328 The Woman in the Red Dress

 

The businessman was feeling helpless, he had a few words of complaints when he heard rustling footsteps coming from downstairs. Turning to look, his already bloodless face paled further. Endless ghosts of children were rushing up the stairs, carrying a maddened woman between them.

“Another one?” The businessman hurried back through the safety door. “Who the hell was that man? I know the security guards here don’t last long but I’ve not seen a guard who is chased by so many ghosts before. How many guards were there already?” The businessman counted on his finger and occasionally looked through the safety door.

Ignoring the other tenants, Han Fei finally arrived at the 22nd floor. The crying of children drifted into his ears. The bruised boy this time didn’t stand inside the stairwell but instead beside the safety door. The syringe woman had learned from her lesson. To prevent her boy from being stolen away too easily, she had the boy stand closer to the safety door. To her surprise, Han Fei returned. The face of the crazy woman peeked through the window on the safety door. She had the syringe raised. The moment Han Fei laid his hand on the boy, she would plunge the syringe through Han Fei’s brain.

“Wake up please! This little girl is your real child, not him!” Han Fei rushed past the wounded boy, shoved the safety door open and grabbed the syringe woman’s wrist. Using Soul Depth Touch, Han Fei became more attuned to the syringe woman’s emotions. The syringe woman was also a manifestation of Zhuang Wen’s maternity instinct but it had been corroded to a different form. The divorced mother was the version of motherhood Zhuang Wen strove towards, while the syringe woman was a reflection of Zhuang Wen’s own mother. She couldn’t shake the reliance on medication, believed too easily into the exorcist’s words, used her child as a bargaining chip, she was crazy and unreasonable. With Han Fei’s hand around her wrist, the syringe woman’s eyes slowly widened. ‘Last time you kidnapped my child and this time you wish to kidnap me?’

Before the raised syringe reached the intended target, a chilly hand touched the syringe woman’s face. The madness on her face softened, some kind of instinct awakened in the broken heart. The syringe woman was prepared when the safety door was blasted through. She had already raised the syringe to poke at Han Fei. But her hand froze as the pair of confused eyes stared at the little girl.

“Where… is my child?” Her lips mumbled, something appeared to have returned to her.

“We’ll run as we talk!” While holding onto the little girl, he grabbed the wounded boy and continued to run. The syringe woman stood there stunned until the divorced mother came with the group of her ‘children’. The syringe woman’s chest rose and fell like something was crawling out from her heart. “My child, they have stolen my child, that is my child!” Her pupils shook as her limbs morphed. Her nails became as sharp as knives. She dropped the syringe and joined the chase after Han Fei.

‘The jumper woman who was trapped inside Room 1244 has voluntarily left the room of nightmare; the divorced mother who never left her home to search for her child is now outside; the syringe woman who has always been tormented by medication has abandoned her syringe as well. All 3 of them have transformed. Some kind of limitation the Butterfly put on their memory has been shattered.’ Han Fei’s intention was good but the problem was there were now even more people chasing after him. He wasn’t sure the red dress could hold back so many ‘people’.

‘Either way, I need to find the female livestreamer, to have her reunited with the red dress!’ With the plan made, Han Fei raced down to the corridor to enter the other stairwell. When he played the Ziggurat game, Han Fei had tried forcing the 3 separate consciousnesses of the jumper woman together. They wouldn’t attack each other, but they wouldn’t help each other either. It appeared like there were more conditions he needed to meet to make them reform into one. Han Fei assumed the specific condition was the little girl but now he realized that might not be the case.

Han Fei hadn’t played the game for that long that night but the amount of exercise he got from this Iyashikei game was already larger than most other games. As he ran down and down, the walls and floor that Han Fei passed would be imprinted with red children's handprints. Han Fei was like the harbinger of tragedy. All the tenants could now recognize the sound of Han Fei’s footsteps because he wasn’t trying to hide them. Then again, whenever the tenants heard Han Fei now, most of them would stay obediently inside their room.

‘I’m getting close.’ With bloodshot eyes and 2 children in his embrace, Han Fei shouted the female livestreamer’s name. As the door opened, he squeezed his feet into the gap.

“How can I help you?” The girl raised her eyes and saw Han Fei.

Before she could say anything else, Han Fei practically shouted at her, “Haven’t you been curious about the dead woman in Room 1044? I’ll bring you to go meet her! I forgot to tell you but I am too interested in everything supernatural. You haven’t left the room since yesterday night, haven’t you?”

“No, I haven't. Is there a problem?”

“No problem, just come with me!” Han Fei could hear the sounds coming after him. He picked up the 2 children and ran downstairs. The female livestreamer represented the positivity and kindness of the world but even someone like her had a hard time keeping a positive outlook when she saw the army that chased after Han Fei. The mountain of ghosts rushed down the corridor. It was too late for the girl to regret her decision now. The ghosts had blocked her way back home. The moment she stopped, she would be crushed under the wave of ghost children.

The upper floors were like scenes of tragedies but the lower floors didn’t fare any better either.

After a whole night, the red dress had managed to fix herself. She was able to do that thanks to Han Fei’s fearlessness. When she was in the most dangerous situation, he risked his life to save her and created a chance for her to escape. She awakened from the wooden box and the first thing that she saw was the jumper woman who injured her the day before. No matter how generous she was, she couldn’t suffer this offense anymore.

The fight between the two became more intense than before. The red dress dissolved into threads and each of the threads possessed unsolvable pain and resentment. The jumper woman was desperate to find the little girl so she too didn’t hold back. She poured her Death Curse into the red dress. The red dress would get stronger every time she was destroyed. But she had the same problem as the jumper woman, she too wasn’t complete. The red dress was like a weapon, missing some key parts.

Underneath the folds of the red dress, a fair woman slowly appeared. Her face had no expression and her skin was fair and flawless. But underneath her flawless skin was endless scars and wounds!

The horrible rumors and words couldn’t harm her appearance but they sank right into her flesh. They pierced through her heart. The powerful Death Curse entered the red dress. With each black character on her body, the wound inside her would deepen. The red dress could be stitched back together after it was shredded, but the woman herself could not. All the wounds remained inside her body, including the ones from 14 years ago. Facing the pressure from the whole world, she could no longer hide behind the red dress, she had to face them herself. But she was not complete, she was missing the most instrumental part of her consciousness. How could she be expected to face the darkness of the world when she had no light within her?

A long time ago, there was a light in her but she appeared to have lost that light. To ensure that no accident would happen, the manager at Ziggurat dismembered any ghosts who might pose a threat to it; it only needed tools to heed his orders. And now Han Fei was doing the complete opposite, he was piecing the individual tools back into complete characters.

“Quick! There is now only one way for us to survive!” Han Fei was close to the point of conflict between the jumper woman and the red dress. He turned back to the female livestreamer, she no longer looked as collected as she usually did.

“What is it?”

“I’ll find a way to distract the jumper woman, while you take that opportunity to approach the woman in the red dress! If possible, put the dress on yourself!”

“What?!” The girl didn’t expect Han Fei to say something like that. She was interested in the woman from Room 1044 but she was not going to fight her for her dress.

“Believe me, after you put it on, many things will clarify! The dress is yours to begin with!”

What Han Fei said confused the girl until she laid her eyes on the woman in the red dress. Her heart skipped a beat. An invisible line seemed to connect her and the red dress. “Do not hesitate! You are her! And she is you!” After saying that, Han Fei turned to the jumper woman with the little girl. “Your humanity is here! Your most treasured thing is here!” To help the girl buy some time, Han Fei taunted the Lingering Hatred. Only Han Fei would dare to do something like that.

The jumper woman’s original target was Han Fei. Since he had returned, she disengaged from the red dress immediately. The tattered red dress was covered in Death Cover, the black words were like venomous bugs, eating into the red dress’ arresting patterns. Under the flawless skin, the soul was heavily damaged. The woman in the red dress held her heart, she could feel the pain, the pain which was much harder than the physical pain.

“You… must be very tired. You’ve already done the best you could.” The red dress turned to look behind her, the livestreamer stood several steps away. “Pain, and disappointment tear at your heart, you couldn’t wait to say goodbye to the harsh world. But you still have things holding you back, like your parents’ love, you never got the chance to thank them and really apologize to them.” The female livestreamer looked at the woman in the red dress, her face twisted from pain and suddenly she cried, “It shouldn’t have gone like this…”

The cold heart beat inside the red dress. The livestreamer studied the wounds under the thin skin and she raised her hands towards them. “This is never our choice, was it?” She slowly approached and the girl ultimately reached out to hug the woman in the red dress, to embrace herself.