Chapter 3

If they were telling the truth—if I was the one who was ill—then what about the note under my bed?

From upstairs, I could see them sitting on the sofa, their faces full of worry.

I aimed my phone at them, took a picture, and sent it to Ji Yan.

He replied almost at once.

“Momo, your parents look perfectly fine.”

They really were my parents!

So it was all true. I was the one who was ill.

I returned to my room in a daze. “Ji Yan, did you cheat on me?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Momo, you did see something that gave you the wrong idea. But please believe me. I really wasn't cheating.”

The truth was, I no longer cared much whether he'd cheated.

Even if I really was ill, there were still too many things about this place that didn't add up.

First, where exactly was Ji Yan?

The photos he'd sent did show him in a villa laid out exactly like this one.

Second, who had written the note under my bed?

Question after question crowded my mind.

I remembered the writing I'd glimpsed under the bed without having time to read it. I crawled underneath at once.

[Bai Mo, I left that note.]

[I'm you from the previous loop. You're going through the same events again. This is your fifth loop.]

[I know this sounds impossible, but those two downstairs really aren't your parents. Don't believe a word they say.]

[Don't trust Ji Yan either. Don't believe him when he says there's another villa exactly like this one. Think about it. He could easily have Photoshopped those pictures.]

[Every time a loop ends, you lose your memories of it. But in the fourth loop, you were lucky enough to keep them. These are the words you're leaving for yourself in the fifth.]

[Above all, don't trust the police. They won't help you. You'll die at eight tonight and enter the sixth loop, unless you kill those two first.]

[You might not believe me, but Ji Yan will do everything he can to stop you from killing them. He'll make up all kinds of lies.]

08

“Momo, are you still there?” Ji Yan asked.

“Ji Yan, I want to kill them,” I said, calming down.

“No! Momo, you can't kill them. You can't do it. You can't!”

I hung up and quietly opened the door.

They were in the kitchen, wolfing down the braised pork.

My heart raced.

“I don't think she really believes us.”

“Why don't we just kill her and be done with it?”

“Why do I get the feeling she's come out?”

The man suddenly looked up—straight at me.

I ducked back into my room, my chest heaving.

Footsteps came upstairs.

“Momo, where are you? Where's Daddy's good girl?”

I hid in the built-in wardrobe, clutching a carving knife. Cold sweat slicked my palm.

Outside, it sounded as though a heavy rain had begun.

Thunder cracked. Through the gap in the doors, I saw a pair of eyes pressed close.

“Found... you.”

The man dragged me out.

The woman seized my shoulders.

“Momo, why won't you trust us? You're ill. Very ill. We have to take you to the hospital.”

My heart pounded wildly. I opened my mouth and bit down hard on her hand.

I used all my strength. She cried out and pulled away.

I raised the carving knife and drove it into her arm.

“Momo!”

Ji Yan stood behind me, panting.

I turned and saw his deathly pale face.

“Bai Mo! What are you doing? They're your parents! You're ill!”

He pulled out a report and flung it at me.

I picked it up. It was my psychiatric assessment.

The report said I was severely unstable, with delusions, hallucinations, and other symptoms.

“Momo, listen to me. I wasn't cheating. My colleague fell, and I just reached out to catch her.”

“You've always been sensitive and suspicious. You kept a tight rein on me, too. None of that matters. But I never thought you'd refuse to hear me out and run off like that. That's what led to the accident.”

“Momo, your parents have worked so hard to take care of you. Put the carving knife down.”

Ji Yan watched me gravely.

The woman was crying too. She paid no attention to her wound, only looking at me in sorrow.

Then those words returned to me.

[Ji Yan will make up all kinds of lies to stop you.]

A flood of images flashed before my eyes.

Mom carrying me on her back to the hospital in town, only for me to throw up all over her.

Dad's simple, honest smile as he brought an orange kitten out from behind his back—the kitten I'd wanted so badly.

The day I got into a top high school, when Dad, who never set foot in the kitchen, clumsily made a whole tableful of delicious food for me.

Their faces appeared before me.

Gentle and kind. They had all the finest qualities parents could have.

But their faces were not the faces of the two people standing in front of me.

Whatever my parents looked like, they would never make me feel this frightened, this unsettled.

My mind was made up.

Under Ji Yan's astonished gaze, I slit the man and woman's throats.

I'd expected them to fight back. To my surprise, neither resisted.

Their eyes were full of hatred, with a fleeting trace of fear.

At that instant, everything before me seemed to reset, breaking apart into countless fragments.

Ji Yan stood motionless, watching me with an unreadable mixture of emotions.

“You did it, Bai Mo.”

But the voice that came from his mouth was my own.

At last, he vanished too, and my parents appeared before me.

My real parents.

They held hands and smiled at me.

“Momo, you did it.”

Tears streamed from my eyes.

Then they, too, broke into fragments and disappeared.

Epilogue

“Dr. Ji, Bai Mo's awake.”

Ji Yan took off his glasses and smiled.

“She managed to overcome her own fears in the fifth hypnosis session. How is she doing emotionally?”

“She hasn't stopped crying. I don't think she's quite adjusted yet.”

“Let's give her a little time to settle. We'll go over Bai Mo's treatment.”

Bai Mo. Female. Twenty-six years old. Sensitive and timid, with a typical people-pleasing personality.

Six months earlier, she had gone to a villa in the suburbs with her parents for a vacation.

That was where she had suffered the nightmare that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Li Daqiang and Wang Cuilan.

A married couple guilty of all manner of crimes, they were dangerous fugitives wanted by the police.

While on the run, they spotted an expensive-looking car parked outside the villa and decided to rob the place.

They forced the lock and broke in.

It was the middle of the night.

Bai Mo and her parents were fast asleep.

At first, the couple had only intended to take some money and leave. But then Bai Mo's mother came out to use the bathroom.

They brutally murdered her.

Her screams woke Bai Mo's father. He quickly realized something had happened to his wife.

While the intruders weren't looking, he ran to Bai Mo's room.

He woke her and told her to hide under the bed.

Li Daqiang and Wang Cuilan soon found him.

From under the bed, Bai Mo watched them slit her father's throat.

Before he died, he mouthed a few words to her.

Don't be afraid.

Having finished recounting her experience, Ji Yan adjusted his glasses.

“Afterward, Bai Mo developed survivor's guilt. She felt an immense burden of guilt and hated herself for not coming out to help her father.”

“She was so timid and insecure that she remained trapped in her suffering. She even began to experience delusions and hallucinations.”

“She imagined that her parents were still alive. But according to her account, the faces she saw were those of Li Daqiang and Wang Cuilan.”

“To treat her, I used hypnosis. Bai Mo cast me as her husband and built that identity for me in her mind. I was her emotional support, but I also represented her subconscious instincts.”

“When a person sees their father being murdered, fear and terror are instinctive. That's why Ji Yan would do everything he could to stop her from taking that brave step.”

“The role she gave me also symbolized the fearful part of her holding herself back.”

“But in the end, she overcame that fear. She was able to forgive herself.”

A trainee asked curiously, “Dr. Ji, what about the identical villa the patient mentioned?”

“That villa is the real place where Bai Mo witnessed her parents being murdered. In her mind, she built another villa to imprison herself.”

After explaining, Ji Yan went in to see Bai Mo.

She was sobbing too hard to speak, but he knew she had finally emerged from that darkness.

Perhaps the greatest pain a person can suffer is being unable to forgive even themselves.

Author: Zhu Li Zhu Qi

Originally published on Zhihu