Chapter 131: Dying With a Grievance |
To avoid scaring the people inside, Bai Mu took off his gas mask before approaching the door.
He figured his face was relatively approachable. At the very least, his first impression wouldn't make him look like a bad guy.
"Hello, is anyone there?"
"Who are you?"
A young, slightly immature boy's voice drifted from inside. His tone trembled, making his nervousness plain.
"I am a friend of your mother," Bai Mu said. "Although you haven't met me, I gave your mother five bags of compressed biscuits three nights ago."
"Really, mister? Are you really mom's friend?" The boy's voice brightened with excitement. "Do you know where mom went? She hasn't come back all night. Did she go to your place?"
Bai Mu paused for a moment before replying, "She ran into some trouble and cannot come back for now. Before she left, she asked me to come and check on you all, which is why I am here."
"There should be two boys and a younger sister, right? She mentioned to me that she had three children."
"No, Sam, mom said we cannot open the door for strangers!"
"But mom knows him."
"But we don't know him!"
"Mom knows him!"
"We don't know him!"
"But he is the only one who knows where mom went. We need to figure this out, Sam. Mom might need us right now!"
"..."
"Alright, you are right, Leon."
The bickering inside ceased. Bai Mu listened as the two boys argued, and it seemed Leon ultimately won the debate.
"Mister, can you show us your hands?" the boy asked.
It seemed they had also watched the news and knew about the physical traits of the Doppelgangers announced by the authorities.
"Of course."
Bai Mu openly held up his hands, deliberately angling his fingernails toward the peephole.
"I know what you are worried about. Relax, I am not a Doppelganger."
"Mom brought back some more compressed biscuits last night. Did she get those from you too, mister?"
"She brought the biscuits home?" Bai Mu caught this crucial detail. "Do you remember what time that was?"
"Around half-past eight," the boy said. "She left the biscuits in the living room and went right back out. We called out to her, but she didn't answer."
"What time did she leave the first time?"
"It should have been seven o'clock. I heard the doorbell ring, and then mom told us to stay in the bedroom before she went out."
The doorbell rang at seven o'clock...
The people from the Emergency Center should have finished inspecting the woman's house before seven.
Bai Mu remembered that the gray vehicles had already driven away by seven o'clock. It was obvious that someone unaffiliated with the authorities had rung her doorbell.
Logically speaking, if she sensed danger, the woman wouldn't have actively left the house to go outside.
Could it be... that the face which appeared before her was a familiar one?
Could it have been her husband, who had been missing for days...
Was she so eager to reunite with her husband that she rushed out?
No...
If she was truly reuniting with her husband, she should have opened the door and let him inside.
She must have sensed danger, deciding she needed to act as bait to lure whatever was at the door away.
What happened next wasn't hard to guess. She was killed, and her corpse was turned into a puppet. Driven by some lingering obsession, she had found her way to Bai Mu's front door.
She must have sprinted with all her might. There might still be traces of her struggle with that thing nearby.
Bai Mu lowered his gaze, carefully examining the ground and the lower surroundings. To his surprise, he actually found a small notebook.
The notebook had fallen under a car. He noticed a patch of grass near the vehicle that had been scraped away, as if someone had crashed heavily onto the lawn and torn up the turf.
Bai Mu walked over and bent down to pick it up. It was a palm-sized ledger, thoroughly covered in mud and dust.
He patted off the dirt and flipped open the pages. The earlier entries detailed trivial matters, such as daily expenses, the water bill, and the electricity bill.
The final section, however, transitioned into something resembling a diary.
"The weather is getting hotter and hotter. This summer is incredibly strange. Due to the high temperatures, both my husband's and my workplaces have shut down. The news says it is an abnormal solar flare eruption. I hope this disaster passes quickly. Good heavens, we have three children to raise. We have to find a way to make money."
"They only supply water for one hour a day. It is not even enough to flush the toilet! I cannot take this anymore. I am going to file a complaint!"
"Sigh, complaining is useless. Our food at home is almost gone, and my daughter has suffered a heatstroke. Now even the hospitals have stopped working. I can only feed her some cold medicine and hope it works."
"No food, no way to earn money. My husband said he will go out tonight to look for his friends and see if he can borrow some food. I am really worried he will come back empty-handed, but he is the only one we can rely on right now."
"He hasn't returned. The news says Doppelgangers have appeared in the city. Why has the world turned out like this? I don't know what to do anymore."
"I am sorry, Mom. I cannot do anything right. I cannot even feed my own children."
"The neighbor is a good man. He shared his precious food with me. In times like these, what use is cash anyway? He is so kind. Friends are completely unreliable; not a single one was willing to help me. Only my neighbor was willing to lend a hand, but I cannot keep inconveniencing him forever."
"Mom, I will find a way to raise my children, just like you raised me."
The diary ended there. There were no further entries.
[Side Quest "Dying With a Grievance" has been triggered.]
[Task Requirement: Help the woman take care of her children.]
[Task Reward: ???]
"Mister, can you please tell us where mom actually went?" the boy behind the door asked. "When will she be back? We are all so worried about her."
Bai Mu closed the notebook. That rotting corpse lay quietly on the grass, as if silently recounting a tragic tale that filled one with sorrow.
Judging from the traces at the scene, the woman had been killed by something before eight o'clock. For the sake of her children, she had bolted out the front door but tripped and fell beside the car.
A terrifying creature had pursued her. There were drag marks on the ground, indicating she had likely been grabbed by her hair and dragged away.
She was murdered in a dark corner, with no one around to hear her cries. Perhaps she was supposed to become a monster under the parasitism of that strange mushroom.
Yet, a fierce, unyielding obsession had driven her to Bai Mu's front door.
Her mind had been chaotic, her logic shattered, yet she remembered she had to find food for her children. She had even carried those biscuits all the way back to her own home.
Bai Mu suddenly understood why she had died in that empty clearing. She likely knew that in her current state, she couldn't stay with her children. Thus, even after hearing her kids calling out to her, she left without looking back and firmly shut the door.
She went alone to an empty clearing where she wouldn't affect anyone. Just as she had written in her diary, she didn't want to be a burden anymore. She felt she had done everything she was supposed to do, and so she lay down quietly in that spot to welcome her death.
However, it seemed there was still something she couldn't let go of. Right before she died, she had clearly turned her head to gaze in the direction of her home.
In her gradually blurring vision, perhaps all that remained was the pale yellow light glowing from her house.