Everly knew that the Bianca Doreen was talking about was most likely an unknown creature impersonating her, not Bianca herself.
Even so, just as her investigation had barely begun, the suspicious fake Bianca suddenly went offline, and this unexpected developnt still left Everly feeling at a loss.
She even entertained a sowhat conspiratorial thought: could the fake Bianca have discovered the surveillance from her and Natalie, and deliberately “died” to escape?
At any ti, her own safety ca first. Therefore, when the situation was unclear, Everly did not rush to the drama club where Bianca had died to investigate. Instead, she shoved a wad of cash into Doreen’s hands and had her “check things out” for her.
“Um… Bianca… her death wasn’t caused by you, right?” Doreen clutched the unexpectedly large sum of money. After hesitating for a long ti, her face showed a mixture of suspicion and fear, as if she were ready to face death.
“….”
Was she seriously asking that so directly? That was way too blunt. If she really were a murderer, wouldn’t Doreen basically be walking into a trap herself? No wonder Arican horror films love using college students as protagonists—so innocent and naive, they really are perfect cannon fodder…
Doreen still needed to act as Everly’s “eyes” and gather information for her, so Everly imdiately denied her suspicion: “No, of course I didn’t kill her. It’s just a cheating boyfriend—it’s not a big deal. If this one doesn’t work out, just get another. Besides, I’ve been here the whole ti, I didn’t have the chance to do anything.”
“Right…” Hearing this, the suspicion on Doreen’s face faded, replaced with embarrassnt. “Sorry, it’s just that Bianca’s death ca so suddenly that I couldn’t help overthinking.”
“It’s fine, I understand.”
“My friend at the scene told that the police want to go over—they need to ask so questions…”
Everly understood the implied aning and nodded.
“No matter what, she was your roommate. The police will definitely have things they need to ask you about. Go on, we’ll keep in touch later.”
“Mm, thank you.”
Doreen thanked her, got out of the car, and hurried toward the university drama club’s activity room.
At that mont, the phone in Everly’s pocket buzzed.
She pulled it out and saw a private ssage from her “special follow,” @CurseWitch.
Her heart jolted at the notification. For a mont, Everly thought Natalie was there to tell her the deal was canceled because Bianca was dead.
However, after opening it, she realized Natalie was talking about sothing entirely different:
[Curse Witch: The client has appeared, but only the body is there—the soul is gone… The mission has changed. Investigate for what exactly happened.]
Everly: “!!”
She quickly typed back:
[Is there a ti limit?]
[Curse Witch: Of course. The sooner the better. I’d rather not have another client run into trouble (smiley face)(smiley face)]
Everly let out a regretful sigh.
It seed Wester wasn’t going to have the luck to earn a commission from her after all.
…
University club activity rooms are usually assigned on a rotating basis, depending on which classrooms are available. However, the drama club, being a long-established organization with history on campus, received certain privileges.
The school had specially allocated a room in the Student Activity Center for the drama club to et, rehearse, and store equipnt. It was a large space, located next to the fraternity and sorority houses’ designated activity areas.
By the ti Doreen arrived, the entrance to the drama club room was already surrounded by crowds, three layers deep.
She pushed through the crowd for a while before finally finding the friend who had ssaged her.
As soon as her friend saw Doreen, she imdiately pulled her aside. Making sure the police were still busy investigating the scene and not paying attention to Doreen, she lowered her voice and quickly began sharing gossip.
Doreen’s friend was also a mber of the drama club. Through her account, Doreen gradually pieced together what had happened.
That afternoon, Bianca had no classes. After lunch, she arrived early at the activity room and sat in a corner, nding a costu for the next performance.
Later, Sara and Kevin’s group also ca into the room.
This group had often b*llied Bianca in the past. Under normal circumstances, when she saw them, Bianca would have kept her head down and tried to make herself as invisible as possible. Yet for so reason, after seeing them today, Bianca actually walked straight up to them and got into an argunt.
“I didn’t hear exactly what they said, but Kevin and Sara both looked really angry. Halfway through the argunt, Bianca suddenly shoved Sara hard, knocking her to the ground. Then she gave them the middle finger provocatively and turned to run outside. Kevin and the others were furious—they helped Sara up and imdiately chased after her.”
What happened after that, and where they went, Doreen’s friend didn’t know, since she had been busy morizing lines and didn’t follow them out.
Anyway, about ten minutes later, she saw Bianca return to the activity room, completely stripped of her earlier arrogance, looking dejected and defeated. Behind her were Sara and the others, walking in with smug expressions.
“Bianca must have been badly dealt with. After coming back, she just sat in the corner completely off—she didn’t move at all, head down, not talking, not working. She was holding a costu ant for Robert’s performance next week. When Robert saw she wasn’t doing anything, he walked over and nudged her shoulder, telling her not to slack off. But unexpectedly, with just that light push, Bianca suddenly tilted sideways and fell straight to the ground.”
Recalling that scene, Doreen’s friend couldn’t help but shiver.
To allow more space for rehearsals, the drama club’s activity room had no tables or chairs. When doing odd jobs, everyone usually just sat directly on the floor.
Bianca had been sitting on the ground with her back against the wall.
The floor was flat and covered with a thin layer of soft padding. From the height of her head to the ground, even if she had fallen without any protection, at most she would have ended up with a bump on her head.
Yet under everyone’s eyes, when Bianca’s head struck the floor, it exploded like a rotten waterlon. With a “pop,” the skin burst open, and a large amount of dark red blood splattered outward.
She lay there motionless, her dry, shriveled eyes now covered with a milky film, opened wide in unwillingness, staring straight at everyone in front of her. In an instant, she had gone from a living human being into a cold, stiff corpse…
“Do you sll that in the air? It’s like dead fish left out in sumr for several days—this rotting stench. That sll is coming from Bianca’s blood… ugh, seriously, the scene plus that sll was just too disgusting!”
As her friend had described, Doreen sniffed hard—and indeed caught a faint, rotten, fishy odor. The sll stirred up a recent mory: yesterday, after coming out of the bathroom and getting dressed, she seed to have slled sothing similar coming from Bianca’s body as well…
“Doreen, Doreen, are you here? The police want to ask you sothing.”
A voice called from inside the activity room, breaking her train of thought.
“I’m here.”
She raised her hand in the crowd. The surrounding students quickly and voluntarily made way, allowing Doreen to walk to the front.
Crossing the police line, she saw officers busy examining the scene. In one corner of the room, a black cloth had been draped over sothing. Several people who appeared to be forensic examiners were gathered behind it.
From the uncovered edge, a slender leg could be faintly seen extending outward.
Judging from the pants and shoes on that leg, its owner was her roommate—Bianca.
It was only at that mont that Doreen belatedly realized she had been in the sa room with a corpse. Even if that corpse belonged to her roommate, the overwhelming fear and discomfort still clenched her heart like a giant hand, making it impossible for her to focus during the police questioning.
“…Thank you for your cooperation. Please sign this statent.”
After the questions were finished, the police signaled for Doreen to leave.
The friend who had called her over—being an eyewitness to the death scene—still needed to remain behind for further questioning. Doreen walked alone along the noisy street, her mind still dazed even after quite so ti.
“Hey, Doreen, over here!”
At an intersection, a familiar large SUV pulled over. In the driver’s seat, a blonde girl rolled down the window and waved at her.
Seeing Everly, Doreen finally rembered that before leaving, she had promised to tell her everything she had learned at the scene. Still shaken from having just seen a corpse, she imdiately jogged over and got into Everly’s car.
The door closed, cutting off the cold wind outside. Warm air from the heater flowed out, carrying a faint citrus scent—like a pair of soft, comforting hands easing Doreen’s anxious nerves.
“So? Was Bianca involved in so kind of accident? How did she suddenly die?” Everly asked at just the right mont, noticing the girl’s tense posture slowly begin to relax.
“It wasn’t an accident. I think she was hurt by those people who always b*llied her. Otherwise, how could a perfectly fine person just die like that…” Doreen, as if a floodgate had opened, began recounting everything she had just experienced in a rambling stream of words.
She talked, and Everly listened quietly beside her, responding with soft “mm-hm” and “uh-huh” sounds from ti to ti. When sothing caught her interest, she would even ask follow-up questions.
“You said the police asked you whether Bianca had eaten or drunk anything recently?”
Doreen nodded honestly, seemingly not noticing anything strange about the police’s questions.
“Besides that, what else did they ask you?” Everly marked the odd point in her mind for the mont and continued questioning.
“They asked what Bianca had been doing from February 16th until today, and whether I noticed anything unusual about her.”
“And how did you answer?”
“I told them I don’t constantly pay attention to Bianca, so I can’t rember many details. I could only give them a rough summary. They said that was fine, so I just told them…”
Half an hour later.
After dropping Doreen off near the girls’ dormitory, Everly pressed the accelerator and drove toward a nearby hotel.
There was sothing suspicious about Bianca’s cause of death.
Based on Doreen’s friend’s account, Bianca’s injuries should have been from a fall, a collision, or so form of blunt-force trauma caused by physical assault. These were the kinds of injuries forensic doctors saw dozens of tis a day—experienced examiners could often determine the ti, tool, force, and angle of impact almost imdiately.
If Bianca’s fatal injury had been any of those, the police would only need to focus on people who had physical contact with her—such as the suspected b*llies Sara’s group, or Robert, who had unfortunately pushed her. The witness testimony they would collect should also center around those individuals’ actions and Bianca’s relationships with them.
But that wasn’t the case.
The police did not ask Doreen whether Bianca was frequently bullied, or questions of that nature. Instead, they shifted the focus of their investigation toward Bianca’s daily life. They asked Doreen what Bianca had said and done over the past four days, what she had eaten and drunk, and—just like Everly—they also asked whether she had noticed anything unusual about Bianca.
This seed to suggest that Bianca’s death was not the result of simple chanical trauma, but sothing else—sothing closely tied to her recent experiences.
Everly decided she would obtain Bianca’s autopsy report and take a closer look.
…
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