Part 27: One-Armed Man

_{content warning: suicide, child abuse mention, spousal abuse mention, violence}

[BGM: Lethal Affair]


One-Armed Man

I picked a random bottle from hundreds of bottles of fine wine in the underground wine cellar, and put it on the luxurious short table in front of the old man.
He nodded with approval and popped the cork.
The bright red liquid was poured into an exquisite looking wine glass; it was swirling and glistening like flowing ruby.

Drink it.
Drink it.
Drink it.

I was standing next to him. Sweat was pouring out of my forehead.
As soon as he drank the wine that had just been “flavored” by me, I would unquestionably become a murderer.
I would no longer be a good Catholic.



But... I had no other choice.
I would not let myself be tortured to death in this damned place. I especially would not let myself die without ever seeing Carlos again.
He had killed so many innocent people, and I had every reason to send him to his final judgement in front of the Heavenly Father.

Money Jia's lips had already touched the glass,
when the housekeeper knocked on the door and informed him that there was a visitor.

A man with only one arm was sitting on the sofa in the living room.
A couple of tall, muscular bodyguards were standing behind him, ready for instructions from their boss.
I had never seen Money Jia act more like a spineless, ass-kissing weasel before.
He had the most cowardly smile on his face. He seemed determined to lower himself as much as possible in front of the one-armed man.



The man yawned and grabbed the bottle of “flavored” wine on the table.

Was he going to drink it?
No! He couldn't drink that!

I stepped forward...

He grabbed the bottle, emptied it with a smile on his face.
...and forced everything gurgling down.

It was already too late.
The wine and cyanide mixture went down his throat and into his stomach.



He suddenly stood up, with his hand grabbing at the sofa. Then he stumbled and fell. His whole body was twitching on the floor.
His hand was now grabbing at his own throat. His mouth was wide open, but he couldn't breathe.
The rest of the wine spilled out of the dropped bottle, turning the white velvet carpet to a bright red color.

The bodyguards were all panicking.

“Boss Ray? Boss Ray?! Mr. Tough, Boss Ray is...”
“What are you waiting for?! Call an ambulance!”

No ambulance could be faster than cyanide though.
Almost immediately, the one-armed man died.



Money Jia had been sitting on the sofa as if he had been paralyzed. He kept staring at the body with an incredulous look on his face.
He didn't move nor say a word until the bodyguards pointed their guns at his head.

“It's... it's her! That bitch did it! She poisoned the wine!”

They wouldn't let anyone get away at this point.
They stuffed Money Jia and I into the trunk of a car.
A “proper greeting” would be waiting for us.

Alicia



[BGM: Cat and Mouse]


The Fury of the Cat

My late Daddie used to lecture me, saying that it was dangerous for us to have a predictable daily routine, as the humans might be able to track our activities.
Despite that, I had developed a habit of visiting the fresh seafood store at the corner of the street every day at noon.

Today, as usual, I was “tank shopping” the tanks in the lobby, pondering the most important question to me ------ what was for lunch.

The fish in the left tank were all too big.
The fish in the tank next to my feet looked delicious, but there were only 6 of them left and it would be too obvious if I stole one.
I decided that I would go with the tank on the top right corner. No one would notice if one fish was missing as there were so many in it. And they had fewer bones too.
Most importantly, they were really fresh.



I hunched my back and was about to jump up, when my ears picked up a tiny noise behind me. The owner had just come into the lobby from the back.
I quickly hid behind a tank and watched as he opened the roller door, washed the ground in front of the entrance and sat down to wait for the first order of the day.

The owner had blonde hair and blue eyes, which was not common in this city. The other humans called him Alex.

I sneaked up to the door and meowed softly, pretending that I had just arrived.

Following the principle of not trusting humans, I would never intentionally expose my tracks to humans.
Still, sometimes I wondered if I needed to be so careful around these humans, whose every move was always so predictable.
Take this guy, for instance. I was sure he would not chase me off.

“Hey! Here you are! Just wait there for a second.”



A couple of minutes later, he placed a glass in front of me and poured me half a glass of milk.
Oh, it smelled so good... Milk is truly a cat's best friend~

But then I realized... I wouldn't be getting any fish today!
I meowed at the owner with my cutest expression.
“I want a full glass.”

He scratched his chin, seemed to understand something and went to go and grab something from a cabinet. Then he put a few pieces of dried fish in front of me.

Ewwwwww!
After Daddie had passed away I spent a whole month eating the dried fish that we had saved together.
Ever since then, even the sight of dried fish had been enough to make me sick.



He pet me on the head.
In the end, as a stray cat, I did not have the luxury to be picky about food.
Besides, as long as I got along with this human, I could come back often and steal more fresh fish.
So I bent my neck and rubbed my head against his hand, pretending to be a docile little kitty, and meowed happily at him.
For the record, I was not ACTUALLY happy!

I was licking the milk with my head down, when a strong smell of alcohol almost choked me.
“Ptui!” Someone spat his phlegm into the nearest fish tank.



Feh. Here comes trouble.
A man with black hair stood in front of the shop. A half-empty beer bottle was dangling from his hand, making a splashing sound. His eyes were wandering and unfocused.

I recognized him. He lived in the small house that was the highest one in the community in the hills.
Both his wife and his son had blonde hair and blue eyes. They were much better looking than him.
Although I had not seen them for a while. I heard that the wife had committed suicide.

The owner's eyes stayed fixated on his newspaper, but his hands were trembling.

Well...
As far as I knew, the relationship between the owner and the other guy's family had been... complicated to say the least.



The black-haired man's blonde wife had often been seen hanging out with the owner in a very intimate way.
Whenever the neighbors nearby saw them together, they would gossip about it.
The owner was very concerned, but the woman didn't seem to care at all.
Once I heard some humans chatting that the blonde woman had some kind of illness.
What kind of illness would make people behave like that?

The man had always been very nice to his wife.
But the wife was a dragon lady. Not only did she have an affair, she would even beat up her husband and her son.

Once I even heard her calling her own son a bastard.
He looked so much like her, how could he not be her own son?
Well, it was terrible.

As the days went by, the man began to lose his spirit too, and he wouldn't go anywhere without alcohol.



But the one who had suffered the most must be the little boy.
He was so pretty and looked nothing like the other kids, so no other children would play with him.

Sometimes I would run into the boy, and if I had nothing else to do I'd play with him for a little while.
If he happened to have some change on him, he would even buy me some milk.
Compared to his parents, the kid was almost like an angel with catnip.

Anyway, it was not a normal family.



The man stared at the owner for a while. His mouth squeezed out a “Psst.”
Then his eyes turned to me.

He crouched down...
...and knocked over the glass.

All of the milk spilled out. Some even got on my paws.
It wasn't the first time this had happened. But the owner still didn't move at all, as if it had nothing to do with him.



Damn you, stupid human! How dare you interrupt my meal! You wait there!
I stared at the stone-faced man, waving my fist.

I swear I am going to stuff dead rats into your bed tonight!

Spottie

[BGM: Lethal Affair]


Once again, we're given a relatively straightforward puzzle, though there's still a decent handful of potential outcomes here due to there being no limitations on how we arrange the pieces.

Let's get started- again, our primary goal is obvious here, which is to prevent the man (who seems to be Money Jia's boss?) from drinking the wine that Alicia poisoned with the poison she successfully hid in one of her S endings in the previous letter.



There are a couple of Bad endings for both here, but Alicia's do have some redundancy so we'll start with her.



The “flavored” wine kept being forced down my throat.
As soon as the one-armed man let go of my neck, a strange senstiaon took over my body.
I could... not... breathe...

My mouth was wide open. I grabbed at my throat with both of my hands and fell to the floor. My whole body was twitching.
As I gradually lost consciousness, I heard a couple of gun shots.

The old man fell in front of my face.
His eyes were wide open and full of shock.
Blood was oozing out of his forehead, turning the white velvet carpet to a bright red color.

Ha... Ha...
Even though things had not gone as planned, I could die without regrets now.
You dirty old monster... I would haunt you on our way to hell...

Yeah. There's a similar ending for if you have Alicia step forward and drink it herself, so no point in showing that one- it's practically the same, just without the one-armed man forcing her to drink it.



However, that solution does give us one of Spottie's Bad ends, too...

[BGM: Cat and Mouse]


He poured the yellow beer onto my head.

Meeeeoooooow!
How dare you, you puny human!
Let me give you a taste of my power!

I jumped onto his shoulder, and pulled out my ultimate skill, used by the one and only Spottie----
The Fist of the Unbreakable Cattie Spottie!!

After my relentless waves of attack, his face began to look like a cross cut fish fillet.

While the stone-faced man had a bad personality, he wasn't a bad person meow.
He used to be a road construction worker. He would go to the lottery place on the street sometimes after work to buy some tickets.
An old grannie used to live there and run the place.
Two years ago, she suddenly lost her sight, and he had resigned from his job to help out at the place.

I had been living on the same street for a few years, so there was nothing I didn't know meow.
For the sake of the old grannie, I would spare you, meow!

[BGM: Lethal Affair]


There's one more Bad ending for Alicia, so let's get that out of the way.





The exquisite looking glass was smashed into pieces near my feet.
The bodyguards of the one-armed man immediately raised their guns in case I tried to do something to their boss.
The one-armed man himself was sitting calmly on the sofa, as if he was just waiting for a show.

The old man looked at the one-armed man nervously, and looked back at me. He was still confused.

Even though it hadn't gone as planned, I couldn't give up now...
Go to hell, you dirty old monster!

I bent down and picked up the largest piece of glass.
But my right hand was somehow blown into pieces right before my very eyes.
And then I felt more bullets hitting me in the chest, shoulders, stomach, legs...

I could feel the white velvet carpet touching my face. It felt so soft.
Slowly, it had turned into a bright red.



[BGM: Cat and Mouse]


He put down the bottle.
He then spoke to me in his drunken voice.
“I have... I have won... the lottery.”

He took another chug of the beer.

“I have won... a million Won... Burp... I am going to... to get my son back.”

Sure, sure. You won a million Won.
What the cat hell did it have anything to do with me?
I lowered my head and continued with my milk, ignoring the boring human.

[BGM: Lethal Affair]


And with that, we seem to have confirmation that Park Sang-Gun's dad doesn't want him to stay where he is now long-term... unfortunately, Sang-Gun doesn't know that.



We're done with the Bad endings for both sides, thankfully, but we still have a couple of non-Bads to see before we get the S endings.



The one-armed man put down the wine glass and picked up the phone handed to him by a scar-faced henchman.
It seemed that something more urgent had come up, the gang left the mansion immediately.

As soon as he had sent them away, the old man changed into his normal self and smashed the remaining bottle of wine on the table.
“Damn you... Ray Lin... How dare you belittle me like this... One day you'll pay for it!”

The wine was turning the white velvet carpet to a bright red color.
I had mixed all of the poison into that bottle.
What was I supposed to do without it?



Well well, we have a name now for the one-armed man- and it's one that might seem familiar...

There's one more C ending for Alicia, but it's very similar to the one we just got- the old man smashes the glass on accident, the gang leaves like they did here, and when Alicia returns to clean up the spill she learns he threw the rest of the bottle out- there's no new information or anything interesting to see there.



The S endings for Alicia and Spottie might seem like just another assortment of pieces, but there's one big distinction to keep in mind here- the piece on Spottie's side has no gender listed. Therefore, it can be interpreted as Alicia doing the drinking, which is why every Bad ending for her has that piece on her side.

Similarly, keeping the 'emptied the bottle' on Spottie's side would result in Park Sang-Gun's father pouring the beer out, which we don't want either. Finally, we want the glass knocked over on Alicia's side as well, so that Spottie's milk isn't spilled- but we also want it before the bottle is emptied, not after, for reasons we'll see shortly...

[BGM: Misterio]


The exquisite looking glass was smashed into pieces near my feet.
The one-armed man stared at me with a smile and emptied everything in the bottle onto the floor.
The wine was turning the white velvet carpet to a bright red color.

The red kept spreading, almost touching my feet.
I wanted to step back, but I was paralyzed by his stare. I couldn't move my body even one inch.

The old man came around after a little while.
“You... Did you poison the wine? You dirty bitch!”

To prove his innocence in front of the one-armed man, he grabbed a fork from the dessert tray and charged towards me in a rage.



No...
No...
You were the one that should be dead! Not me, not now!

I picked up the largest piece of glass from the floor and stabbed at the scumbag.
He stabbed the fork into my shoulder.
But I had pushed the glass into his heart.



The old man made a stifled sound, and he stared at me with death in his eyes.
He probably had never imagined that one day, he would die at the hands of one of his “lab rats”.

I realized that nothing mattered now. I knew I wouldn't be able to survive today.
Heavenly Father... forgive me!

I pulled the fork out of my shoulder and stabbed it towards my own neck.
I felt it touching the skin and flesh on my neck. I needed to push a little harder to pierce my skin and force it into my artery.
My right hand was trembling. My eyes were watering up.
I had to use my left hand to support the other one...



“You must be alive to enjoy life. There's no need to die in a hurry.”

The fork was gone from my hand.
The one-armed man flung his coat over my shoulder, still smiling.
Then he held my freezing trembling hands in his one big palm.

I could not remember the last time I had felt such warmth. I broke down sobbing uncontrollably.



[BGM: What You Saying]


He looked at me.
I looked right back at him.

We stared at each other with our different-sized eyes. Of course, I had the bigger eyes!
At a moment like this, I had to overpower him with my fearlessness!

However, I quietly moved the milk glass behind me a little...

…

After the standoff had lasted for a while, he stood back up defeated. He turned away and walked into the nearby lottery place.

Look! I won!
Stupid human.



…

[BGM: New Life]




NEW MESSAGE: A Woman with Fiery Hair



***

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