Wan Jie Hospice Care Company

"..."

"Yes……"

Affirmative answer.

"Brother Xiang!"

An Ling suddenly panicked. She ran to Xiang Yu, rolled up her sleeves, revealing her fair and smooth forearms, which looked like peeled eggs.

But on that fair forearm, two blood-red characters were etched.

The congealed, dark brown blood turned into scabs along the grooves of the knife wound.

"Mirror"

"..."

Countless fragments suddenly came back into place in his mind, and he understood many things at once.

He immediately stood up, walked up to Ji Zhuo, and asked, "What's the date today?"

"what?"

Faced with this seemingly unrelated question, Ji Zhuo paused for a moment, but immediately replied:

"We started our investigation on December 14th, but inexplicably skipped a night, and today is the morning of December 15th."

Correct.

That's it.

Xiang Yu thought to himself.

On December 12th, the ceramic figurine incident occurred.

On December 13, he and Anling returned home, and for some strange reason, the story fast-forwarded to night.

Then I kept staring at my diary entry for December 14th, but after midnight, the entry didn't appear.

Perhaps the reason isn't the diary...

But at the stroke of midnight on December 14th, the strange thing skipped an entire day and jumped straight to December 15th!

Xiang Yu opened the diary and saw the blank entry for "December 14th" before slowly turning the page.

[December 15th] [Weather: Sunny]

[Mirror, mirror, mirror!!!]

It's here, it's right beside us!!!

[A dream! A dream! It's just a dream!]

Immediately afterwards, the handwriting began to become messy.

Let's play a game! Let's play a game!

[One, two, three, freeze! No talking, no moving!]

[One, two, three, the ghost is chasing people! I'm coming to catch you!]

One, two, three, hide-and-seek! Hide well, hide well, I'm coming!

My favorite game is "Statues," my least favorite is tag, and my absolute least favorite is hide-and-seek!

These words were written in red ink, and the haphazard handwriting disregarded the neat grids on the diary, like a group of creatures that had escaped from a cage, crawling all over the paper.

Xiang Yu's gaze swept over the lines of frantic words, but his chaotic thoughts gradually cleared up.

He understood why that strange thing could steal time.

He understood why the diary, which should have recorded every day, had a blank page in the middle.

He understood why his neighbor had writing on his body.

And why specifically "Billie Jean"...?

Everything is connected!

Seeing Xiang Yu's eyes suddenly light up, Li Yiheng looked at him like a drowning man grabbing onto a piece of wood: "Section Chief Xiang, do you have a solution?"

"...I can't guarantee it, but I have an idea." Xiang Yu, somewhat anxious after figuring it out, called out to An Ling, "Is there a mirror at home?"

"...Yes, but it's above the sink in the toilet. It's very big and needs to be removed," Anling said.

Xiang Yu wasted no time and strode toward the restroom to remove the mirror, but just then, someone grabbed him.

It was the couple from the sixth floor. The man pointed at the woman, who was slumped on the floor, crying loudly in fear, and yelled at Xiang Yu, "Are you their leader? Explain yourself! You've scared my wife to tears! What do you mean by this? Are you using excessive force or are you liars? Let me tell you, we have connections at home, we're not afraid of you fake cops—"

"roll."

Seeing the other person's thuggish expression, Xiang Yu slapped him to the ground.

With the situation so urgent, he didn't have time to get entangled with a useless person.

Just as Xiangyu lifted his foot, a voice rang out.

The voice was childish, clear, and had a high-pitched quality unique to children, making it particularly chilling.

"Hehehehehe..."

Suddenly, a child was standing in the center of the living room.

About three years old.

No one saw how he appeared; there was no sound of a door opening, no sound of footsteps. He just stood there, as if he had always been there.

Xiang Yu was startled. Looking at the mirror not far away, he thought that there would still be some time before he could take it off, and it would definitely be too late.

"Little ball, banana pear, Malan flowers bloom at twenty-one!"

That wasn't the kind of smile a child should have; the corners of his mouth were stretched too wide, almost reaching his ears, revealing a row of small, neat baby teeth.

He clapped his chubby little hands as he sang a nursery rhyme in a childish voice, enunciating each word clearly.

"28256, 28257, 282931!"

"Let's play a game, what should we play?"

"Is it a game of tag, or... hide-and-seek?"

There were six people present, and everyone was startled by the sudden appearance of the child. For a moment, their bodies stiffened, and they didn't dare to breathe.

"There are two very familiar old friends, two good friends I've played with once before, and two new friends I've never played with before!"

The child laughed as he swept his finger across the six people present.

"Old friend..." An Ling sat trembling in the corner of the sofa, "Who is the old friend?"

"It's the two of us." Xiang Yu remained motionless, his eyes fixed on that smiling little face, squeezing out each word through clenched teeth.

"Waaaaah, my old friend doesn't remember me!" The child's emotions changed so quickly that there was no warning. One second he was giggling, and the next second big tears were streaming down his face. His little face was scrunched up, and he was crying his heart out.

Xiangyu's mind began to race; he had to find a way to confirm his hypothesis.

"Hey, you over there," he suddenly said, addressing the man still sprawled on the sixth floor, "you, look at me."

The man was already terrified. Hearing him called, he turned his head blankly and looked towards the corner…

Strange things happened.

His eyes, initially filled with extreme terror, gradually shifted to confusion; then, from confusion, they slowly turned into anger.

"You're their boss, right? Explain yourself! My wife is crying, what do you mean by this...?"

"Look, there's a ghost!" Xiang Yu pointed at the ghost child again.

The man turned his head in the direction of his finger.

The next instant, he froze, his pupils contracted sharply, and all color drained from his face. He was once again rooted to the spot, not daring to move a single finger.

Ji Zhuo felt a chill run down his spine watching from the side.

He didn't understand what Xiang Yu was doing, and he couldn't understand why this man, who was clearly so afraid of ghost children, suddenly became completely unafraid when he turned around and even started cursing at Xiang Yu.

Xiang Yu cursed under his breath, "Damn it, just as I thought."

The reason the neighbors had writing on their bodies was because they became aware of this strange ability before they died.

That is, once you see this strange thing and shift your gaze elsewhere and stop paying attention to it, all memories of it will disappear completely.

Like waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, if you don't immediately try to recall it, the bizarre experiences in the dream will dissolve and disappear at a visible speed, and in the end you won't be able to remember what you dreamed about at all.

This bizarre ability isn't about time at all... it's about memory, or rather, dreams!

Moreover, just like dreams can rationalize illogical things, every time I realized that time had been skipped, I didn't seem to realize that my actions were different from before, and I could still continue saying what I said before the strange encounter!

Just like the man on the sixth floor, he naturally picked up where he left off and continued speaking.

In other words, I had actually seen it many times before, but each time I could only focus on the time it disappeared, and I had no memory of it at all!

The time he claimed was stolen was the time he had spent dealing with it, but he had completely forgotten it!

As the diary says, it was indeed always around the two of them, and it could indeed be seen.

It has always been openly located in Anling's home, in this building. People can see it, but they can't store it in their memories, so it creates the illusion that they can't see it!

Just as Xiang Yu was beginning to understand all of this, the child seemed to lightly put away the deep sadness he had just felt, like putting away a toy he had grown tired of playing with.

He grinned again: "Let's play games together!"

"I have three games to play!"

"One, two, three, freeze!"

"One, two, three, the devil is catching you!"

"One, two, three, let's play hide-and-seek!"

He tilted his head, his dark, unfathomable eyes slowly sweeping over the six people standing frozen in the room, and issued his final ultimatum with a smile:

"Hurry up and choose one!"