Bai Youwei had repeated it so many times that everyone in the room was now looking at her.
Yan Qingwen’s brow furrowed tightly. He spoke the lyrics as well: “Mary and her merry doll… Mary and her merry doll…”
Yu Yaqing, puzzled, looked from Yan Qingwen to Bai Youwei. “Is there something wrong with this song?”
“From the lyrics, the song seems to be about Mary from the amusement park.” Shen Fei was also listening carefully to the melody, translating it word by word —
*”Wherever Mary goes,*
*She will bring along her doll,*
*Wherever people see them,*
*Mary and her doll are always together.”*
Shen Fei thought it over, then looked up at Yu Yaqing. “Just looking at the lyrics, nothing seems to be wrong. Mary does always carry the cloth doll with her — the doll is effectively Mary’s second pair of eyes.”
“It’s not like that…” Bai Youwei slowly shook her head. She recalled the fragmentary clues from the very beginning of the game, and her expression grew worse and worse. “Do you all still remember what the Monitor said when explaining the rules when we entered the game?”
Everyone glanced at each other.
Yu Yaqing answered: “When we entered, the Monitor said that hide-and-seek was Mary’s favorite game — that we had to hide when night fell, and must not be found by Mary and her cat.”
Bai Youwei said: “Apart from that, the Monitor also said… that Mary was very good at hide-and-seek — that she had never been found.”
She looked at Yu Yaqing, then at the others, and asked: “We’ve already spent three days and three nights in this game. Have any of you ever seen Mary hide?”
No.
Mary had been with the cat the whole time. She had never hidden.
“What does it mean?” Shen Fei was confused and couldn’t help getting agitated. “Did the Monitor deliberately mislead us?”
Boom!
A sudden dull thud.
Yan Qingwen’s fist slammed hard into the wall. The words burst out from between his clenched teeth: “The Monitor didn’t mislead us… on the contrary, it gave us a clue!”
“What?” Shen Fei was even more confused.
Shen Mo had understood what Bai Youwei meant. His own expression wasn’t looking good either. He said in a heavy voice: “The Mary we’ve been killing isn’t actually Mary — so no matter what we do, we can never kill her.”
Shen Fei was too stunned to speak.
Tan Xiao stared with wide eyes. “We’ve been killing her this whole time, and she’s not Mary? Then who is Mary?!”
Bai Youwei closed her eyes and spoke the answer: “It’s the cloth doll on her body!”
Yu Yaqing, Shen Fei, and Tan Xiao were all stunned, rooted in place, unable to process it.
And Yan Qingwen — he had already worked out the answer too — and his expression was filled with overwhelming regret!
If they had only thought of this sooner… perhaps Lu Ang wouldn’t have had to die!
“Since the cat can be controlled, why can’t the little girl also be controlled?” Bai Youwei lowered her eyes and continued in a quiet voice: “In reality, we’ve had it completely backwards. The one controlling the cloth cat is Mary — and the one controlling ‘Mary’ is also Mary! The target we’ve struck down multiple times is actually Mary’s puppet doll! That’s why there is this song, playing on repeat, reminding us again and again —
*Wherever Mary goes,*
*She will bring along her doll,*
*Wherever people see them,*
*Mary and her doll are always together!”*
Yu Yaqing couldn’t help standing up. “The condition to clear the game is to kill Mary or her cat! Even if we got Mary wrong, what about the cat? The cat has always been impossible to kill too!”
Bai Youwei looked up at her. “The cat… must be possible to kill. Maybe it requires cutting off the head, maybe piercing the heart — I don’t know… but it must be possible to kill. That’s precisely why Mary’s first priority is to sew the cat back up — to keep us from seeing through the disguise.”
—