I Asked You To Simulate A Crime, And You Pulled Off The Perfect Crime? - Chapter 184

WARNING: This chapter contains descriptions of violence, murder, and disturbing imagery that may be unsettling for some readers. Viewer discretion is advised. Please proceed with caution.

Liang Wei’s pupils dilated in an instant. He stared in disbelief at the timid girl in front of him. Then, gritting his teeth, he tried to stop her, “I didn’t tell you to kill her! Stop! Please, I’m begging you, stop!”

Pft, pft.

But Su Xiaoxiao, as if she had finally broken through her inner shadow, kept jabbing the tip of her pen into Yamamoto Sakura’s eyes, her own eyes red. Not satisfied, she gouged up Sakura’s face and then drove the pen into her body again and again.

One blood-red hole after another opened up.

Liang Wei’s right hand clamped over Yamamoto Sakura’s mouth. He could feel the warmth against his palm, the blood spilling out. Now he didn’t dare let go. He especially couldn’t let Yamamoto Sakura make a sound.

No matter how she struggled, no matter how terrified she was, even if she mumbled that she wanted to tell Su Xiaoxiao she was sorry… It was too late. With his own hands, Liang Wei had the bully pinned beneath him. He had been forced into this murder. He and Su Xiaoxiao were now grasshoppers tied to the same rope.

If he let Yamamoto Sakura go now, she wouldn’t be able to kill Su Xiaoxiao, but if Su Xiaoxiao didn’t see Yamamoto Sakura die tonight, she’d go scorched-earth and expose his secret. Liang Wei knew there was no way back.

“Why did you bully me?”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“I really didn’t want to kill you!”

“You forced me, forced me…”

Pft, pft, pft.

Watching the deranged Su Xiaoxiao, Liang Wei went numb all over. He was witnessing with his own eyes a timid student turning into a devil who killed without blinking.

After a long while, the Yamamoto Sakura in his grasp had stopped breathing. Her body no longer trembled.

“Stop… Stop it… Sh-she’s already dead…” Liang Wei’s voice shook. He didn’t dare meet Su Xiaoxiao’s eyes, as if this student, who’d bottled up her rage for so long, might point that pen at him next.

“Like brother, like sister!”

“Su Xiaoxiao really couldn’t hold it back this time.”

“They always say never bully an honest person, you can’t imagine what they’ll do once their bottom line snaps!”

“Holy crap, I’m stunned, Su Xiaoxiao is fierce!”

“What did Su Xiaoxiao learn in that month living at Chen Shu’s place?”

“Wait, is she really stabbing?”

“Forced perspective and special effects!”

Drenched in sweat, Su Xiaoxiao collapsed to the floor. Staring at the mangled Yamamoto Sakura, she didn’t feel fear anymore, only a loosening, a sense of release.

“Hehehe…” Su Xiaoxiao laughed.

It wasn’t the same as Chen Shu’s smile. Hers was hysterical, reckless, unmindful of consequences. Her brother’s smile, by contrast, was confident, strategic, in control.

“You… are you satisfied now?” Liang Wei stammered, pointing at Yamamoto Sakura’s corpse. “You poked holes all over her with your pen. When the police investigate, they’ll look at you, the bullied one, first. I told you I’d do the killing. What the hell were you being impulsive for? What do we do now? How do we deal with the body?”

Faced with these questions, Su Xiaoxiao’s eyes were empty. “I… I don’t know…”

“For fuck’s sake!” Liang Wei glared at her. “Now we each hold the other’s secret. In a bit we’ll carry the body to the grove and bury it. After that, I walk my broad road and you cross your single-plank bridge, we leave each other alone!”

Su Xiaoxiao nodded. “O-okay…”

Liang Wei hoisted Yamamoto Sakura’s body. And just then, suddenly!

Tap-tap.

From downstairs, crisp footsteps rang out, climbing the stairwell toward them.

“Is it the dorm supervisor?” Liang Wei felt a jolt of dread. He hurriedly said to Su Xiaoxiao, “Get back to the dorm and stay put. I’ll stash the body in the restroom. We can’t let anyone see us. Once the supervisor leaves, I’ll come find you. Until then, don’t go anywhere!”

Su Xiaoxiao responded timidly, “O-okay…”

“‘Okay’ my ass, move!” Liang Wei shoved Su Xiaoxiao down the stairs. Then he lugged Yamamoto Sakura into the sixth-floor public restroom.

At Haicheng High, dorms didn’t have a private bathroom, there was one per floor. Liang Wei lightened his steps; he didn’t dare trigger the sound-activated lights. In the near-total darkness, feeling his way by the weak light from a window, he set Yamamoto Sakura’s body in the innermost stall.

He was about to hide there too, but then, glancing down in the dim light, he saw a line of blood on the floor, the trail dripping from Yamamoto Sakura’s body. The blood formed a continuous line, as if deliberately telling the supervisor outside that someone had been killed at the seventh-floor landing, following the blood to find the body.

Liang Wei panicked. He couldn’t worry about anything else, he bolted from the scene. Even if the supervisor found the body, he couldn’t be there. Whatever happened, he couldn’t be caught on the spot!

Viewers watching this scene began to chatter. Liang Wei and the “Crybaby” were first-time offenders. They’d left too many clues. But just as the discussion heated up, every livestream feed went black. Then a line of red-blood text appeared.

“Lights out – The Chainsaw Man is here!”

Seeing that dripping-blood line, viewers lying in bed felt a chill at their feet and yanked the covers up. At the same time, the chats exploded.

“He’s here, he’s coming with a chainsaw.”

“Who turned off the lights?”

“We can rule out Su Xiaoxiao and Liang Wei first. So the ‘dorm supervisor’ just now wasn’t really the supervisor. It could’ve been Yamamoto Yuu sneaking into the girls’ dorm to peep, or Chen Shu coming to find his sister, and as for An Jiayu, we don’t know her secret, could’ve been her too!”

“Why kill the lights out of nowhere? Yamamoto Sakura’s already dead, what’s the point?”

Back in the control room, Director Zhang Sheng wiped sweat from his forehead. He had no time to guess who the “Midnight Chainsaw Man” was, he was still stuck on Su Xiaoxiao killing Yamamoto Sakura.

It wasn’t just unexpected, no one would’ve imagined that timid, compliant Su Xiaoxiao would undergo such a drastic change this episode!

She dared to kill. She personally killed Yamamoto Sakura.

Of course, Zhang Sheng knew this couldn’t have happened without Liang Wei’s help. If anyone was to blame, blame Liang Wei for having nothing better to do, letting Su Xiaoxiao wash her hair at his place and getting his secret discovered, setting off a chain reaction.

“But it’s fine. Even if the Yamamotos lose one member, it won’t affect things much. Yamamoto Sakura’s death is too on-the-nose, her whole body punctured by a pen. The only suspect will be the bullied Su Xiaoxiao. She’s the only one who would want her dead!”

“And the sixth and seventh floors are smeared with Sakura’s blood. The body will be found soon.” Zhang Sheng exhaled in relief.

Then he shook it off and, along with the viewers, started guessing who the “Midnight Chainsaw Man” really was. He thought the likeliest suspect was Yamamoto Yuu. After all, not just anyone could enter the girls’ dorm, he had the authority to have the supervisor open the door.

Maybe Yamamoto Yuu killed the lights to commit a crime in the girls’ dorm.

An hour passed quickly. The livestreams came back on. In Yamamoto Yuu’s feed, it was pitch black; only loud snores could be heard. An Jiayu’s and Chen Shu’s streams were the same. Only Liang Wei’s and Su Xiaoxiao’s feeds shook with their movements.

Everyone piled into Liang Wei’s stream. They saw him back at the sixth-floor restroom. Feeling his way in the dark, he reached the innermost stall.

Creak.

He opened the door, thinking to take Yamamoto Sakura’s body away now that the “supervisor” had left. But he froze.

The body was gone.

He lowered his head and, by the light from the window, looked at the floor. The blood that had dripped earlier, someone had cleaned it all up.

“Crap, did the supervisor find it? But then why no commotion?”

Utterly confused, Liang Wei slowly closed the stall door. Just then, a thin shaft of light from the window fell across the door panel. He saw, written from top to bottom in black felt-tip pen, three lines: “Look left.”

He read the first line aloud, swallowed, and slowly turned his head to the left, toward the restroom entrance. Pitch black. Nothing there.

“Look right.”

He read the second line and turned his head right, toward the wall with the window. Also nothing.

“Look down.”

He read the third line, then lowered his head to stare at the smooth, slightly damp tiles by his feet.

“Hm?” Something was off. On the glossy tile floor, a fourth line had been written: “Look back.”

Gulp. A chill crawled up Liang Wei’s spine. Stiff as a board, he slowly looked “back”…

“Fuck your mother!” He cursed in his heart. Behind him, there was nothing! “Is whoever moved the body playing a prank on me?”

So he thought, but he let out a long breath. Whoever it was, at least they hadn’t called the police. That meant there was still room to maneuver. He rolled up his sleeve and wiped the three lines off the door. Then he crouched to wipe the last line off the floor, spitting on it first for good measure.

But the instant his sleeve touched the words on the floor, goosebumps raced up his arms. Because, he suddenly understood. The door had said left, right, down, those directions were from the position of facing the stall door. But the words on the floor said, look back.

Not “behind you” while facing the door, but “behind you” while looking at the floor. Meaning, above his head. The ceiling.

“Hiss…” Liang Wei sucked in a breath. He straightened and, inch by inch, tilted his head back, eyes lifting toward the ceiling of the girls’ restroom.

In an instant, his pupils blew wide, every hair on end. He slapped a hand over his mouth to stifle any sound. He saw it. He saw it clearly.

It was a headless corpse in a red-and-green padded jacket. The headless body hung from the ceiling. A night breeze drifted in through the window, making it sway above Liang Wei’s head. And its feet, by sheer bad luck, hung half a centimeter above his shoulders, as if the tiniest dip would plant them on him.

Those feet wore embroidered shoes. He remembered them perfectly. They were his mother-in-law’s. Except for her head, his mother-in-law’s body had been chopped up by Su Xiaoxiao and buried in the campus grove.

But now, who-knew-who had stitched it back together as if with needle and thread.

Smack. 

Liang Wei dropped hard to the floor. His mind went blank. Dazed, he kowtowed, “Esteemed Mother-in-law, such refined taste, out for a stroll so late at night.” 

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Bless me, Buddha… Amen!”