Strange game designer.

Chapter 733 Me in the Dark Box

What's in the darkness?
What is hidden in the darkness of the photo?
Gao Ming took down the last photo in the fourth row, held it in his hand, and carefully examined it, silently gazing into the darkness.

The wheelchair marks on the ground seemed to indicate that the stepfather had taken his wife into the darkness, but Gao Ming did not see them in the darkness, and Li Sansi did not seem to find them that night either.

A photograph is a frozen moment, not a continuous memory. It's like a song that's been sung haltingly, with many lyrics whose meanings are hard to understand.

On the walls of the darkroom, counting from bottom to top, the first four rows of photos are related to each other and have their own logic, which can be tried to interpret.

Starting from the fifth row, the photos became quite different.

The disappearance of his adoptive parents left Li Sansi without a guardian, and the police in the lower district temporarily sent him back to his original home.

The first group photo in the fifth row is very artistic. In the warm and bright living room, there is steaming food on the dining table, but everyone sitting around the table exudes a coldness.

The father wore an awkward smile and avoided eye contact. Aunt Xia lowered her head, suppressing something. The younger brother, who had grown up, grabbed the food on his plate. The little guy wasn't as cute as before. Perhaps it was because he had received too much love. He had become very fat, like a white ball of flesh.

Li Sansi is not in the photo; he was a quiet recorder, a man hiding in the shadows.

No one in this family liked Li Sansi, just as Li Sansi disliked the sweltering summer heat. The glaring sunlight would burn every pair of eyes that looked at the sun, but what could not be escaped was that the sun always existed and would not disappear into thin air.

The second photo shows the younger brother's room, which used to be where Li Sansi lived. New wallpaper has been put up on the walls, air conditioning has been installed, and all the old tables and chairs have been replaced. Li Sansi can hardly recognize it anymore.

All traces of his life in this house have been erased, as if doing so would prevent people from remembering him.

In the corner of the second photo, Aunt Xia is holding her chubby little brother with some difficulty, and the emotion revealed in her eyes is not just disgust, but fear.

The disappearance of Li Sansi's adoptive parents intensified Aunt Xia's fear. Perhaps in her mind, the disappearance of that kind and honest couple must be related to Li Sansi.

The third photo shows a pale-faced woman dressed in black, with small wounds on her hands and legs. Her father is holding a gift and talking to her.

I've seen that woman, Gao Ming, in previous photos. She's Li Sansi's aunt, a pitiful person who's confined to a house due to a hereditary mental illness.

Judging from the photos alone, my aunt's health has improved, and she doesn't look like a madwoman anymore.

“Li Sansi’s family has a history of hereditary mental illness, but the Li Sansi whose memories are intertwined with mine is perfectly normal.”

After his adoptive parents disappeared, his father and Aunt Xia sent Li Sansi to his aunt's place. Every day, his aunt would tell Li Sansi many stories and say many things, as if she wanted to pour out all the crazy words she had accumulated over the past ten years.

Normal people would go crazy in such an environment, let alone a soul that is not quite normal to begin with.

The fourth photo in the fifth row is another selfie; Li Sansi is standing in his aunt's bedroom.
Staring at the camera with a puzzled look, as if looking at someone outside the photo, or as if trying to crawl into the camera, this photo is the most eerie of all the photos, and it gives Gao Ming a very special feeling.

The two seemed to have met across time through this photograph, and Gao Ming seemed to have found a part of Li Sansi that had split off.

Gao Ming didn't know what happened to Li Sansi at his aunt's house, because none of the subsequent photos were related to his aunt, and the scenes depicted didn't include his aunt's house. The fifth photo in the fifth row was taken from a voyeuristic perspective, filming Aunt Xia taking care of her child from outside the window. The scene was somewhat dark, and the camera kept moving forward until it touched the windowpane.

Unlike Li Sansi's clean and tidy home, Aunt Xia was in a good mood, and her younger brother was well-behaved and sensible. All that beauty could be felt even through the window.

The sixth, seventh, and eighth photos show different family members taken from different angles, until the last one.

The entrance to the underground water network was damp, cold, and dark. The wheelchair tracks were gone, replaced by warning tape and more trash.

Sewage flowed, reflecting Li Sansi's somewhat distorted body. The camera captured the foul-smelling water surface, where a child's severed limb floated, its skin smooth, fair, and plump, like a cut white radish.

Fear is a bad feeling about something that hasn't happened yet; people feel scared because nothing has happened yet.

When a premonition becomes reality, fear can transform into other emotions, such as pain, anger, or despair.

Gao Ming's gaze was fixed on the child's severed limbs, his eyes seemingly rising and falling with the sewage. Rows of photos, progressively oppressive, made it difficult for Gao Ming to breathe in this dark room.

The darkness deep within the underground water network seemed to be luring Li Sansi. He and Gao Ming both wanted to find out what was hidden there, what lay deep in the darkness.
In the first photo of the sixth row, Li Sansi, wearing damp clothes and carrying a backpack full of various items, hides in the underground water network.

This is not a selfie; someone is taking a picture of Li Sansi's back. Who is this person?

Who was holding Li Sansi's camera and taking pictures of him entering the darkness?

Is it me?
A bizarre idea suddenly popped into Gao Ming's mind, and he was almost stunned. He had indeed merged with Li Sansi's memories, but he was Gao Ming, and could not possibly be Li Sansi.

"These photos... are making me a little uneasy."

As his gaze shifted, Gao Ming noticed that all the photos in the sixth row were taken from a similar angle. It seemed that Li Sansi had hidden in the underground water network to escape police pursuit. He continued to venture deeper into the darkness, not encountering his missing adoptive parents, but instead encountering all sorts of things.

The plastic toys his mother gave him were reduced to pieces and piled up in the corner; his clothes and dishes were thrown away by Aunt Xia as garbage; a schoolbag filled with sewage; and the murderer who killed his mother.

The smiling murderer crouched in the corner of the underground water network. He was no longer young, and his legs had been pierced, so he could only squat like a frog.

"Why is he here?"

The madman, protected by his father, was also alive and well in the deep darkness.

The last photo in the sixth row was taken at the end of the underground water network, where sewage had gathered into a dark pool. The madman who killed his mother was kneeling on the stinking ground, his body pierced by steel bars. Li Sansi put a rope around his neck and slowly tightened his grip.

He listened to the madman's laughter, his gaze calmer than ever before. He stared at the deep pool before him, where dark, murky sewage flowed. Darkness gradually engulfed his body, swallowing him whole.

(End of this chapter)