Chapter 137: 88. In the dark night, the murderer gave her a charming smile_4
With the faint street lamp light, Shi Nian saw his hands extended in front of him, spreading apart. From the tension in that posture, it could be guessed that he was pulling a rope taut between his hands.
Just like strangling S, perhaps?
.
Shi Nian’s heart raced, but she reminded herself to take deep breaths. Only with sufficient oxygen supply could her brain resume calm and rational thinking.
She accurately fixed her gaze on Jack in the darkness, trying to speak without raising suspicion, "Didn’t you say you brought me here to find Marina? Where is she?"
Jack chuckled sinisterly, "Tonight, you should really blame her. I’m looking for her too. If I hadn’t failed to find her, I wouldn’t have brought you here. This game tonight was originally prepared for her."
With danger looming, Shi Nian instead slowly calmed down.
This was different from the nightmare before; it wasn’t an isolated building where cries for help would go unanswered, but a university dormitory. Outside the door, in the neighboring rooms, were all filled with people. As long as she had the chance to open the door and shout, or even open the window, people would hear the commotion, and then she could escape danger.
So, without turning her neck in the darkness to avoid making noticeable movements that could alert Jack, she simply rotated her eyes to observe her distance from the door, or window, or at the worst, the walls.
However, thick velvet curtains had already fallen over the window, making it impossible for her to determine whether the window latch was open or locked, thus the window was temporarily unusable;
And if she went for the door, Jack was standing in between, so the cost would be greater;
Therefore, she quietly turned her gaze to the walls on both sides. As long as she could ram her body against the wall, or grab the chair next to the desk on her right and smash it, the noise should be enough to alert the students next door.
Having made up her mind, she then started talking to Jack to distract his attention.
"Why did you kill S? And after killing S, why wasn’t it enough, why did you have to harm Marina as well?"
"Was it because they also bullied you? But that’s not right, S bullied people, but she only bullied girls, didn’t she? She was nice to all the boys, so why would she treat you any differently?"
.
When Shi Nian said these words, she intentionally slowed down her speech. She insisted on using interrogative sentences to hold Jack’s attention and delay as much as possible.
She spoke slowly while frantically searching for Jack’s shadow in her mind.
Indeed, only until this moment did she realize that over the past two days, her attention towards Jack had been far too insufficient.
Mostly because the other people in room 507 were too distinctive, whether it was S, Marina, Spicy Girl, or even Zhong Kui... All of them, due to their strong personal traits, had drawn most of her attention.
Besides those people, not to mention Mark, Sean, and... Tang Yanqing.
Her attention was ultimately limited, divided into so many parts, leaving only a superficial impression of Jack.
Jack in the first impression was quiet, shy, and peaceful. His appearance, like his personality, had no sharp edges. From the perspective of an Eastern person, his shoulder-length blond hair made him seem like a girl; easy to get along with.
That was all.
So despite in Tang Yanqing’s class, where the after-class assignment she gave her was to observe and analyze the personality markers revealed by students’ choice of seats, she analyzed S, analyzed Mark, and analyzed the deceased Zhou Guanghan... yet she never thought to analyze Jack.
Even though Jack was seated directly across from her, in what was the second-best observation position in the entire lecture hall, right next to the professor’s seat.
That position, she had also concluded, was the second-best observation position next to the professor’s seat in the classroom.
But even though she saw Jack sitting in that position, she merely assumed it was because his shy nature made him shy away from competition, so after everyone else had chosen their seats, he was passively left with that one.
That seat was less often observed by the professor, so there wouldn’t be many speaking opportunities; Shi Nian thought this was simply due to his shy personality.
Now it seemed, it was completely a grave misjudgment.
She recalled something Tang Yanqing had once said: "A biting dog doesn’t bark. The vilest scum of the earth is not that imagined crowd of burly, evil-looking, coarse people. True scum are often peaceful and humble, possessing good careers in society, holding esteemed statuses, or even having specialized skills... In families, they’re good fathers, good husbands to their wives, good friends in their social circle."
"They deeply hide their most beastly side under layers of perfect masks, enabling them to evade legal punishment—moreover, to challenge justice, provoke law enforcement, to fulfill their twisted sense of accomplishment and values."