Richard, the man with the lip piercing, had always been Jonathan’s right-hand man and staunchest supporter.
For certain reasons, he was desperately short of money, while Jonathan happened to be extrely wealthy and largely devoid of moral scruples. He was more than willing to adopt the endless stream of underhanded sches Richard ca up with in pursuit of attention and online traffic. The two hit it off imdiately, birds of a feather flocking together—the very embodint of partners in cri.
Even if the entire world were to abandon Jonathan, as long as he still had money, Richard would remain a loyal dog at his feet.
As a result, at a ti when everyone had turned against him, the person Jonathan was most willing to trust was naturally Richard.
Unfortunately for him, Richard told a story that differed little from the one he had given the police. What’s more, Richard himself seed to believe it, convinced that Everly really was an actress Jonathan had hired to pull a reverse prank on everyone.
“No! How could that be? Maybe I could understand other people misunderstanding, but you too? We planned this entire prank together! Our script never involved turning the prank back on our own team—you know that perfectly well!” Jonathan protested indignantly after hearing the story.
“Drop the act. We’ve already seen the chat logs between you and that woman. We’re not falling for this!” Mike, who had played the pregnant ghost, crossed his arms and interjected angrily.
The accident during the performance had left him both physically and ntally shaken. Although no knife had actually pierced his chest, the skin in that area still ached faintly even now. The lingering pain only worsened Mike’s temper, and he couldn’t swallow the humiliation of having been made a fool of. Since he had already decided to quit the team, he no longer cared whether speaking bluntly would offend Jonathan.
Based on Jonathan’s usual personality, everyone expected him to imdiately fire back and start a shouting match. Instead, after hearing those words, Jonathan froze for a mont. Then he lowered his head and frantically began scrolling through his phone.
To be fair, his performance looked remarkably convincing. If they hadn’t already checked the chat records between him and Everly, they might almost have believed him.
Mike snorted and kept his arms folded across his chest, standing there and watching Jonathan’s performance.
Jonathan had now heard the phrase “chat records” more than once. He hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but thinking about it now, even the police needed evidence when handling a case. There was no way they would simply believe whatever that crazy woman said.
Since everyone kept bringing up these so-called chat logs, then he’d pull them up and make everyone shut up.
“What app were these ssages on?”
“WhatsApp.”
Jonathan imdiately opened WhatsApp. He was just about to shove the phone in front of everyone and prove his innocence when he noticed that the very first conversation on the screen was with an unfamiliar contact nad “Everly.”
What the hell was this? He didn’t rember ever adding her as a contact…
Could it be that the crazy woman had secretly tampered with his phone while he was unconscious?
Very possible!
If that was the case, then all he had to do was look through the chat history. The tistamp of their very first conversation would reveal when they had added each other.
His fingers flew across the screen. Without even reading the ssages between himself and “Everly,” he scrolled all the way to the top and found their earliest exchange.
The tistamp above it showed that the conversation had taken place at 5:24 PM on the day of the hospital visit—a very peculiar ti. It was after his first encounter with Everly at the reception desk, yet before the prank livestream that evening.
But how was that possible?
At that ti, he had been busy checking and double-checking every detail related to the livestream. He certainly didn’t rember losing his phone, and the idea that he had secretly added the girl and chatted with her was complete nonsense.
The veins on Jonathan’s forehead throbbed. He scrolled through the conversation, skimming the ssages at a glance.
At first, their exchanges were stiff and formal, nothing more than the polite small talk of two strangers.
Then Jonathan got straight to the point. He introduced himself and explained why he had added Everly as a contact in the first place.
[WOW! I can’t believe how interesting this plan is!]
[Can I really join your short film production? Really, really, really?!]
Everly showed intense interest in the reverse-prank video Jonathan had ntioned. Her tone imdiately beca much more enthusiastic.
[Yes! Absolutely!]
[From the mont we happened to et in the lobby, I knew you were the leading lady my film needed! It was that feeling that it simply had to be you. You know what I an? That fateful encounter, that thrill of being struck by inspiration—without a doubt, you are my muse!]
[If you accept my proposal, then let’s go over the script together…]
Jonathan read through the entire conversation from beginning to end. The more he read, the more horrified he beca, and the more he questioned reality itself.
Whether it was the slightly slick, flirtatious tone woven throughout the ssages, the theatrical and overblown exclamations that sounded like lines from a stage play, or the phrase “YWIMS?” that appeared over and over again—a verbal tic Jonathan had recently picked up, short for “Y’know what I’m sayin’?”—everything matched his texting style perfectly.
By the ti he finished reading the chat log, it wasn’t just everyone else who was almost convinced.
Even Jonathan himself was beginning to believe it.
Honestly, it was too convincing.
It was so realistic that he almost started wondering whether he had lost his mory…
Wait.
Hadn’t he?
The more he thought about it, the stranger it felt. For a brief mont, Jonathan even suspected that he might have sohow developed a split personality—one being the normal self everyone knew, and the other an evil alter ego that cared about nothing except its own amusent…
No. Stop.
That was ridiculous.
No matter what, this damned chat log had to be fake.
He had no idea how it had been forged, but he was absolutely certain of one thing: he had never discussed any collaboration with Everly.
After all, hadn’t everyone seen how terrified he was when that girl suddenly went berserk?
His pants were still wet.
Naturally, Jonathan would never tell anyone sothing that humiliating. So even after reading through the chat logs and being confronted with what appeared to be irrefutable evidence, he kept a straight face and stubbornly insisted on his innocence, demonstrating the phrase “lacking reason but not lacking confidence” to perfection.
“Believe it or not, that crazy woman and I have absolutely nothing to do with each other…”
As he repeated the sa argunt yet again, the resentnt in everyone’s eyes may have provoked his rebellious streak. Suddenly changing targets, he turned his attention to Edron and Mohawk Head and said in a mocking tone:
“Speaking of traitors, there’s sothing I’ve been wondering about. Perhaps the two of you could explain it to ?”
The others were one thing. During their chase-and-escape ordeal with the crazy woman, they had all been knocked unconscious by her knife-hand strikes. Being sprawled in pools of blood and playing dead bodies had been entirely against their will.
But those two were different.
When the crazy woman had surrounded the surveillance room, they had actually staggered to their feet and shuffled around like zombies, repeatedly slamming their foreheads against the door. The sight had scared Jonathan and Richard half to death inside.
The crazy woman didn’t have any supernatural ability to control people. That ant all of their bizarre behavior had been entirely voluntary.
Thinking back on it now, if those two teammates hadn’t suddenly switched sides and intensified the fear and panic he and Richard were feeling, then during the final confrontation they might not have lost so miserably. They might even have managed so aningful resistance instead of being wiped out by that woman in one sweep.
And his pants wouldn’t have…
Ahem.
Faced with Jonathan’s accusation, Edron and Mohawk Head showed not the slightest hint of guilt.
“Because that woman told us you hired her specifically to scare your own team mbers,” they replied. “She also said that if we acted well, you’d give each of us a thousand bucks. If we didn’t perform well, we wouldn’t get paid.”
“That’s why we put our hearts into it,” Edron added. “I almost knocked the silicone fake face I was wearing clean off my head from all that head-butting.”
The silicone fake face he was referring to was one of the scare props that Reiner’s team on the eighteenth floor had prepared in advance. It looked like a grotesque face with a layer of skin peeled away and the eyeballs gouged out. Add a little fake blood, and at first glance it was realistic enough to make anyone jump.
Just thinking about that face made Jonathan furious.
As one of the organizers of the livestream, he and Richard had personally handled all the props. They should have recognized it as fake imdiately. After all, that mask hadn’t been cheap, and it was distinctive enough to leave a strong impression.
Yet when Edron had worn it and lain on the floor covered in blood, pretending to be a corpse, neither of them had noticed anything suspicious. Instead, they had been frightened out of their wits, squawking like startled turkeys.
The re thought of it was mortifying.
To make matters worse, Edron seed completely incapable of reading the room and continued pouring fuel on the fire.
“So, Boss, what do you think? Weren’t our performances super convincing? Richard said even he got scared badly. About that thousand dollars you promised us…”
Jonathan exploded.
“She said there’d be money and you just believed her?!”
“Why wouldn’t we?” ca the reply. “We weren’t actually dead. The thing she used to ‘kill’ people was just a trick knife that pumped out fake blood. We saw her pull it out of her pocket with our own eyes. If she wasn’t already prepared to act in your production, who would carry sothing like that around?”
“And she’s incredibly skilled, too—like an action movie star! Around here, running into a pretty girl isn’t unusual. But running into a pretty girl who’s agile and ridiculously good at fighting? The odds are way too low. So we imdiately figured she had to be an actress you’d hired!”
The mont money entered the discussion, the two n completely shed their earlier timidity. They took turns speaking, each argunt sounding more reasonable than the last.
Not only had they convinced themselves, but the people around them were nodding along in agreent.
Wait, what?
How is this making her look even more like an actress Jonathan hired?
Jonathan felt despair creeping in.
Yet, there were indeed many things in this incident that couldn’t be easily explained away—for example, the woman suddenly producing a high-powered flashlight and a folding prop knife, her bizarre and almost supernatural fighting skills, the extra chat logs that had appeared on his phone, and the lights and surveillance caras that had all started malfunctioning at the sa ti…
No—stop.
The more he thought about it, the more terrifying it beca.
Who exactly was that woman?
The anger and courage inside him slowly deflated over ti, like air leaking out of a balloon.
Forget it, he told himself. There was no point continuing to argue. All it would do was make him even more frustrated. He might as well just let it go—at least that way he wouldn’t look completely stupid in front of the rest of the team.
Besides, the footage from tonight’s surveillance could still be turned into good content…
With that thought, Jonathan sighed. Like a powerless husband, he covered his face with both hands and slumped back into the chair.
“Richard, later sort out the footage from the different cara zones and stitch it together into a short video. We’ll upload it to the livestream hopage…”
“I was actually just coming to talk to you about that.”
Richard, the man with the lip piercing, stepped up to the monitor console. After a few keystrokes, he opened the backend storage system for the surveillance footage.
“For so reason,” he said, “all the recordings from tonight are gone.”
“What did you say?!”
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