Volume 9: The Days Can’t Be Lived Anymore
The Ren Family
It’s time for you to grow up on your own, Shen Maomao.
Even after returning to the hotel, Shen Maomao still couldn’t understand why Ren Yue had died.
After four years of knowing each other in university, she thought she understood Ren Yue very well, but in reality, she had never figured out what was truly going on inside Ren Yue’s head.
The two of them showered one after the other. Shen Maomao finished first and came back wrapped in a towel, diving into the slightly damp quilt and plugging her phone in to charge.
Lou Jingmo, disdaining the hotel’s bath towels, came out with nothing on and lay naked on the bed.
Shen Maomao silently turned the air conditioner up by two degrees.
Lou Jingmo said, “Where do you think Ren Yue’s card went?”
Shen Maomao said almost without hesitation, “Do you remember that rich woman master of Ren Yue’s I told you about? I think her master is very likely a game player too. Could the ‘game master’ Ren Yue mentioned at the time have been referring to the Confession Game?”
Lou Jingmo: “That’s certainly possible. Besides, you only ran into all that trouble later because you were accompanying her to meet up in person1. The fact that she encountered danger in the middle of the night and asked an online friend for help instead of calling the police is very suspicious.”
“Ren Yue had very few friends. She was very pretty, but also had very little self-confidence. When I first met her, she would get shy in any public setting and never made other friends… Her father’s ideology was to regard men as heavy and women as light2, and his attitude towards her and her younger brother were polar opposites. She was influenced by this back then and was practically a demon obsessed with helping her younger brother3. It got to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore and overstepped by persuading her to be a little more selfish and think more about herself…”
Thinking of this, Shen Maomao felt a bit emotional. “Later, it was like a switch flipped for her one day. She stopped saving money for her brother, stopped blindly following the family’s arrangements, and started wearing makeup, dressing up, playing online games, and crazily throwing money at them… Lou-jie, do you think she might have entered the game back then?”
“Perhaps,” Lou Jingmo said, her tone cool as she stared at the ceiling. “You taught her she could be a little selfish, and so she used that selfishness on you.”
Shen Maomao: “…Don’t say it, that’s too heartbreaking.”
Ren Yue’s transformation happened in the second semester of her freshman year. If she really entered the game back then, it’s been almost four years now. Why would she still be so terrified by the game?
Maybe some people are just naturally afraid of ghosts. No matter how many times they see them, they’ll still be scared.
Shen Maomao rolled over to face Lou Jingmo. “I originally thought I’d be able to get the Judas Card on this trip, but I didn’t expect someone else would be the swift-footed one to climb first4.”
Lou Jingmo: “Right now, I’m more concerned about whether or not you have to die.”
“It’s been so long already. I think I should be fine.”
Lou Jingmo: “Let’s hope so.”
…
A dreamless night.
Early the next morning, the alarm Shen Maomao had set went off.
She opened her eyes, groggily got out of bed to wash up, and only realized when she got to the bathroom that she had forgotten to put on clothes—she hadn’t brought pajamas and had also slept naked last night.
While brushing her teeth, she looked in the mirror, her gaze traveling up from her stomach with its little bit of flab. She first looked at her gently rising chest, then at her slender and delicate collarbones, admiring herself narcissistically for a moment.
As for the fat on her stomach, it was only there because she thought she was going to die these past few days and had thrown all caution to the wind. If she exercised a bit more in a few days, it would definitely be gone.
As she was looking, her toothbrushing hand paused. She turned to the side to look at the back of her neck and let out a cry of surprise, “Eh?!!”
Lou Jingmo hadn’t been woken by the alarm, but she was woken up by the demonic screaming and yelling. She frowned and asked, “What are you shouting about?”
Shen Maomao: “My tattoo is gone?!”
For a moment, Lou Jingmo didn’t register. “When did you get a tattoo?”
Shen Maomao rushed out with her toothbrush in her mouth and said indistinctly, “That contract… is gone now!”
Lou Jingmo thought it was something serious, but upon hearing this, she rolled her eyes dramatically. “The card has been nullified, so where would the contract come from?”
Shen Maomao was still a little unused to the idea. “I know, but… does this mean I can’t enter the game with you anymore?”
Lou Jingmo nodded, her eyes openly scanning over her before she asked in return, “Isn’t that a good thing? You won’t have to follow me around being scared and worried anymore.”
Shen Maomao felt an inexplicable sense of loss in her heart. “But… we went through so many instances together, and now we suddenly have to part ways… It doesn’t sit right with me.”
Lou Jingmo said helplessly, “It’s time for you to grow up on your own, Shen Maomao.”
Shen Maomao said gloomily, “You sound like my old father…”
Angered, Lou Jingmo scrambled out of bed and kicked her on the butt.
The two of them had breakfast nearby and then, without much delay, went straight to the funeral home together.
At the funeral home, Mother Ren had held a wake all night. When she saw them, she still forced herself to be cheerful and talk to them. “You’re here so early… This is too much trouble for you. How much did this trip cost? Tell Auntie, and Auntie will reimburse you.”
Shen Maomao refused. “There’s no need, Auntie. We happened to be returning to Jiangcheng for some business anyway, so we just stopped by. It didn’t cost much.”
Mother Ren acknowledged her and didn’t press the issue, saying instead, “She’ll be sent for cremation in a little while… Do you want to go to the cemetery with me?”
Of course, Shen Maomao would go, but not for Ren Yue. It was to lie in wait for Ren Yue’s master. “Okay, we’ll go together in a bit. Will anyone else be coming?”
Mother Ren wasn’t sure. “Probably… I think so.”
After eight o’clock, Ren Yue’s body was taken away by the funeral home staff and sent into the incinerator.
Mother Ren clung to her, sobbing uncontrollably. If Shen Maomao hadn’t been supporting her, she would have nearly collapsed to her knees on the ground.
Strangely, Shen Maomao didn’t feel much pity.
Because if something hadn’t gone wrong somewhere, the ones crying like this right now would have been her own parents and Lou Jingmo.
Therefore, she couldn’t sympathize at all. She couldn’t even feel any empathy; she only felt her teeth itch with even more hatred for Ren Yue.
After crying for over half an hour, Mother Ren finally reined in her emotions a little. She sat on a bench, wiping her tears and murmuring to Shen Maomao, “Thinking about it now, our whole family let her down. It’s too late to make it up to her now.”
Her daughter’s body had already been sent into the incinerator, but her father never showed up from beginning to end.
“It’s all my fault… It’s all my fault for giving birth to her in a family like this.”
Perhaps she was spurred on by the fact that her husband, the girl’s father, hadn’t shown up to his own daughter’s funeral. She began to pour out the things she had kept bottled up inside her heart as if dumping trash.
“Her dad never liked her, even when she was little. He always felt that a daughter was just going to be married off to someone else, so there was no need to spend too much money on her. She wore hand-me-downs from relatives and neighbors, played with her younger brother’s unwanted toys, and the only reason they even paid for her schooling was because her grades were good and she could tutor her brother in the future…”
“I let her down… I let her down…” As she spoke, she began to cry loudly again.
If Ren Yue were still her friend, Shen Maomao would definitely have sympathized with her plight and would have wanted to ask her mom, from Ren Yue’s perspective, where all this guilt was before.
But unfortunately, they weren’t friends anymore.
Regardless of whether she had evolved from a demon obsessed with helping her younger brother into a selfish ghost, or if that was her true nature all along, she should not have hurt Shen Maomao, who had refused to even suspect her before there was concrete evidence.
An hour later, while the body was still being cremated, Ren Yue’s father arrived, reeking of alcohol, followed by a reluctant-looking boy.
The boy looked to be fifteen or sixteen years old and had rather delicate features. He was currently looking down at his phone, playing a game, and was even trading curses on speakerphone with people in the game. This must be Ren Yue’s younger brother.
Mother Ren wiped away her tears, went up to them, and started scolding her son. “All you know how to do is play games every day! Have you fallen into the game? What time is it that you’re still playing games?”
The boy said angrily, “Aiya, I’m on voice chat! You just have to talk the moment I get on voice chat. Since when can’t I play games?”
Shen Maomao narrowed her eyes.
Father Ren said with a stern face, “Why are you telling him off? If he wants to play, let him play. A kid can’t do anything anyway, why are you always nagging him?”
Mother Ren was burning with rage. “What’s wrong with me nagging him? He’s my son, I can’t even manage him a little? If I don’t, he’ll be ruined! All he knows is playing games every day, look at what he’s become!”
The boy roared with great impatience, “Enough! I said I didn’t want to come, but you insisted on making me. This is so annoying!” After speaking, he turned and started walking out of the funeral home.
Mother Ren, who was still arguing with Father Ren, quickly chased after him. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going home!” the boy complained. “I knew I shouldn’t have come. It’s so annoying, I can’t even play a game in peace.”
Mother Ren said, “No matter what, today is your older sister’s funeral…”
“I don’t have this sister!” the boy said furiously. “She wouldn’t even buy me a pair of shoes. Other people’s older brothers and sisters spoil their younger brothers, but you call her my sister?!”
Mother Ren was so angry her arm flew up, looking as if she was about to bring a slap down. But the drunken Father Ren rushed forward with surprising agility and grabbed his wife’s arm. “The boy is so old already, and you’re still hitting him?” Then he looked at his son. “Hurry up and go home. Don’t go to the internet cafe, or this laozi5 will beat you with the sole of my slipper6. You got money? Just take a taxi home.”
The boy immediately put down his phone and broke into a cheeky grin. “I’m out! Dad, I want to go eat with my classmates at noon, just give me fifty!”
Father Ren pulled a red bill7 from his pocket. “Here. Spend it wisely. Don’t ask this laozi for money for the rest of the week.”
The boy took the money gleefully. “Dad, you’re still the best to me, not like Mom who’s thinking about my sister all day.”
Father Ren gave him a light kick. “Well, I haven’t seen your mom starve you to death! Get lost! Just looking at you makes me angry!”
The boy ran off with light steps.
Mother Ren struggled free from his grip and complained, “Why did you give him so much money?”
The man had a nonchalant attitude. “It’s this laozi’s own money, I’ll spend it however I want.”
The two of them grumbled at each other for a few sentences before Mother Ren came back with red-rimmed eyes and apologized to Shen Maomao and Lou Jingmo, “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Shen Maomao said, smiling with her skin but not her flesh8, “Not at all.”
The man beside them asked, “Who are these two little girls?”
Mother Ren replied, “They’re Ren Yue’s friends from university. They were passing by and came to see her…”
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