CH 22

Translated by boilpoil

Edited by boilpoil

“Xiao-Chun… Wu Chun!”

What the Glasses yells out towards the doll of the little girl shocks everyone else.

Quarrelsome reflexively asks, “what? Wu Chun? Her? Isn’t this a doll?”

Ponytail almost immediately gets it and turns to Wu Shen, shouting in terror, “you made your daughter into a doll?!”

Wu Shen stops walking towards them, and just stands there with a vicious, uncanny smile. What he says is even stranger, “you’re afraid? But… daddy, is making xiao-Chun’s wish come true.”

Ponytail angrily retorts, “how could xiao-Chun have wished to be made into a doll?!”

Wu Shen cackles at the remark, before eerily continuing, “what else could I do? I can only make dolls. Daddy is so useless… Uwuwu, just like your mother said that night. Daddy is so useless. Xiao-Chun, daddy is useless…”

Then he begins crying for real.

Ponytail’s anger slowly turns into unease and fear. She wants to ask why. Why did Wu Shen end up like this? Was his love towards his wife and daughter evident in the diary entries fake? How is he so depraved and twisted?

She recalls the letters Wu Shen’s wife wrote to him. She said he was, insane.

And… She told Wu Shen off for being useless that night?

Could this be, what the bookstore owner heard a certain night? The night when Wu Chun was crying and the wife was scolding somebody? Yet Wu Shen told the bookstore owner that Wu Chun got on his wife’s nerves and she snapped.

… But, it could very well be that, she was crying because her parents were arguing.

If that was true, then Wu Shen is completely untrustworthy.

And with the corridor being only as long as it was, no matter how wobbly the steps of the girl doll was, she is already next to the Missiontakers.

Yet, instead of attacking them, she is looking at Wu Shen, calling out, sounding slightly anxious, “daddy…”

Wu Shen’s face is still frozen in his twisted, unreadable expression. His attention seems to drift away when he turns his head towards the doll.

And suddenly, the appearance of the doll store changes once again, back to its once pristine glory. Wu Chun’s room is still a clean, tidy princess’ room.

Yet both the Missiontakers and the viewers in the stream are feeling complicated seeing this scene.

This is the day that disaster befell Wu Chun.

Since this day, this normal little family, with its occasional squabbles, with its occasional sweetness, fell apart entirely. The owner’s wife would no longer make detours to buy snacks for her daughter. Wu Shen would no longer record his family’s banal, trivial daily lives in his diary.

Everything has changed.

All that is left, is Wu Chun, now a doll, put inside the display cabinet in the storefront, and Wu Shen, that merely wallows in hopelessness and dread, on the second floor, day in, day out.

… Wu Shen.

Why did he do that?

Did he go mad? If he didn’t, how could he ever have done something so cruel to his daughter?

The moment the scene of the day Wu Chun went missing has come to life, the doll of the little girl and Wu Shen both disappeared instead this time. The trio walk out into the corridor, to see Wu Shen stopped at the stairs.

Ponytail looks over Wu Shen’s appearance and his current posture, and concludes, “this is where the flashback cut off earlier.”

Glasses says, knitting his brows, “so it’s really like you said, Wu Shen’s other personality has killed Wu Chun? And the flashback was stopped because Wu Shen’s main personality didn’t actually know anything?”

Ponytail nods, “it’s highly possible,” she thinks, before adding, “and it is also possible that the main personality was aware and knew what was happening, but the trauma made that personality forget entirely.”

“Makes sense.”

Then they stop talking to follow Wu Shen down the stairs.

Wu Shen has a really strange facial expression right now. Unlike the loving, doting father, he now has a creepy smile instead. When he descend the stairs, his joints seem awfully rigid; he is jumping his way down the stairs with stiffly straightened legs.

He looks just like a real doll – during his time making dolls, he has slowly become a doll he used to make himself.

The Missiontakers follow after him, and finally see the little girl for themselves on the first floor.

A cute cheek that reminds them of a little apple, with two ponytails, Wu Chun is lying on the counter right now, looking squarely at a doll inside the display cabinet.

They also follow her gaze.

It is a doll in a red dress. It resembles a princess. Despite its plastic limbs and facial features, it is a beauty to behold.

Wu Shen follows her gaze, and after staring at it for a while, he suddenly asks, “xiao-Chun… do you like this doll very much?”

Wu Chun nods firmly, and holds up her face with a big beaming smile, saying, “daddy is amazing! I love the dolls daddy make!”

“Daddy made this doll in the image of xiao-Chun,” Wu Shen says, his tone then turns ugly, “xiao-Chun, if you like this one, do you want daddy to make another doll specifically for xiao-Chun?”

“Hurray! Daddy, I want, the most perfect…” Wu Chun happily says, “doll in the whole world!”

Wu Shen seems to twitch visibly.

Wu Chun continues, “I see daddy make dolls a lot, but they are all for other people. So if daddy is giving xiao-Chun a doll, then, I want the most perfect doll in the whole world!”

“The most perfect… doll?” Wu Shen tilts his head and shows an unsettling smile, saying, “of course. It is, a promise from daddy.”

The young little girl shows a lovely smile, saying, “daddy is the best!”

Then Wu Shen slowly trudges along towards Wu Chun.

The three Missiontakers quickly try to stop Wu Shen, but they realise that they can’t actually affect Wu Shen at all.

All the audience in the stream are hurriedly typing, “jesus christ! dont smile! run!!!”

Wu Shen, cooing Wu Chun along the way, is holding her little hand as he takes him to his second-floor workshop.

He will turn his own daughter, into the most perfect doll in the world.

The three Missiontakers are now looking at each other in abject terror. They all know they should walk upstairs to keep an eye on the process, knowing there might be some hints or clues for a True End, but… They do not want to.

The stream has gone silent.

No one would ask Xü Beijin to move the video source over.

A cute, lively little girl, has become a stiff, poker-faced doll.

They do not know how Wu Shen did it; they do not know what insane thoughts must be driving Wu Shen to do this. Just imagining the scene already makes their hair stand on end. It must have been terrifyingly gory, yet Wu Shen was even able to show how much he loved and missed Wu Chun afterwards, just like a father that ended up losing his daughter inexplicably…

It truly is impossible to empathise with the mentally insane.

A while later, the mood in the stream has lightened up a little.

“why r the players just standing around”

“id be totally petrified in the situation too, and theyre probably unable to leave until the memorys over…”

“It truly is heartrending, the SAN value is falling through the floor.”

“still theres lots of info here, they could get a true end soon enough!”

“but wait… host, i feel like the other players are almost done with an ending, y r u still lazing about in the bookstore…”

“The host really is a player that wins by doing nothing.”

Xü Beijin has finally gathered his wits about him to show them an embarrassed smile.

Then he glances over at the stream, to see that Lin Qin is still hanging out in the abandoned street. The rest of the players are all inside ‘Wu Shen’s Flashback.’

What better time to leave than now?

Xü Beijin stands up immediately and switches the main view to himself, putting the flashback scene into the corner. He then talks to the viewers, “then… should we take a walk now?”

The stream is filled with cheers.

Other than the detective dalao who is still focusing on the three Missiontakers’ progress, the rest of the viewers have been distracted already.

They are chirping over where Xü Beijin should go first, like a tour guide leading a tourist.

“the bedroom first! for the diary!”

“hey hey what about the letters in the study?”

“at least nobodys gonna search thru the trash in the workshop (murmur)”

“lolol, these scenes are all explored anyway, lets find new clues!”

The stream is growing a bit sombre again, just like every other time they mentioned Wu Chun. This is a game, but a highly engaging one, no less.

Xü Beijin isn’t good at mediating the mood either; his communication skills are lacking. He can only sigh alongside them.

Though, he can’t help but wonder, whether the Nightmares in the Tower, really are just ‘games’?

This is something he doesn’t dare thinking too deeply about.

He is fortunate as he doesn’t run into Lin Qin on the streets. Soon enough, he’s inside the first floor of the doll store.

It is just like what they saw on the stream, but such a filthy, messy location and the stench still makes Xü Beijin furrow his brows.

The Tower is mostly scenes just as dirty as this, but they are especially nasty in Nightmares.

And a comment quietly flies through the stream, “how much is this stench from wu chuns blood and corpse after her death, you think?”

A critical hit.

Xü Beijin tries to take a deep breath——And immediately coughs because of the putrid air.

He begins exploring around the first floor.

There are mountainous piles of boxes and dolls strewn all about. It is difficult to navigate.

The entire southern wall is the glass door plus the glass display cabinet. The area the Missiontakers cleared up with a way to the hatch to the second floor is in the northeast corner, while the counter itself is at the northwest corner.

Xü Beijin runs the floor plan through his mind and then walks towards the counter.

In Wu Shen’s flashback, this is where Wu Chun was sitting when she was on the first floor. She looked to be keeping watch on the store from here.

There are lots of boxes and dolls piled up around the counter. These are probably boxes once used to pack dolls within, but most of them are broken or worn down now. The dolls all similarly look soiled.

These dolls do not attack Xü Beijin. Perhaps because he is only an Actor. Perhaps because this is the safety period between the waves of doll chasing.

He pushes the boxes and the dolls, and circles around the counter. He glances over it, and pulls open the single drawer installed in it. Then, his gaze fixes onto the letter lying squarely inside.

The viewers in the stream are all celebrating.

“nice, host! u got a clue now!”

“woah, did u know this host? how did u find this so quickly!”

“I did think there might be something everyone missed on the first floor, so it’s a letter! Host, quick, look inside to see what’s written!”

“feels kinda distant to keep calling him host…”

“we shud give him a nickname!”

“[laugh_cry emoji] With just the four of us plus the host, this really is like some family stream”

“xü beijin… lets go with beibei! ill take no objections!”

Xü Beijin “…”

He says while sighing inside, “I don’t mind. You can call me whatever you like.”

The comment barrage immediately ends up overtaken by ‘Beibei.’

Only Xü Beijin and the detective dalao are still focusing on this heretofore unseen letter.

He examines the envelope. The sender’s name suggests it’s a she. Perhaps this is the owner’s wife’s name? It could be a letter from her to Wu Shen.

There is also a sender’s address near her name. It’s beyond reach in the Nightmare, but at least it should imply that the wife herself was fine. She only moved away after divorcing Wu Shen.

Xü Beijin opens the envelope and checks the contents on the letter.

“[…]

You accused me of not caring for xiao-Chun? If she knew that after she went missing, her daddy is still all obsessed with the dolls he hasn’t finished yet, I wonder how sad she must be!

When there was the press interview earlier, you were even walking around with that doll, saying things like ‘xiao-Chun will definitely be by my side forever.’ You even moved to sleep in xiao-Chun’s room afterwards, saying she never left and is always by your side […] you’re really sick, Wu Shen. You have gone insane.

We have once loved each other very much, so I still want to tell you, and ask you, if xiao-Chun really isn’t coming back, are you going to keep living like this? Spend your entire life with your dolls? […]

You may think I’m heartless. You may accuse me of not caring for xiao-Chun […] my own daughter! I wish, I damned wish it was me who ended up […] I am still holding out hope, how ever small a glimmer of hope it might be. I still dream – I fantasise about a day when xiao-Chun might return to my side, but […]

Wu Shen, our daughter, could really, be in some other, happier place.

Call this a mother’s instinct or whatever. I feel like something really did befall her. You do not believe me, nobody does. Everyone thinks I do not love xiao-Chun. Everyone thinks I am saying that because I hated my daughter.

Of course not. xiao-Chun… I felt it. Something really… really happened to xiao-Chun!

She was so young […] only six. When she was born, her little body was so little. She was clinging to my side […]

[…]”

Xü Beijin is quite absorbed reading the contents of the letter alongside the viewers in the stream.

When suddenly, a hand comes out of nowhere, and takes the letter right out of his hands!