Ch54 - The devil’s diary

Trigger warning: Depictions of gore, self harm and animal abuse/torture.

Zheng Mi Mi called me, and said that Xiao Sui Guang wanted to see me. 

Hearing this, I was taken aback as I had only met Xiao Sui Guang once prior. We hadn’t conversed much either, so why did he want to see me again?

“He took a liking to you that day, and he wants to invite you for a meal at his place. He’s even eager to have you take a look at his collection.” Zheng Mi Mi explained.

 

 

I knew that it wasn’t me that Xiao Sui Guang wanted to see, but rather “Zheng Mi Mi’s boyfriend.” All of this had started off with a solitary lie, and now I needed to make up even more to keep the initial one going. It was a tale as old as time.

“This is the last time that I’m going to help you out. If your Uncle asks about me again, then just tell him you’ve dumped me.” 

Zheng Mi Mi eagerly responded to my request with a barrage of ‘yeses’, then forwarded the address to me as we confirmed the time.

 

“Di-ding.”

I had barely just hung up when a customer walked in from the door.

“Welcome…”, As soon as I noticed that the person I was talking to looked to be only around sixteen or seventeen, I stopped mid greeting, as I reminded her instead, “We don’t conduct business with minors here okay, little sister.”

 

I pointed a finger at the red text on the walls, as the young girl startled in response. Her hair was all sleek black and pin straight, as she hurriedly waved her hands at me.

“No no, I’m here to look for someone, not to pawn off an item.”

The young girl had large eyes and a small face, her features all beautiful and proper, and purely judging by appearance alone, she looked as if she was a hundred percent Chinese. However, when she spoke the intonations of her words sounded strange, like she was a foreigner.

 

“Who are you looking for?” I asked. There were only three people here, Liu Yue, myself and Shen Xiao Shi. Liu Yue had already seen her come in earlier, and had no reaction whatsoever, so it didn’t look as if she recognised the girl. I also didn’t recognise this girl, so the only person who could possibly know her was… 

My gaze fell upon Shen Xiao Shi, as I had all kinds of guesses in my mind.

Given Xiao Shi’s current predicament, ignoring the whole situation of his mother, who hadn’t yet escaped her fate of possibly being sentenced to jail, there were still a heap of things going on. The incident between him and Wei Shi hadn’t been cleared up yet, and now we were going to add a young girl, a minor into the mix. I was legitimately worried that he wasn’t going to be okay after this.

Shen Xiao Shi could feel my sights on him, as he was quick to explain, “Wha- what? I don’t know her, this doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

He then shot the question back to the girl, “So, who are you actually here for?” 

The girl’s sights circled the room once before fixing her gaze on me, as her fingers clutched the straps of her backpack hesitantly. She then walked towards me as she introduced herself, “Hello, could I just check if you’re Lu Feng? My name is Han Ying Yuan, I’m Qi Yang’s half sister, we have different fathers you see.”

As soon as I heard the two words ‘Qi Yang’, whatever expression was on my face instantly vanished.

I had previously considered this, what I would do if I somehow bumped into Qi Yang’s family members on the street. However, I had never imagined that they would proactively seek me out instead.

The pawn shop wasn’t the right place to have this conversation as I felt the inquisitive gazes of Liu Yue and Shen Xiao Shi. I led Han Ying Yuan out of the store as we went to a nearby tea restaurant instead. 

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“Sorry, for suddenly reaching out to you like this…” The young girl placed her black backpack on her lap and brought it close to her, as if she was embracing it. “My father and mother remarried to become one family, so there’s quite a large age gap between my half-brother and myself. After… my brother’s incident, barely two years had passed before my parents divorced. I followed my father as we moved overseas, and it has been a long time since I’ve come back. I’ve returned this time to arrange for my mother’s funeral.”

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“Condolences.” I muttered, however, even if this was the case, I couldn’t think of a reason for why the young girl would want to come find me. All the grievances and ties between their family and I had been cleared ten years ago.

Han Ying Yuan pressed her lips together, looking as if she had much to say but did not know how, as she appeared to be struggling with where to start. It was then precisely at this moment that a waiter arrived, bringing us some refreshments to drink.

The cold glass had condensation on the sides, yet the girl cupped it tightly between her hands as if it could provide her warmth, as she seemed to gather the courage to continue again.

“To be honest, I shouldn’t have come to disturb you. However, I found something in my mother’s remnants of items. After taking a look at it I honestly… honestly couldn’t convince myself that I hadn’t seen anything…” She zipped open her backpack, and took out a worn down, green notebook from within. She carefully placed it on the table and pushed it towards me. 

Though puzzled, I accepted it and opened the notebook out of curiosity to take a glance at its contents. Inside were rows and rows of cramped, claustrophobic scribbles, each word being formed extremely carelessly. From the format of the entries, this notebook looked to be a journal.

I became more apprehensive as my eyes traced down the page. This wasn’t just anyone’s diary, this was Qi Yang’s.

I flipped over a page and looked up to meet the eyes of Han Ying Yuan. She lowered her gaze, as if she was afraid to look at me directly.

“I found this at the bottom of one of my mothers big suitcases where she kept all her clothes. I was never really tight with my brother, when he passed I was only six years old. When I first found this journal, I thought that this would be a good way for me to get to know him better. I never could have imagined that…” She tightened her grip on the glass, as minute shivers ran down her body, “This is without doubt, the devil’s diary.” 

As I continued to read the journal entries, I began to understand why she had described it as such.

Qi Yang was indeed a psychopath, and within his journal entries he made no effort to conceal his twisted, deviant actions. Today, he killed a stray dog; the next day, he tortured a stray cat. He recorded the horrific outcomes of these actions in gruesome detail, as if he was at a wine tasting, as he noted down each chilling scream they let out, and every miniscule reaction they showed.

He derived joy from this, and he had absolutely no remorse.

All of a sudden, I had a gut feeling that perhaps in Qi Yang’s diary I could find the piece of the puzzle that was missing, the part that Sheng Min Ou wasn’t willing to tell me. 

I started to quickly flip through the pages in the journal. Ten years ago, Sheng Min Ou was in his second year of university, and had been classmates with Qi Yang for two years. That was the end of everything, but if I wanted to know how things began, then I needed to go back to see what happened when they first met.

I gave Qi Yang’s diary a cursory glance as I flipped to the page where he had just entered university as a first year. I noted Sheng Min Ou’s name appearing for the first time in his journal.

Qi Yang and Sheng Min Ou were actually roommates at the beginning. From the moment Qi Yang set eyes on Sheng Min Ou, he was given no impetus to arrive at this conclusion but he became absolutely certain that they were of the same ‘kind’, and thus they should be together.

In another context, for a different person, this type of feeling would be ‘love at first sight’. However, given it was Qi Yang, this could only be termed as ‘fatality at first sight’. 

“Bullshit…” I swore, unable to keep quiet whilst reading his entries, as I belatedly realised my actions were inappropriate. Sitting opposite me was a minor, and she was also the younger sister of the person that I had cursed at.

“Sorry,” I said, apologising to Han Ying Yuan, “I couldn’t hold it in.”

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“It’s okay.” She replied, drinking her milk tea, as she gently shook her head at me.

I continued to read onwards, and the more I saw the more enraged I became, until I was trembling all over and my insides were burning. 

I was wondering why Sheng Min Ou would move out of his dormitories, and why he would rather rent a place outside. Turns out that he had been harassed by QI Yang to the point where he couldn’t continue living there anymore.

Qi Yang followed him, and sent him all sorts of explicit messages, forbidding him from interacting with anyone else. He even sent him various ‘presents’, still dripping fresh blood as it was given.

If it was an ordinary person, then I’d imagine that they would have already been driven crazy by Qi Yang. However, Sheng Min Ou was able to in the end withstand his harassment for two whole years.

[Before, he appeared unmovable and stoic, and I thought that there was nothing that I could do which could shake him. However, today I suddenly found out that he actually has a younger brother.] 

Even though I was just seeing some words written on paper which alluded to me, chills still creeped up my spine, as I couldn’t help but feel goosebumps erupt on the back of my neck.

[His younger brother, such an adorable brother, if I split open his chest and spill out his guts, then would he still remain as calm as he is now?]

[I sliced open my own stomach today and went to find him, kneeling in front of him as I promised that he could do anything to me. He rejected me again and said that I didn’t understand him. I didn’t understand him? Apart from me, no one else on this earth would understand him better!]

[I told Sheng Min Ou that his younger brother was the same as me, he wanted him all to himself. His younger brother wanted to kiss him, so that in his eyes only he was reflected. Sheng Min Ou’s gaze was terrifying, hahahaha!] 

I sped through the journal, reading ten rows at once. The words, which were written slovenly at first became more and more illegible. Each stroke was a stab to the page, a personification of his psychotic nature.

Finally, when I had reached the last few entries of his journal, the contents, paired with his handwriting, was outright suffocating.

[I secretly bugged Sheng Min Ou’s room, and hacked into his phone messages.]

[He wanted to meet up with me near the abandoned building so he could kill me. He had also asked his younger brother to meet him there too, so he could see him one last time. I knew of all his plans, but I won’t let it go his way….] 

[And he’s still going to say that I don’t understand him? If I don’t understand him, then how would I be able to read his thoughts so clearly?]

[Though dying at his hands would be great, dying at the hands of his younger brother would be even better. I want him to never be able to forget me in his life.]

[Neither of us belong in this world. I will be free soon, but how long will he be suffering for?]

I stared at his last entry, shell-shocked. The restaurant had their air conditioning on full blast, yet sweat seeped through my pores. 

The words of Qi Yang from ten years ago couldn’t be trusted. I knew this from long ago, but I hadn’t considered that everything, including his death, was a ploy that he had planned.

I raised my head and looked towards Han Ying Yuan at a loss and pointed towards the diary, “What does it mean here? Back then, Qi Yang allowed me to kill him?”

 

Han Ying Yuan bit her lips as she spoke in a low voice, “From what’s written on the journal, it appears to be so… back then I was still young, so I don’t really have many memories of it, but I heard from my father that there was a mental illness which seemed to be hereditary on Qi Yang’s father’s side of the family.”

I had always cursed at Qi Yang, saying that he was a psychopath, but it turns out that there actually was something wrong with him. 

I laughed as I closed the journal up and pushed it back to her.

“Why did you decide to come now and show me all of this?”

Han Ying Yuan stilled for a second, “I just felt like, I should come find you to tell you the truth. Then you wouldn’t have to spend the rest of your life in remorse over what had happened.”

I cut her off, “I don’t feel any remorse over the incident. Killing him is a decision I’ll never regret.” 

I only regret not having done so earlier, otherwise Sheng Min Ou could have endured two years less of Qi Yang’s harassment.

Han Ying Yuan seemed as if she had been shocked, as she shrank in response, “S-Sorry.”

I took out my wallet and left a banknote on the table, “This has nothing to do with you, thank you for telling me the truth.”

I got up and was about to leave before remembering that I still had a question which I hadn’t asked, so I retraced my footsteps to do so. 

“By the way, do you know how much the compensation sum was ten years ago?”

At once, the young girl’s face seemed to burn red at the thought, “I think, I think it was two million… sorry, we shouldn’t have accepted it…..”

It really was two million.

I closed my eyes, not saying anything more, as I turned and left. 

After seeing Qi Yang’s diary, everything which I hadn’t been able to piece together before now made sense.

Qi Yang was really exceptional. Using his death, he had plotted for both mine and Sheng Min Ou’s demise.

However, why did he say that Sheng Min Ou calling me out to meet me was the last time that we would see each other? Was he exaggerating his words or was it… because it was the truth?

Hot air enveloped me outside of the restaurant, yet my hands and my feet were chilled to the bone. 

There was another possibility that I had never considered, and now it suddenly, unexpectedly occurred to me.

The person who wanted to get into a fight to the death with Qi Yang, who wished for an ending that resulted in mutual destruction, was never me. The fear that Sheng Min Ou wanted me to experience, was also not Qi Yang’s death.

 

[Once you have truly experienced fear, you won’t want to get close to the abyss again.]

In his eyes, he was the abyss in my life, and it was only when he disappeared that I would be able to return, walking the right path again. 

He was using a tragic method, deliberately triggering stress in me, so that I would remember to never get close to people like him again.

I clutched onto my chest, and sank down to the side of the street next to the flowers and shrubs. I was suffocated by the cruel reality of it all, my breaths coming up short.

Whatever he did, he never took my feelings into consideration. He would also never think about how I felt as a consequence of his actions…

To him, this world was boring, and he had become tired of pretending to be an ‘ordinary’ person. He wanted to be free, and he wanted to leave me in this hell. 

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