Kaleidoscope of Death

Chapter 104: Paying Debts

In the middle of things, Lin Qiushi and Gu Longming went to the bathroom together. On the way there, Gu Longming asked, "what's on your mind, Yu Linlin?"

Lin Qiushi said, "I'm thinking about Zhou Hanshan."

"What are you thinking about him for?" Gu Longming's current impression of Zhou Hanshan was vastly different from before, because frankly, he was the catalyst of everything that happened. "If he didn't go falling in love with Zhu Ruyuan, then this situation might never have happened."

"Right," Lin Qiushi said. "Do you think he's still lying about something?"

Gu Longming nodded.

Everybody had secrets. But some of these secrets might be kept all the way up until the moment of death.

"When evening comes, you should be careful," Lin Qiushi said. "I don't think making a wish will be that easy."

"Will that person try to stop us?" Gu Longming asked.

Lin Qiushi looked down as he washed his hands. Cold water ran down the neat lines of his palms.

Are you talking about Zhu Ruyuan, or do you mean Zhou Hanshan?"

"Zhou Hanshan?" Gu Longming didn't understand. "Why would he stop us from making a wish?"

"Because maybe our wish and his are contradictory." Lin Qiushi shut the water off and grabbed a paper towel to dry his hands. "Do you remember where we met Zhou Hanshan?"

"In the classroom...Hang on, those three..." Gu Longming suddenly thought of something—he remembered what the three students were doing in the classroom. "Those three were making another wish too??"

"Yeah." Lin Qiushi's lips moved up into a faint curve. "Say, how much do you think this Zhou Hanshan is actually hiding from us?"

The bisected Xiao He, the beheaded friend, plus the surviving Zhou Hanshan—when he and Gu Longming first met the three, they were in the classroom smearing blood onto their wooden figures. According to Zhou Hanshan, bleeding on the dolls was part of the wishing process, but there was an obvious hole in the logic here—there had been no sculpture in the classroom.

If everything were as Zhou Hanshan said, however, and they made wishes to the sculpture, then why were those three doing the ritual inside the classroom? Either the wishes didn't actually have any effect, or the sculpture didn't.

"Actually, Zhou Hanshan is not the only survivor left in the school," Lin Qiushi said. "Remember the librarian?"

"I do." Gu Longming's mind was a jumbled mess, but he kept feeling like in all these interlocking clues, there was a vital point, and that point was where to begin parsing all this. "The librarian...Do you mean..."

"He's still alive," Lin Qiushi said. "And he has that doll too. This indicates that Zhou Hanshan is indeed lying."

Gu Longming chuckled, pained. "I feel like I'm doing a really difficult math problem."

Lin Qiushi flipped a palm up.

"A math problem would be way easier than this. We just haven't thought through a lot of the details yet. The librarian is still alive, which is proof of one thing."

"What?" Gu Longming could only ask.

"Making a wish doesn't kill you," Lin Qiushi said. "It might be true that you have to pay a price, but that price isn't necessarily your life."

Upon this realization, Gu Longming fell into a beat of silence.

"Then why did they—"

"I'm beginning to suspect that the sculpture and Zhu Ruyuan aren't the same things at all," Lin Qiushi said. "The sculpture grants wishes, and the resentful spirit goes on killing sprees. Of course, this is all just a guess, and I don't have any evidence."