Secrets

While sorting through my mother’s belongings, I found a crumpled notebook tucked under her pillow.

Four words were scrawled unevenly across the title page: “The Kill List.”

The first name on the list was the obstetrician who had delivered me.

The date noted beside it was the day I was born.

The second name was my father’s.

The date was the day he died in a mining accident.

The third name belonged to a stranger.

The date noted was yesterday.

The police told me that this person really did die yesterday, but my mother was buried over a month ago.

A year ago, on a whim, I told my wife a story.

Because the content was bizarre and the details were too realistic, she was scared out of her wits.

Afterwards, I deeply regretted it and emphasized countless times that the story was made up. But her trust in me had already collapsed, and the look in her eyes was filled with fear.

That night, she ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and called the police.

As a result, I ended up in jail.

Now, I am sorting out the whole incident as follows.

Before she died, my closest friend gave me two things.

A piece of skin she had cut from her own body, and her lover.

She asked me to use that skin to make a shadow puppet for the opera…

I think I understood what she meant. She was telling me: Ah Mei, I’m giving you a generous gift. You should return the favor-kill someone for me.

I was about to hide my boyfriend’s body in the refrigerator.

Then Siri on his phone suddenly spoke.

“The refrigerator is not the optimal location for concealing a corpse.”

I stared at the phone on the floor in terror, a chill running through my entire body.

“A better location for corpse concealment has been detected. Would you like to proceed?”

Siri continued. As if possessed, I asked, “Where?” “The basement. The entrance is inside the wardrobe in the master bedroom.”

Half-doubting it, I followed Siri’s instructions and actually found the basement.

It really was the perfect place to hide a body. Because inside, I found several more corpses…

My cousin is dead.

His hands were tied to a ceiling beam, and he was wearing a red dress over a swimsuit-a swimsuit that was still dripping wet.

The police report claimed it was a suicide.

But I know he didn’t kill himself. And I know who’s next.

It’s me. There is no escape.

At one o’clock in the morning, I counted the Eleventh Step on the western staircase of my office building.

Resting on that single step was a white sneaker, its laces tied into the same blue dead knot my missing best friend always used.

Five years ago, a woman had died in this building.

Now, the security guard who holds the elevator for me every day looked up and flashed a smile.

“Miss Tang, you shouldn’t go around counting stairs.”

I married into an ancient manor. My husband was handsome and gentle, spending every day personally selecting hairpins and picking out dresses for me.

Later, I discovered the manor’s secret, and my eyes welled with tears of terror.

He said, “You’re trembling. It’s not because you’re afraid of me, is it?”

“It’s alright. You just haven’t adjusted yet. I’ll teach you, slowly…”

The night I was sent into the Royal Palace, snow was falling from the heavens.

One hundred and twenty silver lamps lined the steps, but their wicks were not made of cotton; they were segments of little finger bones coated in white wax.

Everyone said that as long as I sold my last box of matches to the Crown Prince, Baili City would survive this winter.

Only I knew that the flames capable of conjuring the scent of bread, the crackle of a hearth, and the warmth of a grandmother’s smile were not blessings from God.

They were the final dreams of children who had frozen to death in the streets.

Tonight, the Royal Palace was coming for mine.

There is no spring in the Sea of No Return.

On the eve of our wedding, Shang Wujiu personally gouged out my Heart Lamp and sealed me within the Sea of No Return.

Three hundred years later, he knelt by the shore, begging me to return.

But he didn’t know that the lamp-the very thing that had extended his life-had long since burned into ash at the bottom of the sea.

At three in the morning, the funeral home’s Morgue was only supposed to have five registered bodies, yet I found a sixth, unregistered, nameless female corpse in locker number six.

A slip of paper was pressed against her chest with nothing but my name written on it.

Even more terrifying was the moment my hand brushed her wrist; I saw the last seven seconds of her life and heard her raspy, blood-choked voice whisper: “Shen Nian, don’t trust your father.”

That was the night I realized that sometimes, the dead don’t come to say goodbye-they come to reopen a case.