Chapter 229: Return to One

2022-05-20

The suppressed voice finally erupted, its laughter echoing strangely through the empty underground space. The Killer slowly stood up, still with his back to me. His voice tore through the silence, rough and raw like shredded fabric. “What do I want? I want this body! That’s all I’ve ever wanted!”

As he spoke, he swept his arm across the table, sending every bowl crashing to the floor.

The sharp clatter of breaking porcelain filled the air. Bowl after bowl shattered, fragments flying everywhere. I could feel the breeze of tiny shards whizzing past my leg. Like a madman, he cleared the whole table and then stomped down hard, grinding the pieces beneath his feet.

With every crunch, those white bowls, each painted with colorful zodiac animals, were reduced to dust. It was as if only by crushing them could he vent his hatred, as if those bowls were his mortal enemies.

I understood some of his intent, but so much still eluded me.

“Ah!” His crazed scream stabbed into my eardrums until it hurt. He let it all out, screaming until he was red-faced and breathless, finally falling silent.

Blue veins bulged beneath his skin. There was no trace left of the gentle, well-mannered uncle from before. He gasped and grinned wild-eyed. “Feels good… so damn good. You’ve never felt anything like this. You can’t even imagine. The world’s finally quiet. Everything’s under my control now.”

He looked like a man who’d survived disaster. But it was already seven o’clock—and Guan Zengbin was in danger. Real danger. I could practically see that knife plunging into Guan Zengbin, his body collapsing, slumping helplessly against the bed. The image screamed of death, pain and utter helplessness.

I forced myself to speak. “I don’t care what you’ve gained. Tell me where he is.”

The man waved me off and said, “I’m not the one who took your teammate. It was Ze, you understand? She said we disgusting men shouldn’t be allowed near that woman. Me? I don’t really care—and as for Yama, he was still sleeping.”

A bad feeling crept over me. Sometimes being too clever is its own curse. This man said all he wanted was this body. A simple man might accept sharing, but the clever rarely allow anyone else to exist.

I asked, my voice trembling, “So… all the others are gone? There’s only you left now?”

He nodded hard, then slumped onto the desk. “Yeah. Just me.”

A hopeless weight sank in my chest, like I’d lost the most precious thing in my life. My knees buckled and I collapsed to the ground. My mind spun out of control; I tried to steady myself, to believe maybe Gu Chen had already rescued Guan Zengbin.

But even I knew I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to talk or move. It felt like everything I’d done was wasted. I knew, joining this profession, you set your life aside. Any of us could die at any time, or be hunted by a killer’s accomplices. Plenty of people wish us dead.

But when life and death stared you in the face, you realized death wasn’t just a couple of characters on a page. Each one meant flesh gone cold, souls faded away, and hearts left in pain.

Overwhelmed with grief, I watched as the Killer spoke, sounding eerily at ease. “Since the day I was born, I’ve been looking for a way to get rid of the other personalities in my body. That’s why I studied psychology, why I researched ways to treat dissociative identity disorder.”

I could barely absorb a word, my head spinning.

“I learned it’s nearly impossible to cure. There’s no real medical way to make the others disappear—ethics get in the way. Even if they aren’t the main self, are the others not people? Of course they are! They feel happiness, anger, sorrow, desire… they’re alive, just as much as anyone.”

His words rang clear and heavy in my ears.

“So in medicine, all you can do is try to integrate the personalities, make them aware of each other, reach a balance, and erase the personalities prone to violence—make them disappear, or at least go dormant.”

He paused, then went on. “Take Yama for example. If he vanished, it wouldn’t really matter. Killing to repay murder, that’s only right. But here’s the thing: if I went to the hospital for treatment, would I really get a better result than trying to blend these personalities myself?”

Tears slid down my cheeks and spotted the ground, but inside, a strange calm took hold. I didn’t know if I was grieving. I just wanted to sleep.

The Killer looked at me and said, “So I was the first one to realize I had multiple personalities. I tried reaching out to them. Before I showed up, their lives were a mess—they didn’t even know the others existed, thought they were mentally ill.”

He fell silent for a moment. “But dissociative identity disorder is a mental illness. More precisely, it’s a psychological disorder. I couldn’t stand it. One second I’d be reading, the next I’d be brawling in some bar. Or I’d be eating Western food, then suddenly beating up a stranger.”

He tapped his chest. “I have to admit, I’m afraid of dying. But really, what intelligent person isn’t afraid of death?”

“At first, I only wanted Yama gone. I never knew when my last meal might be. I didn’t want to be killed. But then I thought—if I could erase Yama, why not erase the others too?”

I looked up at him and asked quietly, “So you’re going to kill them all?”

He let out a cold laugh. “Kill? Is destroying my own personalities murder? Not a single country on earth would agree to that.”

“But you’ve killed eight people. Now you’re the only one left. Do you really think it ends here? Do you think you can avoid punishment?”

He shrugged, brushed the dirt from his clothes, and replied, “That’s why five years ago I started recording everything—just to prove it. It’s nearly impossible to fake dissociative identity disorder. Every time you switch, everything changes: how you talk, your tone, your gestures, your habits. You become someone else, and that’s not something you can pretend.”

I frowned as it hit me—he’d been planning this since five years ago.

“So it was never about helping the host personality recover childhood memories. You never wanted to help the host get better. From the start, you only ever cared about yourself.” I locked eyes with him. “You went through all the trouble to collect those twelve bowls just for this moment, didn’t you? There’s nothing more tragic than the shattering of hope. I guess the host personality will never show up again.”

He nodded. “All they ever felt was pain. Better to die than live like that. The host was trapped for fifteen years, chasing something that never existed. Yama, driven by endless pain and sorrow, was always doomed. Even Ze—she’s been the responsible big sister for fifteen years. They’re all tired.”

Listening to him bare his soul, I could hear it: not hatred, but relief. The release of someone who finally made it home after a long journey.

“Even if their lives were hard, it’s not your call to make them disappear! Whether they go to sleep or fade away—that’s their decision, not yours! Even if Yama deserved it, even if he’d kill to get those twelve bowls, what about Ze? What about the host? Don’t forget, he created you!”

He burst out laughing. “I could just say they asked me to do this. They wanted to disappear. But even if I did make them vanish, what can you do? Is there a law anywhere that says you can’t kill other personalities inside your minds?”

I fell silent. There really wasn’t such a rule.

“Since the host made me, it’s only right I make him disappear. You wouldn’t understand! You’re not one of us. Could you bear to see her finish sketching all twelve bowls only for the mother she longed for to never return? If you ever faced that… you’d know what true despair and sorrow really are.”

His gaze was fierce as he stared at me. “I can’t let her finish. Hope can be beautiful, but when it’s crushed, it can destroy you. She was fading away already—I couldn’t let her feel that final hopelessness right before the end.”

“You don’t get it. You don’t understand anything.” Tears welled up in his eyes. “It’s like those people who called me a freak back then! We’re just different. Just unique! But in their eyes, that makes us monsters—unfit to live in this world.”