Those paintings had killed people. Forget touching them-most people wouldn't even dare look at them, would they?

Song Qingzhang nodded. "Li Xian said he took a painting down last night and even dropped it. It was fine."

Liang Pei said, "..."

Was he just too much of a coward?

"So where did you..." Song Qingzhang broke off halfway through his question when he noticed the bottle in Li Xian's hand. He blurted out, "Where did you find that? Isn't that varnish?"

Li Xian paused. "You know what this is?"

Song Qingzhang took the bottle from Li Xian and carefully examined the peeling label. "Yes, it's varnish."

Liang Pei asked, "What's varnish?"

"It's a liquid you apply to a finished oil painting to protect it from oxidation and dust... It also makes the painting look shinier."

Li Xian seemed to have caught onto something. He took the brush from Song Qingzhang and touched its bristles. A thin layer of transparent liquid coated his fingertip.

"What about this? Is this varnish too?"

Li Xian held his fingertip out to Song Qingzhang, who rubbed the liquid on Li Xian's finger with the pad of his own before belatedly realizing that wasn't necessary:

"Ahem. You can just give me the brush."

Song Qingzhang took the brush and compared it with the liquid in the bottle before confirming, "Yes."

"But how does that help us?" Liang Pei asked.

By then, Li Xian already had an answer in mind. With practiced ease, he took a painting down in the hallway and carried it back into the room.