Mysterious Hunting Ground

Chapter 157 157. Tendency
Dean and Jonah returned to the mall, holding Peter's photo and asking around the store.

"Good afternoon, Catherine, excuse me, do you know him?" Dean walked to the ice cream counter and handed Peter's photo to the woman. In a few days, I have limited contacts, and I have never seen this child."

"Okay, keep busy, we won't bother you." Dean was about to take Jonathan away,

"Wait a minute," Catherine quickly scooped up two cones and handed them over, smiling softly, "please cool off."

"Thanks." Dean unceremoniously bit off half of the cone, and grinned, "I'm the most fair person, buy me ice cream, and call me next time you're in trouble."

"Heck, your favor? I made a lot of money!"

……

Next, the two visited clothes, glasses, and various shops one by one... but they didn't get any results. The employees of the shops didn't have much impression of Peter.

Until a movie peripheral store, the store owner with a flamboyant tuxedo and mustache finally gave a clue,
"Peter Seymour is a regular customer in my store," the man handed the photo back to Dean, stroking his mustache, "he has been visiting the store every month in recent years to buy some interesting little things , but his family is not very well-off, so he buys cheap things."

"What did he buy?" Dean asked.

The boss turned around and pointed to the dazzling array of colorful products on the shelves in all directions in the store, "His favorites are posters and miniatures, followed by clothes and props from some movies..."

"He is obsessed with horror, thriller, supernatural and monster movies..." The boss suddenly chuckled, "So the things he buys are more frightening, such as dentures, capes, toy claws, and monster models with horns."

Dean nodded secretly.

This is consistent with what the three basketball players and Jonathan said, Peter is an out-and-out weirdo.

"So what do you think of Peter?" Dean asked again.
"I'm from a small town, and I've heard about this kid's experiences." The boss suppressed his smile, shook his head and sighed, "My parents left early, and I was raised by my aunt, but I didn't hang out on the streets like other little bastards, making trouble everywhere. He honestly studies in school, so he is a good boy in his bones."

"And I can see that he is not like other customers who buy movie accessories just to satisfy their curiosity and pursuit of excitement." The boss's eyes flashed with memories, and a look of approval appeared on his round face, "His love for monsters comes from In his heart, he will properly collect it when he buys it home and appreciate it repeatedly. He is a true monster lover."

True monster lover?
Dean noticed that the investigation progress jumped from 15.00% to 17.00%,
"Where did Peter go this summer vacation?"

"I don't know, I have to visit the store every day and see it very late, and I rarely ask about the lives of customers."

"Then why do you think Peter is unconscious?"

"I'm not a doctor, so I can only guess randomly. It should be some kind of rare and strange disease." The boss said regretfully, "I hope the poor child can wake up as soon as possible, otherwise there will be one less loyal customer in the store."

"Okay, thank you for your answer." Dean spent a few dollars to buy a Star Wars poster from the boss's shop, turned and left.

"Have you found any clues?" Jonathan followed him through the shopping mall hall with people coming and going,
"A little bit..." Dean passed the poster into the fantasy space in the windbreaker, and when he looked up, he saw a Barris Bookstore in the distance. "Go and see this one."

……

Entering the store, Dean glanced at it from the perspective of God as usual.

It is very quiet, with soft lighting. Behind rows of tall bookshelves, a few readers are sitting on the smooth marble floor, flipping through the books intently.

And at the front desk stood a thin young clerk who was obsessed with a chicken soup book called "How to Become a Millionaire".

Dean has always paid attention to equal transactions, so he first asked Jonathan to choose a book about shooting and boxing to help the clerk's dream.

Dengdeng.

Dean tapped the front desk with his index finger upside down, and put two books on it.

The clerk closed the book, rubbed his eyes with dark circles, and slowly started packing.

"Dude, let me ask you something, do you know the person in the photo?"

"I am very impressed, Peter Seymour, a student in the middle school in the town, and a regular customer," the clerk nodded, looking at the photo as if seeing a good friend who died unfortunately, full of nostalgia, "He used to come to the library every few days Soak in the shop for a while, read some novels and picture books, um, Cheng Hui, twenty dollars."

Dean gritted his teeth. The prices of old and beautiful books began to rise in this era. Buying books is not cheap at all. It is difficult for ordinary students to afford them. Relying on bookstores or going to public libraries is a good choice.

"Are you familiar with him?" Dean took out his wallet to pay the bill, and gave the packed book to Jonathan who was beside him, who hugged him tightly with surprise and gratitude.

"It's average. Although there is very little communication, people who like to read have a kind of spiritual understanding." The clerk smiled more on his pale and tired face, and pointed to the empty area behind the bookshelf on the left, "He usually likes to stand There, watching for two hours without moving."

Dean asked him again what books he was reading. As expected, the answers were books related to ghosts, zombies, aliens, unsolved mysteries of the world, and so on.

"I haven't seen Peter for half a month, and I'm not used to it."

"So about his illness..."

"I've heard that, and I deduce that he has serious psychological problems, such as depression, and then formed corresponding somatic symptoms." The clerk raised his glasses on the bridge of his nose, and said a bunch of professional terms, "I I have seen him standing in the corner of the bookshelf several times, hugging the book, covering his mouth, weeping softly with trembling shoulders, and there are many sad things in his heart."

The clerk described the meal artistically, and said seriously, "Once a person is too sad, his body will be damaged."

Dean couldn't help interrupting, "Then do you know why he is sad?"

"Once I was really curious and couldn't help breaking the rule of not interfering with customers, so I went over to chat with him." The clerk paused, looking at the chandelier on the ceiling with melancholy, "He is not good at communication, and his emotional intelligence is not good. Worrying. Chatting for a day always leads the topic to scary or even disgusting monsters, so peers regard him as a weirdo, ridicule him, and laugh at him, except of course Jonathan by your side."

"So, he was very lonely."

"I once gave advice and advised him to imitate the classmates around him and learn to be a little more normal, but he stubbornly remained silent." The clerk said helplessly, "It's really a troublesome child."

"It's not that serious!" Jonathan retorted, poking his neck. "Peter is just not very good at communicating, but he is very nice."

"No matter how beautiful the heart is, it's useless if you don't know how to express yourself." The clerk retorted indifferently with his arms folded, "Even a wise and gentle person like me can't bear to communicate with him. He is destined to not make many friends,"

"With few friends, and unwilling to share and communicate with his family, negative emotions continued to accumulate, and he became lonely, restless, depressed, and finally fell ill with strange diseases."

After the clerk made such an analysis, Dean was surprised to find that the system progress had slowly increased to 20.00%.

So Peter is a lonely weirdo, a big clue?
"So did Peter ever get into a fight with anyone in the library?"

"You mean this stuffy gourd? No."

"Has he been anywhere other than bookstores and movie theaters?"

"Sorry, I'm busy reading and don't have time to pay too much attention to a customer."

"Well, I wish you a millionaire soon." Dean glanced at the pages of the book that the clerk had turned, and the dense notes made people dizzy.

Turning around and leaving the bookstore with a wave of his hand, he sighed to the people around him, "Peter is more suitable for listening to that song 'Space Stranger' than us."

Jonathan hugged the book and camera tightly, and nodded silently.

"Dude, don't you have anything to say?" Dean looked into his eyes, "As Peter's best friend, you also know him best, and you should know best that he may have some psychological problems, why didn't you tell me before? "

"Did he have any abnormal behavior before the accident, or did he say anything strange?"

Jonathan lowered his head even lower, his taut pale side face revealed a stubbornness,

Seeing this, Dean was sure that this guy was hiding something,

"You don't want to save Peter, do you?" Dean looked up at the sunset in the sky, his eyes were melancholy, and he didn't hide the disappointment in his tone, "You hope he dies in a lonely coma, maybe today."

"Don't talk nonsense! I want to save him!" Jonathan suddenly yelled, staring at Dean angrily, his tone full of struggles, "I promised to keep him secret."

"What's the secret?" Dean took a step closer and asked, but Jonathan pursed his lips tightly and remained silent.

"Keeping a promise is fine, but what do you think would happen if you killed a best friend because of your secrecy?"

Jonathan licked his dry lips, panic flickering across his face.

"Let me tell you..." Dean continued to put pressure on his words, "you will wake up in a nightmare every day in the future, and the pale face in the coffin will keep flashing in front of your eyes, your whole life will be spent in regret, and you will never Can't forget this wrong decision...Is this kind of secrecy necessary?"

With a pale face, Jonathan took two steps back and sat down on the steps. After a while, he sighed and covered his face in pain.

"Stop talking, I'll tell you all."

"Peter came to look for me at home two days before the accident, with a smile on his face all the time, as if he had encountered some great happy event. I asked him and he didn't say anything. He just listened to music for a long time in the room normally. ...Before leaving, he suddenly said something unusual to me."

"What?"

"He asked me if one day he was gone, would I miss him? I asked him what was going on, but he changed his words as a joke and told me not to say it."

Dean was startled, why did this kind of words sound a bit overwhelming.

Like some kind of farewell?

Dean's mind flashed through the previous movie theater manager's narration, Peter voluntarily took huge risks to participate in Monica's magic show three-body body, and extreme blindfold magic, which is completely inconsistent with his shy personality.

Now it seems that there is only one reasonable explanation. Peter is vaguely expecting an accident in the magic show.

Expect yourself to encounter the unexpected.

Combined with the words of the bookstore clerk, Peter was under tremendous psychological pressure. He was depressed and often wiped his tears by himself, and he probably had a certain tendency to commit suicide.

Dean's thoughts were like lightning, and the progress of the incident also jumped to 20.00% five.

"Could it be that Peter's illness was not caused by outsiders' poisoning, but by his own suicide?"

Dean made this inference, but the progress has not changed at all this time, and the evidence is not enough.

So it's just a tendency to commit suicide, but I'm not sure if it's suicide.

Jonathan shook his head resolutely upon hearing this,
"After so many years, Peter has long adapted to the current life. It is impossible for him to suddenly lose his mind because of loneliness or being excluded."

"And he's just an ordinary high school student, he doesn't have the ability to let himself contract this terrible strange disease!"

Jonathan seemed very sober and rational at this moment, obviously thinking a lot in private.

"You're right, whether Peter committed suicide and why, I can't draw a conclusion now," Dean couldn't help nodding, and the crying woman in the ward flashed in front of his eyes. She concealed too much information, "but his aunt Lucia should Know better than us, go, ask."

(End of this chapter)