Chapter 506 Fish

The hot water was poured into the glass. The man could not wait to take off his gloves, picked up the cup and felt the warmth.

"You are so brave. I have warned you so many times, but you still dare to run around." The man's room has been renovated many times. There is not only a fireplace, but also a stove and a kang. Even if there is no door installed, the room is still warm.

"I am a curious person." Gao Ming also picked up the cup, but he did not intend to drink it.

"Curiosity kills the cat. Isn't it good to live in confusion?" The man wanted to remind Gao Ming something. He looked up and found that Gao Ming had started walking around the house, holding the photo he hung on the wall in his hand: "It is not a good habit to mess with other people's things."

The photo shows a family of five, with three children standing in front and parents standing in the back. It is worth noting that the face of the child in the center of the photo was covered, and it was a dark hole. The remaining four people stared at the camera expressionlessly. If it were not for the blessing words such as family happiness written on the photo frame, Gao Ming would probably think that these were five strangers standing together.

There was no eye contact or verbal communication between them, nor was there any physical contact. There was a distance between each of them.

"Are they your family?"

"Yeah." The man held the water cup, as if he was lost in memory: "The middle-aged man who looks wild and rude is my father. He is a mixed-race and a handsome bastard. He is different from my romantic grandfather. He is old-fashioned and serious, and he advocates violence in his bones. About two years ago, he hunted a bear in the deep forest of the snowy mountains."

The man showed some complicated feelings for his father, with admiration and helplessness.

"The middle-aged woman standing behind me is the biological mother of my younger brother and sister. She seems to never age. In my impression, her face has never changed."

Hearing the man's words, Gao Ming couldn't help but look at the middle-aged woman a few more times. In the photo, she was wearing a red dress with strange patterns, looking noble, mysterious and a little bloody.

"Isn't the mother of you three brothers the same person?" Gao Ming held up the photo: "And why was the face of the child in the middle cut off?"

"The one with the face cut off is my younger brother. I don't know why this happened. Since he disappeared, all the photos related to him in the manor have become like this." The man noticed Gao Ming's suspicious eyes: "I know you don't believe it, but it really has nothing to do with me. Although he and I are not born from the same mother, we have a very good relationship. I have been with him since he was a child. To be honest, my relationship with him is closer than his relationship with his parents."

"What about the sister at the end? Where did she go?" Gao Ming put the photo back in place. He had memorized all the details in the photo.

"This brings me to another very strange thing." The man's eyes slowly fixed on the face of his sister in the photo: "Sometimes I doubt whether I have this sister?"

"What do you mean?"

"She is in the photo, in the diary, in the account and so on, but I can't remember her." The man's distressed look did not seem to be pretended: "What does she look like, what happened between her and me, how did she disappear, I have no impression at all."

"You have been slowly forgetting your sister since a certain day?"

"It was not a slow process, but a very sudden thing. In other words, although the girl was in the photo of my family, I didn't know her at all."

The man's family was very strange, and it seemed that no one was normal.

"Don't force yourself if you can't remember." Gao Ming clinked glasses with the man: "By the way, you just said that your parents were locked up on the fourth floor. What happened to them?"

The man sighed softly, as if he had aged a lot. He sat next to the fireplace with a shotgun on his back, his eyes blending with the firelight: "My stepmother fell ill last winter. Dad has been taking good care of her, but my stepmother has become thinner and thinner, and her condition has not improved at all. One day, Dad discovered that my stepmother loved to eat freshly caught live fish from East Lake. Since then, he has gone out to fish for her no matter what the weather is like outside, but..."

"But what?"

"Dad always goes out at night and comes back with an opaque black bag before dawn."

"Are you sure there are fish in that bag?" Gao Ming didn't believe that the fish in East Lake had such magical effects.

"They are always tossing around in the bag, and dad has to work hard to hold them down. I actually haven't opened the bag to look at it. My younger brother did get close to the bag because he was naughty, but he was chased away by dad before he could open it."

"What did my younger brother see? What does the fish look like?" Gao Ming became more and more curious.

"He didn't see the fish, he saw the hair." The man's hand gently fiddled in the dark: "Strands of hair stuck together, with a fishy smell and dirt."

The fire in the fireplace dimmed a little, and the temperature in room 3003 seemed to be dropping.

"Dad only cooks for mom at night. He always puts a wooden lid on the soup bowl he stews, and he won't open it until he enters the fourth floor. As for the leftovers from my stepmother, dad won't waste them either. He often hides in the kitchen cellar to eat them himself. I once heard the sound of digging the soil. I don't know what dad buried after dinner." The man revealed another piece of information to Gao Ming, that the kitchen cellar where food is stored may hide some clues.

"It was probably at the beginning of winter this year that my father blocked the windows on the fourth floor with bricks in advance and installed iron guardrails in the corridor, but there was still a door on the guardrail at that time." The man's eyes were a little dim: "He told me in person that after he entered the fourth floor, he would remove the door and seal the way to the fourth floor."

"But you didn't do it."

"I thought they would come back, so I just replaced the door with a stronger guardrail. I also saw what my father and stepmother look like now. They have become monsters and only appear at night." The man clenched the shotgun: "All the misfortunes in my family may be related to my stepmother, but I don't have the courage to hurt her, nor the ability to find out the truth. I can only stay here day after day, hoping to survive the long winter night. Maybe, when summer comes, everything will be better."

"What if there is only winter in your world?" Gao Ming didn't completely believe what the man said, and the whole family was very strange.

"No." The man shook his head: "If you really want to help me, you can go to East Lake and see if you can find the 'fish' that my stepmother ate."

Bai Huang went to East Lake before dark. She did not mention any relevant information, and Gao Ming was not sure whether the other party was deliberately concealing it.

"Okay, I'll go at dawn."

"No." The man shook his head: "I've been there many times during the day and found nothing. The 'fish' should only appear at night."