Chen Ge pushed open the second stall. Inside was a thin, small male doll with one deformed foot, curled up in the corner. Mud and trash were scattered all around it.
"It looks a bit like Wang Yicheng."
The doll in the second stall and the Wang Yicheng on Chen Ge's back were both wearing blue sneakers. This doll must represent Wang Yicheng.
Chen Ge raised his phone and pointed it at the second stall. The image on the screen made his heart clench.
The faceless child had been cornered into the bathroom stall by a group of people, who were throwing all manner of garbage on him.
The boy in the image didn't resist. He just let them bully him.
The doll in the third stall was wearing a pair of glasses. Red paint had been splashed all over its body, and it stood blankly against the bathroom stall wall.
The doll bore a resemblance to the tall, thin boy Chen Ge had seen in Room 413.
Drawing on his earlier experience, Chen Ge pointed his phone directly at the stall.
On the screen appeared a boy with no facial features, standing alone in the bathroom stall. People kept splashing paint into the stall from outside.
His once-clean clothes were soiled, paint sliding down along the hem.
The boy hung his head, not saying a word.
"These bullies have completely lost control as a group." Chen Ge pushed open the door of the fourth stall. The doll inside was not wearing any clothes — its garments had been soaked and tossed beside the squat toilet.
Chen Ge took out his phone and filmed the fourth stall. On the screen, the faceless boy slowly peeled off his paint-soaked jacket while someone poured bottle after bottle of water over him.
The fifth stall, the sixth stall…
Every stall's image was horrifying. When people descended into madness, they had no idea how awful their behavior was. They unrestrainedly vented all their negative emotions onto a single person.
When Chen Ge had first opened the stall, he had only wanted to find the truth. Everything here had nothing to do with him — he was just a passerby, a victim trying to escape.
But after looking through six stalls in succession, something inside him had shifted without his noticing. His face was grim. If anyone who knew him well saw this expression, they would have been surprised — this man rarely let such a look cross his face.
A change in expression was a change in inner emotion. When feelings showed on the face, thoughts were exposed and weaknesses could be discovered. That was why Chen Ge always maintained his composure when carrying out the black phone's missions.
"Are these still children?"
He looked up and gazed at the seventh stall — the only stall without a doll inside, and also the only stall without a door panel.
The door hinge had been violently destroyed, and splintered wood fragments were still visible at the connection point. The door to the seventh stall had been smashed open.
The door panel was nowhere to be found, and the interior was covered with those blood-thread-like things. To be precise, the blood threads in the bathroom had all crawled out from this very stall — the seventh stall was the source of all the bloodstains.
"Was this the stall where Lin Sisi was locked in back then?"
The dark red blood threads clung to the walls like dead ivy, as though trying to conceal something.
Chen Ge took out Lin Sisi's phone. He turned the screen brightness all the way up and pointed it at the stall.
The faceless boy was clutching his jacket and pants to his chest. Dirty water and paint streamed down his body, a riot of colors resembling a grotesque monster clinging to him with bared fangs and spread claws.
On the screen, the bathroom stall door appeared to have been blocked from the outside by something. The boy hung his head, hugged his clothes, and threw himself against the door panel again and again.