Volume 1 - CH 14

“So just now, I was looking through the pieces of torn paper and comparing the penmanship with the previous writing we’ve seen. There have been two recognisably distinct handwriting, between the dollmaker and his friend.

Of course, I’m not a professional, so this is my preliminary analysis only. Thankfully, the handwriting really is exceptionally distinct, perhaps as intended by the game’s designers.

Anyway, onto the main point, the handwriting on the pieces of paper are from two persons. One, from the owner Wu Shen himself. The other one is not from his friend, though, but from an entirely unseen third party.

After working through the information acquired thus far, I have come up with this bold hypothesis – this handwriting belongs to the owner’s wife!

Here, let’s first go through the known information on the pieces of paper. We know they consist of these fragments-

1: You are insane; I was wrong.

2: Wake up to reality; never be back; impossible.

3: I don’t believe; all my fault; don’t say; nobody loves; more than me.

I numbered them 1, 2, 3 to distinguish the ones found in the same crumpled up ball of paper. These fragments are all too fragmented to tell what they originally meant, but if we identify by the handwriting, 1 and 2 belong to one person, and 3 from the other.

The first time I saw 1, I thought it was Wu Shen, who also said his missing daughter was a punishment for him; however, I found out later when comparing handwriting that only 3 is Wu Shen’s handwriting consistent with the diary and letters.

Therefore, I can only conclude that 1 and 2 must be letters from someone else to him, presumably his wife, and 3 is his reply, that was not sent but instead torn up and thrown into the trash alongside the letters from his wife.

With that context, 2 and 3 are easy to explain. They’re still the wife telling him xiao-Chun will never be back and hopes for Wu Shen to get back on his feet; Wu Shen does not want to consider the possibility and still says it is his fault. ‘Nobody loves xiao-Chun more than me.’

So, a question, what is 1 about?

Why would Wu Shen’s wife be accusing Wu Shen of being insane and saying she was wrong?”

Here, the detective dalao’s comment barrage finally pauses, leaving some time for the rest of the viewers to take it all in.

In the bookstore, Xü Beijin rubs his own chin and murmurs, “Wu Shen?”

And soon enough, comments begin to fly in the stream again.

“got it! wu shen is sus!”

The dalao begins typing to explain, “this is a conclusion drawn from two perspectives.

One, after the two players were discovered by Wu Shen, they were chased out of the doll store entirely and he locked up the door to the store entirely as well. This is definitely an overreaction, practically telling everyone there are secrets that must never be known inside the second-floor workshop.

Two, the wife’s accusation of insanity is actually a wake-up call to demolish Wu Shen’s image thus far.

Currently, we have no direct proof. What I mean is that we do not even know what is happening to xiao-Chun. We are severely limited by this in our investigation, and we can only try to hypothesise through indirect evidence. So, what was the indirect evidence telling us about Wu Shen?

From the diary, to the letters, to the information the host was dispensing, Wu Shen was merely a father that doted on his daughter, and even seemed to spiral into endless depressing and near madness after her disappearance.

‘It is unfathomable he may be the one behind it all, for how much he loved his daughter. He couldn’t possibly do anything to her.’

This is the image we have of him from all the indirect evidence. This all meant Wu Shen was less and less suspicious.

Yet under this favourable impression, what points of suspicions have we thus ignored of this seemingly daughter-loving father?

First, we know that he is practically alone with xiao-Chun the day she disappeared!

This is a game. I have emphasised this point before, and long story short, the game will never arrange for someone we do not know at all to be the perpetrator. Therefore, that point only should have pointed Wu Shen to be our number one suspect!

Next, the news from the newspaper mentioned the mother’s sorrow in particular, but nothing about Wu Shen himself, when normally they should have received near-equal coverage.

And, those two players before were chased out after invading his workshop, true, but that is even after they told him they were here to investigate on xiao-Chun’s disappearance. This attitude really screams guilt to me.

Finally, after his daughter’s disappearance, why is Wu Shen sleeping in his daughter’s room? For nostalgia’s sake? But a father doing something like that definitely screams perversion to some degree.

Four points of suspicion, of which the latter three are possibly reading too much into things, but the first point is also what I was most concerned about!

And of course, I still cannot rule out that these points are all here to distract from a truth where the wife of the owner did end up laying her hands on xiao-Chun, or a truth where the little girl did just run away from home for her mother’s attitude.”

In the stream, the viewers all seem to be terribly stupefied from the long arduous analysis.

“uh… pretty amazing couple… yeah”

“from both positive and negative analysis, they could both be innocent or both be guilty”

“they could both be the thief yelling ‘thief'”

“thief yelling ‘thief’ yelling “thief”?”

“im spinning in circles lmao”

“my eyes: you understand; my brain: no, you don’t”

“its mainly the contradictory clues from everyone involved, and even from the same person himself, like our host who said both the wife beat her daughter at night and the wife would make a detour to buy snacks for her daughter”

“actually… it’s not contradictory either…”

“I heard those players say earlier that Nightmares all have particular Difficulties, which also serve as hints. If we could settle on a Difficulty, then we can probably manage to resolve these clues?”

That comment makes Xü Beijin turn towards the Missiontakers in a heated discussion similar to the four viewers.

He is spectating them just as someone with zero participation would. Then he glances over at Lin Qin, equally hovering above everything, and can’t help but feel like he could sympathise with this dalao who is stupidly sterong.

Lin Qin, meanwhile, is blanking out leaning on the doorframe. He notices Xü Beijin’s glance and immediately turns to him and opens his lips to make the word, ‘fight?’

Xü Beijin quickly averts his gaze, frightened.

Lin Qin then makes a bored expression, but he does feel slightly amused seeing how Xü Beijin is desperately avoiding him.

His lips perk up slightly as he glances towards those noisy Missiontakers.

The Missiontakers are now in the same conundrum as the viewers of the stream. They do not know which of the myriad of clues can lead them to the truth and which are merely distractions.

Ponytail almost feels like her head is going to explode, saying, “if only we can decide what the Difficulty actually is…”

“That would fundamentally resolve basically the entire Nightmare. It won’t be easy,” Glasses says with a serious tone, “for now, a key point is verifying the rest of the torn letter fragments.”

Quarrelsome says dejectedly, “but the first floor is already locked up. What else could we do?”

Glasses and Ponytail ignore that remark for now, the latter mentioning, “not just the fragments in the workshop too. If the wife really did send this unidentified third handwriting over, then there might be other information left behind in the store too from her. Any messages or other letters she sent over after she left.”

Glasses nods.

Ponytail then begins to murmur, “that’s right… Even though the store was also where she lived for a long time, but there isn’t a single shred of her having once resided there. Or, did the relationship between this long-time couple really fall apart so completely after their divorce?”

Glasses is quiet for a moment before saying, “if xiao-Chun was still missing after all this time, even after she has left, she should at least have sent messages or wrote letters asking about the search for her daughter, right? If she didn’t do even just that…”

Ponytail immediately adds as she gets what he wants to say, “then the wife really is too cold and uncaring for her daughter. That makes her suspicions higher.”

Quarrelsome’s head is throbbing.

Yes, he isn’t as smart as either of them.

Yet he is also at least aware of how their suspicions seem to keep jumping back and forth between the Dollmaker’s owner and his wife.

This clue? Yeah, the owner is suspicious.

That clue? Yeah, the wife is also suspicious.

This… isn’t this utterly strange? (TL: And can’t they both have conspired? Ta-da! Well actually not, as you’ll see soon enough)

Quarrelsome can’t help but speak up, “so from all the information we have, we still can’t settle on the most suspicious individual?”

Both Ponytail and Glasses shake their heads.

Then Quarrelsome says, “but… but we don’t even know where the wife of the owner is right now…”

His words seem to suddenly pull the rug out from under their mist, as Ponytail and Glasses immediately give fiery stares at him while the detective dalao in the stream also makes an exclamation mark in the comments.

“Uh, what…”

Ponytail yells out, “that’s right! The wife is also essentially going missing!”

Glasses starts to quickly spit out words, “Wu Shen said he divorced her, yes, so where is she? Wu Shen’s friend wrote him a letter; he clearly also didn’t seem to know where she went…”

The detective dalao is practically showcasing his typing speed as his comments bombard the stream,

“Right now, every opinion and judgment cast on the wife is stemming from Wu Shen alone. We have never once heard her actual perspective nor how she saw Wu Shen herself, except for ‘insane’… Everything was Wu Shen himself speaking!” (TL: And before you ask, remember that Xü Beijin said it was Wu Shen who told him after the fact that the ‘woman scolding and child crying’ was her beating her daughter up. It was not first-hand evidence)

Xü Beijin quietly murmurs, “is Wu Shen lying to all of us?”

Quarrelsome says blankly, “so… what now?”

“Go to Wu Shen!” Glasses shoots up and quickly walks to the door, “we go question him directly! We have no time now. We must at least try… See if Wu Shen would at least panic in guilt.”

Shortly thereafter, the three Missiontakers begin yelling in front of the store.

“Wu Shen! We knew you killed your daughter!”

“And you killed your wife, didn’t you?! You still sleep on the second floor every day, are you not worried your daughter and your wife’s spirits will haunt you forever?”

“Wu Shen, you’re shameless! You killed your daughter and still dared to tell everyone over and over again about how much you loved xiao-Chun, you’re sick!”

A little bit of yelling immediately draws out an angered Wu Shen from the second floor, who leans out of his bedroom window, obviously irate, and yelling firmly, “what the hell are you going on about?! I could never have done anything to xiao-Chun or my ex-wife! If you keep spouting nonsense I’ll be calling the police!”