Chapter Thirty-Eight Schedule

  The boss became somewhat nervous and his voice changed: "What injury did she suffer?"

  "I'm not too clear about this. It's something related to the hospital."

  Everyone fell silent, and this news was a very important clue for us, especially the boss. After getting our luggage, we ordered food at a big restaurant in the town and had dinner. No one spoke, just eating silently. When returning to the hotel, everyone came to my and Su Haicheng's room without saying a word.

  Kakaxi and I sat on the bed, boss sat on a stool beside. Ah Tian leaned against the wall, Su Haicheng sat on the sofa. This looks irregular, but actually, we surrounded him.

  The boss asked first: "Have you ever seen Sakura Yuki?"

  "I don't remember. These things, I have some fragments. But I'm sure that key was taken from under an old man's body. His action at the time was to hide and protect. A kind of intuition, I feel like I need to protect this key."

  "What's with the express delivery? What's going on?"

  "I don't remember, anyway I have the impression that I indeed sent the key back home by express delivery. The handwriting on the package's note is not mine. I also guess it was someone I asked to send it out."

  Kakaxi burst out laughing: "Hey, have you guys ever thought of a hypothesis? That is, Su Shiying is actually Sakura Yuki. He's from two dimensions, and then in that Death Village, something special happened and they merged into one. Before, when the boss saw Sakura Yuki, Su Shiying didn't appear, but after Su Shiying appeared, Sakura Yuki disappeared. If Sakura Yuki loves the boss so much, why wouldn't she appear? So, Su Shiying is actually Sakura Yuki, and in fact, she's always been by the boss's side."

  I rudely pushed him off the bed: "Have you been reading too many comics? Why don't you call out Xi Yangyang to help us think?"

  Kakaxi sat directly under the bed and looked up at me with a glare: "What are you doing?"

  The boss glared at us two: "You two shut up! Be serious! Otherwise, you two go back and do your homework!"

  As soon as the boss spoke up, we indeed shut our mouths. We finally arrived here after wandering around for two and a half days. Now let's go back? No way!

  After both of us calmed down, Su Haicheng said: "Kakashi, take notes."

  He quickly sat up, took out the tablet and switched it to notebook mode. Su Haicheng said: "According to what the medic said, they entered the village on August 18th and found that everyone in the village was dead. We received news of the medical team's loss of contact on August 21st and rushed to the village at dawn on the 22nd. At 8 o'clock on the morning of the 22nd, we began to investigate. On the afternoon of August 23rd, we received orders from our superiors to burn down the village to prevent infectious diseases. The fire was lit at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on the 23rd."

  The boss said, "Xueying took the intercity train on August 22nd in the morning. According to the route, she should have arrived at Dead Village on the evening of the 22nd or the morning of the 23rd."

  "In that case, I may have really seen her. Assuming I had already picked up the key on the morning of the 23rd and then saw Sakurayuki and asked her to courier the key to my home."

  "There's a problem!" Ah Tian interrupted, "Xue is from the village, she knows about the key, you're an outsider, if you let her deliver the key, what will she do? That was originally their village's thing, why send it to your home?"

  Kakashi and I nodded in agreement. Indeed, if it were our family's belongings, we wouldn't believe a stranger either. Sakura must have known that was the key passed down through generations in their village.

  The boss let out a long sigh: "Maybe at that time, Sakura Snow already felt that she couldn't protect the key herself, so she decided to send the key to the designated place in Su Haicheng. At least it could alleviate the crisis at that time. She... may have been dead by then, and she knew that a dead person couldn't keep the key left by her ancestors."

  "It's not the right time!" Su Haicheng said, "Xue Xue wouldn't have arrived until the evening of the 22nd at the earliest. If she had entered the village at that time, our people would have stopped her and told her it was a contagious disease and couldn't enter. How could she have died if she couldn't get in?"

  The boss suddenly sat up: "Xue Mei might not be dead?! Not dead?! Why didn't she come out? Why won't she see me?"

  Su Haicheng pushed away his boss and continued: "Kakashi, go on. When did you enter the Dead Zone?"

  "We set out on the morning of August 28 and arrived in the evening of the same day."

  "I added a sentence: 'I saw you for the first time on the evening of the 28th. We left on the 29th.'"

  Su Haicheng fell silent for a moment, then said: "We set the fire on the 23rd. I should have died on the 23rd. The corpses mutated on the night of the 28th. In those few days, there were no signs of decay on the corpses."

  "Actually, those corpses also have different manifestations." I raised my doubts, "You have the first kind that appears well, like Sakura and Su Haicheng, and that medic. The second kind is those villagers who were burned, they lined up to go to the lake and didn't come back. I think what they experienced must be different. Maybe your death is not the same as theirs."

  "Maybe you weren't dead after all! You were just poisoned by the pufferfish toxin. Now that the toxin has been cleared, you're fine."

  Things have basically come to a standstill here. This time, the memory is that when the boss said he would wait for other packages tomorrow, he went to the hospital to check Sakura's medical records first. If it was really tetrodotoxin, there should be a reaction on Sakura's medical records, right?

  After everyone left, only I and Su Haicheng were left in the room. He seemed to have not walked out of those doubts yet, frowning, saying in a low voice: "Did I really see her? Did I ask her to send express delivery? How come I don't have any impression?"

  "It's gone if it's gone, but I'll always remember."

  "He finally looked up at me: 'Si Yi, go take a bath and sleep first, you said you didn't feel well just now.'"

  I nodded, I was indeed uncomfortable, had a headache, and felt like I was coming down with something. After taking a bath, he walked out of the bathroom, still sitting on the couch in the same posture, even the angle of his furrowed brow hadn't changed. Forget it, he must be suffering now, such an important thing, yet he couldn't remember it himself.

  I really want to comfort him, but I can't do it now. My head is getting more and more painful, I can only curl up in bed under the unfamiliar quilt, no matter how hard I try, I just can't fall asleep. Can't sleep, my head hurts even more, and I'm even more miserable.

  In a daze, I didn't know whether my head was spinning and I had fainted or if I had really fallen asleep. As the world spun around me, it seemed as though I had returned to that dead village. I watched as one by one, the charred corpses rose from the ruins, walking, walking, until they sank into the beautiful lake water.

  I held the key in my hand, trembling all over, and a voice said: "It's been nine days, open it, use that key to open it. Let these dead people come back."

  "Nine Heavens?" I opened my eyes in shock. The headache wasn't as severe anymore, and under the relatively dim light of the room, I saw Su Haicheng.

  He seemed to have taken a bath and was sitting in front of the bed looking at me. "Had a nightmare? Your whole body is shaking, very cold?"

  "No." I sat up, propping myself up. Ever since the last time we were so intimate together, I've been tense in similar situations like this now, can't quite put my finger on what it is, just tense.

  Su Haicheng said in a low voice: "Avoid me? Afraid? I'm not going to take your life in a place like this, am I?"

  "Haha, I was just dreaming. Never mind, I'm fine now. You go back to sleep too."

  "Are you really afraid of me?"

  Speaking of fear, I blurted out: "What I'm most afraid of is your mom. She's intimidating without being angry, even more fierce than your grandfather."

  "My mom is also a reasonable person."

  "I know, but... I've done something wrong, so I'm especially afraid of her. I cheated her out of so much money..."

  "How was it cheated?"

  "I told her it's about the kid, but I don't have your kid? Oh god, thinking of this is giving me a headache again. She wants a big belly, I can go to Taobao and buy a silicone belly sticker, but after a few months, where am I going to find a kid for her? She also wants to do a DNA test. Su Haicheng, Su Haicheng, why don't we just have one ourselves? Or else she'll really take me to jail." Uh, no! I'm getting nervous and talking nonsense.