"The fourth thing, in your life, what is the fourth thing that made you feel devastated?"
Wen Xishu asked more straightforwardly than the last time. But unexpectedly, Tang Rui shook her head:
"There is no... no fourth thing."
The effect of the truth-telling wine was still there; the one who drank it could not lie. Indeed, there was no fourth thing.
Although Wen Xishu was puzzled, he didn’t ask further. He was silent for a good while, as if he vaguely understood something.
At the end of this truth-telling conversation, he picked up his wine glass and drank it down with gusto.
Tang Rui propped her head with her hand, feeling a bit drowsy and confused:
"You... what are you doing?"
"I’ve learned everything I wanted to know, so here, I’ll share a secret with you in return."
Tang Rui chuckled, asking somewhat vaguely:
"Then why... why haven’t you been loved? I’ve always been curious; after all, you have a happy family."
A broken life left her no room to care about others’ pain. But she became interested in this young man, holding a magical wine glass, who barged into the end phase of her life.
He clearly had such a beautiful childhood. Why did he say he hadn’t been loved?
Wen Xishu also smiled:
"Because we are the same kind."
He said this while smiling, but the smile was not pleasant.
Those familiar scenes turned out to be carefully embellished lies. Only at this moment did Tang Rui see the complete memory.
"Little Tree, Little Tree, look, look, what’s this? This is a rog handheld console Mom bought for you, are you happy?"
The child was, of course, happy, but as the camera moved away, when his hand touched the packaging box of the game console, his gaze suddenly became vacant.
"Mom, is it an empty box again?"
The woman didn’t respond, just blissfully stared at the video on her phone, tweaking beauty filters, thinking about how many likes this video would get once posted.
The child didn’t ask again; he tactfully held the empty box and walked toward home.
"Little Tree, Mom brought you some food. After school, we’ll celebrate your birthday together, okay? Hee-hee."
The scene shifted to the classroom door, where countless children enviously looked at Wen Xishu. What a beautiful and lovely mother, and she loved him so much.
But they didn’t know, as he walked out of the classroom, the child’s smile slowly faded:
"Mom, my birthday was many days ago, you don’t... you don’t remember, do you."
"That’s not important. Come here, Little Tree, sit here, quickly open Mom’s loving lunchbox, and show a smile. Yes, be happy."
The little boy showed a smile. The frame used a warm light filter, with a caption saying, "Mom will always love you."
But beneath this filter, it couldn’t capture the slightly undercooked rice.
The memory continued.
"What about Dad and Mom? Are they high-level NPCs too?" the boy asked.
The man shook his head:
"To others, Dad and Mom are powerful NPCs, but whether you are poor or rich in the future, whether you achieve success or not...
"From the moment you were born, we’ve been in your team, and that will never change."
When he finished this sentence, the little boy felt happiness. At least for that moment, he also thought he had been happy.
But soon, the camera was turned off, the man urged the child to go to bed, and after a while, the man walked out of the bedroom and closed the door.
The woman said:
"Honey, how much longer? I really want to have our own child."
"Soon, dear. We will achieve financial freedom shortly. Look, everyone online is talking about how happy our family is, praising how much we love our child. Quite a few people are imitating us, starting to make parent-child videos."
"Not much longer. When the time comes, we just need to cry, and countless people will sympathize with us. No one will suspect it was us!"
"When our own child is born, they will even bless us."
The man and woman hugged and laughed, unaware that on the other side of the door, the child was barefoot, with his ear against the door, silently shedding tears.
Tang Rui shivered all over, looking at Wen Xishu incredulously.
She had never thought that the boy in front of her, several years younger than herself, had such a horrific past.
She seemed to understand why the memory included a child standing in the flames, saying that they loved themselves. She felt terrified, her whole body shivering.
Suddenly, it started to rain heavily outside the bar, without warning, as if to extinguish some distant flame.
Wen Xishu laughed softly:
"Tonight, we have exchanged secrets."
"You see, I’m also an unwanted dead child, but so what?"
Tang Rui didn’t know how to respond.
In another version, Wenren Mirror once gave Tang Rui extreme love.
But now, what Wen Xishu intended to do was to teach Tang Rui how to please herself.
Wen Xishu suddenly raised his glass again, took a sip of wine, to indicate the truth of his words.
His smile gradually became charming again, a bone-chilling cold hiding in the tone of his words:
"Tang Rui, when I was a child, I loved watching horror movies. Everyone said that Chinese horror movies were scarier, eerie, malicious, terrifying, much more thrilling than the bloody American horror movies, but I disagree."
"Chinese horror movies are indeed interesting. As ghosts, grievances seek revenge while enmities demand retribution. Sometimes, I think, from a ghost’s perspective, Chinese horror movies are too much like fairy tales."
"People don’t know that true Chinese horror is when you are bullied but cannot express your grievances."
"When you want to laugh, they tell you not to be unrestrained. When you want to cry, they tell you not to shed tears lightly. When you want to be angry, they teach you to endure."
"They clearly don’t love you, yet they constantly tell you that everything they do is for your good."
"They show all the light to irrelevant spectators to prove how well they are doing, but they leave only the darkness to us."
"They are the good people who harvest honor and praise, while we are the deformed and twisted monsters."
Wen Xishu’s smile grew more gentle:
"The place I lived in was beautiful, everyone lived by agreed rules, loving each other. But because of this, those who broke the rules always ended up badly."
"I believe that the things people praise truly exist, just not for us cursed ones. In that world, people like me have to accept bad luck."
"But now it’s different."
Wen Xishu drank the wine again, further emphasizing the truthfulness of his words:
"I won’t deceive you, this world is about to break, and all order will be destroyed. All the chains imposed on you will also shatter."
"You will evolve, become stronger, make everyone fear you. Maybe then, many people will beg for your protection. But that’s not love; that’s just their need."
"Promise me, when that day comes, don’t do something foolish like reconciling with your past self."
Tang Rui was slightly stunned. The man still had a charming smile, but his eyes burst with ferocity and evil.
She inexplicably found that very attractive.
Wen Xishu seemed like a demon enticing humans to commit crimes, his voice gradually rising:
"In your unfortunate life, shouldn’t there be at least one hearty release? Resent your grievances, avenge your enmities, let scum meet their scum fate, let trash meet their trash fate. Those wrongs cannot, and should not, be let off."
"I promised to bring you luck. If you choose to be a parrot, then tonight is just an ordinary drunken spree; in a few days, whether you jump off a building or wallow in self-pity, it’s your freedom."
"But if you don’t want to be a parrot, if you still have hate and resentment in your heart, still have anger and knots, then come with me!"
Facing Wen Xishu’s extended hand, listening to the torrential rain outside the bar, Tang Rui asked tremblingly:
"Where... where are we going?"
Wen Xishu smiled gently, saying one word at a time:
"Of course, to find them."