I said you are all war criminals

Li Xi suddenly stopped and turned around slowly, staring at Aine with his red eyes, as if he wanted to devour her.

"who are you?"

Li Xi's voice was terribly hoarse.

"My name is Chihaya Aine. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a classmate of Tomo."

Aine repeated what she had said before and added carefully, "Are...are you okay?"

Li Xi gritted his teeth and said, "I'm not feeling well... The light is dead! How can I possibly get better?"

"Ahh, you and Deng must be very good friends..."

Aine's mood also fell, "I...I haven't had the chance to become friends with Deng yet."

Aine continued, "Deng told me that he wanted to be in a band with me for life... I never thought that Deng's life would be so short."

"Band for Life?"

Li Xi repeated this sentence, his voice hoarse as a broken bellows, "She...she wants to form a lifelong band with you?"

Aine nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. "Yeah, Deng said she wanted me to become the best guitarist, and then we could form a band and play music together for the rest of our lives. She said...she also said..."

Aine choked up and stopped talking.

Li Xi felt like his heart was being tightly gripped by an invisible big hand, and he was almost suffocating.

A lifetime... Deng actually wants to form a band with others for life?

Does she want to play music with this silly pink-haired girl in front of her for the rest of her life?

"what……"

Li Xi let out a short, dry laugh, as if a piece of glass was stuck in his throat. "She never told me... in her entire life."

Band for Life.

It's really... an enviable agreement.

Obviously I can do it too. I can also form a band with Deng for life...

"I didn't expect it to be so sudden... I regret... I regret not agreeing to Deng..."

Aine’s voice trailed off.

Li Xi wanted to speak, but his throat was as dry as if it was stuffed with cotton.

She wanted to question Ain, to ask her on what grounds, on what grounds she deserved Deng's favor, on what grounds she could form a "lifelong" band with Deng. That should clearly be her, that was the promise between her and Deng, their shared dream.

But when the words came to his lips, they turned into a broken whimper.

After not having a drop of water all day and the immense mental strain, Riki's body couldn't take the full strain. She stumbled, her vision blacking out, and she fell straight towards Aine.

Aine instinctively reached out to help, but she underestimated Riki's weight. Or rather, she overestimated her own ability to bear it.

Li Xi fell heavily on Aine. It didn't feel like falling into a soft embrace, but more like hitting a hard steel plate.

"Ouch!"

Aiyin cried out in pain and looked down. Riki had fainted. His face was frighteningly pale, and his lips were chapped and bloodless.

"Hey! Wake up!"

Aiyin patted Li Xi's cheek, but there was no response. She sighed and helplessly helped Li Xi to a bench by the roadside and let her lie down.

Looking at Riki's weak appearance, Aine felt mixed emotions.

She guessed that Lixi and Deng had a good relationship, and she also knew that Lixi must be in pain now.

Aiyin's heart skipped a beat as she looked at Lixi, who had collapsed on top of her. She looked thin, but she was actually quite heavy. She gritted her teeth and, with all her might, finally helped Lixi onto a bench by the roadside.

"Hey, wake up!"

Aine pushed Riki, but there was no response.

"No way, are you really dizzy?"

She reached out and felt Li Xi's breath. Fortunately, he was still alive.

"What should I do... I don't even know who you are..."

Aine pulled out her phone, thinking of calling the emergency number, but hesitated. If she did call an ambulance, how would she explain it? She'd say a girl she didn't know had suddenly collapsed in front of her? What if they found out something else... Aine shuddered and quickly dismissed the idea.

"Forget it, let's take her home first."

Aine sighed and resigned herself to carrying Riki on her back. The weight almost crushed her.

After stumbling along the way, Aiyin finally carried Lixi back home. She placed her on her bed and covered her with a blanket. Looking at Lixi's pale face, Aiyin felt annoyed.

Aiyin sighed irritably, walked to the kitchen, picked up a cup, and filled it with warm water. She slowly walked to the bedside, leaned over, and brought the cup to Lixi's lips. She whispered, "Drink some water."

Li Xi didn't respond, his eyes closed tightly, his brow furrowed. Aiyin called out a few more times, but still got no response. She carefully tilted the cup, trying to get the water to flow into Li Xi's mouth.

However, before the water touched Lixi's lips, she subconsciously turned her head away and didn't drink a single sip.

"Okay, you're awesome."

Aiyin put down the cup helplessly, took a towel, dipped it in some cold water, and gently wiped Li Xi's forehead.

As she was wiping, Aine suddenly discovered that there was a wooden pendant on Riki's chest.

"...Is this what she always carries with her?"

Aine stretched out her hand and fiddled with the pendant a little... No, it wasn't a pendant, it wasn't hanging around Riki's neck, but was just resting on Riki's chest.

It's as if it just appeared.

…Aine carefully examined the wooden pendant.

It was an exquisitely carved wooden bead, its warm wood radiating a soft sheen under the dim light, its priceless value evident at a glance. The bead was oval in shape, yet not a perfectly regular oval. Instead, it had been meticulously carved into the shape of a basket. Within this small wooden basket, a carp, poised to break free from the water, its body powerful and sturdy, its tail slightly upturned, seemed to hold an infinite vitality. Most astonishing was the depiction of the fish's scales, meticulously detailed and lifelike, each one clearly visible, as if the scales had been peeled off one by one from a living fish and then perfectly reproduced in precious wood.

Aine stared at the wooden bead, a strange feeling welling up in her heart.

She stretched out her finger as if possessed by a magic spell and gently touched the smooth fish scales on the surface of the wooden bead.

As soon as my fingertips touched the wooden beads, a feeling as muddy as mud surged into my heart.

——It’s so hot, so hot, so hot, so hot, so hot, so hot, so hot!

It was obviously icy cold river water, but it was scalding hot.

Ah Shiming likes rivers the most.

Ah Shimingming likes fishing with his father and washing clothes by the river with his mother the most.

Ah Shi... Ah Shi...

Ah Shi hates it so much...

Mother, why did you leave Ah Shi...

Dad, why did you leave Ah Shi...

Die... Die...

Those who abandoned me...even my parents...may all die...

Anyone who leaves me behind...even if they are just passing by...may all die...

Those who abandoned me...even those who didn't know me...may all die...

Gulu gulu...

At the bottom of the cauldron of hell... drown...

...kill it.

...Kill them all.

...Kill everyone who left me behind!

"ah!"

Aine abruptly retracted her hand, her heart beating like a drum.

"What the hell..."

She cursed under her breath, rubbed her numb fingers, and looked at the wooden bead again.

The memories of those resentments almost set her head on fire.

Aiyin turned around and wanted to leave, but her feet seemed to be rooted to the ground, and she couldn't move a step. An inexplicable uneasiness gripped her heart, making her unable to move. What would happen if she just left like this? Would Li Xi...

Aine gritted her teeth and scratched her hair in frustration. She knew she was in trouble. But she couldn't just leave an unconscious stranger at home.

"Damn curiosity..."

Aiyin cursed softly, walked over to the computer resignedly, and began searching for information about the wooden beads.

She first typed in "wooden pendant", and all that popped up were popular internet celebrity items, none of which were as... weird as the one on Li Xi.

She tried searching for "antique wooden beads" and "carp-carved wooden beads," but still came up empty-handed. Aine pounded away at the keyboard, her heart racing like a rabbit.

Just when she was about to give up, a key word suddenly popped into her mind: abandonment drain.

For some unknown reason, Aine typed "abandonment drain" into the search bar.

The search results are so numerous that they are a bit scary.

The so-called abandoned canal is said to be a place where someone was fishing in a moat in Tokyo. Perhaps he was lucky, so his basket was full of fish. As he was happily preparing to go home, the sky gradually darkened and he could hear faint calls from the riverside: "Release them... Release them..."

The fisherman thought, "Who's talking? Could it be my imagination?" He hurried home and opened his fully loaded basket, only to find that all the fish were gone.

In addition, there are stories that say that the fisherman heard the sound and was so scared that he dropped his fish basket and ran away. Later, he and his companions returned to the place to check and found that the fish basket was empty. In other stories, two people went to the moat together to fish. After hearing the sound, one of them immediately dropped the fish basket and ran away. When the other was about to escape with the fish basket, he was pulled into the moat by a hand that stretched out from the water and was killed by a monster.

Aine felt her blood boiling. Those stories, those strange tales about the abandoned canal, although the details were different from the fragments of memory in the wooden beads, the cold, desperate, and resentful atmosphere told Aine that these stories were her stories.

Could it be that after the story of Ashi spread, it had morphed into something else? Or... No, what shocked Aine even more than the story was that she now instinctively felt that she could kill others with the curse.

As long as someone leaves...leaves Shiina Riki?

"...That's not right. According to that memory, the person who left 'me' should be cursed. Why is it the person who left this person who was cursed? And why do I know her name? She didn't even tell me..."

Aine felt her mind was a mess. Drains, curses, murder... these words swirled around in her mind like a demon, unable to be shaken off. She shook her head vigorously, trying to get rid of these horrible thoughts, but she found that they clung to her like maggots on her tarsal bones.

At that moment, the unconscious Li Xi suddenly made a weak sound and propped herself up. Aine was startled and subconsciously took a step back, staring at her warily. Li Xi's face was frighteningly pale, her lips were chapped, and her eyes were empty, like a puppet with its soul sucked out.

"Are you...are you okay?"

Aine asked tentatively, her voice trembling slightly.

Li Xi didn't answer, but looked around blankly, her eyes filled with confusion and pain. She seemed to be invaded by those resentful memories, her body trembling slightly, as if she was about to collapse.

Suddenly, Li Xi's face dropped. "As long as you kill someone, you can revive the lamp... How can there be such an irony?"

Aine's body trembled once, then again: Murder? Why did you suddenly mention murder? Could it be that Riki got the information from the memory of resentment? But I don't have that memory!

Completely ignoring Aine's hesitation, Shiina Riki covered his face and took a deep, deep breath as if to absorb all the sadness and anger into his lungs.

"To revive the lamp, I can sacrifice ten thousand, one million, or even a hundred million people—as long as I don't know them, I can kill them all without any psychological burden."

——Hakuno’s words rang in Riki’s ears.

Okay, I'll show you.

Whether it's 10,000 people, 1 million people, or 100 million people, I can kill them all—

25

Chapter 25: Ming Laoqiu Ren.

Between the second-hand bookstore and the other buildings lies a narrow alley. It's narrow and straight, like a sharp blade slicing through the heavy shadows of the two buildings. Flanked by towering concrete walls, their rough surfaces stained with years of dust and dirt create a suffocating, oppressive atmosphere. Deep within the alley, the light is dim, as if swallowed by the concrete walls, leaving only an unsettling gloom. The air is filled with a nauseating smell of damp and decay. Trash and rubble litter the ground, and the occasional rat scurries through the dark corners, adding to the alley's eerie and terrifying quality.

If this wasn't a shortcut, I'm afraid no one would go here.

A certain woman walked into this alley just to take a shortcut.

Because the children at home are still waiting, because they worked overtime too late today, because of this... because of that... because of various reasons, on such a night, the woman did not walk on the main road, but went into this alley.

The towering concrete walls, like two massive tombstones, weighed her down, suffocating her. The air in the alley was damp and sticky, carrying an indescribable smell of decay, like the slowly decaying corpse of some creature. The woman quickened her pace, her high heels tapping against the concrete floor with a resounding clatter that echoed through the narrow alley like the beat of a death drum.

Suddenly, she heard faint footsteps behind her, soft and slow, like some kind of wild animal stalking in the dark. Her heart tightened, and her breathing became rapid. No way… This alley was usually deserted, but in the middle of the night… She couldn't help but glance back. In the dim light, the deep alley was deserted, filled only with a sickening damp smell and lingering darkness.

"Maybe... it's an illusion?"

The woman consoled herself, trying to control her trembling legs and continued walking forward. However, the sound of footsteps followed her like a shadow, lingering like a maggot on her bones.