Volume One, Chapter Six: Malevolent Thoughts (Part 5)

Her home was a half-hour drive away, and it happened to be on the way.

We chatted a bit more in the car; she wasn't as reserved as I had imagined. I asked, as if casually, "You and Li Pingping have been friends for many years, right?"

She seemed to be reminiscing as she replied, "She was the first friend I made at my first job. It’s been nearly ten years. She is the person I trust the most."

I said, "I can tell. You are just as important to her. I spoke to her about you today, and I could feel how worried she was."

"Is that so?" she asked.

I replied, "People sometimes lose their focus."

She turned her head and stared at me, saying, "So, even bad people should be protected." Her eyes were filled with a mockery that carried an intense, chilling coldness.

I was contemplating how to respond when we arrived at her apartment complex. She invited me upstairs for a cup of tea. Though I felt a sense of refusal in my heart, a sudden rush of excitement surged through me.

I followed her inside. After I sat down, she brought me a glass of water. Seeing that I didn't touch it, her usually bland face twisted into a bizarre, wretched smile, and she began to speak incessantly.

"So, you think I’m a murderer."

"Yes, I did kill someone. That homeless man, for instance."

"Zhou Daliang and I were supposed to register our marriage on May 20th. On May 17th, Li Pingping told me she saw my boyfriend kissing another woman. I called him frantically, but he wouldn't answer."

"It wasn't until the next morning that he told me his phone had died and he had fallen asleep from exhaustion after working overtime."

"I didn't believe him. The more I thought about it at home, the worse it got. I decided to go to the park to clear my head, and that’s when I found that animal."

"I struck him over twenty times. Even though he was thoroughly dead by the third blow—I saw his brains splatter out—I was so furious, as if I were striking that dead man, Zhou Daliang."

I listened, feeling a mixture of fear and excitement. The sensation was incredibly strange. I interjected, "So, it’s possible you killed Zhou Daliang, too."

Her eyes were completely consumed by madness.

"Possible? Ha, why so uncertain?"

"As long as you use a few tricks, lay a trap in advance, and employ some emotional manipulation, killing someone isn't difficult at all."

"But I didn't expect that Daliang shouldn't have died; it should have been Li Pingping. But her time will come." When she spoke of her husband, she was filled with profound sorrow, but when she spoke of her best friend, she was gnashing her teeth.

"Now that I think about it, Li Pingping’s accidental remark about 'seeing my husband kissing someone else'—was that also emotional manipulation, exploiting my trust?"

"You weren't supposed to die, but you kept digging. If you died, no one else would know I killed my husband. That would mean my husband wasn't killed by me. Isn't that like covering one's ears to steal a bell?"

Suddenly, she stomped her foot on the floor, and before I could react, she darted away from the sofa.

The next moment, the massive chandelier directly above me plummeted from the ceiling, slamming into my head with lethal force.

I was instantly engulfed in agony, my vision blurring and losing focus. I could only see a woman standing in the distance, watching over me, keeping me company, and grinning hideously.

"This way, my child won't have a mother who killed her father, like I did."

I then plunged into darkness.

***

Postscript:

I had a very, very long dream. In the dream, an eight-year-old girl suddenly lost her parents and was taken by a man to a strange, massive house. The man told the little girl to be good. The girl was terrified and dared not speak, thinking that if she were obedient, she could go home.

Over the next few days, she saw other children leave the house and never return. An older ten-year-old boy told her, "This is a human trafficking ring. We will be sold all over the world, filmed for illegal videos, and used to satisfy the twisted needs of perverts."

I was so scared, so scared. Then a voice appeared, constantly calling me a coward,