The Hand of Confession – Chapter 384

Volume 11: The Days of Traversing Through the Mirror

Game Update

Social Death

Shen Maomao was so shocked she almost couldn’t hold her phone.

Shen Wenwu was gone too?

She hurriedly asked, “Then what about Ren Yue? Do you still remember her?”

“Ren Yue…? Is she your high school classmate? I don’t think I’ve heard you mention that name… I really can’t remember.”

“It’s fine, I was just asking.” Shen Maomao’s heart and mind were not at peace¹. After a few more words with Mother Shen, she hung up.

She wanted to share the situation with Lou Jingmo, but the rented car had already pulled up. She could only suppress the thought, open the door, and get in.

The car drove along the small roads of Zhao Family Village, the scenery outside blurring into a single line. Glistening white snow covered the black earth, and the neatly arranged ridges possessed a unique kind of beauty.

This was where Peng Xiaorui had lived, but now, all traces of her existence had simply vanished…

She’d once heard that a person experiences death twice. The first is the death of the flesh. The second is called social death², which is when the last person who remembers you forgets you. At that point, you disappear completely, from spirit to flesh.

Although they still remembered Peng Xiaorui, to her, they were just strangers. In the eyes of her closest relatives, she had been dead for many years—so long that her mother’s emotions barely fluctuated when mentioning her death.

Besides Peng Xiaorui, there was her paternal male cousin and Ren Yue. Was the problem affecting all deceased players, or was it a coincidence that she had encountered these few?

What kind of power did the Confession Game possess to tamper with so many people’s memories and forcefully erase a person’s existence?

And why had this never happened before? What kind of change had occurred within the game?

Everything was still a mystery.

---

After swaying back and forth for over an hour, they finally left Zhao Family Village and returned to the city center.

It was already dark, and the earliest flight wasn’t until the next morning. The two found a hotel, planning to rest for the night before heading to Jiang City to investigate the stories of Zhang Xiao and the other two.

After a hot shower, Shen Maomao dried her hair and burrowed into Lou Jingmo’s arms. “Lou-jie… why do you think this is happening?”

Lou Jingmo held her. “I contacted Shang Zhou and told him to investigate.”

Shen Maomao was speechless. “You’re quite good at ordering people around.”

“It’d be a waste not to use him,” Lou Jingmo said. “They have more people, so they should care more about the outcome than we do.”

Shen Maomao figured that made sense, so she put the matter aside and went back to scrolling through her school’s forum, searching for posts related to jumping off a building, stealing, and asthma.

Her carpet-style search actually turned up several posts from many years ago. The topic was the ten great strange tales of the College of Humanities, and two replies in particular caught her eye. One claimed a girl had died in the women’s restroom on the fifth floor. She had been locked in a stall from the outside with a mop and died from an asthma attack. Afterward, the stall door often refused to open and even scared two other girls into insanity. It was eventually converted into a storage room and kept locked. The other reply mentioned someone jumping off a building to secure a postgraduate recommendation³, which sounded a lot like the post she’d seen in the game. However, this dorm only housed three girls. One jumped, one secured a postgraduate spot at the same university, and the post didn’t say what happened to the third. They were all from the class of ’03.

The reply was from ’07. More than a decade had passed, so it had long since sunk to the bottom of the forum. She only managed to unearth it by grave digging⁴.

She did the math in her head. A student from ’03 would graduate in ’07 and start their postgraduate studies in ’08. All she needed was the list of postgraduate students from the humanities major for the class of ’08.

Without much hope, she contacted her counselor⁵.

Back in school, she’d never been a standout student. She wasn’t active or excellent, just mediocre like a happy second fool⁶. Contacting her counselor now, she figured the woman would have to wrack her brain just to remember who Shen Maomao was.

After she sent the message, the counselor didn’t reply. Shen Maomao put down her phone, hugged her girlfriend tighter, and leaned over to look at her screen. “How’s it going? Any news?”

Lou Jingmo let her look without any fuss. “He said he needs to compile the information and will get back to me tomorrow morning.”

Shen Maomao said gloomily, “I just can’t figure it out. I feel like the game is planning some kind of conspiracy, and my heart can’t find a solid place to land.”

“I, on the other hand,” Lou Jingmo said, “feel that this is the game’s pity for the players.”

Pity…?

Lou Jingmo patted her intermittently. “Dazai Osamu⁷ once said in No Longer Human⁸, ‘Death is the end of everything; the ones who live are the most pained.'”

Shen Maomao snorted. “So classic NetEase Cloud Music depression⁹.”

Lou Jingmo continued, “Born, I am sorry.”

“Alright, stop telling ghost stories. I get what you mean.”

Not all players were a king of being single¹⁰ like Lou Jingmo. Take her, for example. If something really happened to her, the ones who would be saddest were Lou Jingmo and her parents. If the game was erasing the social traces of dead players… then their loved ones would no longer grieve their deaths. They might even forget them completely.

From that angle, was the game’s creator actually doing a good deed?

Wrong!

This is a conspiracy!

If it weren’t for this trash game, these people wouldn’t have died in the first place!

Trash game! It must be trying to whitewash itself, to give all the players Stockholm syndrome. While they’re in instances where dangerous situations arise all around¹¹ and their lives hang by a thread, they’ll be so grateful that tears and mucus fall¹² for the game’s creator. Wouldn’t that be just awesome?

She, Shen Maomao, was the modern-day divine detective Sherlock Rabbit¹³!

After hearing her theory, Lou Jingmo was silent for a full three seconds before saying with some difficulty, “I feel… what you said isn’t without reason.”

“Right? I believe—”

“We have to catch a plane tomorrow morning. Let’s get to sleep. If we don’t, the sun will be up.”

“Are you trying to ignore me? Do you think I’m annoying?”

“Hoo—hoo—hoo—“

The snores angered Shen Maomao so much that she punched Lou Jingmo hard through the quilt.

Lou Jingmo was completely unmoved, her snores only growing a little louder.

Such blatant dismissal and disdain left Shen Maomao quite hurt. She wrapped herself into a bean roll¹⁴, turned her back to Lou Jingmo, and fumed. She wasn’t even two minutes into her sulk before her eyes refused to stay open and her breathing grew heavy.

After a long while, certain she was sound asleep, Lou Jingmo turned over, unwrapped the little bean roll, and pulled her into an embrace before reaching up to turn off the bedside lamp.

The hotel room fell into darkness. She slowly lowered her head, placing a silent kiss on Shen Maomao’s large forehead. She rested her chin on the spot she had just kissed, then closed her eyes.

---

When she woke again, it was already the next morning.

The sky was bright, and Shen Maomao was covered in sweat. She opened her eyes and realized Lou Jingmo wasn’t there.

She groggily fumbled for her phone and opened her social media app to check her messages.

At the very top was a message from Lou Jingmo, telling her she’d gone to buy food and to be a good girl and stay put.

Her fish-like memory had made her forget everything from last night. She long-pressed the voice message button, replied with a “wooden horse,”¹⁵ then scrolled down to see what else she’d received.

Besides Lou Jingmo, the rest were just muted group chats. She searched for a moment and was surprised to see her counselor had actually replied: 【Why are you asking about this? If you have a clear reason, I can help you ask.】

Shen Maomao was instantly wide awake.

She had no idea how to respond.

Should I say: I suspect a student who got a postgraduate recommendation back then was involved in intentional injury or even murder, so I want a list to investigate?

Did she live on the Pacific Ocean, sticking her nose in everything?

Besides, it had been over a decade. That person would have graduated long ago. Even if she found her, what could she do?

The thought instantly dampened her enthusiasm.

Adopting an attitude of smashing a cracked pot¹⁶, she replied to the counselor: 【I only found out about this recently. I have a distant older female cousin who was also in the Chinese department at our school, but she jumped off a building before the postgraduate entrance exams in her senior year. Another person in her dorm was recommended for postgraduate studies because of this, so I wanted to ask about the situation.】

This time, the counselor replied quickly: 【Have you been scrolling through Tieba¹⁷ too much? [confused emoji] If you’re talking about that incident from over ten years ago, I think I have some impression of it. It caused quite a stir at the time. The girl who jumped did so because she couldn’t cope with having contracted AIDS; it had nothing to do with her roommate. And her roommate secured the recommendation through her own major creative project. Later, she dropped out halfway through her postgraduate studies for some unknown reason. The professors in the college felt it was quite a pity, all saying that if she had continued, her academic qualifications might have gone up another level. You’re not a child anymore. You need to learn to judge the truth for yourself and not just listen to the nonsense on Tieba; they just use that kind of talk to attract attention. And definitely don’t take crooked doors and evil paths¹⁸ for a postgraduate spot. As a person, it’s more solid to take one step, one footprint¹⁹. If you have any thoughts, you can come talk to me. My office is in 130. If you’re too embarrassed, you can also talk to me on WeChat. I’ll reply when I see it.】

Shen Maomao was quite touched, but she guessed the counselor had mistaken her for a current student. She explained: 【No, no, I’m not thinking of any crooked doors and evil paths. Counselor, I’m a recent graduate. I was just curious and wanted to understand the situation. Sorry to trouble you. [rose emoji]】

The counselor replied: 【No trouble. Even after graduating, you’re still the teacher’s child. [rose emoji] I’ll help you ask the other teachers in the office.】

Shen Maomao quickly thanked her.

The counselor didn’t reply after that. She scrolled down and saw no one else was looking for her, but she did see their small dorm room group chat.

She hesitated for a second, then clicked in. The number of group members was now (3).

Only three people.

Ren Yue… had disappeared.

Back then, because the other two hadn’t left the group, she had only muted it and stopped paying attention. She had no idea when Ren Yue had vanished.

She sighed, not out of pity for Ren Yue, but out of melancholy for her own confusing path ahead, unsure of what to do.

A short while later, Lou Jingmo returned with breakfast: snow-white steamed buns, steaming hot soy milk, and a bowl of fragrant wontons.

Shen Maomao instantly forgot about her confusing future and jumped out of bed barefoot to get the food, but Lou Jingmo stopped her. “Put on your slippers for me.”

She obeyed like a little daughter-in-law, then sat on a chair and watched with eager eyes as Lou Jingmo arranged the food in a row of disposable containers.

As she worked, Lou Jingmo said, “Roll over and wash your hands.”

“Oh.” Shen Maomao scampered off to the bathroom.

After washing her hands, she returned to the chair like a little cat waiting to be fed, her face screaming, “I’m hungry.”

Lou Jingmo couldn’t help but laugh. She opened the bag of wontons, broke apart a pair of chopsticks, and stuffed them into Shen Maomao’s hand. “Eat. I got you wontons specially, with extra seaweed and dried shrimp.”

Shen Maomao smiled so wide her eyes narrowed into a line. “Lou-jie, you’re the one who dotes on me!”

Lou Jingmo rolled her eyes.

Shen Maomao picked up a mouthful of wontons, blew on them, then held the chopsticks up to Lou Jingmo’s mouth. “Ah—”

Lou Jingmo was very obliging and ate the wontons.

Only then did Shen Maomao start eating herself. As she ate, she recounted what her counselor had said, concluding with, “I don’t think we need to go to Jiang City. If there’s any news, the counselor should tell me.”

“Then why aren’t you refunding the tickets? What are you waiting for? Just because your older sister has money doesn’t mean you can waste it like this.”

Shen Maomao shot her a white-eyed look and refunded the plane tickets she’d bought yesterday.

She ate a few bites of wontons, then started craving Lou Jingmo’s steamed buns. But she only craved them, she didn’t say anything, just stared eagerly at the buns.

Lou Jingmo glanced at her sideways. “Give it to me.”

Shen Maomao smiled like a flower and pushed the wontons toward her.

In the end, Lou Jingmo finished all of her leftovers.

After the meal, Shen Maomao dutifully cleaned up the trash. Lou Jingmo sat on the bed, watching her move back and forth like she had ADHD. “Shang Zhou’s investigation results are out,” she said.

“Eh? What is it?”

“According to their statistics, about half a month ago, all the dead players they knew of had their existences erased. The degree of erasure varies, with no discernible pattern. The game seems to be evolving.”

“Hearing you say that makes me even more squared²⁰.”

“What are you squared about? It’s not like you’re going to die.”

Shen Maomao didn’t dare make any promises. “That’s not for sure, is it…”

Lou Jingmo’s face darkened. “You will not die.”

Shen Maomao was startled by her expression, but she knew Lou Jingmo was just scared from the false alarm last time. Realizing this made her feel a little sweet inside.

She took Lou Jingmo’s hand and kissed her on the cheek. “I won’t die, and you won’t die. We’re the women who will laugh until the very end!”

Only then did Lou Jingmo’s expression soften as she pulled her into a tight hug.

---

That’s what she said, but the game was still a time bomb hanging over their heads. It could explode at any moment; they just didn’t know when.

But even with the constant danger, life had to go on.

After returning to South City, everything went back on track. The end of the year was approaching, and the entire city was filled with a festive atmosphere. Big red lanterns were hung on the streets, and the pedestrian walkways were full of vendors selling spring couplets and flower lanterns.

They had already decided to spend this New Year at Shen Maomao’s house, but Lou Jingmo was someone who cared a lot about a sense of ceremony. Even though no one would be home, she still bought a pair of spring couplets and a few “Fu” character posters to put up before they left.

Shen Maomao had been living so comfortably that she’d almost forgotten about the game.

When she finally remembered, she realized her counselor had said she would help her look, but it had been over a month with no contact.

She opened WeChat, but when she scrolled down, she couldn’t find their previous chat history. She didn’t think much of it, just assuming her phone had automatically cleared it.

After a moment’s thought, she sent a message to the counselor: 【Hello Counselor. I spoke with you before. I was wondering if you’ve found any related information?】

The counselor didn’t reply. It was normal for older people to be slow with WeChat, so Shen Maomao didn’t press her. Instead, she went upstairs to help Lou Jingmo pack for their trip home.

By the time they were done, two or three hours had passed. She picked up her phone and saw the counselor had replied half an hour ago with two simple words: 【You are…?】

The moment she saw those words, Shen Maomao felt the matter had gone cold²¹.

Not giving up, she quickly replied: 【I’m your student, from the batch that just graduated. I previously asked you for information about the roommate of the girl who jumped from a building in our department over ten years ago. You said you would help me ask other teachers.】

A short while later, the counselor replied: 【Why are you asking about this?】

Shen Maomao immediately felt something was wrong. Their counselor was old, but not so forgetful that she’d forget something from a month ago. Now that she thought about it, the vanished chat history seemed suspicious too.

She had no choice but to roughly repeat her story.

The counselor sent a voice message directly: “I seem to have some impression of this. The little girl who jumped did so because she had accidentally contracted AIDS and made an impulsive decision out of despair. It was because of her illness that no one was willing to live with her. Everyone in her dorm moved out, which is why she didn’t have anyone to talk her out of it when she couldn’t think straight. I don’t know where you heard about this, but we must trust the school and the police. Don’t spread or believe rumors. Besides, it happened so many years ago. It’s best not to disturb the deceased.”

Shen Maomao was dumbfounded again. She quickly sent a “thank you” to the counselor, then ran upstairs to the study with her phone. “Lou-jie!! Lou-jie!! I have something important to tell you!”

Lou Jingmo seemed to be on the phone with someone. Hearing Shen Maomao, she simply put the call on speaker and set it aside, showing no intention of hanging up.

Confused, Shen Maomao gestured to her, indicating she was about to talk about the game, while saying aloud, “Ah… are you busy? I can tell you later?”

“It’s fine,” Lou Jingmo said. “Just say it.”

The person on the other end of the phone spoke up. “Is that Rabbit? Hello, I’m Shang Zhou. Do you remember me?”

It dawned on Shen Maomao. “Oh, oh, oh, so it’s you.”

She wanted to reminisce with the great god, but Lou Jingmo cut in. “What did you discover?”

Shen Maomao turned her attention back to her. “Right, so my counselor never got back to me, so I contacted her. But she completely forgot what she told me before… and in her memory, the girl who got the postgraduate recommendation has disappeared.”

“Disappeared like Peng Xiaorui?”

“Yes.”

“In that case,” Lou Jingmo concluded, “that student was probably a game player too. The reason your counselor forgot her is because she happened to die in the game within this past month.”

Shang Zhou asked over the phone, “Can you tell me the specifics?”

Shen Maomao briefly summarized the instance’s plot and told him about the before-and-after changes in her counselor.

After listening, Shang Zhou sighed. “The game hasn’t changed for so many years. Why did it suddenly start updating? Based on the current situation, this update seems benign, but none of us can guarantee it won’t continue to update in the future…”

They chatted for a while longer before Shang Zhou suddenly said, “Little Lou, I actually called because I have a favor to ask.”

“What is it?”

“I’m entering an instance in a few days. I won’t hide it from you—I have ten cards on me right now, so it’s very likely the game will target me. I’ll enter the instance in five days. I want to call you before I go in. If I don’t make it out, could I ask you to come and inherit my guild? The cards can be your payment.”

What kind of cool-story script²² did Lou Jingmo get? Shen Maomao thought. Someone’s just showing up to hand over a guild and cards? Can Shang Zhou really make it out of that instance after raising a flag²³ that big for himself?

Lou Jingmo replied, “I’m not interested in your mess.”

Shen Maomao: “…” As expected of Lou Jingmo. Her class²⁴ is so high she won’t even take what’s delivered to her door.

Shang Zhou gave a bitter laugh. “Sometimes I really envy your carefree attitude. I thought we could at least be considered friends.”

“I don’t need friends.”

Shen Maomao turned her head and found Lou Jingmo looking right at her.

She walked over, sat astride Lou Jingmo’s lap, and wrapped her arms around her waist, squeezing into her embrace.

Lou Jingmo supported her with one hand and reached for the phone with the other. “Alright, I have other things to do, so let’s end it here. Goodbye.”

Shang Zhou’s voice sounded a bit helpless. “Okay. If we can meet again.”

The call ended. Shen Maomao said, “Shang Zhou is pretty amazing. He actually has more cards than you, Lou-jie.”

Lou Jingmo shot her a sideways glance. “You’re farting. His guild has over a hundred people and only ten cards total. I have seven all by myself. Can you not do math?”

Shen Maomao quickly started to suck up. “My wife is the amazing one! Shang Zhou is just a fart!”

Lou Jingmo patted her butt. “Get off your wife’s lap. She’s about to be crushed to death by you.”

“If you’re going to talk like that, then we don’t even need to be friends.”

Lou Jingmo’s hand suddenly tightened, pushing her onto the desk and pressing her whole body on top. “I don’t need friends, but… I’m currently lacking a bed-warmer²⁵.”

Shen Maomao yelped, “Waist, waist, waist! My old waist!”

Lou Jingmo: “…”

She reached out and pulled Shen Maomao up. “I’ll be angered to death by you sooner or later.”

Shen Maomao said, “What I mean is, the desk is too hard… you get it, right?”

---

---