Hell's Handbook

Chapter 153: The Body

The little girl was too stunned for words. It wasn’t hard to reach these conclusions, but the little girl’s vengeful spirit had been blinded by her hatred and rage, or perhaps she never sought to find out the truth in the first place.

“Did you…guess all of this?” The little girl stared at Su Jin and Xiang Nan. She couldn’t understand how the two of them figured everything out as though they knew exactly what happened back then.

Su Jin shook his head and explained, “Guessing is part of it, but I got the most important clues from the hidden sixth floor of the house.”

He took a photograph out and showed it to her. That was a photograph of a toddler who was two or three years old and wasn’t wearing anything, so it was obvious that the toddler was a boy.

“The boy in the photo should be your younger brother, right? I compared this photo to the one in the living room and they look like the same person, so I guessed that you had already taken over your brother’s body by the time that photo was taken and you were also threatening your parents,” said Su Jin.

Everyone was surprised that Su Jin had found some clues on that floor after all. They had all been too distraught after he said that he hadn’t found the little girl’s body.

The little girl didn’t say anything, so Su Jin continued, “You probably took over his body when he was seven years old, or perhaps he was the one who let you have it.”

The little girl looked alarmed but did not utter a single word.

“You don’t wanna talk about it? I’ll keep guessing then. Even though your mother did not give birth to you in the end, you already had a soul and it did not vanish along with your physical body. You were filled with hatred, so your soul refused to go to the nether world and you eventually became a vengeful spirit. For some reason, you did not do anything to your brother. Instead, you stayed by his side as he grew up. Unfortunately, during this period, you became jealous of how he got all the love from your parents, and this jealousy drove you to do something more extreme.”

“You told your brother about how you felt and he wrote about this in his diary as well. One of the entries say: My older sister is so pitiful. I want to help her. I want her to be as happy as I am.”

The little girl’s expression faltered and calmed down when Su Jin spoke about her younger brother.

“The diary entries stop when your brother turned seven and that was the only entry that mentioned you. But when you put it together with everything else, it’s enough for us to piece the whole story together. You wanted to take over your brother’s body, and regardless of whether he did it out of guilt or kindness, he agreed to let you have it.”

“You got your brother’s body but you weren’t satisfied with that. You wanted everything he had as well. You insisted on having two beds in the bedroom because subconsciously, you still saw yourself and your brother as two different people. On top of that, you wanted a lot of girl clothes, which is why we ended up finding so much of it in that room over there.”

“I think your parents already realized this by that time, or perhaps they even tried to do something about it. You fought back and you fought back very violently, making it too difficult for the servant in the house to continue working for your parents. More than one servant quit during this time,” said Su Jin very calmly, as if he were just talking about the weather.

The little girl clenched her hands together tightly as she kept her head bowed. Su Jin did not stop. “You’re a vengeful spirit, so these humans were obviously no match for you. In the end, they let you control them like marionettes, and that’s how the three of you ended up taking that photo, isn’t it?”

“I…I just wanted to take back what I had lost,” said the little girl quietly.

Su Jin sighed. “But it was impossible for your parents to truly love you since you were forcing them to. And because you threatened them like this, they slowly began losing their minds, while you became tired of their fake love for you and you began to hate these parents of yours. In the end, tragedy struck.”

“I’ll take over from here.” Xiang Nan motioned to Su Jin to take a break and he continued, “And because you hated your father, you made your mother kill him. But your father wasn’t the only one you hated. You also hated your brother, the one who gave you his body. To you, he was the real reason why you were abandoned.”

“So, in the end, your brother died along with your parents. You killed them all.”

After Xiang Nan finished speaking, the little girl finally raised her head again. Bloody tears were flowing out from her eyes and disgusting maggots were wriggling inside her eye sockets. She said spitefully, “Why…why did I get abandoned…I…I hadn’t even done anything wrong…”

“You’re right! You didn’t do anything wrong, but tragedies do not necessarily happen because of anything you’ve done. Your hatred stems from your assumption that your parents aborted you, but I don’t think that’s the case at all,” said Xiang Nan.

The little girl froze and asked, “That wasn’t the case? Then?”

“If we look at the indignation and regret in your father’s diary entries, alongside your mother’s entries about making up for his loss, I think you were lost through a miscarriage, not an abortion,” said Xiang Nan.

The little girl didn’t buy it and questioned him loudly, “And how would you know that?”

“It’s simple. Your father’s diary writes that he wanted a boy, and that’s probably why you think he made your mother abort you. But if we look at your mother’s diary entry, she was very excited about her second pregnancy, saying that it had made up for your father’s loss. If your mother had miscarried in the middle of November, it would take time for her to get well and become pregnant again by March the next year. In other words, she would have only just found out about her pregnancy in March and there’s no way she would have known about the baby’s gender at that point.”

“So…you weren’t aborted at all. Your mother had a miscarriage, so when she became pregnant again, she felt that this new baby would make up for your father’s disappointment,” explained Xiang Nan.“

The little girl stared at Xiang Nan in disbelief and shock. But Xiang Nan’s explanation had been very clear. Even if her mother wanted a boy, she would have to wait until she was pregnant for some time before the doctors could confirm the gender of the baby. She wouldn’t have talked about making up for her husband’s loss in the first month of finding out about her pregnancy, unless the couple never cared about the gender of their child to begin with.

“This…None of this is true…you’re…you’re lying to me…you’re lying to me…” The little girl shook her head in disbelief, but it was clear that she believed what Xiang Nan said to be true.

“You know best whether what I’m saying is true or not. The supernatural are able to look into human hearts, but why don’t they look at their own hearts!” yelled Xiang Nan.

The little girl’s body shook violently as it gave off a white glow. Tiny sparkles restored her rotting flesh and it didn’t take long for the little girl to look more like a little angel.

“Thank you everyone, for helping me to understand what really happened and for helping to let go of the past! However, the rules of the game still apply. You still have to tell me where my body is.” The little girl looked as pure and beautiful as an angel, but she couldn’t go against the rules of the game.

“Finding your body really made us rack our brains, but thankfully we figured it out in time. Actually, searching the entire house for it was a dumb move, because we overlooked the place right under our noses,” said Su Jin.

He walked to the coffin where the couple lay. The wife had one arm around her husband, but it was also holding a knife that was stabbed into his back. It was such a terrifying sight to behold.

“Sorry to disturb you guys.” Su Jin suddenly stuck his hand in between the couple to separate them, then smiled faintly as he pointed at them. “You’re here.”

Everyone was surprised and they craned their necks to look into the coffin, but couldn’t see anybody else besides the couple. What was Su Jin talking about?

“Mr. Su, please don’t spout nonsense like that! What you say could determine whether we live or die!”

“Exactly! Don’t just give up and say something like that in desperation!”

Some of them were still worried that Su Jin might be wrong.

Su Jin ignored them and stared straight at the little girl as he said softly, “The bloodstains in the kitchen and the bathroom make it very obvious, but it sounds really insane, so most people wouldn’t want to go there.”

Su Jin tugged at the husband’s shirt and murmured, “The poor man looks like he’s barely 30, yet he’s had to go through something like this. Poor fellow!”

While everyone was still confused and were trying to understand what Su Jin was talking about, Su Jin suddenly tore the husband’s shirt open and laughed quietly when he saw the man’s stomach.

“So, you really did what I think you did. After your mother killed her husband, you minced your brother’s body up and put the pieces inside his stomach.” Su Jin touched the huge stitches on the man’s stomach. It was clear that whoever stitched the man’s wound was no professional. Those were some crazy looking stitches.

Everyone’s eyes widened when they heard what Su Jin said and were speechless when they saw those stitches on the man’s body.

“You made them embrace each other like this so that you could hide the bulge, right? That would be a truly unexpected place to hide the body. Everyone’s first thought would be to search the house, so even if we noticed something amiss later, we might not have enough time to figure things out. The size of the house also distracted us.” Rumor appeared in Su Jin’s hand and he gently sliced through the stitches on the man’s stomach.

A sticky mess of bones and flesh instantly poured out of his belly. The missing body had been found. It had been right in front of them all this time.

“It’s not possible to find your actual body, since a miscarried fetus would have been disposed of years ago. But your brother’s body is here. You took over his body, so this body is also your body. We’ve found it,” said Su Jin as he looked at the little girl.

The little girl looked at the three sets of bodies lying in the coffin and nodded. “Congratulations on getting through the first game. Please move on to the second game!”

Immediately after she said that, the dim light in the room instantly went out. Everything went black, just like how they always entered the Handbook universe.

“Congratulations on making it here, because it means that you’re still alive! But that’s also an unfortunate thing because all of you are going to die here! Let’s begin the second game, Gambling with Ghosts!”