Scenario One: Painted Skin — 9

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Seven human skins in all. Rusty clothes hangers propped up their shoulders, and they hung from steel pipes strung across the bathroom ceiling like seven hanged ghosts. The translucent skins were a grayish yellow. Each had a zipper running down the back that could be opened, while the head and face had been folded down at the neck like a hood, dangling over the chest.

The bathroom was extremely cramped. Any move Bu Jianhan made would inevitably brush against the skins suspended around him. The feet of one were resting against his arm.

Bloody water dripped from the steel pipe and splattered on the floor. In the darkness, every last sound rang out with unnatural clarity.

If Bu Jianhan's eyes had still been intact, two crystalline tears would surely have been sliding down his cheeks.

Holding back those tears, he began examining the skins one by one.

Aside from Lin Eight's skin, which was still in Princess Bunny's room, the skins of the Lin family's other seven brothers were all here. Lin Five was missing the tip of one finger. Lin Seven's skin was bald at the crown. The zipper down Lin Xiao Ming's back had been sewn on crooked, and there were two holes beneath the arms and behind the knees.

So Lin Seven really had been wearing a wig.

If all eight Lin brothers were accounted for, then where were Mr. and Mrs. Lin?

Bu Jianhan figured there was a fifty-percent chance they had been murdered. The other fifty percent was that... they were locked inside the Horse Room, the one that always had strange noises coming from it.

Either way, that was the next door Bu Jianhan had to open.

Which brought him to a question that struck at the very soul.

Where was the Horse key?

Bu Jianhan searched every visible corner of the Snake bathroom without finding a single item.

Heart full of dread, he had no choice but to turn his gaze toward the toilet bowl, half-filled with bloody water.

One minute later, Bu Jianhan left the Snake Room clutching the blood-dripping Horse key. The room would likely feature in his nightmares for years to come.

[Item acquired: Zodiac Horse Key ×1.]

Although the Skinner had stopped chasing him, he was still Wandering through the corridor.

Bu Jianhan used the furniture scattered through the hallway to lure him into taking a long detour. Once he had successfully lost him deep in the maze of clutter, he unlocked the Horse Room.

The layout inside was simple: a double bed and a nightstand serving as a dining table. Colorful foam padding covered all four walls, and every sharp edge on the furniture had been carefully wrapped in strips of foam to prevent the prisoners from hurting themselves in a moment of despair. Two skeletal figures lay side by side on the bed, their hands and feet bound and their mouths sealed with tape.

They were so emaciated they scarcely looked human. Bu Jianhan could just make out that one was a man and the other a woman, both with blackened eye sockets and deeply sunken cheeks. At the sound of the door opening, their eyes flew wide. They turned toward the light in the doorway, writhing incessantly and making muffled sounds deep in their throats.

Bu Jianhan hurriedly put a finger to his lips. He pulled the door almost shut, ran to the bed, and tore the tape from the man's mouth.

The adhesive was so strong it ripped away a patch of skin, but the man did not seem to feel it. Keeping his voice as low as possible, he said weakly but urgently, "Save my wife! Please, you have to save her. That mad animal will kill us sooner or later!"

"Shh. Calm down, calm down. I will." Bu Jianhan quickly made a placating gesture and tried to soothe him. "Are you Mr. and Mrs. Lin? How did you end up locked in here?"

"Yes, we are... No, wait." Halfway through his answer, the man abruptly fell silent. He held his breath and listened. "He's coming... that bastard is coming! Turn off your phone and find somewhere to hide... Under the bed! Hurry!"

Bu Jianhan extinguished his phone's light almost at once, dropped, rolled, and slipped beneath the bed.

With a creak, the door slowly swung open.

"Dad? Mom?" the person at the door asked softly. "Can I come in?"

Unlike the hoarse, furious roars Bu Jianhan remembered from the Skinner, this voice belonged to an ordinary young man. It was low and resonant, even faintly pleasant. Bu Jianhan almost failed to connect the speaker with the Skinner at all.

"Why was the door open?" the Skinner asked himself. "Dad, did our guest come in?"

"No. There wasn't any guest." The man was plainly terrified. His voice trembled slightly, but his denial remained firm.

"You're lying!" The Skinner suddenly lost control and roared at the top of his lungs. His strange cadence brimmed with sickness, obsession, and an indescribable horror. "Honest, mature parents aren't supposed to lie to their children! You helped an outsider deceive your own son. Don't you love me anymore?!"

The deafening roar made Bu Jianhan flinch. His elbow nearly struck the underside of the bed.

"I love you. Of course I do. We love you more than anyone." The man answered quickly, plainly well practiced at handling the Skinner's fits of madness. "A guest did come by just now, but he's already left..."

"Really? He left?" The Skinner calmed a little and asked between heaving breaths, "Did he leave on his own? Did he think I was boring? Didn't he want to play with me? No, he was obviously so gentle with me... Did you drive him away? Why did you drive away my friend? Do you think I shouldn't play with him?!"

Seeing the Skinner on the verge of losing control again, the man hurried to soothe him once more. "No, no, we didn't drive him away! It was just too late. He needed to go home to sleep."

"No! He promised he'd stay the night!" A sob crept into the Skinner's voice. "You lied to me just now. I'll never believe another word you say! Mom, Mom, you tell me..."

The Skinner stomped over to the bed. Through the gap beneath it, Bu Jianhan could see a pair of sinewy, blood-red feet planted directly in front of him.

With a tearing sound, the Skinner ripped the tape from the woman's mouth. "Mom, you tell me. Why did he leave? Is it because no one likes me, or did you make him go?!"

The woman was too terrified to speak. She whimpered and shook. Bu Jianhan could even feel the bed trembling with her.

"Don't treat your mother like that... son," the man said, doing everything he could to protect his wife. "She's timid. Running around in front of her without any clothes on will frighten her. Be good and go put something on, all right? We'll all love you."

"All right. I'll go get dressed. When I come back, you have to tell me where he went." The Skinner thought for a moment, apparently persuaded by the man's explanation. "But which one should I wear? Eldest Brother's? That one wasn't made very well. It has holes all over it. What about Fourth Brother's? That one's too skinny. I just ate, and my belly would split it open. Or maybe Fifth Brother's? But one of his fingers is too short. I have to wear gloves every time I put it on, and they're so uncomfortable..."

At those words, the woman on the bed seemed to reach the end of her endurance. Her whole body jerked violently, and then she broke completely.

"You lunatic!" she shrieked. "You're a pervert, a monster! You murdered every one of my sons! I wish I'd never given birth to a demon like you! Give me back my sons... Please... give them all back to me!"

"Honey! No, don't... Honey, stop talking..." Panic-stricken, the man desperately tried to quiet his wife. "Listen to yourself. What are you saying? Our son is right here in front of us, isn't he? There, don't cry. You'll hurt the child's feelings, talking like that."

The Skinner did not speak for a long while. He seemed stunned.

After a silence that stretched on and on, he said sadly, "You weren't like this before, Mom. Don't you love me anymore?"

"I hate you!" the woman screamed hysterically. "Go die, you lunatic! Kill me, or go die yourself!"

"No! Honey... no! Son, don't!"

Over the man's frantic pleas came a heavy thud against the bed. The entire frame jolted. The woman screamed in pain—and then fell silent.

"I knew you had been lying to me all along..." The Skinner's voice began to turn hoarse. "You really don't love me. You never loved me! Am I not your child too? You only ever paid attention to them. You were always telling everyone how wonderful they were while I was good for nothing... You don't care about me at all! Why did you play favorites?!"

"Honey, don't scare me... Say something, please. Come on, honey, talk to me."

The man paid no attention to the Skinner's muttering. He anxiously tried to assess his wife's condition, his voice fading from panic into despair.

At last, like a solitary beast that had lost its mate, he let out a howl of grief.

"You bastard! How could you do that to your mother? She's your mother! You ungrateful wretch—treating your parents this way will bring the wrath of heaven down on you! You'll get what's coming to you!"

"Shut up!" the furious Skinner roared back. "You're both liars! Selfish hypocrites! I'll never hope for your love again. I will always be loved—everyone will love me! I won't have to debase myself begging for your attention anymore. I won't have to tiptoe around, terrified, trying to please you ever again!"

The Skinner raised something and brought it down on the bed in a frenzy. Blow after blow landed with all his strength, dozens in succession. The bed shuddered and creaked as if it were about to collapse, and the man's anguished cries had long since been drowned beneath the unending crashes.

This was not slaughter. He was merely venting his rage in a frenzy.

Several minutes later, he finally brought that pointless venting to an end. After a brief silence, Bu Jianhan heard a soft rustling, as though someone were cutting through hempen rope with a knife, then arranging and rearranging something.

The noises continued for a long time. Bu Jianhan did not dare move. His entire body had stiffened until it went numb.

He felt a wet, sticky liquid seep through the gaps between the bedboards. With a soft splat, it landed on the back of his hand.

At last, the rustling stopped. A pair of knees, white tendons exposed, sank to the floor before Bu Jianhan. He heard the Skinner's soft, grief-stricken sobs. He seemed to be lying against the edge of the bed, weeping brokenheartedly.

A moment later, the Skinner stood and murmured tenderly, "...My dear child, Mommy and Daddy love you."

With that, he trudged out of the room, his footsteps heavy and wet.

Bu Jianhan finally crawled out from beneath the bed.

He switched on his phone's flashlight and illuminated the bed before him.

The sheets had been completely dyed a blackish red. Soaked through, they dripped blood steadily onto the floor. Mr. and Mrs. Lin's heads had been smashed beyond recognition, and someone had arranged their bodies in a deeply peculiar position.

They appeared to be asleep in each other's arms, the man's hand resting on the woman's waist and the woman's hand draped over the man's shoulder. Yet a gap of about twelve inches separated them, their arms forming a strange, narrow pocket of empty space.

As if a small child lay curled asleep in their embrace.

Bu Jianhan noticed that the man's hand was clenched in a death grip, as though something were hidden in his fist. He lifted the hand and gently drew out what it held.

[Item acquired: Sheep Room Key ×1.]