Chapter 5

It was 402’s voice.

He was all right!

Thank God.

I stood and watched through the peephole for a while.

“Where are the other two?”

“Let me in first! Fuck, that bastard nearly stabbed me to death.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think? The bastard in 502! He went crazy. I thought he’d come out to help me deal with the killer, but he tried to stab me. Good thing I reacted fast.”

“Where’s 502 now?”

“How the hell should I know? I stabbed him a few times. That little shit was no match for me. I drove him downstairs. Open the door before he comes back and kills me!”

I stayed at the door, watching coldly for a little longer.

There really were no other sounds.

Finally, I opened up.

The corridor lights came on.

Outside was chaos.

Blood covered the walls and floor.

There was no way to tell whose it was.

402 lay barely breathing outside my door.

He clutched his leg. Looking closely, I saw a stab wound from 502. Blood was pouring out.

I quickly dragged him inside.

The door slammed shut.

Safe.

Safe at last.

I found supplies to clean and treat his wound.

“Have you called the police?”

He kept his head down, tending to his leg.

“Yes, yes. Maybe it’s the rain. That must be why they’re taking so long.”

I handed him some gauze.

“Do you know where 502 went?”

His hand stopped as he applied the medicine.

“How would I know? I stabbed him a few times and he ran downstairs. Who knows where he went?”

I stood behind him.

“502 is dead, isn’t he?”

He silently wrapped the wound.

When he looked up, his eyes shifted away.

“How would I know if he’s dead? What are you talking about? Help me up. Get me somewhere I can sit.”

He quietly hid his right hand behind his back.

But as he drew it away, I clearly saw the small knife that had been lying on the floor concealed in his palm.

When I didn’t move, he grew angry.

“Why are you just standing there? If 502 comes back, I can’t promise your door will keep him out.”

His right hand was about to move forward.

A sharp knife went straight into his heart.

“You don’t know if he’s dead. But I do. You killed him.”

He stared at me in disbelief.

Before he could speak, blood poured from the wound in his chest.

I pulled the knife free and pinned him beneath my foot.

I watched him slowly collapse.

Then I crouched beside him, as though admiring my prey.

“I wouldn’t normally wash my hair or take a bath at ten or eleven at night. It’s too late. My hair won’t dry unless I blow-dry it. Look at this mess. I don’t feel like drying it at all.”

I loosened the rubber gloves on my hands.

They were there to hide my fingerprints.

The man on the floor struggled to get up.

“What are you talking about? You’re insane.”

I ignored him.

“Unfortunately, I got blood all over my hair and clothes today.”

“You could smell it, couldn’t you? Disgusting. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up.”

I looked around, then took a set of bloodstained clothes from under the bathroom sink.

I’d hidden them there earlier.

“Oh, that’s right. I told you about the murders at the western market, didn’t I? Awful. So brutal.”

“You know, I killed one of them.”

That seemed to interest him.

His eyes widened.

I teased him as he lay there.

“You killed the other two, didn’t you? I ought to thank you. You gave me such a wonderful opportunity. Without you, I’d never have had the chance to kill that bastard.”

I hadn’t lived in the complex long.

But I had already noticed something wrong with 402.

In front of everyone, he seemed perfectly ordinary.

In private, he did things no one knew about.

There had been a lot of stray cats in the complex.

Gradually, I noticed fewer and fewer.

For days, Tuanzi hadn’t come to eat the food I’d left in the corner downstairs.

I knew something had happened.

After watching quietly for several days, I discovered who was responsible.

402.

He secretly caught the strays, took them home, and tortured them to death.

He even livestreamed it without showing his face.

On foreign platforms, he broadcast himself abusing and killing kittens.

Boiling water. Scissors. Strange liquids injected into their bodies.

Whatever cruelty you could imagine, he had done it.

Someone like him was born with an antisocial personality.

I was very fond of people like that.

I found his livestream.

Using an anonymous account, I gradually coaxed his true nature out.

All I wanted was to make him a weapon in my hand. To have him kill that bastard.

I hadn’t expected him to hurt innocent people.

That alone was enough.

He deserved to die too.

Then, today, he finally said he was going to do something big.

Early on, I watched from upstairs as he went out.

He had disguised himself and was carrying a black backpack.

I knew that bag.

It held all the tools he used for his crimes.

I quietly cut the cable to 502’s camera, disguised myself too, and went out.

I followed him to the market in the west of the city.

The bastard who had hurt my mother and me was there too.

But in the end, 402 was a coward.

He had only ever killed cats, never people.

When the time came, he hesitated.

Then he dropped his knife and ran.

I had to deliver the final blow myself.

Imitating his methods, I killed my stepfather.

My stepfather was a compulsive gambler.

Whenever he lost money, he beat my mother and me.

He only stopped when she gave him more.

Years ago, after beating her one day, he looked at the woman from whom he could no longer squeeze another penny.

“The whores downstairs earn more than you do. Why don’t you just die?”

The next day, she did.

The police said she had jumped to her death.

But I knew.

He had driven her to it.

From the day she died, I had made up my mind.

I would have my revenge.

At last, I had found my opportunity.

I had cultivated the perfect scapegoat.

I had endured enough of that life.

One thrust of my knife sent him straight to hell.

Someone like him deserved nothing more than to rot there.

I was covered in blood.

I immediately changed into the clothes I’d brought.

That was why I went straight into the bath when I got home.

Then everything I’ve already described happened.

Uncle Wang knocked to inspect my doors and windows.

The man in 502 was a bastard too.

Yes, he took my rubbish downstairs for me.

But every time, he secretly took out my personal things.

Then he brought them home and treasured them.

How did I find out?

Once, when I went out, he was already standing in the corner of the lift.

Right behind me.

I stood in front, my back to him.

There were only two of us.

In the reflection in the mirror on the lift ceiling, I saw him take one of my sanitary pads out of his pocket.

Disgusting.

Just thinking about him made me want to vomit.

He’d also heard there was a killer on the loose.

The western market wasn’t far from our complex.

He thought his chance had come.

He had always hated the couple in 401.

Why, I didn’t know.

So he planned to kill Uncle Wang, the girl downstairs, and her boyfriend.

He even wanted to kill me.

He meant to pin it all on the killer from the market.

What he hadn’t expected was that the real killer lived in our complex too.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

“No. He didn’t kill Uncle Wang. I did.”

402 lay on the floor, clutching his chest and gasping.

Blood welled from his wound as he laughed.

“I killed him. Ha ha… When I got back from the market, I was scared out of my mind. But at the same time, I felt wonderful. Ha ha ha…”

A sick bastard, all right.

I handed him the knife.

“Then kill me.”

But he only waved a hand.

He had no strength left.

I put the knife in his hand and used it to stab myself a few times, avoiding vital areas.

Then I smashed my phone on the floor and stuffed my bloodstained clothes into his backpack.

When I was done, I left the door open a crack.

In the morning, barking woke me.

My door was pushed open.

A black-and-gray husky rushed in, leaped onto me, and licked my face until I woke up.

Then came a woman’s piercing scream.

I recognized her voice.

The woman from the third floor.

She had come with her dog.

The police solved the case quickly.

Zhao Nan, the resident of 402, had a warped personality—a textbook example of an antisocial personality.

He had abused and killed cats and dogs since childhood, until he developed the urge to kill people.

A few evenings earlier, he had put his plan into action.

The victim, Zhou Qiang, was a fifty-five-year-old market trader. He died at the scene.

Zhao Nan fled back to his apartment complex, where he encountered a management worker making door-to-door inspections.

He killed the man and his wife, who had been accompanying him.

Tang Xin, the resident of 502 in the Blue Moon complex, took the opportunity to copy the crime.

He killed the couple in 401.

Finally, Zhao Nan and Tang Xin encountered each other in the corridor.

Zhao Nan stabbed Tang Xin to death on the spot.

Zhao Nan was wounded too. He feigned injury and went to the resident of 501 for help.

The moment she opened the door, he knocked her to the floor.

He smashed her phone and tried to kill her.

But in the end, he had lost too much blood and no longer had the strength.

The residents of 501 and 301 survived.

“Thank you so much. You saved me. If you hadn’t come, I probably would have bled to death.”

As soon as I recovered, I went to thank the woman in 301.

She was packing to move out.

Her husky sat at the door.

The moment it saw me, it wagged its tail happily.

I stroked its head.

Good dog.

So much more lovable than people.

All those times I’d fed it hadn’t been wasted.

The woman in 301 tossed back her long hair and gave me a brilliant smile.

“What are you thanking me for? People like that should have died long ago.”

When I said nothing, she leaned close to my ear.

“You didn’t go easy on yourself with that knife.”

“If I hadn’t got there in time, you might really have bled to death.”

So…

She knew everything that had happened that night.

(The End)