Chapter 15

Chapter 15

“In this house, the mirror is the source of Contamination. It makes anyone who comes near the house unable to see what people originally looked like,” Wei Sen explained to the version of herself standing before her.

That was why, after leaving the cabin, she had seen her true appearance reflected in the stream.

“Wait here!” Grandma said, then hurried upstairs.

Before long, the sound of a mirror shattering rang out from above.

Then came footsteps descending the stairs. When Wei Sen looked over again, the figure frozen on the staircase was no longer a white-haired old woman, but another her!

“It… it really is true.” The Other Self shook her head in disbelief as she looked at Wei Sen standing in the middle of the room, wearing a tiny Red Hoodie. She looked somewhat ridiculous.

But before the mirror was smashed, the Little Red Riding Hood she had seen had clearly looked bizarre, with the skin of her face fused together with the Red Hoodie like an Eerie Entity!

“So what do we do now?” The Other Self asked, coming up to Wei Sen.

Wei Sen looked at the apple pie and said, “Little Red Riding Hood’s Clearance Condition is to complete Mom’s task. Mom’s task is actually very simple: make Grandma eat the apple pie. But because this apple pie is poisoned, and because one of the previous Grandmas left behind the words ‘Don’t trust Little Red Riding Hood,’ the task became difficult to complete.”

“But if I eat this apple pie, I’ll die.”

“But I am you. If I clear it, that means you clear it too,” Wei Sen said.

The Other Self hesitated.

Wei Sen was not worried that The Other Self would refuse. Because they were the same person, she understood.

Here, there might once have been thousands upon thousands of versions of herself.

But none of them had their previous memories.

It was hard to say which one was the real her.

But as long as she returned to the real world, then she would definitely be the true her. Because there, there was only one of her: the one and only her!

“But how can you be sure Little Red Riding Hood has never succeeded before?” The Other Self raised her eyes and looked at Wei Sen, her expression grave.

Wei Sen froze abruptly.

That was right. How could she be certain no Little Red Riding Hood had ever succeeded?

She had assumed from the start that as long as she cleared it, she would be able to leave this Dark Fairy Tale Instance World.

But if two of her could exist at the same time, then it was entirely possible for one version of her to clear the Instance and leave, while another version of her still remained inside it!

The more Wei Sen thought about it, the more terrifying it became.

The two of them fell silent for a long time. Then The Other Self slowly picked up the apple pie and said, “But we don’t have any other choice, do we?”

Wei Sen’s eyes stirred with emotion. “Mm. Even if there’s only a one-in-ten-thousand chance, I have to go back.”

“Yes. I have to go back. Someone is waiting for me there,” The Other Self said with a willing smile.

Just as she was about to eat the Poisoned Apple Pie, she suddenly stopped again, looked at Wei Sen in confusion, and asked, “How do you know all of this?”

Wei Sen sat down and said, “Three days ago, I woke up here too.”

“So your first identity was Grandma?!”

“Mm. Back then, there was still another Grandma’s corpse hanging in the house. She had hanged herself. I suspect it was because after she finished exploring, she discovered that Grandma had no Clearance Condition, and she also failed to realize that Little Red Riding Hood was herself. So she killed herself out of despair.”

“Heh. To drive me to the point of suicide… that really is…” The Other Self gave a helpless laugh, then continued asking, “And then?”

“Then I met the first Little Red Riding Hood. She knew perfectly well that the apple pie was poisoned, and she wanted me to eat it. I assume she had already survived for some time as Little Red Riding Hood, so she had uncovered a lot of information about Little Red Riding Hood. But her problem was also that she didn’t know Grandma was herself.”

“She proposed playing a game with me. She wanted to win the game and make me eat the Poisoned Apple Pie of my own accord. But when you’re playing against yourself, the odds are fifty-fifty. Obviously, I won. But in truth, that Little Red Riding Hood didn’t exactly lose either. Before she died, she had probably already guessed the truth, but she had no way to verify it anymore. So she told me to head south and search for the truth.”

“On her, I found Little Red Riding Hood’s Clearance Condition: complete Mom’s task.”

“Then I passed through the Misty Forest. Along the way, I encountered the Hunter, the Wolf, and the Witch. At the Witch’s place, I rescued a little girl, and the little girl gave me a cord bracelet. After that, I found Little Red Riding Hood’s home and met Mom.”
“In Mother’s house, I found a few hints left behind by my previous self. Following those clues, I entered Mother’s room and saw portraits of Mother, Grandmother, and Little Red Riding Hood.

“From the little girl’s wrist cord in the portrait and the one I had obtained, I deduced that the girl imprisoned by the Sorceress was the real Little Red Riding Hood.”

“Then, in the basement of Mother’s house, I saw many corpses of myself wearing the Red Hoodie. That was how I learned the Red Hoodie was poisonous. But if I wanted to truly change from Grandmother’s identity into Little Red Riding Hood’s identity, I had to put on the Red Hoodie. So I made a deal with Mother.”

“I would help her find the real Little Red Riding Hood, and she would give me this non-poisonous Red Hoodie.”

After listening, The Other Self quickly understood the logic behind it all, but she was still confused. “We entered the Eerie World of Dark Fairy Tale because of that unspeakable power, so we had no choice but to do these things because of the mission and the rules.

“But why would Mother in this world do all this? Grandmother is Mother’s own mother. She wants to poison her own mother to death?!”

“Didn’t you notice? In the entire story, one person vanished perfectly.”

“The father!” The Other Self immediately caught the suspicious point and analyzed, “The missing father, the daughter imprisoned by the Witch, Grandmother’s wooden cabin with no kitchen, the Poisoned Apple Pie… This is… revenge!”

“Mm.” Wei Sen sighed softly. “That’s the only possibility. Or perhaps, it’s the one closest to the truth.”

“The mint in the basement, and the fact that a family of three clearly lived there yet there were only two rooms, all prove that originally, there were only Mother and Grandmother. But one day, Mother became pregnant out of wedlock!”

“I’ve read before that in old Europe, pregnancy out of wedlock and abortion were both forbidden. That’s why there was so much mint in the basement. Back then, some people drank large amounts of mint juice to induce miscarriage.”

“But obviously, the abortion plan failed. In the end, Mother still gave birth to Little Red Riding Hood. That also explains why three people lived together but there were only two rooms, why there was so much mint in the basement, and why the father disappeared.”

The Other Self came to a realization. “Although Little Red Riding Hood was born, in that era, it was still shameful for an unmarried woman to become pregnant. So Grandmother was never willing to accept Little Red Riding Hood. In the end, when Little Red Riding Hood was about four or five, Grandmother tricked her into the forest!”

Wei Sen nodded and continued, “Mm. There were many Wolf entities in the forest. Mother thought Little Red Riding Hood had been eaten by Wolf, so from then on, she broke with Grandmother and threw Grandmother into the forest the same way, into this house with no kitchen and no food, intending to starve Grandmother to death.

“And the real Grandmother’s legs were already paralyzed. Once she was thrown here, she could practically only wait to die. If she wanted to return to the Red House in her wheelchair, she definitely wouldn’t make it out of the Misty Forest before dark, and she would certainly be eaten by Wolf.”

“But the green fruits were edible!”

“So Grandmother barely survived all these years. But Mother still found out, and Mother just happened to encounter ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ so she made ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ deliver Poisoned Apple Pie here again and again.”

The Other Self shook her head and sighed. “They were both mothers, yet for the sake of their own children, they both became monsters.”

The two fell silent, facing each other. Hidden behind this dark fairy tale was the bitterness of two mothers.

No one knew whether Grandmother regretted tricking Little Red Riding Hood into the forest, nor did anyone know whether Grandmother’s original intention had been to free Mother from the disgrace of pregnancy out of wedlock, or to keep the family from being shamed because of Little Red Riding Hood.

“All right. The story is over. It’s time for us to return to where we came from.” After saying that, The Other Self bit into the Poisoned Apple Pie without the slightest hesitation.

“After you return to the real world, remember to live well for my share too. Remember to meet, in my place, the person who has been waiting for me all this time.”

Wei Sen looked into The Other Self’s eyes and gave a slight nod. “I will.”