The Hand of Confession – Chapter 416
by Little PandaEpilogue: The Final Instance
Teddy Bear
Resurrection
Rotting wood?
Shen Maomao was momentarily confused. Why would she have that kind of smell on her?
She reached out and touched her shoulder but didn’t feel anything. However, the instant her hand brushed past, she clearly felt the temperature around her shoulder drop slightly, causing a row of goosebumps to break out on her arm involuntarily.
There’s something on my shoulder.
Shen Maomao realized this with perfect clarity. But she couldn’t see or touch it, so for now, there was nothing she could do.
She placed the trembling little spirit on her head and began to search the room.
The house wasn’t large. The living room could be seen at a glance and was stuffed full of various objects: a big-bottomed television on a table, a dated-looking TV cover, a green refrigerator standing by the sofa, a coffee table covered with a small floral tablecloth, several crudely made low stools, and even a folding round table identical to the one at Lou Jingmo’s house.
Shen Maomao walked over and ran a hand across the coffee table, coming away with a handful of dust.
Police Officer Bai1 had said something happened at her home. The person involved must have been the Old Lady. If she had only been injured, there would have been no need for her to be so ambiguous2. The only possibility was that the Old Lady was dead, and it hadn’t been an ordinary death.
Shen Maomao opened the door on the right. A foul stench immediately assaulted her nose, accompanied by the buzzing of flies swarming over a trash can near the doorway.
Puck fainted on the spot. He was foaming at the mouth3, lying motionless on the floor, apparently knocked out by the smell.
Pinching her nose, Shen Maomao fought back her disgust and peeked inside. To her surprise, she found the rotting corpse of a black cat.
The cat’s head was facing up. A gash ran across its right eye, and its bloodshot, cloudy pupil stared blankly at her. She could faintly see maggots squirming inside.
It was a black cat.
Shen Maomao tilted her head, glancing from the cat on the refrigerator to the one in the trash can.
Both cats were pure black. The one on the refrigerator had beautiful, emerald-green eyes. The one in the trash had one eye closed, while the other was red and bloodshot, making its original color impossible to discern. She couldn’t be sure if they were the same cat.
She closed the kitchen door. As she did, she thought she saw a blurry, pitch-black shadow in the smooth reflection of the wooden door. It was perched on her shoulder, its face pressed intimately against her ear, as if whispering secrets—or perhaps about to bite it off.
Just then, the cat meowed again. The sound was sharp, like a child crying, and it made Shen Maomao shudder, her heart pounding wildly.
But when she looked closely again, there was nothing on the door.
After shutting the door, she glanced at the cat again. It had jumped down from the refrigerator at some point and was now scratching at the freezer door.
Shen Maomao had a bad feeling, so she didn’t open the refrigerator. Instead, she went to check the bathroom first.
The mirror inside was covered with dried water stains. Shen Maomao stood in front of it for a long time but couldn’t see the fleeting black shadow again.
Scratch, scratch…
The little black cat was still scratching the refrigerator, leaving white marks on its surface. It had only made that one sound and was now silent, just scratching the door while watching her, as if hoping she would help open it.
Shen Maomao pretended not to notice and went into the other bedroom.
This bedroom had an indescribable smell. If she had to describe it, it might be the unique scent of the elderly—the smell of being on the verge of death. The smell of death itself.
This must be Grandmother’s room.
She gave the room a quick scan but found nothing, so she backed out and went to the last room across the hall.
If she wasn’t mistaken, this was supposed to be her room.
After opening the door, the first thing she saw was a small single bed with a messy blanket. Two 《Cardcaptor》4 stickers were pasted on the round post of the headboard.
Next to the bed stood a worn-out wooden wardrobe. One of its doors had fallen off. Inside, a row of girls’ clothes was neatly folded, but otherwise, it was empty. The room didn’t even have a window.
It was dark and oppressive, almost making it hard to breathe.
Shen Maomao opened the other wardrobe door and found that there was nothing inside at all.
She thought for a moment, then closed the door.
For some reason, the wardrobe gave her a very bad feeling.
She turned to search elsewhere and found some crayon drawings on the windowsill.
A child in their early teens could already draw what they wanted to express quite clearly. Shen Maomao glanced over them and saw that although the pictures were made of simple geometric shapes, they were very expressive.
The top drawing was a family portrait. Two adults held a little girl’s hand, and next to them stood a person with a wrinkled face holding a cane. It should have been a harmonious scene, but the two adults had been crossed out with red and black crayons, leaving only the clean figures of the little girl and the old person.
The second drawing showed several purple bolts of lightning. Beneath them was a rectangle, and at the bottom of the rectangle sat a little girl with two pigtails, hugging something that looked like a doll.
This room doesn’t even have a window. Where did the little girl see the lightning from?
Shen Maomao stared at the picture for a long time. For some reason, the rectangle looked a bit like the wardrobe.
She subconsciously compared her own size to the wardrobe and finally understood why the left side was empty.
This was the secret base5 of a young girl. Whenever it stormed, she probably climbed into the wardrobe and curled up inside, letting the enclosed space give her a small sense of security.
She continued flipping through. The third picture depicted a bed with a wrinkled person lying on it. The little girl was kneeling at the bedside, looking as if she were crying. The very next one, however, showed the little girl and the old person eating together. Both of their faces had big smiley faces drawn on them in bright red crayon, which was particularly jarring against the overall black tone of the drawing.
The order of the drawings might not mean anything, she thought. Looking on the bright side, maybe Grandmother got sick, but then she got better, which is why they could happily eat together.
In the fourth picture, the old person’s cane was lying on its side. In their hand was a dripping knife. The little girl stood a short distance away. The ground in front of them was colored red with crayon, and beneath the red, you could faintly make out two square bodies without heads.
And finally, the fifth picture: the family of four was sitting at the dinner table. Everyone had a red smiley face drawn on them, except for the little girl, whose face was a blue, crying one.
Shen Maomao overturned all her previous speculations.
She believed the information the drawings revealed was this: the little girl and her Grandmother had to depend on each other for survival. At first, she still missed her parents, but over time, or perhaps after something happened, she became completely disillusioned with them, which was why she’d crossed them out. Later, her Grandmother died at home but came back to life for some reason and started taking care of the little girl again. Then, after her parents returned, the Grandmother killed them with a knife—and they, too, experienced a resurrection.
While she was looking at the drawings, Puck slowly came to. He said weakly to Shen Maomao, “Promise me you won’t go into that room again. I’ll die.”
His interruption actually made the cramped little room feel less oppressive.
Shen Maomao searched around and only found a golden pig piggy bank behind the curtain. She picked it up and shook it; it sounded like there was quite a bit of money inside.
A penny can stump a hero.6 If the situation allowed it, she really didn’t want to take money from the original owner, but if she didn’t take any now, she would starve to death.
She sighed, pulled ten one-yuan coins from the bottom, then put the piggy bank back where she found it and left the room.
The black cat was still scratching at the refrigerator. When it saw her come out, it watched her without blinking, its emerald-green eyes fixed on her.
Shen Maomao walked up to it and tentatively held out a hand.
The little black cat retracted its claws and moved away from the door, but it didn’t let Shen Maomao touch it. It quickly scrambled back onto the top of the refrigerator.
Puck was trembling, shrieking like a screaming chicken7, “Aaaah!! Shen Maomao!! Keep an eye on it! Keep an eye on it!”
Shen Maomao was speechless. “Just fly outside and wait.”
Puck cried, “My wings have gone soft! I can’t fly anymore 55555…”
Shen Maomao: “…” What a coward.
Puck: “So scary 5555, I don’t like Tom8 anymore…”
The little black cat glanced at him, then elegantly licked its paws and rested on its forelegs, watching Shen Maomao.
“Stop crying,” Shen Maomao said helplessly. “It probably has no interest in you at all.”
Puck was shocked. “What? It’s not interested in a cute little spirit like me?!”
Shen Maomao was at a loss for words. “…So do you want it to play with you or not?”
Puck huffed, “Me being scared is one thing, but whether it likes me or not is another! To think it doesn’t like me! What kind of cat is that? I’m going to turn it into a pig!”
“Meeow—!” As if it understood him, the little black cat arched its back, raised its tail, and let out a fierce meow. The sound terrified Puck so much that he immediately burrowed back into Shen Maomao’s hair, trembling and muttering, “Wuwuwu, I was wrong, I’ll never do it again!!”
He was crying so loudly that Shen Maomao couldn’t even think straight. With a helpless sigh, she recalled him to her item bar9.
As soon as Puck disappeared, the world fell silent.
Mustering her courage, Shen Maomao pulled the freezer door open.
A blast of cold air hit her, making her shiver. Even though she had prepared herself, the scene still made her jump.
The inside of the freezer was covered in a thick layer of frost. There were no drawers. Instead, two human heads were stacked vertically, facing forward.
One head belonged to a woman with long hair, the other to a man with short hair. Both had their eyes closed and their faces were a purplish-blue. Smiles were fixed on their lips, and beads of frozen blood clung to their skin.
And next to the two heads sat a clean teddy bear. Its pitch-black eyes reflected her stunned expression.
Footnotes
- Hanzi: 白警官 | Pinyin: Bái jǐngguān | Context / Meaning: A kind female police officer from Taodong Police Station who helps Shen Maomao.
- Hanzi: 模棱两可 | Pinyin: móléng liǎngkě | Context / Meaning: An idiom used to describe Police Officer Bai’s vague statement about what happened to the grandmother, implying it was not a simple death.
- Hanzi: 口吐白沫 | Pinyin: kǒu tǔ bái mò | Context / Meaning: An idiom describing Puck’s dramatic reaction after fainting from the foul stench of the rotting cat in the kitchen.
- Hanzi: 《魔卡少女》 | Pinyin: Mókǎ Shàonǚ | Context / Meaning: Literally “Magic Card Girl.” A likely reference to the popular anime “Cardcaptor Sakura.”
- Hanzi: 秘密基地 | Pinyin: mìmì jīdì | Context / Meaning: A child’s secret hiding place.
- Hanzi: 一分钱难倒英雄汉 | Pinyin: yī fēn qián nándǎo yīngxióng hàn | Context / Meaning: A well-known proverb acknowledging that even the most capable person can be thwarted by a lack of money.
- Hanzi: 尖叫鸡 | Pinyin: jiānjiào jī | Context / Meaning: A popular rubber chicken toy known for its loud squawk.
- Hanzi: 汤姆 | Pinyin: Tāngmǔ | Context / Meaning: Refers to the cat from the cartoon “Tom and Jerry.”
- Hanzi: 道具栏 | Pinyin: dàojù lán | Context / Meaning: The player’s inventory screen. Shen Maomao uses it to store Puck when he becomes too noisy.
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