Strange game designer.

Chapter 506 Fish

The hot water was poured into the glass. The man couldn't wait to take off his gloves, picked up the glass 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 without a door, the room is still very warm.

"I'm a very curious person." Gao Ming also picked up the water cup, but he had no intention of drinking it.

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

The photo shows a family of five, with three children standing in the front and parents standing in the back. It is worth noting that the face of the child in the center of the photo is cut out, leaving a dark hole. The remaining four people stare at the camera expressionlessly. If it weren't for the blessing words such as "Happy Family" 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 any physical contact. There was a distance between each person.

"Are they your family?"

"Yeah." The man held the water cup and seemed to be lost in memory: "The wild and rude middle-aged man is my father. He is a mixed-race and a handsome bastard. He is different from my playboy 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's emotions towards his father are somewhat complicated, with admiration and helplessness.

"The middle-aged woman standing behind me is my younger brother and sister's biological mother. She seems to never age. As far as I can remember, 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. She looked 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 brother. I don't know why this happened. Since he disappeared, all the photos of him in the manor have become like this." The man noticed Gao Ming's suspicious look and said, "I know you don't believe it, but this 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."

"Where is the last sister? Where did she go?" Gao Ming put the photo back to its 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 his sister's face in the photo: "Sometimes I even doubt whether I have this sister."

"What do you mean?"

"She's in the photos, in my diary, in my accounts, and so on, but I can't remember her." The man's distressed look didn't seem fake: "What did she look like, what happened between us, and how did she disappear? I have no impression at all."

"Since a certain day, have you slowly forgotten your sister?"

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

The man's family is all very strange, and no one seems normal. "Don't force yourself if you can't remember." Gao Ming clinked glasses with the man and said, "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 by the fireplace with a hunting rifle on his back, his eyes blending with the firelight: "My stepmother fell ill last winter, and my father has been taking good care of her, but my stepmother became thinner and thinner, and her condition did not improve at all. One day, by chance, my father discovered that my stepmother loved to eat freshly caught live fish from East Lake. From then on, no matter what the weather was like outside, he would go out to fish for her, but..."

"But what?"

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

"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 struggling in the bag, and dad has to work hard to hold them down. I have never opened the bag to check. 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 brother see? What did the fish look like?" Gao Ming became more and more curious.

"He didn't see the fish, he saw hair." The man's hand gently fiddled in the dark: "Strands of hair stuck together, smelling of fish 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 has cooked and doesn't open it until he reaches the fourth floor. As for the leftovers from my stepmother, Dad doesn't waste them. He often hides in the cellar in the kitchen to eat them secretly. I once heard the sound of digging. I wonder what Dad buries after dinner." The man revealed another piece of information to Gao Ming. The cellar where the kitchen stores food might contain some clues.

"It was probably around the beginning of winter this year when my father blocked the windows on the fourth floor with bricks and installed iron railings in the corridor, but there was still a door on the railings 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. That's why I saw what my father and stepmother look like now. They have turned into monsters and only appear at night." The man clenched his 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 nights. Maybe, in the summer, everything will be fine."

"What if there is only winter in your world?" Gao Ming did not completely believe what the man said. The whole family was very confused.

"No." The man shook his head: "If you really want to help me, you can go to East Lake and have a look. Maybe 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 daybreak."

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

(End of this chapter)