Hell's Handbook

Chapter 152: Mystery Of The Dates

Su Jin did not say anything and just held out the diary in his hand toward Xiang Nan, pointing out a few important areas. Xiang Nang did the same thing and they both pointed to the dates in the diaries.

“What are the two of you trying to imply? There’s no more time left! Are we just waiting to die now?” Han Yiqing almost flew into a rage.

“Come on! We’ve got to go back to the first floor!” said Su Jin.

Nobody knew what Su Jin was trying to do, but they had no choice but to follow him back downstairs. When they passed through the living room, Su Jin glanced at the odd photograph and smiled strangely at it before walking into the room full of clothes with Situ Jin.

A minute later, they emerged from the room and brought everyone back to the first room they were in. The coffin was still lying quietly where it was. As everyone walked around it again, Han Yiqing suddenly exclaimed, “But wait! If the scene of the murder was on the missing sixth floor, then why is the coffin here?”

“What a dumb question. It was carried down, obviously,” snapped another person. They were about to face their deaths soon, so some of them found it hard to keep their cool.

Han Yiqing laughed hollowly. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, if the coffin was originally placed on the fifth floor, then why didn’t the wife just place her husband in the coffin there? Why drag it all the way down to the first story? There was no blood on the floor where the coffin had been, which means that the coffin was still on the fifth story when the murder happened, and was only carried down after that.”

Han Yiqing’s point made everyone start thinking. Since the coffin was already on the fifth story, it would have been easier to just dump his body into it there. Dragging the body to the first story, then carrying the coffin down before placing the body inside seemed like a lot of trouble for nothing.

Su Jin and Xiang Nan remained silent the whole time, as though they were waiting for something. But while they could remain calm, the rest couldn’t. Their faces were pale and some were on the verge of crying. They had no idea how these two men could remain so calm in the face of impending doom. Could it be that they had already lost their minds?

Once time was up, the entrance to the room went dark again and the little girl walked out from the darkness. She had a wicked smile on her half rotten face, as though she was about to eat something delicious.

“All of you failed to find me, so you’re all going to die!” she shrieked in a shrill voice.

Everyone shuddered fearfully but Su Jin snorted and said, “What do you mean by we failed to find you? We found you.”

Everyone was shocked and turned to stare at him. No wonder he and Xiang Nan had managed to remain so calm. They had actually located the little girl’s body.

The little girl’s voice was frosty as she said, “Don’t you dare lie to me, or you’d suffer a worser fate than death.”

“We wouldn’t dare to do that. But…actually, you don’t belong to this family, right?” said Su Jin out of nowhere.

The little girl was stunned for half a second before she opened her mouth and shot her rotting tongue out at Su Jin, stopping just before it hit his face. She roared, “You’re spouting nonsense! Of course I belong to this family!”

“I don’t think so. Or at least, you’re not the child that the couple raised,” said Xiang Nan as he held up the three diaries and pointed to them.

“Mr. Xiang is right. The three diaries belong to the wife, the husband and their child. The name on the child’s diary is not a girl’s name, but a boy’s name,” said Su Jin. He looked curiously at the little girl and said, “We’ve checked the rooms on every story. There’s a room filled with children’s clothes for both boys and girls on the first story, and there’s a children’s bedroom on the third story with two beds. Situ and I checked the clothing to find that the boy clothes look like they’ve been worn before, but the girl clothes are all brand new. The tags haven’t even been cut.”

He held up a handful of tags, which were all taken from the room full of clothing. All the adult clothing and the boy clothing looked like they had been worn and washed before, but all the girl clothing still had tags on them.

“If this family really had a daughter your age, why would all her clothes still have their tags on?” said Su Jin.

The little girl’s tongue kept changing in shape in front of Su Jin’s face but he wasn’t bothered by it at all. Since it failed to frighten him, she withdrew it and glared fiercely at him instead.

“Didn’t you see the photograph in the living room? That’s a photo of my family!” yelled the little girl.

Su Jin nodded and said, “You’re right, the photograph does show a husband and wife with a little girl in the middle. But I found their expressions extremely disturbing. They look like they were forced to take this photograph. There’s no reason why anybody would look like that if they were taking a photo with their actual child. So, perhaps they looked like that because…you forced them to take this photo.”

“That’s not true! I did no such thing! I’m their child! I’m their child!” The little girl seemed to have gone mad and her body emanated a black mist as she shrieked.

Xiang Nan waved the three diaries in his hand and said, “Let’s start from these three diaries then. The husband’s diary entries end on a different day from his wife’s, and the wife’s entries actually start on after the husband’s stop. There’s a year in between the two dates.”

“The husband’s diary records clearly for us that his wife was pregnant and he was very happy about it. He said that he wanted a boy, but a few months after first writing about his wife’s pregnancy, the entries stopped.”

“The interesting thing about both their diaries is that their diary dates include only the day and month, but no year,” Su Jin continued where Xiang Nan left off. He took one diary from Xiang Nan and flipped through it as he went on, “The date on the entry in the husband’s diary about his wife’s pregnancy was on 1^st November, and it stopped in January of the next year.”

Su Jin flipped the diary open to that page, then flipped open the wife’s diary. “The wife’s first entry on her pregnancy was in March, and it stopped in January of the next year as well. They seem to stop around the same time, but their records of her pregnancy have a difference of around eight months.”

Everyone agreed that this was very strange indeed. While it was true that the woman would know about her pregnancy first, it couldn’t have taken the husband eight whole months to know about it, unless he was blind or something.

Su Jin smiled and continued, “It all seems very strange, but remember, the dates in these diaries do not state the year. Also, the content of the wife’s diary is very strange. She seemed very excited, saying that she’s made up for her husband’s loss and is pregnant.”

“That is very strange because the man’s diary entries from the back half of November onwards are filled with frustration and indignation, while the woman’s is filled with joy and celebration. But everything made sense once I filled in the year.”

Everyone was really getting confused now except for Xiang Nan. Su Jin pretended to write the number 1 on the husband’s diary and the number 2 on the wife’s diary.

“Let’s look at it this way. If the man found out that his wife was pregnant on 1^st November of year 1, and the wife found out that she was pregnant in March of year 2, then the difference in time reduces from eight months to four months.”

Su Jin looked at the little girl and went on, “The difference is still quite a lot, but if you combine that information with the content of the entries…let me hypothesize for a while here. What if the wife was pregnant not once, but twice?”

Everyone’s eyes widened. Situ Jin and Kano Mai had strange looks on their faces, because they had clearly put some of these clues together faster than the rest.

Xiang Nan smiled and said, “Alright, Mr. Su! I’ll take over from here.” He took the diaries back from Su Jin and continued, “From the man’s diary, it’s obvious that he wanted a boy, and the woman’s entries also state that she did give birth to a boy.”

“But if we assume that the wife was pregnant more than once, then going by Mr. Su’s timeline, the wife had a miscarriage or she aborted her child. If we say that the wife discovered her pregnancy first, and the husband found out later, then this abortion or miscarriage would have happened when she was already eight months pregnant, which is a little unbelievable. Anyone who wants to abort their child wouldn’t wait till eight months, and the fetus is usually too stable to be miscarried by that time as well.”

“So, it makes more sense to switch them around. The husband discovered that his wife was pregnant in November of year 1, and then his wife became pregnant a second time in March of year 2. That would be more reasonable.”

“So let’s make some assumptions here. Say the husband found out that his wife was pregnant on 1^st November, but two weeks later, he discovered that she was pregnant with a girl and not a boy, like he wanted, so he brought her to get an abortion.”

The little girl’s expression suddenly became contorted, as though she was going to hack Xiang Nan into a thousand pieces.

Xiang Nan was unfazed by her expression and went on, “Then, in March the next year, the wife became pregnant again and this time, she was pregnant with a boy. She gave birth to this child by the end of the year and that’s the real child to this couple.”

“Both diaries stop in January of the year after the entries start. If you don’t read everything carefully, you might not notice anything amiss. But once you realize that the entries don’t make sense and you rearrange the dates accordingly, everything would make sense.”

The little girl began shrieking maniacally again, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair! I had to be aborted just because I was a girl! That man killed me! He forced Mommy to lose me! I must make him pay! I must!”

Su Jin snorted and said, “I don’t think it was your father who brought your mother to get an abortion. If he wanted it to happen, he wouldn’t have written diary entries with such content all the way till January. It seems more like it could have been someone else.”

“Impossible! That’s impossible! I could sense my mother’s sadness! She missed me! I’m sure of it!” shrieked the little girl.

Su Jin shook his head and said, “A husband and wife have other family members too. The one who brought your mother to get an abortion might have been an elder of the family. In any case, I’m quite sure it wasn’t your father. You’ve chosen the wrong person to take revenge on.”

The man’s diary entries were filled with frustration and indignation from November all the way till January. If his frustration and indignation was about his baby’s gender, then it would mean that up until January, he still had no idea that his wife was already no longer with child. That would also mean that he wasn’t the one who brought his wife for an abortion, if it even happened at all.