Translator: CinderTL
One afternoon, two weeks later, Pan Du brought his younger sister to the mountain ridge while his foster parents were away. After knocking her unconscious with a stone, he tossed her still-breathing body into an abandoned well.
The well's opening was small, and its depths were pitch-black and incredibly deep. He struggled to move several large stones and threw them into the well.
For his first murder, Pan Du felt no fear or panic. Instead, he remained remarkably calm, even experiencing a faint sense of satisfaction.
She deserved to die!
It was all her fault.
She should never have been born!
Mimicking techniques he'd learned from police dramas, he began cleaning the scene, wiping away any potential traces of evidence, all while wearing his innocent, youthful face.
It wasn't until he reached a tree that he saw a plush rabbit toy.
The rabbit sat with its legs spread against the tree, its glass bead eyes gleaming. Perhaps it was his guilty conscience, but he felt the rabbit was staring directly at him.
It was his sister's toy.
She had always been timid, so she clutched the rabbit toy while sleeping and took it everywhere she went.
Just moments ago, his sister had been playing hide-and-seek with him.
She was the police officer, and he was the thief. While she covered her eyes, facing the tree, he had raised the stone and struck her brutally from behind.
The thought flashed through his mind: this toy rabbit could become evidence. It had to be destroyed. He grabbed the rabbit's ears and tossed it into the abandoned well.
But at that moment, he could never have imagined that this rabbit would become the nightmare of his life.
From that day on, the rabbit began to appear countless times in his life. It would sit on his foster father's shoulder as he returned from the fields with his farming tools, appear in front of his foster mother's busy stove, sit on his desk in class, and even lie beside his pillow when he woke suddenly in the night.
He tried every method he could think of, every tool he could use. He hid the rabbit, locked it away, buried it, burned it, tore it to shreds, even threw it back into the well.
But every time, it would return, its glass-like eyes fixed on him, unmoving and silent.
Even more unsettling, only he could see the rabbit. His foster parents, even his teachers and classmates, couldn't understand Pan Du's panic.
And he dared not explain.
Pan Du fled the village as if escaping a plague. This time, he was the one who abandoned the foster parents who had grown fond of him again after his sister's disappearance.
He knew in his heart that this was his sister's revenge.
He could only flee.
Flee as far as possible.
Flee to a place where no one knew him, no one recognized him, no one understood his past. Over the years, he had wandered the land, changing his appearance and identity.
His identity, name, contact information, even his appearance, had become completely different from what they once were.
He was confident that even his foster parents, or even his sister's ghost standing before him, wouldn't recognize him.
Because even he himself no longer recognized himself.
But the advantage of this was that he had finally shaken off that damned rabbit.
It had never reappeared.
Pan Du had once consulted a psychologist, speaking as a victim. The doctor's response was subtle, but he understood.
It was all in his imagination. There was no rabbit. He had thrown it into an abandoned well long ago.
Along with his damned sister, never to see the light of day again.
The rabbit he had seen was merely a symbol, a manifestation of his guilt and fear tormenting him, though he refused to admit he felt either.
After all these years, he had believed he had escaped that village, that mountain. But what now appeared before him shattered his illusion.
He had never truly escaped.
The rabbit had come back for him.
No, it's my own sister!
My sister has come to claim my life!
Suddenly, Pan Du, slumped on the hillside, felt a chilling gaze—as if some terrifying creature was lurking in the shadows, watching him.
He immediately turned his gaze in that direction. Behind a few tree branches, a rabbit sat silently, its glass bead eyes filled with venomous resentment as they peered through the gaps.
How could this be?
Pan Du's breath came in ragged gasps, like an old bellows leaking air. He had just buried the rabbit toy, yet here it was again, right before his eyes.
No, that's not right. It's been following me!
The rabbit toy was still covered in dirt, especially its paws, which were thickly caked in mud. It looked as if it had been buried alive and clawed its way out of the grave.
Like a vengeful ghost crawling out of hell.
"No, please, stop haunting me!" Pan Du ran forward like a madman, grabbing the rabbit and tearing at it. Then, relying on his memory, he raced to the abandoned well and hurled the toy down. "You're dead! You're a dead thing! Stop tormenting me!"
"It's all your fault!"
"It's all your fault you're going to die!"
"You shouldn't have even been born! If you hadn't appeared, their love would have been mine. They would have loved me forever, raised me as their own child!"
Pan Du grabbed whatever he could find nearby and hurled it down the well. Stones, clumps of earth—he was like a madman, determined to fill the entire well.
As if burying the well would bury his past mistakes.
Suddenly, his body froze. His hand had grasped something strange.
It was soft and furry.
The rabbit!
It was perched right at the well's edge, its eyes fixed on him. But this time, Pan Du noticed something different.
The rabbit's face was slowly changing, especially its eyes. Those glass-bead eyes now held a spark of life.
They were human eyes!
Bloodshot and filled with terror, they stared at him. Pan Du screamed and turned to run, but his foot slipped. He plunged into a dizzying freefall.
He had actually fallen into the deep well.
The very well where he had dumped his sister's body!
But... how could this be possible?
He had been running backward. The well should have been in front of him, in the opposite direction.
He didn't have time to think. A sharp pain shot through his body, and he finally landed with a thud. The excruciating pain made him black out.
He didn't know how long he had been unconscious before he woke up. One of his legs was broken, having struck a sharp, diamond-shaped stone.
The well had long since dried up and was pitch-black. But what terrified Pan Du even more was the faint, lingering gaze that still felt present, right beside him.
With no other options, he steeled his resolve. He groped for a stone and began digging in the well. He would dig up his sister's bones and grind them to dust!
"You wouldn't let me live, so I'll kill you again!" Pan Du's eyes burned red. "I won't even let you become a Ghost!"
After moving aside stones and digging up a lot of soil, he felt something soft.
It was a rabbit's ear.
(End of the Chapter)
---
📖Read (NS) on Pa.treon@CinderTL - c886. [+4]
🔑Early Access at $1.
✍Translated (6) Series, (3.6K+) Chapters, (5.1M+) Words.