The Hand of Confession – Chapter 237

Volume 8: The Days of the Ghost Marriage

Di Yiqiao

What about you, Lou-jie? Why did you come in here?

The moment the thing in the well let go, Su Han was flung straight out. Shen Maomao released her grip, and she and Lou Jingmo stumbled backward from the inertia. Finally, Lou Jingmo stomped her foot back forcefully, bringing them to a stop while holding Shen Maomao.

Su Han lay on the ground, panting raggedly, her hand still locked in a death grip on the bucket’s rope. It seemed that by desperately clinging to this rope, she had just managed to avoid falling in completely.

Shen Maomao’s first concern was for her wife: “Lou-jie, are you okay?”

Lou Jingmo nodded. “Check on her.”

The two walked closer, only then discovering ten bluish-purple fingerprints imprinted on Su Han’s slender neck. It was easy to imagine just how much force the thing that had choked her had used.

Shen Maomao extended her right hand to her. “Are you alright?”

Su Han coughed twice and grabbed her hand to pull herself into a sitting position. On her outstretched right hand were five more dark, bruised fingerprints.

Su Han said, “If you hadn’t come, something definitely would have happened.” Because her neck had been squeezed for a long time, her voice had lost its former clarity, now carrying a rasp as if it had been sanded down.

Lou Jingmo asked, “What’s in the well?”

Su Han shook her head with a bitter smile. “It seemed like a person, but I didn’t get a clear look… A moment ago, I was trying to lift out the full bucket of water when suddenly an icy hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the well. Then it choked me by the neck…”

The three of them all turned their gazes toward the well.

Shen Maomao said strangely, “Why didn’t anything happen to the first two?”

Su Han: “Is it because I was alone?”

“Possibly.” With that, Lou Jingmo nudged Shen Maomao. “Go on, try fetching some water.”

Shen Maomao’s face was full of doubt. “What’s going on? Aren’t I the person you love most? You want me to try something so dangerous?”

Lou Jingmo made a move to pick up the wooden bucket. “Then I’ll go?”

Shen Maomao stopped her with righteous indignation. “No! How could a delicate girl like you do such rough work? Put it down, let me! I can do it!”

Su Han: “…?”

Heart trembling with fear, Shen Maomao walked to the well, grabbed the windlass rope, then turned and ran. The windlass creaked jiga-jiga, letting out a groan of old age. From a good distance away from the well’s mouth, she secured the bucket, then raised her arm from afar. The bucket flew in a parabola and dropped into the well, making a muffled gudong sound.

Lou Jingmo: “Are you practicing your free throws?”

“Pah!” Shen Maomao spat. “I’m doing this for safety!”

It was indeed quite safe. Aside from that one dong sound, nothing else stirred from the well.

Lou Jingmo said helplessly, “Then how are you going to pull the bucket up? With your mind?”

Shen Maomao: “How about you two hold onto me, and I’ll go try?”

Lou Jingmo took her small hand. “Let’s go.”

The two of them walked to the well’s edge together. With the girlfriend buff active, Shen Maomao’s courage grew more than twofold; she even dared to poke her head over the edge to take a look inside.

She only peeked for a second before quickly pulling back. The well was pitch-black inside; it was impossible to make out any details with the naked eye.

Shen Maomao turned the windlass¹ and, with more creaks of jiga-jiga, brought the wooden bucket up.

The bucket was filled with clear well water, not the bloody water she had imagined. She took the bucket off and said, “It seems that what happened to Su Han won’t occur if there are more people.”

Su Han nodded. “Could I trouble you two to wait for me?”

Shen Maomao naturally had no objections. The two of them stood to the side, watching as she tremblingly filled her bucket, and then the three of them left together.

One bucket of water wasn’t that heavy, which meant they would have to make many trips, which in turn meant—they had to face that well multiple times.

On the way, Shen Maomao carried her water and asked Su Han, “Have you considered teaming up with Di Yiqiao?”

Su Han frowned, an unwilling expression on her face. “Better not. That Di Yiqiao looks like trouble. Teaming up with her would be worse than me going it alone.”

Shen Maomao thought that made sense. If it weren’t for Lou Jingmo, she probably wouldn’t be willing to team up with a stranger either. Who knew what kind of monsters or demons you might end up with.

After a few more steps, they returned to the front of the courtyard. The two women who had returned earlier were already preparing to go for another load of water, but they didn’t see any sign of Di Yiqiao.

Shen Maomao asked, “Where’s Di Yiqiao?”

The woman with a beauty mark under her right eye answered, “No idea. She was already gone when we got back.”

She looked to be in her twenties, a bit more mature than Shen Maomao. The name she gave during introductions was Milk Tea—clearly an online handle.

The other girl, who was a bit chubby, was about the same age and called herself Potato Chips. She and Milk Tea must have entered the queue together.

Hearing Milk Tea’s words, Su Han had a look of utter incomprehension. “Where does she get the nerve to just run around?”

Potato Chips smiled and, lifting her bucket, said, “We don’t know, and we don’t dare to ask. She probably hasn’t witnessed how terrifying the game can be yet. The ignorant are fearless.”

Milk Tea then asked them in return, “Why were you guys gone for so long? Did something happen?”

Su Han lifted her collar and rolled up her sleeves, answering truthfully, “There’s something in the well. It almost dragged me down. Be careful when you fetch water, and it’s best not to approach the well alone.”

Potato Chips cupped her hands toward them in a very jianghu²-like manner. “Thanks, we’ll be careful.”

With Di Yiqiao gone, Su Han brazenly tagged along with them. Shen Maomao and Lou Jingmo didn’t mind the extra few minutes and would voluntarily stop and wait for her after each trip.

Su Han was deeply moved and offered to wash their clothes for them, but Lou Jingmo refused. She didn’t insist, just offered a few more words of thanks, then obediently sat on a stone stool and began to scrub her own clothes.

Shen Maomao sat with Lou Jingmo.

Lou Jingmo first moved all the dirty clothes to one side, then placed the topmost item into the washbasin. She gently rubbed a soap bar³ over it before starting to knead the fabric.

Shen Maomao, whose only survival skill was cooking, copied her every move. She started scrubbing the long robe, sighing as she washed, “I have this instance to thank. It not only taught me how to haul bricks, but it also taught a woman who only knew how to wash underwear and socks how to do laundry.”

Lou Jingmo comforted her, “Don’t worry, you’ll master even more skills in the future and contribute to our country’s cause of communism.”

Shen Maomao: “I will definitely follow the Party’s leadership and abide by the Party’s policies and principles…”

Milk Tea and Potato Chips: “…??” Are these two nuts? Did the pressure get to them and make them go crazy ahead of schedule?

Having received two strange looks, Shen Maomao consciously lowered her voice and, while washing clothes, whispered in Lou Jingmo’s ear⁴, “Lou-jie, from our brief contact just now, I feel like Su Han is a pretty good person.”

Lou Jingmo said flatly, “She’s alright.”

Shen Maomao asked again, “A person like her, what reason could she have for entering the game?”

Lou Jingmo’s hands paused for a moment. She glanced at Shen Maomao, then resumed her work, saying, “I told you from the very beginning, there’s a problem with the conditions this game uses to select people.”

“This world has never been black and white. Take you, for example. Although you always try your best to help those you approve of, when your own life is threatened, you will definitely choose to protect yourself first. Is that wrong?”

Shen Maomao: “I don’t think what I do is wrong. My survival is what’s most important.”

Lou Jingmo smiled. “Have you ever heard the saying? If a person does a hundred good deeds and one bad deed, everyone will just think all his previous good deeds were a facade to disguise himself, and they’ll see him as an utterly hypocritical person. But if a person does a hundred bad deeds and one day suddenly does one good deed, then everyone will think he still has kindness in his heart and is not beyond saving…”

“The creator of this game has exactly that kind of mentality. You not saving someone in order to protect yourself is selfishness in his eyes. You accidentally killing someone to save your own life, in his eyes, both of you are guilty. If a person did one bad thing, and then out of guilt did countless good deeds to make up for it, and even earned the forgiveness of the victim, is he ultimately guilty or not guilty? The creator is not a supreme god; the selection rules he established are inherently unreasonable.”

“Shen Maomao, you can’t just slap a fixed label on people because of the game’s rules.” Lou Jingmo raised her arm, her damp hand resting on Shen Maomao’s chest—right over her heart. “You have to use your heart. Use your heart to feel who is trustworthy and who isn’t. There are no absolute villains in the world, nor are there absolute heroes. What you need to do is to sincerely distinguish between those who are good to you and those who are not.”

Shen Maomao was half-understanding. “What if someone who is good to me commits murder and arson?”

Lou Jingmo: “I’m rather selfish; I believe in siding with kin over reason⁵. If this question were posed to me, as long as the matter doesn’t directly affect me, he’s still a good person to me.”

Shen Maomao thought for a moment and said, “Since the matter hasn’t fallen on my head yet, I think I’d side with reason over kin. But if it did happen to me, I don’t know if my perspective would change…”

Lou Jingmo: “So, does that mean I should try a little harder to not be so selfish, so that I can stand on the same side as your ‘reason’?”

Shen Maomao felt a little giddy. “Lou-jie, I won’t allow you to talk about yourself like that! You’re already amazing! You side with kin over reason, and I side with reason over kin. We’re simply a match made in heaven!”

Lou Jingmo: “…”

Shen Maomao: “Alright, you can take your hand off my chest now.”

“Ahem…” Lou Jingmo gave a dry cough and silently continued washing the clothes.

After all this buildup, Shen Maomao hesitated and fidgeted, but still asked the question she had been wanting to ask all along: “What about you, Lou-jie? Why did you come in here?”

In truth, she wasn’t that curious about why Su Han had entered the instance. What truly had her unbearably curious⁶ had always been Lou Jingmo’s story.

In this relationship, she was actually very passive. Lou Jingmo knew almost everything about her, but she knew nothing about Lou Jingmo’s past, which made her very uneasy.

The moment she asked, Shen Maomao instantly regretted it.

Lou Jingmo wasn’t a girl without a story⁷. By asking so bluntly, might she have just poked at a painful memory?

Thinking this, Shen Maomao immediately backtracked: “On second thought, never mind. I’m not actually that curious.”

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