Chapter 373 - Disappearance

Chen Chen’s theory was thought-provoking.

Most people in this line of work tend to not be religious at all. Even upon hearing news of mass disappearance that seemed to defy the laws of reality, their first assumption was a phenomenon that defied common scientific constructs. None of them suspected it being a work of the supernatural.

Put it this way, even if a holy deity were to appear before them, their first thought would probably be to study its substance components instead of getting on their knees to worship.

Therefore, Chen Chen’s explanation was perfectly suited for their taste and made everything clear almost immediately.

So, the FBI assigned fifteen soldiers to Chen Chen. They split into three shifts of eight hours each to monitor Chen Chen closely. They were instructed to stay vigilant and not go on any breaks.

The interrogation room was also refitted into a room specifically designed for Chen Chen. Not only was a single bed provided for him but he was also granted a laptop for his leisure.

After everything was set, Chen Chen settled himself down.

Meanwhile, in a city several hundred kilometers away was Li Bo’s hometown. Unfortunately for him, just as he was about to enter his vehicle, he was taken away by the FBI to the local FBI branch.

Li Bo quickly revealed everything he knew without much hesitation.

After the questioning was complete, they took Li Bo to a room and confiscated all of his electronic devices.

The room was brightly lit and cold fluorescent lights shone from above the ceiling. The room was decorated like a frugal bedroom. Apart from a single bed and a table, there was nothing else, not even windows.

It was like a solitary room.

Li Bo felt like he had been locked in here for a long time, perhaps seven to eight hours, maybe longer than that. At first, he still felt normal. As time went on, he started feeling like something was off.

He looked in the direction that gave off the strange aura he was feeling. In a corner under the table that was sheltered from the harsh light, unknown darkness sat still.

A mysterious restlessness quickly surged in Li Bo’s mind.

He could not place what he was feeling into words. All he knew was that so long as he looked into the dark corner, he would panic uncontrollably.

It was as if there was something inside the cloud of darkness staring back at him.

“It’ll be alright, don’t worry. Everything will be fine…”

Li Bo quietly comforted himself. He carefully approached the table and moved it to the side. The fluorescent lights above immediately cast their radiance onto the dark corner and drowned it out.

“Phew!”

Li Bo heaved a sigh of relief. As soon as he erased the darkness, he felt the strange spying sensation fading away as well.

“I knew it, I’m just scaring myself over nothing.”

Li Bo returned to the bed, feeling lighter now. To distract himself, he picked up a magazine on the table and started reading it.

If Li Bo’s father saw what he was doing now, he would be leaping and crying out of joy. Li Bo was the sort of person who rarely took his studies seriously and only did it when it was necessary. Just by doing this, he was able to easily put himself near the top spot of the class. It was a rare sight to see Li Bo suddenly reading so seriously.

After only a couple of minutes, transparent liquid dripped onto the magazine Li Bo was reading.

It was sweat.

The room was very cool, even a little chilly since there were seldom any inhabitants. However, Li Bo could feel prying eyes on him for some unknown reason. He felt a harsh gaze piercing through his back, even stronger than it was previously even though there was nothing notable in the room. Cold sweat started to drench his body.

Finally, Li Bo gently set the magazine down before lifting his head and peering around the room.

The room was brightly lit now that there were no more dark corners under the table. Still, the feeling he felt refused to fade away. It only changed its location.

When this thought crossed Li Bo’s mind, he subconsciously turned to look behind him. In between the bed and the wall, he spotted a gap half a finger wide that was filled with darkness.

That was where the strong peering sensation that he could not shake off stemmed from…

A flash of anger appeared in Li Bo’s eyes as he pushed himself up from the bed and pushed the bed into the wall.

With a loud “thump”, the tiny gap between the bed and the wall was closed.

That uncomfortable feeling vanished again.

Li Bo settled himself down again and returned to the bed. As he was about to pick up the magazine to continue his reading, he suddenly paused.

What sort of magazine was this?

Li Bo turned the magazine around and looked at the cover. Three bold texts were written on the cover —

I Saw You.

I Saw You? What sort of magazine was this supposed to be?

Li Bo frowned. He could faintly recall that the magazine had a different title.

Everything inside this room, from its sheer brightness to the dark spot shielded from the light, even the magazine carried an indescribable eeriness…

There was not much Li Bo could do about it. He flipped to the page he was on and prepared to finish the passage.

When he flipped to the page he had left off, he saw a few drops of sweat still pooled on the pages.

Li Bo was confused by what he saw when he looked at the contents of the page.

The passages in the book had all turned into three repetitive strings of words — I Saw You.

For the third time now, Li Bo felt the unsettling feeling of someone peering at him again. Except for this time, it came from right in front of him!

When he raised his head and looked in front of him, he finally saw it. Between the tiny dark gap under the door, a pair of blood-red eyes were silently staring at him…

“I Saw You!”

Li Bo felt his heart tighten. At this moment, he finally understood what this phrase on the magazine meant…

“Ah!”

A terrified shriek came from inside the room. A guard who was posted outside immediately barged inside when he heard this sudden shriek. He found the door open after unlocking it with his key!

“Bang!”

The guard darted his eyes across the room and found that there was no one in the room. The only thing that stood out was a magazine lying open, facing down on the floor.

The confused guard picked up the magazine and noticed several watermark stains on the magazine.

“Filthy…”

The guard flung it around in disgust before opening the lid on a trash can and tossing the magazine inside. It was only after that when he shook his head and left the room, closing the door on his way out.

As if there was nothing else peculiar that he noticed inside the room.

…

Meanwhile, inside the FBI secret branch, Chen Chen was reading a book leisurely.

Chen Chen read with extreme efficiency. It appeared as if he only scanned them at a rapid pace and could easily finish a three-hundred pages book in just approximately fifteen minutes.

Five soldiers were surrounding Chen Chen. They formed a circle around him and closely supervised every single thing that he did.

After a short while, Chen Chen suddenly got up from the table and approached the door. None of the soldiers tried to stop him, they only trailed after him wordlessly.

After Chen Chen left the interrogation room, he did not wander around. He went straight for the toilet.

The soldiers still kept their eyes on him and followed after without any hesitation. They watched as Chen Chen finished his business.

After that, Chen Chen returned to his quarantine room with the five soldiers accompanying him.

“48 hours have passed.”

After checking the time, Chen Chen breathed a sigh of relief. On the outside, he may appear relaxed, but his heart was pounding with alertness on the inside.

Over the last few days, he had no clue whether the Ju-on curse broke out in the outside world. If that were to happen, even Gods themselves could not save them all.

“Forty percent of the group of students that you suspect were infected by the meme have disappeared in their quarantine rooms.”

It was then when the director of the FBI stepped inside. He reflected on the reality of the situation. “What’s going on in this world that such a terrifying entity could exist without me knowing about it. It’s a good thing we’ve apprehended these people ahead of time. Still, there are many instances of people disappearing inside their rooms over the last two days.”

“This is the dangerous nature of the memetic effect.”

Chen Chen smiled. “What about the one supervising them? They wouldn’t enter the rooms of these victims, would they?”

“Of course not.”

The director shook his head. “The bad news is that of the roughly twenty-three thousand students detained, more than two thousand have ‘disappeared’. They can pretty much be ruled as deceased.”

“You only detained roughly twenty-three thousand students?”

Chen Chen jumped and immediately asked. After all, there were as many as thirty-thousand students in the school and that was not including the teachers and the other faculty staff.

If only twenty-thousand of them were detained, there would certainly be odd cases here and there that managed to slip away. The Ju-on curse would use these people as its medium to spread rapidly across what remained of society.

All of their efforts to this point would be rendered useless as mankind’s civilization would meet its demise.

“The total student population is twenty-three thousand and one hundred. I know this number by heart now.”

The director’s reply caught Chen Chen by surprise. He smiled as he continued. “Don’t question my professionalism. I’m the one in charge of this operation. You expect me to not know how many students there are?”

Chen Chen shot him a perplexed look. “Mr. Director, you really should check the statistics again.”

When the director saw Chen Chen doubting him, he approached the computer and quickly used the search engine to search: How many students are there in Shangdu Jiaotong University?

The first result immediately provided a clear answer: The total student population is 23,100.

Chen Chen found himself caught off guard by this result. His expression quickly twisted in confusion.

“See, told you so, right?”

When the director saw Chen Chen’s visible confusion, he laughed heartily. Before Chen Chen could say anything, he changed the topic. “Over the last few days, you were closely monitored by the soldiers present here as well as our personnel in the back room, also with the surveillance cameras. Judging by the looks of it, it may appear the experiment was successful, no?”

“It would seem so, yes.”

Chen Chen decided he was not going to continue griping about the student population. He chipped in with his input as well. “Forty-eight hours, which is two days. Based on my previous experience, forty-eight hours is sufficient for Kayako to claim most of her victims. Only a small demographic can manage to avoid this fate and go on to live fearful lives.

“Since I’m still alive now, I’d say my initial hypothesis is at least partially correct.”

Chen Chen evaluated. “Judging by this observation, it’s true that Kayako cannot influence the living directly if there are third-parties present. This means that if I can continue living my life under supervision, then I’ll never experience the breakout effects for the rest of my life?”

“But this would be too time and resource-consuming.”

The director frowned. “It may work in the short term. If we’re talking about long term, not only you but even the soldiers are going to manifest mental illness.”

“That’s true.”

Chen Chen agreed with a firm nod. “The most urgent task now is still to find a way to suppress Ju-on, how do you guys plan to do this?”

Chen Chen suddenly asked, “How much power have you accumulated in the USB drive over the last two days and what do you plan to instantiate?”

“Now this is a secret.”

The director shook his head. “But what I can tell you is that as of now, the USB flash drive is still charging. We calculated it based on the ratio of power to mass ratio you’ve given us. I’m afraid it’ll take a few more days to produce something that can help us defeat the memetic effect.”

“If you guys can afford to take several more days, then I suppose nobody managed to slip past your efforts out there.”

Chen Chen shook his head and left the topic aside and asked, “How about my dorm mate Li Bo, is he still alive?”

“Li Bo?”

Something completely unprecedented happened. The director looked at Chen Chen with great uncertainty. He seemed to flip the question in his mind several more times. “Who is Li Bo?”

“Li Bo, isn’t he the student that told you about my USB drive? The one who was in Dorm 404 with me.”

Chen Chen frowned. It seemed like the director was not as good as he claimed to be.

Upon noting the lingering confusion on the director, Chen Chen stepped to the computer and typed in Li Bo’s name. With the director’s database access, he went through the database of Dorm 404.

After the document was printed out, Chen Chen grew even more confused after he looked at it.

On top of the pages were black and white text closely arranged together. On one of the labels that read 404, there were three names —

Dormitory leader: Wang Wei.

Dormitory members: Chen Chen, Zhou Jie.

Li Bo’s name was not found anywhere in the dormitory database.

Something was not right.

Chen Chen’s temperament grew cold as he turned to the director. “Mr. Director, are you sure you don’t remember Li Bo?”

“No, I don’t. I doubt that there’s ever been such a person in the first place, I’m very sure about this.”

The director shook his head and answered gravely, “Chen Chen, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Unless there’s something else you have on your mind?”

“Yes.”

A drop of sweat slowly dripped down Chen Chen’s forehead as he asked solemnly, “Mr. Director, since you tell me that you don’t remember Li Bo, then can you tell me how you found out about the existence of the USB drive before detaining me?”