Chapter 52: Candy and Greeting Card |
"How did you know there was something in the wall?" Yan Yu asked, a look of astonishment on her face.
She had studied the doodles at the end of the diary several times but hadn't been able to make heads or tails of them. To her, they just looked like the random scribbles of a child, completely devoid of any pattern.
"Could these doodles actually be a map?"
Yan Yu frowned, turning the diary right-side up and then upside down. No matter how she looked at it, she couldn't figure out the connection between the scribbles on the paper and the wall where the television hung.
"What is it, what is it? Did Brother Bai pick up some good gear?" Great Northern Wilderness shifted his gaze over. Holding a heavy iron pot and a slotted spoon, he scooped out the noodles and divided them evenly among four porcelain plates. He casually topped each plate with a stir-fried sauce made of ketchup, peas, and pork, releasing a mouthwatering sweet and sour aroma into the air.
"I am afraid what is inside this plastic bag isn't equipment," Bai Mu said, weighing the item in his hand. Even though he hadn't opened it yet, he had a pretty good idea of what it was.
"Then what is it? Hurry up and open it, Brother."
Great Northern Wilderness put down his spoon and jogged over to join the fun. Although he wasn't the one who had accepted this quest or retrieved the item, everyone loved a good mystery.
"Wait a minute, explain what these doodles mean first. How did you know there was something in the wall? Was it just blind luck?" Yan Yu asked, holding up the diary.
"Crouch down?" Yan Yu asked, slightly confused, but she followed Bai Mu's instructions anyway.
"Do you understand now?"
"Not at all."
"Uh..." Bai Mu paused. "How about this? Come over to where I am standing and count the gaps in the floorboards and the wall bricks."
Yan Yu waddled over like a duck, moving a few steps until she was right next to Bai Mu. She glanced back and forth several times before sudden realization washed over her. "So that is how it is!"
"How is it?" Great Northern Wilderness asked.
The two brothers had already picked up their plates and started eating. Since there were no chopsticks in the room, they used knives and forks. Great Northern Wilderness twirled a clump of fried spaghetti around his fork and stuffed it into his mouth, his cheeks bulging.
"The lines and squares in the doodles represent the gaps between the wall bricks and the floorboards," Bai Mu explained. "It is actually quite easy to understand. This is the diary of a nine-year-old girl. She was about four feet tall, so her line of sight was only about three feet off the ground. Because of that angle, she could clearly see the texture and gaps of every floorboard and wall brick."
"But just because she could see them doesn't mean she could memorize them, right? Did she draw it while looking at them?" Yan Yu asked.
"I think she committed them to memory. In her own little world, she probably treated the gaps between the floorboards as a narrow log bridge that only she could see."
"She must have played this kind of game since she was very young—stepping only in the gaps between the boards and never touching the wood itself. After playing it enough times, she naturally memorized all these lines."
"The doodles in the diary are most likely the maze she walked through in her imagination while cooped up in this room, pretending to play her game. She drew it all out to ease her boredom and frustration."
"I see," Great Northern Wilderness nodded in agreement, continuing to chew his noodles.
It was hard to tell if he was actually listening, as his eyes remained glued to the plastic bag in Bai Mu's hands.
Yan Yu, however, understood perfectly. She asked, "But if you put it that way, what do the circles and pencil holes mean?"
"We actually saw the pencil holes at the children's playground," Bai Mu said. "They correspond to the climbing holds on that rock wall. If we took the drawing there to compare, I would bet they would match up by at least eighty or ninety percent."
"You even remembered that..." Yan Yu couldn't fathom how Bai Mu had the presence of mind to observe the climbing wall in such a dark and dangerous environment, let alone commit it to memory.
'You really are a bit of a freak,' Yan Yu couldn't help but grumble inwardly. She didn't say it out loud, of course, but she genuinely felt that Bai Mu wasn't entirely normal.
Although there were very few normal people in Paradise to begin with, even among all the Players Yan Yu had encountered, Bai Mu was by far the most abnormal.
It was one thing for this guy to be so skilled at slaughtering Zombies, but he was also incredible at deduction, perfectly unraveling even the meticulous psychology of a young child.
She honestly didn't think the puzzle was easy at all. Hearing someone else explain it made it sound simple, of course, but if left to her own devices, she never would have thought about it being a matter of perspective.
Bai Mu tore open the plastic bag, revealing a cylindrical tin box inside.
It was a Candy Box. The surface of the tin was printed with a classic rabbit mascot, an image Bai Mu had long since memorized.
[Side Quest "Futile Waiting" has been completed.]
[You have received rewards: "Lucy's Candy Box" and "Lucy's Greeting Card".]
"So the quest rewards were something I had to dig out myself?" Bai Mu muttered, looking down at the tin box in his hand.
"Strictly speaking, you have to complete the quest before they transform into items recognized by Paradise," Yan Yu said. "If you hadn't accepted the quest and just smashed the wall open, you would only have obtained two pieces of junk that couldn't be brought out of the Script."
"Good to know," Bai Mu nodded. He examined the attributes of the new item, and its information materialized in his field of vision.
[Name: Lucy's Candy Box]
[Type: Special Item]
[Quality: Rare]
[Effect: Consuming a candy from the Candy Box will slowly restore Health and Satiety, and grant mental clarity. (Only candies can be stored inside the Candy Box.)]
[Remaining Candies: 30/30]
[Note: Every day, the teacher would give a candy to the well-behaved children in class. She thought they were the most delicious candies in the world, so she secretly saved them up, wanting nothing more than to give her mother a surprise.]
Bai Mu opened the Candy Box. Inside sat thirty fruit candies wrapped in brightly colored paper, along with a pink greeting card.
Written on the greeting card in incredibly neat handwriting were the words, "Mom, Happy Birthday!" Beside the text, there was a drawing of two figures, one large and one small.
It was clearly drawn with great care—much more so than the scribbles in the diary. It utilized colorful crayons and watercolors, depicting even the finer details of their clothes. Bai Mu pulled the group photo out from his pocket. The drawing was an exact replica of this photograph, depicting the mother and daughter.
Above their heads floated white clouds and a bright sun. On their round faces, simple upward curves traced out their smiles, looking innocent and endearing.
At a glance, it was obviously the work of a child, yet one could deeply feel the dedication and the outpouring of emotion poured into the artwork.
[Name: Lucy's Greeting Card]
[Type: Consumable Item]
[Quality: Unique]
[Note: A greeting card that was never given in time, and perhaps never will be. Use it to unlock the Adventure Script: Lucy's Wish.]
It was exactly as he had guessed. That day, after Lucy argued with her mother, she had simply stayed in her room, trying to figure out how to make her mom happy again.
After their fight, her mother had dropped her off at the children's playground just like usual, perhaps telling her with a stern face that she would pick her up after work.
But she never managed to wait long enough for her mother to arrive. And from then on, her mother would never come to take her home again.
Comments 2