“Did Manager Hu tell you all this?”

Hearing He Jian rapidly dump such a long story on me, I was stunned: “He knew all along that Lin Xiufen was left here without anyone to care for her, so why didn’t he speak up earlier? Did he have to give me such a fright?”

He Jian said gravely: “After we found out that Lin Xiufen wasn’t dead, we first contacted the Hu family members, learned that Hu Wei had been taking care of Lin Xiufen all along, but Hu Wei wasn’t immediately willing to speak up… I told him that if it would harm you, Lin Xiufen might be shot on the spot, and only then was he willing to tell us all this.”

So… in Hu Wei’s original plan, Lin Xiufen and I should have been able to coexist peacefully?

He never thought there was a possibility his mother could be shot?

This thought flashed through my mind, and He Jian continued: “Hu Wei’s unwillingness to reveal Lin Xiufen’s role in those murder cases was most likely to exonerate his mother… We still haven’t found direct evidence that the first homeowner was pushed down the building. The autopsy at the time completely pointed to an accident, so I suspect the first murder wasn’t Hu Wei’s initiative, but rather the homeowner accidentally witnessed Lin Xiufen, leading to the accidental fall.”

I gasped: “You said before that he always wanted to get the house back, and after the accident happened, the price of No. 29 started dropping…”

He Jian sighed: “Yes, for the subsequent three incidents we found related evidence proving they were indeed Manager Hu’s proactive actions. Very likely, he discovered through the first accident that once a death occurred, the price of No. 29 would drop, and in order to finally buy back the house for his mother to live in, he could only commit crimes repeatedly until the house’s price reached a level he could afford… This was his real motive for killing, and his increasing urgency was because Lin Xiufen’s physical condition wasn’t good—he didn’t dare wait any longer.”

My vision went black.

“…How can there be such a foolish person in the world? Is his brain filled with cream cheese, without a single wrinkle?”

At this moment, everything connected.

After the fourth tenant’s suicide, the price of No. 29 finally reached a range that Manager Hu could accept. But at this crucial moment, out of nowhere, our family’s Dong Mingzhu of Yu Jiang got some information and had me look at No. 29, causing Manager Hu to once again helplessly watch the house fall into someone else’s hands.

It’s imaginable that when I bought the house, Manager Hu had very likely already promised his mother that he would move her back to No. 29.

This also led to Lin Xiufen’s repeated appearances afterward.

The area outside temporarily quieted down. I took a deep breath: “So the haunting at No. 29 was actually the behavior of two people all along… Manager Hu and Lin Xiufen.”

He Jian hummed in agreement: “Lin Xiufen most likely had been in the house the whole time. This is also why Hu Wei used many methods like putting hair and blood in the bathtub, desperately trying to scare you away… Having a living person constantly living right under our noses without being discovered carried too great a risk.”

This explained why the refrigerator door kept opening and closing, followed immediately by someone making noise to attract my attention and scare me back upstairs.

If there were two people in the house, then the one opening the door to get food was probably Lin Xiufen, while the one making noise was Hu Wei.

At that time, Hu Wei could still bring his mother back and forth through the secret passage, ensuring she wouldn’t go hungry in No. 29, but now…

“Lin Xiufen has the ability to survive alone in the house. She would have long ago gone to my refrigerator to get food, it’s just that Hu Wei had been stopping her before.”

I took a deep breath, finally understanding everything.

Why did Hu Wei desperately try to strangle me in the middle of the night… Perhaps he just wanted to make one last desperate attempt to see if he could scare me away and let his mother live back in this house.

At the root of it all, everything was simply because there had always been one extra person living in No. 29.

“Boss, are you alright?”

Seemingly because he couldn’t hear any movement from my side, He Jian asked worriedly: “We’re just two intersections away. If there’s danger, boss, you’d better first…”

“Thinking about it now, Old Han had one lie that wasn’t bad.”

After thinking for a moment, I calmly interrupted He Jian: “The ‘ghost’ in No. 29 really doesn’t like strangers… Just now two police officers knocking on the door scared her like that. If you all directly saw the door open soon, I’m afraid she’ll lose control even more.”

“So what do you want to do, boss?”

“I…”

After hesitating, I don’t know where the courage came from, but I grabbed the bedside table blocking the door and slowly pulled it back.

As the bedroom door opened a crack, I held my breath and looked outside. Where was there any “ghost shadow” at the door?

“I won’t hang up the phone. I’ll go downstairs right away to throw the key through the door crack… Don’t rush in, wait for my signal.”

After saying this, I took three deep breaths in a row and finally mustered the courage to carefully leave the room.

No. 29 was completely silent, and by now I could hear the distant sound of sirens.

He Jian and the others were already very close to me.

Police in horror movies always arrive just in time to attend the funeral feast. I used to scoff at this, until this time when I encountered the same thing, and I realized that once a person becomes unlucky, they really can choke on cold water.

I tried walking downstairs. This time no one blocked me on the stairs, and I smoothly threw the key outside the door, then turned and walked into the kitchen.

When I last saw Manager Hu not long ago, he had said that with No. 29 in my hands, I would at least treat it well and give it a better ending.

At that time, I thought it was strange for someone to have such deep attachment to a house, but it was only today that I understood—he might not have been referring only to No. 29.

Knowing that after his arrest his mother would be left alone here, he still chose not to confess. This reckless protection also hid a kind of logic.

Perhaps Lin Xiufen, who had been able to coexist peacefully with us for so long, actually had no aggressiveness, and Manager Hu also believed that I would treat his mother well.

You can do this, Bai Yang. Face-judgers aren’t scumbags; we don’t discriminate against burn victims.

I silently chanted in my heart as I took out the cake base and cream I had prepared to keep for myself from the refrigerator.

Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and placed the cake base on the turntable, wiped the cold sweat from my palms, and began spreading the cream.

The call with Xiao He continued, but at this moment there was no sound on the phone, not even sirens—I knew this meant they were already at the door.

“Xiao He… Officer He, the boss, the boss isn’t already gone, is he? I, I don’t want to do makeup for the boss.”

Halfway through spreading the cream, I suddenly heard an extremely worried female voice on the phone—it was Song Nanshi.

“Should be fine. With his courage, if something happened he would have been screaming long ago.”

Another very calm voice immediately answered her, and I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. I didn’t expect that even at this point, Han Sha was still making personal attacks against me.

“Shh, listen to the movement inside.”

With He Jian’s whisper, the sound on the phone completely disappeared, and my cream spreading had reached the final stage.

“Mr. Bai, your craftsmanship is really good. I’ve been wanting to patronize your business. My family is from the south and likes sweet things.”

“Later when I went back to mom’s house, the cake shop she used to frequent had already moved away.”

…

At this moment, the snow-white cake was rotating in front of me. I recalled some words I had heard before and suddenly thought of a possibility.

The cake I brought to Manager Hu last time—did he eventually give it to Lin Xiufen too?

She had tasted my handiwork, so that’s why she would steal my inventory. Could it be like this?

The aroma of cream hit me, and I poured all the remaining cream into a piping bag, expertly decorating the snow-white cake surface with a layer of white roses.

The old lady from the spicy and sour noodle shop had mentioned before that in front of the old Lin family house, there grew a patch of very beautiful roses, all planted by Lin Xiufen.

Not hearing any movement from my side, He Jian asked puzzled: “Boss, are you over there…”

“Don’t be anxious yet, I’m inviting the guest out.”

I placed the cake on a plate. Although my hands were steady as an old dog, my heart was already screaming eight hundred times.

Even with full mental preparation, this was my first time in life inviting Sadako to eat cake. Please tell me, what conflict is there between my willingness to invite her to eat and my being scared?

Damn it, as long as one is willing to go all out—

I took another deep breath, forcing my weak legs to support me, and called out: “Ms. Lin… Ms. Lin, don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you. It’s just that if you’re hungry, eating only chocolate definitely won’t work. I made you a cake, will you come out and try it?”

Think about it, inviting someone to eat cake is better than inviting them to hot pot—that way everyone would have to face each other for forty minutes while cooking vegetables.

I comforted myself in my heart and continued: “Your son… I mean, Manager Hu isn’t here these past two days and entrusted me to take care of you. I was a bit negligent these past few days because the shop was busy, but I’ll treat you well from now on.”

If I hadn’t thought about the twenty or thirty people possibly at the door, my voice would have uncontrollably trembled. I was originally worried I wouldn’t be able to “invite” the other party out, but as soon as I finished speaking, the first-floor bathroom to my left suddenly made a crisp “click” sound and opened a narrow crack.

Hang in there, Bai Yang! You can do this! Even lasting ten seconds would already be amazing!

My back was covered in cold sweat. I forced myself to crouch down with the cake, trying to coax gently: “Haven’t you also taken some roses from my shop these past two days? I guessed you liked them so I made some rose piping. Will you come try it?”

God knows how much courage it took me to say these words, but fortunately, this time the “ghost shadow” seemed to understand what I was saying and actually slowly crawled out of the bathroom.

Without Hu Wei helping her these past few days, the woman’s clothes were already very dirty, the silicone mask on her face was somewhat crooked, revealing the scarred neck underneath, with some thin, crystalline traces hanging on it.

…Tears? She was afraid?

My heart jumped, and then I suddenly realized that perhaps the police station’s door-banging just now made her think it was a repeat of the accident from years ago. After all, someone had once very forcefully wanted her to move out of her own home.

In this matter, Lin Xiufen was just a victim too.

“Ms. Lin… the floor is cold. The cake is made for you. Shall we sit down and eat?”

I held the cake in front of her, hoping she would stand up, but the woman’s thin body just trembled, and two more large teardrops fell from behind the silicone mask, hitting the first-floor tiles.

“Son, fire… run…”

Some unclear sounds came from her throat, her whole body shivering. My heart couldn’t help but sink.

At some point, Lin Xiufen had mistaken me for Hu Wei, and her rushing toward me earlier was very likely just trying to protect me from the “people breaking down the door.” Such a person, whose consciousness wasn’t even clear, let alone harming others, would probably have difficulty even leaving this house.

Thinking of this, I couldn’t care about anything else and directly helped her up, only to feel that the body in my arms was really too light, just like my seriously ill mother on the hospital bed years ago—nothing but bones from inside to outside.

“Fire…”

The woman was still trembling, as if afraid. I lifted her onto a stool and hesitated before saying to the phone: “Keep the noise down, you can come in now.”

They had been waiting for me to speak. In an instant, the lock of the rolling door made a crisp sound. The woman in front of me was like a startled bird, instinctively trying to hide under the table. I grabbed her with one hand.

The brilliant afternoon sunlight accompanied He Jian and the others as they opened the rolling door, flooding into the house. Only then did I see clearly that behind the silicone mask, under Lin Xiufen’s scarred eyelids were eyes brimming with tears. She trembled: “Son, they want to burn… burn us.”

“No, it’s just sunlight coming in, mom… not fire. I’m here, no one can hurt you.”

I nodded lightly to He Jian at the door. Behind him were two medical personnel called in temporarily. Because they weren’t clear about Lin Xiufen’s physical condition, they needed to first give her a sedative and take her to the hospital for examination.

“It’s alright, it’s alright.”

Seeing the medical personnel still hesitating, I gently grasped the woman’s anxiously shrinking hand and, after hesitating, helped her remove the mask.

After all this haunting, I had thought there would be a terrifying face underneath, but when I actually saw it, I discovered it was really just a face covered in scars and tears.

“Have a piece of cake, it’s alright.”

I brought the spoon with cream roses to her lips. At this moment, I truly hoped that the person in Lin Xiufen’s eyes was her own son.

“…We’re home now, mom.”

Author’s Note

Bumingyan

Author

2022-07-08

Although the main story is almost finished, there’s a new character appearing tomorrow…