My Healing Games

Chapter 211 Spiders and Butterflies

“I’ve told you everything I know. Getting involved with the spider will get you into trouble sooner or later.” The old man coughed a few times. He had been blocking the doorway the whole time, not letting Han Fei into the house. “Using his story to make a film is suicide. If you don’t stop, someone in your crew will meet with misfortune sooner or later.”

His cloudy eyes slowly moved, as if he could already see the scene of someone dying tragically: "I know you don't believe what I'm saying, but you'll soon realize that this building is completely different at night and during the day."

Seeing that Han Fei remained unmoved, the old man stopped trying to persuade him. However, the way he looked at Han Fei was different from before; it was as if he were looking at a dead man.

"Uncle, besides you, how many other families live in this building?" Han Fei wanted to visit the others.

"Those who are able to leave have already moved away, leaving behind only elderly people living alone and the sick. They're practically in their graves, too weak to move around anymore, and they have no contact with each other. I guess even if they die at home, the neighbors won't know until they've started to decompose."

Compared to the bustling and vibrant new urban area of ​​Shanghai, this remote suburb is desolate and dilapidated. The elderly living in the buildings seem to have been completely forgotten by the outside world and are completely disconnected from it.

“It’s really scary to die alone without family to take care of you.” Han Fei found a newspaper in the house and wrote his phone number on it: “Uncle, this is my phone number. If you encounter anything in this building or need any help, you can call me.”

Unable to get any more clues, Han Fei prepared to leave. Just as he reached the door, the old man holding the newspaper suddenly spoke again.

"A few days before the writer died, he received some letters. No one knows who sent them. It is possible that he sent them to himself."

"A letter?" Han Fei was unfamiliar with letters. In this day and age, even in relatively remote areas, very few people wrote letters.

“My son once opened a letter with strange, scribbled writing inside, along with a few butterfly wings,” the old man said, as if talking to himself. “I’ve told this to other people, but everyone who knew it is dead. I hope you’ll be an exception.”

The old man walked shakily into the living room, lifted the black cloth covering a shrine, and muttered about sins and karmic obstacles, constantly repenting.

Han Fei did not see the scene inside the shrine; he only saw faint traces of blood and bird feathers on the black cloth covering the shrine.

The caged bird seemed to have been offered as a sacrifice to the gods inside the building by the old man.

After leaving the room, Han Fei took the script and returned to the fourth floor.

In the short few minutes he was gone, the writer's door on the fourth floor was opened again.

"Wasn't it locked just now? Was someone hiding in one of the rooms on the fourth floor?"

This slightly eerie event caught Han Fei's attention. He slowly opened the door, scrutinizing every detail.

"Based on the information we have now, there must be some kind of connection between the spider and the butterfly. The spider may know who the butterfly is. Because it knows this secret, anyone who gets close to the spider will be killed by the butterfly."

Han Fei wasn't sure if ghosts actually existed, but he knew that the butterfly's method of killing was exactly the same as what the old man had described: disguising all deaths as suicides and using various accidents to create fear.

“From tracing the human body pattern to now, I’m getting closer and closer to that butterfly.”

Pushing open the door, Han Fei entered room 401, where the spider had once lived.

Judging from the furniture and furnishings inside, this doesn't look like a writer's room at all. Medicine boxes and bottles are placed everywhere—on the floor, on the table, in open drawers, and on the television.

Director Zhang was also very surprised when he first entered the spider's house, but he did not damage the spider's room. He only did a simple dusting and wanted to keep the house as it was.

Spider didn't originally live in the meat processing plant's staff quarters; he moved there specifically to write a book.

In other words, this place is the burial ground he chose for his other eight personalities; he wants to record the process of killing the other eight versions of himself here.

To outsiders, Spider is a madman, and to doctors, Spider is also a madman. He is truly suffering from an illness, but he doesn't see it that way. He believes that the existence of the other eight personalities has a reason. He never thinks they are a disease, but rather treats them as living, breathing people.

Upon entering Spider's study, one finds a messy desk piled high with various medicine bottles.

There were three large locks hanging on the desk drawer, which showed that Spider was unwilling to share the secrets inside the drawer with anyone. However, those locks had been pried open a long time ago.

I opened the drawer, and it was stuffed full of letters.

The letters had no sender or recipient; they seemed to be written by the spider to itself.

Han Fei opened and read a few letters. These letters were written from the perspective of a reader, and most of them were about exchanging ideas about the plot with Spider and discussing some doubts about life.

Knowing that Spider didn't have many readers, Han Fei initially thought that these letters were Spider asking and answering himself. He simply read them one by one, not wanting to miss any clues.

When he saw the thirty-fourth letter, he suddenly realized that the letter in his hand was different from the others.

Inside the tattered envelope was a dried fragment of a butterfly wing; the once-intact wing appeared to have been accidentally broken by someone.

Han Fei carefully took out the letter. The handwriting on the letter was exactly the same as the other letters, but the content of the letter was completely different. It only had three words written on it: "Who are you?"

Upon seeing these three words, Han Fei turned his head and looked around. He had a very strange feeling, as if these three words were spoken directly to him.

After putting away the envelope, Han Fei continued reading and soon found another rather strange letter.

The letter contained the same question: Do you believe in ghosts?

"It felt like he was talking to me." Standing alone in the room where people had died, Han Fei wasn't afraid. He carefully examined the letters, and then he found a third letter with butterfly wings hidden inside.

Upon opening it, the letter still contained a question—Guess where I've hidden?
"Did the spider receive these three letters? Were they sent to him by one of his personalities? Or was the butterfly imitating one of his personalities?"

Three strange letters, three odd questions. Han Feiguang couldn't deduce the relationship between the butterfly and the spider from these letters, but he used his extraordinary memory to record all the contents of the letters.

"The spider and the butterfly must have fought each other in some way. It seems that the spider may have won and found the butterfly's true form, but he also paid a huge price."

Director Zhang and the others all believed that Spider's enemies were the other eight personalities, but Han Fei was different. He always felt that everything that happened to Spider was related to Butterfly.

After putting all the letters back in their original places, Han Fei looked at the bookshelf next to him. One of the books looked like it had just been moved.

He opened the book, and right where the bookmark was placed, there was a sentence marked: "I know your name, I know what you look like, I have been watching you, this building will be your grave."

The sentence in the book seemed to have been deliberately left for Han Fei. He slowly turned around, and scenes flashed through his mind: "When I first came to the fourth floor, the door to room 401 could not be opened. There must have been other people in the room at that time. This sentence in the book was probably left for me by that person."

The film crew booked the entire building, so the people who were able to sneak in at this time were most likely actors and crew members.

"The filming location for 'The Suspense Novelist' is in the remote northern suburbs of Xinhu, far from the city center. The nearest police station is two kilometers away, which is indeed a good opportunity for Butterfly to kill me."

(End of this chapter)