Chapter 9

As soon as Su Mian's words fell, the sound of glass shattering startled her. A crow that had hit the window and died flew to Su Mian's feet, its body still twitching feebly.

Su Mian suppressed her obscure gaze and covered her mouth and nose with paper.

"What?!"

Hearing this, the woman didn't react much, but the Mr. Guan stood up and patted the table, his face showing horror, "Madam, I said long ago, that day was not suitable..."

"Alright, these are all in the past."

The woman interrupted him.

Seeing that the two didn't intend to continue, Su Mian raised her wet eyes and put her hands together.

"Is it convenient to tell me what happened?"

Mrs. Guan hesitated, but the girl bit her lip, her eyes red, "Xiaoxiao... was my best friend."

"Don't cry, child."

Mrs. Guan sighed, wiped Su Mian's tears, and then told the story.

"On this day last year, we had been here. Xiaoxiao... was originally not the child we wanted to adopt."

"Yes, the child we chose at first was a child named Yu Tong."

Mr. Guan echoed, his fingers intertwined, his face bitter, "Who knew such an unlucky thing would happen that day."

"May I ask, Yu Tong... is she dead?"

【You are too presumptuous, Mian Mian.】

4399 didn't know when it popped up again.

A trace of surprise flashed in Mrs. Guan's eyes, "Yes, she is dead."

"She died in the abandoned well of your orphanage."

"We originally intended to take Yu Tong home, but the child disappeared when she was about to leave. We thought that since the contract wasn't signed, we would pick another one, so we picked Xiaoxiao."

"The jade plaque was given, and a child suddenly told us that Yu Tong died in the orphanage's well. When we arrived... she had already been burned to ashes."

The man hugged Mrs. Guan and patted her to comfort her, shaking his head and sighing, "We felt it was unlucky, so we didn't pick any of them."

Su Mian nodded lightly, "I know."

In this way, all the clues in front are connected.

She remembered the nursery rhyme Guan Xiaoxiao led when the five people first came to the cafeteria.

"Moonlight, heart panic"

"Sister singing at the bottom of the well"

"One new friend every day"

"Come down and play hide-and-seek with me"

This sister probably refers to Yu Tong, because they should have become a family. The hanging doll is the resentment from Guan Xiaoxiao as a sister.

She originally could have been picked up and lived a happy and wealthy childhood from then on, but because of this accident, she lost her family and continued to stay in the orphanage.

Then... who killed Yu Tong?

And who killed Guan Xiaoxiao?

What does the real orphan refer to?

She is still missing a file, a file of the orphanage last year, except for what Yu Maomao leaked at the beginning, if she knows which of the five people stayed in the orphanage a year ago, then the truth will be solved step by step.

Su Mian thanked the two, walked out of the room, and took out the map given by Grandma.

【Mian Mian... you don't want to go to the Director's office, do you.】

Su Mian's expression was calm, her eyelashes drooping to cover her eyes. She didn't have any expression when she heard this, but a trace of extremely fast cunning flashed in her eyes. She turned to look at the office at the end of the corridor and muttered.

"I'm just a stupid child who loves hide-and-seek and accidentally hid in the Director's office."

【...】

4399: I bound you because I saw you were honest at first.

It was a bit anxious.

【Are you really not afraid?! Mian Mian, think about your ex-boyfriend, he's still lying in the medical room now!】

Su Mian's ears were already pressed against the door, "I am of course afraid of him, but didn't you say that as long as you don't touch his bottom line, it's fine?"

"Besides..."

It was quiet inside. Su Mian turned the handle lightly, and the door opened easily.

"The door is unlocked. Isn't this an obvious hint for players to go in and find clues."

Seems to be the truth.

But no player has ever done this so blatantly, okay?!!!

4399 is regretting it now. Why did it have a loose mouth to tell its host these things!!! It's fine to gossip about the DM behind his back, saying he's like a university teacher, but he's not really a university teacher, ah ah ah.

It's over, it's over, will its host be chopped into blood mist...

4399 was anxious, while Su Mian closed the door carefully.

Sure enough, as she expected, the map didn't mark the "file room."

Then, all the files must be locked in the Director's office.

Su Mian approached the cabinet that occupied the entire wall. Each cabinet had a neat label of year, month, and day on the bottom left corner.

However, the key was inserted into the lock casually, making the owner of the office look particularly relaxed.

She quickly found the file cabinet from last year and pulled it lightly. The old drawer made an unpleasant friction sound.

Su Mian pulled out a thick stack of materials, her eyes quickly scanning through the files one by one.

Lin Xiaofan, Si Han, Kai Luo...

The corresponding people are...

Zhou Yichen, Yu Maomao, and Wang Zhe.

So they were all adopted by the Sunshine Orphanage last year.

And she herself, with Wen Zirui, entered the orphanage this year.

To confirm, she pulled open the file cabinet for this year lightly and flipped through it quickly.

Sure enough, the information of Mi Guo and Xu Yiyi was clearly written inside.

However, Su Mian noticed a hair-raising difference.

In this year's orphan files, there was an unprecedented column of information: weight.

She looked at it intently.

Page after page, the numbers were almost all between 18 and 24 grams.

Su Mian frowned, her fingertips rubbing the corner of the paper lightly, which was a subconscious action when thinking.

How could the weight of a normal child be just over twenty grams?

The scale of twenty grams can describe a small piece of chocolate, can be the weight of a hummingbird, but it is far from enough to carry a living child.

A thought suddenly flashed through her mind, as if some ancient metaphor had been awakened from the depths of her memory.

... 21 grams.

That is a number that once caused controversy in medical and philosophical history: at the beginning of the 20th century, an American doctor claimed that the weight lost by people at the moment of death is exactly the mass of the soul, 21 grams.

Although it was later proven to have no scientific basis, this number became a symbol of "the existence of the soul" in an almost absurd way.

And at this moment, Su Mian suddenly remembered that she had drawn a similar setting in a script murder game: "The Absurd 21 Grams."

In that game, one of all the players existed as a ghost, and she happened to play the "murderer."

Therefore, her memory of this number was particularly deep.

If you follow this line of thinking, then... are all the children in the orphanage already dead?