Nine in the morning, suburban funeral home.
Ji Xun, sporting two massive dark circles under his eyes, huddled among a solemn-faced crowd. In one hand, he held a cup of coffee. In the other, he clutched two steamed buns filled with fresh meat. While sneakily nibbling on the buns, he wistfully missed his warm, cozy bed.
What kind of bewitching potion had Shen Kui fed him that, after pulling two consecutive all-nighters, he had volunteered to accompany her to the funeral home? Why hadn’t he followed Tian Ke’s blissful example and gone back to catch up on sleep?!
He must have been possessed!
He took a fierce bite of his bun, muttering, “Serves you right for being so talkative, insisting on tagging along…”
Shen Kui, having just finished exchanging pleasantries with a colleague, caught the tail end of his muttering and casually asked, “Tagging along for what?”
“N-nothing, ahem…”
Shen Kui didn’t pay much attention to his little grumbles. Checking the time, her expression turned grave. “The ceremony is about to start. Wait for me outside later.”
“Mmph, don’t you want me to help keep an eye on things?” Ji Xun mumbled through a mouthful of bun.
Shen Kui was silent for a moment before shaking her head. “No. Let her leave with dignity on her final journey.”
Ji Xun wisely kept quiet.
“By the way, about the surveillance cameras, what have you decided?”
Shen Kui had already told Ji Xun about discovering the pinhole camera at home before she lost consciousness. As expected, Ji Xun had been scared stiff on the spot, repeatedly exclaiming, “My life is over!”
Ji Xun finished the last bite of his bun, dusted off his hands, and declared, “I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to fight fire with fire! I’ll head to the computer market later and buy a dozen cameras to install at home.”
Shen Kui was speechless. “You haven’t even been home to check. What if there aren’t any cameras there in the first place?”
“Even better if there aren’t.” Ji Xun said excitedly. “I’ll install them first. If anyone tries anything funny later, I’ll catch them red-handed. That’s called ‘preparing the provisions before the troops march’!”
Shen Kui: “…Alright then.”
They chatted idly for a few more minutes until a family member from the funeral home came to inform them that the ceremony could begin. Shen Kui then followed the crowd inside.
*** ***
Regardless of the season, the temperature inside a funeral home always seemed several degrees colder than outside.
The moment Shen Kui stepped into the main hall, she couldn’t help but shiver.
The black-and-white mourning hall was chilly and cavernous. Though many people had gathered, no one spoke. Only the muffled sounds of suppressed sobs echoed faintly in the space.
Shen Kui took a bouquet and slowly approached the transparent coffin at the center along with the others.
As the first person to arrive at the accident scene, Lu Ting’s death had left a deep psychological scar on Shen Kui. Facing that face again, half horrifically disfigured, half eerily beautiful, was no small challenge for her.
Taking a deep breath, Shen Kui bent down slowly, intending to place the flowers beside Lu Ting.
However, just as her gaze was about to meet the other’s face, she instinctively looked away. It was then that her peripheral vision caught sight of a familiar pattern.
Shen Kui focused her eyes. There, on Lu Ting’s right collarbone, was a tattoo of a slender, coiled snake biting its own tail. It was the exact same ouroboros she had seen both on her boss and the forum!
Shock and terror jolted through her. Her hand involuntarily loosened its grip. The flowers fell gently onto Lu Ting’s body, the delicate petals scattering across the half-ruined, half-beautiful face, like pale yellow blossoms sprouting from a wound, bizarre and hauntingly beautiful.
Yet Shen Kui had no mind to pay attention. Her entire focus was captivated by that eerie pattern.
All the details from these past days linked together like frames of a film playing on loop in her mind, the final scene freezing on the thud at three in the morning. She had leaned out the window to look. In the darkness, Lu Ting lay quietly in the bushes, her hollow, unseeing eyes gazing back at her from afar.
“What are you thinking about? So careless.”
Just then, a rough, large hand reached out from behind into Lu Ting’s coffin and naturally picked up the flowers.
The speaker’s tone was gentle, without a hint of reproach, yet Shen Kui felt her entire body turn cold, her blood seeming to freeze. She reflexively dodged to the side, avoiding the bouquet being offered to her.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you recognize your boss anymore?” Uncle Xu was puzzled. His gentle, honest face showed just the right amount of confusion, making Shen Kui almost waver in her suspicions for a moment.
But the next second, she saw the tattoo on Uncle Xu’s wrist again. Reason instantly returned. She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Uncle Xu.”
“Take it. Don’t be too sad. See her off properly on her final journey.”
Uncle Xu handed the flowers over again. Shen Kui struggled to suppress the discomfort in her heart, took the flowers, and placed them beside Lu Ting.
Uncle Xu said with concern, “You still look very pale. Do you want to rest for a few more days?”
Last night, after Shen Kui woke up, she had messaged Uncle Xu, saying she could return to work after the weekend. Uncle Xu had urged her to rest for a few more days, but Shen Kui had refused. It wasn’t that she loved her job so much, but rather that Uncle Xu might hold some clues. She needed to take this opportunity to understand them clearly.
“No need. Thank you, Uncle Xu. I’m fine,” Shen Kui politely declined his kindness. Perhaps it was psychological, but now, whenever she looked at Uncle Xu, she felt a chill down her spine.
After exchanging a few simple words with Uncle Xu, she found an excuse to leave.
*** ***
When Shen Kui returned, her steps were hurried, her face ashen, her demeanor completely different from just ten minutes before.
Ji Xun sensed something was wrong from afar, but he wisely refrained from asking too much.
The two hailed a taxi back to the city. Throughout the journey, Shen Kui remained silent.
Ji Xun waited and waited, fidgeting restlessly, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. “Um…”
Shen Kui turned her head at the sound.
Under her direct gaze, Ji Xun immediately backed down. “N-nothing. I just wanted to ask, where are we going now?”
“Let’s just find a place to sit for a while,” Shen Kui said wearily.
There were too many clues in her mind, too chaotic. All the events were like a tangled mess of threads, intricate yet interconnected. She tried to sort them out but couldn’t find that crucial starting point.
The two found a quiet café and sat down. Shen Kui asked the front desk for paper and a pen. Under Ji Xun’s bewildered gaze, she sat down and began writing.
She divided the various problems she had encountered recently into two broad categories.
One category was clues related to the forum. Under this category, she listed several sub-branches: the damage situation at Huaixihe Station, the photo of the seven people, the belongings, the survivors, and the classmates.
The other category was clues related to “three in the morning”. Under this category, she listed three sub-branches: Lu Ting’s death, the taxi accident, and the unexplained awakening.
Then she drew a line connecting “Lu Ting’s Death” and “Forum”. In the middle, she wrote the three characters: “Ouroboros.”
Ji Xun was puzzled. “Hiss, what’s the connection?”
Shen Kui didn’t answer his question directly. Instead, she said, “I’ve had a vague feeling all along that Lu Ting’s death wasn’t simple. Although the time of her accident happened to be 3 a.m., which seems more closely related to another clue, many of the details behind it are actually inextricably linked to various things on the forum.”
Shen Kui took out a pen and drew three branches from left to right beneath the words “Lu Ting’s Death”. On the leftmost branch, she wrote the word “Package”.
“You said your package appeared out of thin air in your home, right?”
“Right, it gave me quite a scare,” Ji Xun said, still shaken.
“But my package was delivered by Lu Ting.” Shen Kui briefly recounted what Lu Ting had said at the time: “According to her, my package had been sitting at the front desk for a while. What are the odds that it just happened to be found and delivered to me the day after I saw the forum post?”
“Second point of suspicion.” Shen Kui wrote the word “Forum” on the middle branch.
“Forum? What does she have to do with the forum?”
“When you investigated the cause of Lu Ting’s death, didn’t you ask what platform she and her online boyfriend met on?” Shen Kui asked.
Ji Xun froze, then widened his eyes in disbelief. “No… it can’t be…”
“The day she delivered the package to me, she told me herself that she met her boyfriend on the forum.”
Shen Kui recalled the details of that day: “There was another strange thing at the time. I saw that the forum post had been updated on her phone, but when I logged into the forum on my own device, I didn’t see any new replies. Logically, even if the latest reply was deleted, a post that had been bumped to the top wouldn’t sink so quickly. Yet, in just two minutes, not only had the latest reply disappeared, but the post that had been bumped to the homepage had sunk back beyond the fiftieth page.”
Ji Xun hesitated. “Are you sure you didn’t misread it?”
“At the time, I thought I might have misread it, too. But thinking back, I probably wasn’t that blind.” Shen Kui circled the word “Forum”. “Even if I did misread it at the time, it doesn’t change the fact that she met her online boyfriend through the forum.”
Ji Xun pondered this. “That’s true. One thing being related could be a coincidence, but if everything is a coincidence, it starts to feel a bit eerie. What’s the third point?”
“Third point of suspicion.” Shen Kui sighed deeply and wrote the three characters “Ouroboros” on the final branch.
She looked up and stared at Ji Xun, speaking slowly. “Just now, at Lu Ting’s farewell ceremony, I saw a tattoo on her body that was identical to the Ouroboros in the forum’s picture.”
The moment she said this, Shen Kui clearly saw the color drain from Ji Xun’s face. His lips trembled. For a long time, he couldn’t utter a single word.
“There’s one more thing I didn’t tell you before.” Shen Kui unconsciously rubbed her thumb against her index finger, trying hard to suppress her anxiety. “My boss… he has the same tattoo on his body.”
After a long pause, Ji Xun finally found his voice again. “Do you suspect that Lu Ting, the boss, and the forum poster are all connected?”
“Not necessarily.” Shen Kui tapped her fingers lightly on the table. “It all depends… on what this symbol truly represents.”
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Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152