"Are you sure the woman was pregnant?" Shao Lan asked.
The old man nervously picked at his hands. He seemed about to nod, then hesitated.
"Think so," he wrote. "But room was dark. Not sure."
Shao Lan understood. The old man had been killed too quickly, in poor light. He'd seen her, but couldn't be certain.
"Tell us about the second time."
The second time, he'd never left the bedroom.
"Scared. Hid."
He pointed at Shao Lan, the tip of his pen trembling. "Phone call. Died."
...
When Uncle Pancake woke in that bed for the second time, he was scared out of his mind.
He couldn't understand what was happening. He could only assume he'd run into some evil spirit. Following something he'd heard in his village as a child, he wrapped himself completely in the quilt and silently recited Buddhist prayers.
He prayed for a long time. Outside, everything was quiet.
When he poked his head out, the same strange bedroom remained before him.
He wanted to escape, but remembering how the woman had killed him the instant he'd left the bedroom last time, he lost his nerve.
He didn't know how long he hesitated before he heard someone speaking quietly on the phone outside.
"Building No. 7 of Happiness Residential Complex."
He hurried to the door and peered through the gap beneath it.
He saw a young man in a white shirt and black pants, with handsome features and silver-framed glasses perched on his nose.
The young man leaned toward the landline, holding the receiver in one hand.
"Building No. 7 of Happiness Residential Complex. Right now. Someone threatening us with a knife."
Was he calling the police?
Uncle Pancake reached to push open the door. The next instant, his eyes widened.
Dim light fell across the living room. A short distance behind the young man, a monster crawled on all fours.
Her stomach brushed the floor. In the darkness, she looked like a spider with an enormous abdomen.
It was the woman! The woman who'd just killed him! She'd heard the young man's voice and crawled all the way from the kitchen!
Uncle Pancake wanted to shout, but terror clamped his throat shut. He couldn't make a sound.
Her tangled black hair covered her face, merging with her black padded jacket.
Then she drove her arm straight through his chest!
Blood sprayed.
Uncle Pancake fell back onto the floor.
He shut his eyes, shaking all over.
He didn't know how long it was before he opened them again.
The living room was silent once more. Only the large splash of fresh blood on the wall reminded him that what he'd seen hadn't been a hallucination.
From the kitchen came music on the radio and the repeated chop of a knife through bone.
Trembling, he sat against the wall and clenched his teeth.
He'd been a coward all his life. Now he didn't dare go out, didn't dare fight, didn't dare do anything.
He thought he was going to die here.
Time ticked past. Suddenly, a police siren split the night.
His eyes flew open!
He lunged toward the window. Rain and mist obscured everything, but small headlights really were flickering deep in the fog.
The police were here!
Sure enough, a moment later, someone began pounding on the nearby security door.
"Police! Open up!"
"Is anyone inside? Open the door!"
Call after call. Nobody opened it.
As the knocking began to grow less frequent, Uncle Pancake panicked.
He stumbled out of the bedroom.
Only one door stood between him and the police. If he opened it, he'd be saved.
But after only a few steps, he tripped hard over something and fell.
"Aaaah!"
He screamed at the top of his lungs.
Like a corpse, she'd spread her arms and legs wide and lain flat on her back.
But she wasn't a corpse. The instant he screamed, a bizarre smile appeared on her face.
She sprang up, seized him, and slammed him to the floor.
She couldn't see or find her "prey." But if her "prey" ran through the living room, it would step on her.
Uncle Pancake's last memory was of her gripping his neck and forcing him to meet her gaze.
Those bloodshot eyes, all whites, stared at him, stretched wide.
"So bitter," she said with an eerie smile. "So very bitter."
The next instant, bone cracked. His vision spun, turning toward the wall.
His head had been twisted a hundred and eighty degrees. His neck was broken.
Not far from him lay Jiang Mingran. Shao Lan had already been dragged into the kitchen and chopped to pieces.
Everyone was dead again.
The second loop ended there.
...
The goldfish in the tank released a few bubbles.
Having asked Uncle Pancake everything he could, Shao Lan stood and sank into thought.
Jiang Mingran came over and held up a note. "Uncle Pancake's a good guy, right?"
Shao Lan nodded slightly.
Even before the interrogation, he'd known Uncle Pancake probably had nothing to do with Jiang Mingran's death last time.
But "probably" wasn't enough. In this bizarre place, anything was possible. He had to get the full story.
As far as they could tell, Uncle Pancake hadn't lied.
He was timid, lacking both courage and judgment.
But his presence wasn't meaningless.
Though he'd hidden in his bedroom throughout the previous loop, he'd confirmed something extremely important for them.
If they called the police, the police would come.
That was crucial. It meant this approach was correct. They simply hadn't survived long enough for the police to get inside.
So what they needed to do next was...
"Tell me." Shao Lan looked at Jiang Mingran. "How exactly were you killed?"