Stench stood in front of the wardrobe, staring at it blankly.
Chen Ge was somewhat curious. He slowly approached the wardrobe, and when he saw what was inside, his expression turned to one of great surprise.
Huddled in the corner of the wardrobe was a short, chubby, ugly-looking little boy. The child's entire body was wrapped in layers of cling wrap, with an obvious wound over his heart and a faint ligature mark around his neck.
"Is this child the Stench from back then?"
The boy's fists were clenched tight, refusing to let go even in death. In his left hand he clutched a photograph, and in his right he gripped a torn piece of a shirt.
The shirt was clearly adult-sized. The boy's presence here meant that the diary describing Stench's backstory in Chen Ge's haunted house had been inaccurate.
"The truth doesn't seem to be what I originally guessed. Why did the boy end up like this?"
Stench stood silently before the wardrobe, looking at the boy inside. A bitter smile appeared on his round, chubby face.
He tore the cling wrap from the child's arm and took the photograph from the boy's palm, holding it before his eyes.
It was a photo of a father and son, both smiling happily. Who could have imagined what would happen afterward.
A deep, guttural growl emanated from his throat. Stench's hands slowly applied pressure, tearing the photograph he had once refused to let go of, piece by piece.
Though he was clearly tearing only the photograph, wound after wound — marks left by domestic violence — appeared on the child's body inside the wardrobe.
Blood flowed beneath the cling wrap. The adult man in the photo was crying and screaming, while the child clapped his hands, laughing and jumping for joy.
When the photograph was completely torn apart, the child's body inside the wardrobe had turned entirely red, and the layers upon layers of cling wrap covering him began to crack and split apart.
"Ooh…"
Stench seemed to be calling someone's name — as if bidding farewell, yet also as if beckoning.
He scattered the shredded pieces of the photograph onto the floor. His eyes flashed crimson. He turned to glance at Chen Ge, then lowered his head and whispered something.
Chen Ge didn't catch it. He was about to press for an answer, but Stench had already stepped into the wardrobe.
The stench in the air gradually faded. A crimson mist drifted into the room, and thread after thread of blood spread outward from the wardrobe in all directions.
The room had originally been almost identical to its real-world counterpart, but in just a few minutes, its walls were already crawling with blood vessels — this was how the world behind the door was supposed to look.
"All the stench has gathered into the wardrobe?" Stench's massive body squeezed into the narrow cabinet, and along with him went all the foul odor that had filled the room.
When the last trace of stench vanished, a strange sound came from inside the wardrobe. Chen Ge peered in, and a chubby little boy in a blood-red coat was staring back at him.
"Stench?" Chen Ge narrowed his eyes slightly, looking the boy up and down. "What's your name?"