The interior of the Route 104 bus had grown even colder and more oppressive, as though something stood right beside
The middle-aged woman slowly pulled her hand from her pocket, her body trembling.
Without Chen Ge needing to say another word, she placed the child on the seat outside on her own initiative.
Chen Ge picked up the boy from the seat. He was warm, his heartbeat clearly felt — this child was a living person.
"Why would the middle-aged woman bring the child to the eastern suburbs? Do they think children are more likely to become Door Openers?"
Chen Ge had already witnessed many tragedies in the eastern suburbs, and the protagonists of all those tragedies were children. He could not yet figure out the reason behind this.
Arriving at the bus's rear door, Chen Ge did not get off, nor did he hand the child over to the Red Raincoat directly.
He remembered Fan Cong once telling him that in one of the game's endings, Xiao Bu had been taken away by the Red Raincoat.
The Red Raincoat was probably not Xiao Bu's mother, yet she had still taken him away in the end — she may have treated Xiao Bu as a substitute for her own child.
As for whether that ending was good or bad, Chen Ge was unsure. Compared to death it was certainly better, but it was not fair to Xiao Bu himself.
The situation he faced now was much the same as in the game. The boy lay unconscious inside the bus, and no one knew whether he was truly the Red Raincoat's child.
If he rashly handed the boy over, the Red Raincoat would likely not refuse — she might even take him as a substitute.
Gently straightening the boy's face, Chen Ge called out to the Red Raincoat standing in the downpour outside the bus: "Is he your child?"
The Red Raincoat's gaze softened considerably. She did not answer Chen Ge's question; she merely took a step forward.
"So he's not yours." Chen Ge had been staring at the Red Raincoat the entire time — a mother who had been braving the storm to wait at a bus stop would never be this calm upon seeing her own lost child.
He stepped back and placed the child on the seat beside him.
Seeing Chen Ge set the child aside, the Red Raincoat let out a low sound from behind the mouth sewn shut with threads of blood. The gentleness in her eyes vanished in an instant, and thread after thread of blood welled up from the depths of her gaze — dense, terrifying.
"I only promised to help you find your child. I never said I'd hand over someone else's child." A month ago, even if someone had given Chen Ge ten times the courage, he would never have dared speak to the woman in red face-to-face like this.
But things were different now. He stood on the hearse, with
"You look a bit upset?" Chen Ge leaned on his Skull Crusher and looked the Red Raincoat up and down. "I'm curious — you know your child might be on this very bus, so why not come aboard and check for yourself? What are you afraid of?"
Her sewn mouth could not produce a sound. The moment her lips moved, the red threads of blood above them began to twist.
The Red Raincoat was growing agitated; her pain and fury were plain to see.
"You've been guarding this bus stop, searching for your child. Did you get separated at the stop? You're injured — after your child went missing, what happened to you while you were looking for him?"
Chen Ge's words pulled the Red Raincoat back into memories of the past. Scene after scene of painful recollection flashed through her mind. Rain washed over her body, and by the time it hit the ground, it had turned to blood.