Mom's Anniversary 3

The figure wore a black mask and was covered from head to toe.

He lowered the hood of his cloak, revealing a head of black curls.

Then he looked Lu Mi over carefully, sounding pleasantly surprised. "Oh, you really are a cat."

His voice was distinctive. At first, it sounded husky and smoke-roughened, but there was a youthful quality mixed in, like coffee with milk.

Holding him, the masked man walked over to a stone bench in the garden and sat down.

Lu Mi wanted to bite his hand and break free, but after sniffing him again and again, he couldn't detect even a trace of a living person's scent. He didn't dare make any rash moves.

"Actually, I'm not that fond of cats. Sneaky, cunning, always..."

Delighted, Lu Mi waited for him to let go, only to feel a head burrowing into his fluffy belly.

"Always looking so innocent, killing people with cuteness and getting away with it."

Lu Mi: ...

That "Mom" was nothing. This was a real creep.

Apparently, burying his face in a cat while wearing a mask wasn't satisfying enough. After a while, he tried scratching Lu Mi's chin, adjusting his technique whenever Lu Mi seemed uncomfortable.

In the end, Lu Mi couldn't fight his feline instincts. Without even realizing when he had let his guard down, he narrowed his eyes and began to purr.

The masked man looked down at the Tabby Cat in his arms, his eyes curving into a smile.

At the first faint light of dawn, the cold woke Lu Mi.

He had returned to human form and was lying on the grass with a black cloak draped over him.

The masked man was nowhere to be seen.

It's all right, he thought calmly. At least I'm still alive.

But when he lifted the cloak and saw his completely naked body, he clenched his fists in fury.

Since it was still early, Lu Mi wrapped himself in the cloak and slipped quietly back to his room.

After putting on his clothes and catching a little more sleep, he went out into the corridor to check whether Ning Zhuangzhuang was still alive.

At first glance, the corridor was quiet. Every room's door was shut, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Lu Mi passed the room right beside his own, then abruptly stopped after a few steps.

Something's wrong.

He backed up and slowly leaned close to the gap in the door, catching an overpowering smell of blood.

Just then, a voice nearby asked, "Want to go in?"

Lu Mi looked over. Ning Zhuangzhuang was approaching, combing his hair. "I wouldn't recommend it. We still have breakfast to eat."

"What does breakfast have to do with this?"

Ning Zhuangzhuang shrugged. "Whoever's inside is definitely dead. Seeing it will ruin your appetite."

The clock downstairs chimed. It was eight in the morning.

People began getting up one after another, and the corridor grew lively. Amid the footsteps and conversations, a scream suddenly rang out.

"Someone's dead! Someone's dead!!"

A young woman rushed out of one of the rooms, wailing hysterically, her face deathly pale.

Lu Mi frowned, unsure what had happened over there.

Creeeak-

The old door in front of him trembled as it swung all the way open.

Morning light spilled through the window directly opposite him, falling over the blood-soaked carpet and the man slumped against the wardrobe.

His hollow mouth gaped wide-he was the man whose tongue had been cut out last night.

There was a deep, bloody wound in his chest. He appeared to have been stabbed to death.

Lu Mi: ...

"Don't blame me for not warning you if you can't eat later." Ning Zhuangzhuang's expression remained unruffled, as though he was used to this sort of thing.

A crowd had gathered around the young woman, too.

Amid the commotion, the young man called Brother Xu wore a grave expression and demanded sharply, "Tell the truth. Did you two sleep together last night?"

The question nearly drove the young woman to a breakdown. "No! Yes, we're good friends, but no matter how scared we were, we wouldn't dare break the rules. We each slept in our own room, but something still happened to her!"

"She has no reason to lie. Besides..." Lu Mi walked over and pointed at the room that had just opened. "The person in that room slept alone, and he was still killed."

Brother Xu's expression shifted slightly at that.

Despite all the noise just now, not everyone had come out.

Lu Mi opened several doors near his own room in succession. Behind each, he found much the same horrifying scene.

Over the course of a single night, "Mom" had killed five people with a knife.

Brother Xu frowned deeply. "Last night was so quiet..."

With so many people being murdered, there should have been screams and sounds of struggle.

A young man crouched down, hugging his arms, on the verge of breaking down. "We get killed even when we follow the rules. This game clearly just wants us dead!"

The young man had very dark skin. The temperature had dropped several degrees today, yet he wore only a short-sleeved shirt. Cold and terrified, he couldn't stop shaking.

He tugged at Lu Mi's sleeve beside him. "Hey, man, do you have a spare jacket? I'd just finished a vacation on a tropical island. I fell asleep on the plane and ended up here. I'm freezing to death."

Remembering that his jacket was still in the bathroom, Lu Mi went back to his room to fetch it. Sure enough, it was still neatly folded on the bathroom counter.

After coming out, he handed the young man the jacket and explained his reasoning.

"Most of the victims' rooms are near this end of the corridor. Last night, 'Mom' probably started checking the rooms one by one from the far end after midnight."

The young man pulled on his jacket without hesitation and muttered, "What good does knowing that do? That thing will get around to killing us sooner or later..."

"Shut up." Brother Xu shot him a stern glare, then motioned for Lu Mi to continue.

"All the victims had one thing in common." The gruesome scenes he had just witnessed flashed through Lu Mi's mind. "Some died in the bathroom, some at their desks..."

Brother Xu understood and picked up the thread. "So to really count as 'going to bed on time,' you have to be lying in bed?"

Lu Mi nodded.

Most of them had returned to their rooms quite late. Many had assumed they were safe once inside, never realizing that "Mom's" mention of "tucking them in" was a hint that they had to be in bed when it came to check.

The private bathrooms were clean and spacious, tempting people to follow their usual routines and wash up.

"No, we can't just sit around waiting to die... I still have a huge inheritance waiting for me. I don't want to die!" The young man's lips trembled as he shot to his feet.

"I'm going to kill that woman! There are so many of us. If we team up, we can definitely beat it, right?"

No one made a sound.

Facing the crowd, the young man scanned everyone's faces. Most of them looked afraid.

He was about to curse them for being weak and useless when he noticed Lu Mi frantically making faces at him.

A chill enveloped him from behind.

He fell silent and slowly turned around like a stiff wooden puppet.

Before he could scream, long, sharp nails pierced his throat.

"Children, time to eat." The woman's voice brimmed with love as it withdrew its nails.

The young man collapsed, his eyes bulging. Blood flowed from his mouth toward the others, frightening one of the girls in the group so badly that she almost cried out.

After a long while, Brother Xu answered, "Okay, Mom."

Everyone waited in silence for "Mom" to leave, but it stood motionless in the middle of the corridor, sweeping its cold, sinister gaze over each of them.

"Last night, one child was naughty and didn't return to his room to sleep on time. How should we punish him?"