Part 47: Life of a Big Brother

_{content warning: dissociation/depersonalization symptoms, suicide, violence, severe bodily harm}

[BGM: Getting Serious]


Well, we still don't have a current name for our mysterious man in blue, but through enough context clues it's not hard to figure out who he is, as well as his connection to 'Maple House'... Let's go ahead and get to solving this puzzle, though.



There's no more Bad endings for Carlos, but there's still a few for ???, so let's get those out of the way first, like usual.

[BGM: Friend of Mine]


I angrily dragged him off the bed.
I grabbed the knife on the desk and held it against his pale and tender neck.
The pyramid of cards collapsed and they scattered all over the floor.
The air in the cell seemed to have suddenly frozen.

I just wanted to scare him, and surprisingly it worked.
Hotaru said he would give me back my money the next day.

However, on the next day, not only did I not see a penny of my money, I was moved into another cell.

Since then, I would often find my food tickets gone, or my uniform thrown in the toilet, stained with filthy things.
But my new cellmate was a huge meathead. I didn't dare complain to anyone about him.

Hotaru never returned my money, but somehow I found myself missing him a little.



[BGM: Getting Serious]


I could see my own reflection in the blank TV screen.
My face was gradually overlapping with some of the gruesome visions in my head.

It was too late...
I remembered...
I... I remembered everything...
My parent's faces, my home, and... my hellish childhood.

The buzzing in my ears and the spinning were morphing into excruciating pain, pinching every single nerve in my body.
Those bloody memories, and the cruel truth that they implied, were pushing me to the brink of my sanity.
If I was on that edge, my illness would take over my mind and push me over the cliff.
And then, history would repeat itself.

I do not want to become someone I hated again.
I do not... I cannot... I refuse!
I... I must stop myself!

I pulled the window open and looked down to the ground 15 floors below.
I stepped over the bars and fell to the concrete.
I could not afford to leave anything to chance.



Onto the next one. (Regallion's guess for both Carlos and ??? results in this outcome.)



[BGM: Friend of Mine]


It didn't look like I was going to get my money back.
What else could I do? Should I hit him?
No. I couldn't do something like that.

I paced across the small yard for 20 laps.
As I realized that I would have to spend my time with him day after day, I felt even more depressed.
If only there were some other way to teach him a lesson without violence.

Why was I so unfortunate?
Not only did I end up in prison, I also had to live with such a bastard of a cellmate.

Lord, was this part of your trial for me?



[BGM: My World]


The image of the woman on TV hysterically screaming “Monster!” lingered in my eyes.
Why... why was I having such a strong reaction to this word?

A few blurry visions were beginning to come together in my head.
Some of them were starting to become even clearer...

There was a room without lights...
A man who looked like a doctor...
And me, as a child...

He was a monster, and his actions destroyed my sense of self.
When we clashed with each other... only one could survive.



I felt some changes happening inside me.
It felt so good, as if a group of people had been tolerating a smoker in an enclosed space, and then the smoker was suddenly killed by a falling meteor.

I picked up the knife and walked into the bedroom.
There was one tiny detail that had been bothering me for a little while.

I opened his luggage again.
I confirmed that the necessities did not just belong to one person, neither were they new.
And there were multiple pairs of underwear in different sizes.
My confused memories failed to fill in the missing pieces.



I pushed the knife against his throat lightly, thinking that I would conduct an “interrogation” on him once he woke up.
I didn't know that his instinct to danger was much stronger than I could have ever expected.

“Click.”

Before I knew it, the black barrel of a gun was pushing up against my left temple. Mr. Policeman, who just woke up, was on the other side of the gun.
I could tell from his expression that he wasn't afraid.
That was truly... frightening.

I dropped the knife.

“You, you're a monster...”

He pulled the trigger.
And those were the last words I ever said in this world.

[BGM: Getting Serious]


Hmm, I wonder who that police officer is? It's sure a mystery. And even more clues about our mysterious man in blue.


There aren't any more endings for Carlos, so let's finish up ???'s side before we see the S endings, starting with his final Bad ending.



The policeman was no longer asleep. He was standing at the door to the bathroom.
He was holding his head in his hands, and looked confused and neurotic.
He looked at me as if I had just done something despicable to him.

However, I was the one who was really losing control.
The image of him screaming “Monster!” at me lingered in my brain.
Those horrifying fragments of memories were beginning to become even clearer...



“...Ahhhh... Haha... Hahahahahah...”

I couldn't control myself. I chuckled, then laughed, and then screamed.
I felt some changes happening inside me, something not quite right.

To make sure that I could still control myself, I picked up the knife on the desk and lunged at him.
I stabbed him in his shoulder.

He suddenly dropped his defending hands and became extremely quiet.
Next, I saw his eyeballs twitching, and he mumbled something.
I had a bad feeling, so I tried to pull the knife out. But my right hand was caught.



I looked at him again.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
The person standing in front of me had the same face as the policeman, but I knew they could not have been the same man.
He had turned into something different. Something much more... frightening.

“You, you're a monster...”

He twisted my arm with super-human strength and pushed the knife I was holding into my own throat.
And those were the last words I ever said in this world.



Unsurprisingly, it turns out trying to kill the guy you woke up in a hotel bed with is a bad idea, especially when it's this specific guy. Anyway, let's get ???'s final non-S outcome now.





The policeman was no longer asleep. He was standing at the door to the bathroom.
He was holding his head in his hands, and looked confused and neurotic.
He looked at me as if I had just done something despicable to him.

However, I was the one who was really losing control.
The image of him screaming “Monster!” at me lingered in my brain.
Those horrifying fragments of memories were beginning to become even clearer...

“...Ahhhh... Haha... Hahahahahah...”

I couldn't control myself. I chuckled, then laughed, and then screamed.



To make sure that I could still control myself, I lunged at him.
We were tangled together, hitting each other as hard as we could with our fists and feet.
I needed to relieve what was piling up in my mind in the most primal way.
I pushed his head away with my hand and slammed it into the TV screen, which then shattered into pieces.

But I didn't win the fight.
The black barrel of a gun was pushing up against my left temple.
The person who was holding the gun had the same face as the policeman, but I could see something different. Something much more... frightening.

“You, you're a monster...”

He pulled the trigger.
And those were the last words I ever said in this world.



The solution for this puzzle is actually really simple- it's just swapping both sides' pieces.



You don't want the knife on ???'s side so that it can't be used to seriously hurt either of them, you want the line to be on ???'s side because if it's on Carlos's side, he'll decide he needs to threaten Hotaru when he picks up the knife, but you also need the TV piece on ???'s side to recontextualize the line as being something said on the TV, not said by the policeman he woke up in bed with.

[BGM: Misterio]


I looked at the fruit knife and I had an idea.
I decided to swallow my anger. For now.

Later that night I was lying on the top bunk, waiting with my eyes open.
Hotaru turned in his sleep.

“Squeak... Bang!”

The entire bed shook violently and I heard a panicked scream under me.
I looked down, feigning ignorance.



The bottom bunk only had a metal frame left. There were a few broken pieces of wood on the floor.
And the screws that I had loosened up earlier were lying innocently in the corner of the cell.
Hotaru sat on the floor in shock, still processing what had happened.

Hahahahaha, you sucker!

Back at the orphanage, there had been a fat little kid who would always bully me. I once taught him a lesson in the same way.
Although I was scolded by Alicia, it still felt really good.



They needed a week to fix the bottom bunk.
In the meantime, Hotaru was temporarily moved to another cell.

Being in the cell alone was quiet... too quiet.
I used to sleep in the top bunk in the orphanage, and Alicia would sleep on the bottom one.
It wasn't a sturdy bunk bed. Alicia would have to hold the bed every time I climbed up.
Otherwise it felt like the bed would immediately topple over.

Oh, how I wished that I would find her sleeping down there when I woke up.

I flipped the wet pillow, lay my head on it again, and closed my eyes.
I had to seriously start thinking about what to do next.



[BGM: My World]


The image of the woman on TV hysterically screaming “Monster!” lingered in my eyes.
Why... why was I having such a strong reaction to this word?

A few blurry visions were beginning to come together in my head.
Some of them were starting to become even clearer...

There was a room without lights...
A man who looked like a doctor...
And me, as a child...

He was a monster, and his actions destroyed my sense of self.
When we clashed with each other... only one could survive.

I felt some changes happening inside me.
It felt so good,
as if a group of people had been tolerating a smoker in an enclosed space, and then the smoker was suddenly killed by a falling meteor.



I left the hotel.
I walked in the middle of the street, under the pale moonlight.

I used to believe God was real when I was a kid.
But if He or She were real, none of those things would have happened to me.
People like me, we didn't really need a god. We just needed a dagger.

I decided to stay in Hong Kong.
There must be a lot of people here who could use a dagger like this. A dagger like me.



…

[BGM: Lost Memories]




…

[BGM: Days Go By]


The Story in the Rainbow

The mountain was called Shuanglong Mountain. The name meant “a mountain with two dragons”.
In weather like this, one could see the most beautiful rainbow on the mountain when the rain stopped.

The rain was beating down on the bus window; it washed the view outside into a blur. The only thing recognizeable was the blurry greenish mountain that was getting closer and closer.



”He's got cancer. Stomach cancer. Late stage.”
”He's got cancer. Stomach cancer. Late stage.”
”He's got cancer. Stomach cancer. Late stage...”

Ms. Yang's words kept echoing in my head.

Why didn't he tell me?
Why would he just leave like this in secret?
I thought that we were at least friends...

Once again, I had been left all alone...



At the foot of the mountain the ranger told me that hiking had been temporarily suspended due to a high probability of mudslides.
I managed to sneak past him when he wasn't paying attention.

I was hiking up, one step at a time, along the wet and slippery steps.
My school uniform had gotten soaked inside and out; my shoes were covered in mud.
I looked up. I was maybe... 100 meters away from the summit...
No... it should be only 50 meters...



A gust of wind at the mountaintop blew me off balance.
I was blown over like a young, weak and small tree. I rolled down the steps along with the mud and rocks.

I tried to grab onto anything I could touch. The tress, the grass... but they all snapped.
I was rolling down faster and faster.
I felt myself leaving solid ground. I was flying.
And I saw the valley beneath me.

I pulled a pen out of my pocket, and stabbed forward with it as hard as I could.
A murky torrent of mud and rocks rushed down from up the mountain.

I somehow stuck the pen into the cracks among the rocks in the cliff.
But the torrent was too powerful.



I felt weightless.
I had never done bungee jumping before. I imagined it would probably feel something like this.

I was falling... I kept falling...
After what had felt like an eternity my body finally touched the ground.
I could feel something sticky coming out of my nose, and my ears...
It hurt so bad... so, so bad...

I never thought this would be the end of me...
I didn't want it to end like this...
There were so many things... I hadn't told him yet...

Li Wen



[BGM: Life is Good]


Life of a Big Brother

In this modern life there isn't anything that can't be delivered right to the door.
Yet, despite this, there are still things that are beyond our control.

For instance, the shipping fee.
Or that to qualify for free shipping you have to buy many small filler items, hoping that they will be useful one day.
Or that... the tissues always run out sooner than expected.

I always wrote down what I needed on my shopping list.
Then, every Tuesday, I would use the list when I went shopping at the nearby supermarket.
I would usually go between the supper and evening discount hours.
This way I could avoid the afternoon rush hours, as well as the housewives who swarmed in for the discounted goods, and be done within 30 minutes.

However, it wasn't a good day to go out.

[BGM: Silence]


The weather was extremely bad that night.
As soon as I opened the door huge raindrops smacked my face like small pebbles. Thunder exploded as if it was right on top of my head.
I opened my umbrella.

It was such a stormy evening. I heard that spooky things might come out on a night like this...
And just when I had finished the thought...

“Big brother, could you come play with me~?”

[BGM: Lethal Affair]


I suddenly heard a childish voice near me. I was so startled that I stumbled one step back.
I stopped and took a closer look. It was a young boy that I had never seen before.

“Hey! Kid, don't play outside in the rain like this. You should go home!”

I hurried past him without a further thought.
Just recently I had become the target of some malicious gossip. The mastermind behind it was an elementary school kid.
As a result, I had been feeling easily set off every time I saw these tiny, mischievous young children.



However, something didn't feel right. Two blocks later a young girl jumped in front of me, holding a flowery umbrella, and said in a crisp voice,

“Big brother, could you come play with me~?”

“Little girl, you are really cute. But 'big brother' is NOT going to play with you!”

Leave me alone, all you boys and girls. I am not in the mood.
I held the umbrella lower and kept walking.

However, I then mysteriously ran into several more children of similar ages, although all of them were wearing different clothes.
Yet they all looked at me with an identical innocent smile and said exactly the same thing.

It was so freaky!
I was almost walking as fast as an Olympic race walker.
Just a little further! Once I turned around that corner I would be at the supermarket!



Bump!

I bumped right into someone, fell to the ground, and my umbrella slipped out of my hand.
It wasn't a kid this time, but someone who was very skinny. I couldn't see anything but a dark figure.



Thunder kept booming in the clouds. Suddenly, a blinding bolt of lightning flashed across the sky and almost lit up the entire grey city.
The person was covered from head to toe in dark clothes underneath a clear rain coat.
His face was mostly hidden behind a mask. I could only see a pair of ice cold eyes that were glimmering from the flash of the lightning.
I felt a chill climb up my spine.



”Big brother...”

A muffled voice came out behind the mask. I couldn't tell whether it belonged to a woman or a man, but I knew it was the most terrifying voice I had ever heard.

”Could you come play with me...”

I climbed up off of the ground, turned around and ran as fast as I could, without even picking up the umbrella.
And yet, I heard foosteps following behind me with exactly the same pace as mine, and... laughter.



Who is that?
Why are they chasing me?
What... does it want with me?
The thoughts kept getting scarier and scarier in my head. I tried to shut them out and just kept running. But no matter how fast or how far I ran, the footsteps and the laughter were still right behind me.

My mother had always complained that I never exercised.
She said if I ever ran into a bad guy I would be dead because I would be running too slow.
Mother... I promise I will never fail to listen to you ever again.

My legs were getting heavier and heavier, and the foosteps behind me were getting closer and closer.

Suddenly, my left hand was firmly grasped.
I turned around in utter terror and gazed right back intot hose cold eyes once again.
There was no way that those eyes could belong to a normal human being.



The dark figure grabbed my wrist tightly, with a strength that was way too powerful for its skinny frame.
It then covered my nose and mouth with a damp cloth.
A tide of exhaustion suddenly washed over me. Everything went dark; I passed out.

When I woke up I realized that I couldn't move.
Wait, why was I tied to a table with my arms and legs all spread out?

”Big Brother...”



I heard his chilling voice right next to my ear. The masked person had a shiny scalpel in one of his hands this time.
He kept brushing the back of the cold scalpel over my thighs.
In his other hand he was holding the gossip newspaper that had a picture of my butt.

What the hell?
I tried to protest, but my body felt as heavy as a piece of cast iron, and the only sound I could make were some random noises.

I saw a silver reflection flash through the air.
The pain was so intense that even my numb body couldn't ignore it.
It looked like a warm, red liquid splashed all over my body.
The only thought I had before I completely lost consciousness was:

Damn... I shouldn't have gone out.

Jimmy



***

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