Chapter 10
As soon as I got back, I called the police.
After hearing everything, the officer sounded even more serious.
“All right, we understand. We’ll send people to investigate immediately.”
Only then did I understand the truth about Dad’s death.
It hadn’t been murder. It had been suicide.
More precisely, he’d been incited to take his own life.
Following my leads, the police sent trained undercover officers into the complex. They stayed there for days, painstakingly piecing together information and working their way deeper into the mysterious organization.
Finally, three months later, the police rounded up the criminal organization.
Once the culprit was caught, he admitted that thousands of people obeyed him. He had also unlawfully confined dozens of people in an attempt to keep brainwashing them.
Dad’s case hadn’t been an isolated one.
There had already been nineteen other inexplicable suicides.
That meant nineteen families had been torn apart.
Almost all of those who died had severe injuries to their legs, as though they’d received the same instruction.
The man I’d seen in the wheelchair that day also had raw wounds all over both legs.
They were strikingly similar to Dad’s injuries.
To everyone’s disbelief, these people had set everything in motion more than a decade earlier and lain low for years.
They’d posed as a benevolent community organization, offering warmth and help to middle-aged and elderly people. Once they’d earned their trust, they gradually brainwashed them, telling them that if they believed in the organization, they could be reincarnated into a life of ease.
Only through reincarnation could they live forever.
Many people had overlooked a very real problem.
Middle-aged and elderly people have profound emotional needs. They’re afraid of illness, of loneliness, and, most of all, of death.
The organization had seized on their greatest vulnerability, winning their trust through companionship.
It also reinforced its ideology by regulating people’s behavior, making them follow a set of so-called rules.
No singing and dancing at home, for instance, because that was disrespectful to the family.
No going to hospitals, because the virtuous would heal on their own.
Morgues were places where departed souls gathered. Anyone who wanted reincarnation had to revere death.
Using these supposed standards, they selected their most trusting followers. Then they subjected them to repeated brainwashing, drilling into them the belief that death was rebirth.
Dad and Mom were among the man’s most devoted followers. This had run through my entire childhood.
That day, my cousin had given me exactly the same answers.
My aunt was another devoted follower of those bizarre rules.
Dad had believed that obedience would earn him the chance to be reincarnated into a life of ease, that he could be happy forever.
He’d believed in this secret and was even proud of it, dropping hint after hint to me.
And with Mom’s confession, the mystery of what had happened in our house was finally solved.
Dad had a condition that left him unable to feel pain.
Everything that night had been his own doing, all for the sake of this supposed “immortality through reincarnation.”
Mom had known everything and done nothing to stop him. She, too, had believed he’d gone to a better life.
The truth was very close to what I’d suspected.
But I still felt utterly helpless.
If I’d noticed sooner, could all these tragedies have been prevented?
Although Dad couldn’t feel pain, he’d left me that note before he died.
Perhaps, as he lay dying, his unwavering faith of so many years had finally begun to falter.
People change when they’re dying.
At some point, perhaps he’d wondered whether what he was doing was right…
But it was already too late.
Before Mom was taken to the hospital for psychiatric treatment, she screamed herself hoarse at me, saying I’d destroyed her path to eternal life.
I had nothing left. The happy family I’d once had had been torn apart.
A few days later, as I lay in bed letting my mind go blank, I suddenly remembered the stranger who’d messaged me.
With the police arrests, those criminal groups had been uprooted.
The mysterious stranger must have been one of the victims who’d been illegally confined, the ones mentioned in the reports.
I couldn’t help opening my phone and sending a private message. [Are you all right now?]
It was late that night before a single reply arrived.
[Where are you?]
I stared at it, confused. Had I guessed wrong?
Then the next message made every hair on my body stand on end in the darkness.
[God says they’re coming to save you.]
A chill spread across my back.
Could some of them still be out there?