After briefly skimming through the notebook, the three forensic medicine students each had different thoughts.
"Helping outsiders bully his own child — he doesn't deserve to be called a father." Li Xue looked visibly upset. Even though she knew this was probably just the haunted house's backstory, she still got emotionally invested, feeling indignant on the boy's behalf.
"That kid is such a pushover. It's painful just watching. If it were me, whoever messed with me would get it back double!" Wang Yan clenched his fist.
"Actually, I think the kid isn't just a pushover — he's genuinely terrifying." Yang Chen carefully leafed through the notebook. "Did you guys notice? The last few months of the boy's diary are entirely him apologizing to his father."
"Doesn't that just prove he's a pushover? Kowtowing to his own murderer."
"The boy apologized to all sorts of people every day, but at a certain point, only his apologies to his father remained in the notebook." Li Xue had caught on too. "Why would he keep apologizing to his father over and over?"
"Look at the timeline." Yang Chen flipped through the notebook from back to front. The latter half was entirely confessions and apologies directed at his father. He kept flipping backward — over twenty pages — before the notebook's content finally changed.
"The boy started apologizing to his father from the night his father was called in, the night his father beat him until deep into the night." Yang Chen held the notebook, standing in the middle of the dormitory, lost in thought.
"It's written clearly in the notebook — his father locked the dormitory door from the inside and wouldn't let anyone near. He even used bedsheets to stuff the boy's mouth. It's monstrous." Li Xue's heart ached with sympathy for the boy.
"You need to think about one thing. The notebook was written by the boy himself. He would only show us what he wanted us to see." Yang Chen closed the notebook in his hands. "The whole thing is filled with 'sorry' and 'I apologize,' but think about it — a lunatic whose worldview is completely inverted, who sees filth and ugliness as beauty and purity — how could his real inner thoughts possibly be remorse?"
He sat down on that stench-emitting bed, as though slipping into the boy's role. "His classmates hated him, stomped on his every kindness, felt sick just looking at his face. And when he went home, the only family he had treated him like an enemy. The kid's life was nothing but cruel words and violence. So he could only bury his true self deep inside, wrap himself in a skin of constant apologies to protect himself."
"Old Yang, what exactly are you trying to say?" Wang Yan and Li Xue both sensed something was off about Yang Chen's mood.
"When I was very young, I also suffered domestic violence. But I was lucky — I had a strong, clever older brother." Yang Chen was still sitting on that stinking bed. "I've felt the same pain, so I can probably guess what that kid was really thinking."
A look of indescribable emotion flickered through his eyes as Yang Chen casually picked up one of the trash props from the floor. "This haunted house is astonishingly well designed. Everything feels like it actually happened."
"Well, tell us too! What are you muttering about by yourself?" Wang Yan imitated Yang Chen and picked up a piece of the garbage prop, but couldn't spot anything unusual.
"The haunted house owner started giving us hints from the moment we walked in." Yang Chen held the trash model under his nose and sniffed. "The garbage in this room has no smell whatsoever, yet the stench has been present this entire time."
"We already knew that."
"Then think again — why was the boy constantly bringing trash into the dormitory?" Yang Chen had figured out the truth, but he felt no thrill in cracking the case. If anything, he felt a flicker of unease.
"Because the boy had a psychological condition — doesn't the notebook say so? He'd been sick for a long time, his worldview had collapsed, and he saw ugly things as beautiful things."
"Wrong. The real answer is actually very simple." Yang Chen picked up the trash prop in his hand. "In real life, garbage produces a stench."
"In real life?"
"The boy was trying to use the stink of trash to mask the smell of something that was truly rotting! That's why he kept bringing garbage back to the dormitory!" Rising to his feet, Yang Chen swept his gaze across the room. "What kind of thing emits a smell? And a smell that absolutely cannot be let anyone catch?"
Wang Yan and Li Xue locked eyes. Both of them were forensic medicine students, and the same word flashed through their minds at that exact moment — "The smell of a corpse!"