S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 4 Chapter 27

A Requiem for a Murderer 27 – Prerequisites for Happiness

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The students were confused as the original stage play turned into a one-man show by Zhan Zhao, but since Zhan Zhao was so perfect on the dark stage under the bright spotlight, they couldn't care less about their doubts and just appreciated it seriously.

As soon as Zhan Zhao appeared on stage, he threw out a surprise, saying that this place was not a school originally, but a grave, a killer's grave.

It was a late night and the atmosphere was good. It is said that the scariest thing in the world is to listen to a ghost story alone, while the least scary thing is to watch a horror movie together with a group of people, so the students were clutching their long-prepared fries and coke with great interest.

Zhan Zhao paused appropriately before speaking, "This place, it was originally a poor and remote village with very few people. Twenty years ago, it was secluded beyond belief."

The students looked at each other in disbelief, thinking that this really was the case. In recent years, there were suddenly many more people, mainly because of this school.

"Does everyone like to watch movies?"

Zhan Zhao suddenly popped a question, and most of the students nodded their heads.

"Have you ever watched Peace Hotel?"

The crowd all thought about it, and most of them nodded; it was an old movie, quite a classic.

"Well, the story starts here." Zhan Zhao showed a nice smile, with a pair of clear cat eyes, electrifying the crowd of students in the audience with a dizzying haze.

Bai Yutang looked at him and shook his head, while beside him, Zhao Jue grimaced – Dead cat, discharging his energy randomly!

Zhan Zhao continued with what he was going to say, "Once upon a time there were some killers, well, it was about twenty years ago. They were trained to carry out missions, some were injured and some died. One day, the little bit of conscience and human nature that they had suppressed in their hearts suddenly awakened. They saw parents and children enjoying a happy family, and felt strange – Why did they want to go down this road of no return with no tomorrow, no happiness and sooner or later, death?"

Many students found Zhan Zhao's statement interesting, and several laughed.

Zhou Yi, who was sitting in the front row, also laughed, except that the laugh tasted like the black coffee in his hand, bitter as hell. It was indeed funny, the more real things are, the more funny they are, because most people don't live their lives that real, a life that is too real is destined to be just a joke.

"In a person's life, there are three kinds of pursuits." Zhan Zhao said, "The pursuit of success, the pursuit of freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. Among them, freedom is the most basic pursuit. What is the prerequisite for freedom?"

A student with a quick brain raised his hand, "Security!"

"Smart!" Zhan Zhao nodded approvingly, "What about the prerequisite for the pursuit of success?"

The students all looked at each other and whispered to consult, after which someone answered:

"Ability?"

Zhan Zhao shrugged slightly.

"Academic knowledge?"

Zhan Zhao shook his head.

At the side of the stage, Zhao Jue raised his hand, "Interest."

Zhan Zhao gave him a contemptuous look, and Zhao Jue flattened his mouth and asked Bai Yutang, "If it's not interest, what is it?"

Bai Yutang couldn't laugh or cry.

At that moment, a low and magnetic voice came from the dark audience and softly said, "Ambition."

Zhan Zhao smiled, he could hear that it was Bai Jintang who had said this. Indeed, successful people had a thorough understanding of success.

"It is indeed ambition!" Zhan Zhao nodded in satisfaction, "The starting point of everything is because of ambition."

The students didn't seem to have any objections and found this answer acceptable; indeed, it is ambition that leads to striving, even by unscrupulous means. Every kind of success is the result of ambition in some sense.

"What about happiness?" Zhan Zhao stood still and asked, "In this world, what kind of people will be happy? What is the biggest prerequisite for happiness? "

"I know, it's freedom and success!" There were a few clever boys who roared, making the crowd laugh.

Many others also gave a variety of answers, after all, they were all students, and the atmosphere gradually became somewhat like a classroom discussion.

After Zhan Zhao dismissed all the answers, he finally reached out and pointed at Zhou Yi who was staring blankly at the stage, "Tell me, what is the prerequisite for happiness?"

Zhou Yi was stunned, his gaze meeting Zhan Zhao's, and after a moment's hesitation, he shook his head with a bitter smile; Zhan Zhao was too vicious.

Still, he spoke quietly, "Only those who have never done anything bad deserve to be happy."

After a moment of silence, several students thought it was a brain teaser, thinking that the answer should be this, but of course, only a few people, such as Luo Tian who was sitting in the stands in a daze, could understand the bitterness.

What is the prerequisite for happiness? Why do you always hear people say that there is no turning back in life? Sometimes one wrong step is taken, and some mistakes are like tattoos, which cannot be washed away.

Luo Tian knows this all too well. For example, when Luo Yang gave him a present on Father's Day, he felt very happy, but that night he dreamt of the man he had killed in the jungle in order to "survive", and all the things that followed, before waking up from his nightmare. He often dreamt that his mistakes had finally come back to haunt Luo Yang.

This feeling made every step difficult for him. He did not dare to ask for anything or fight for anything, and did not even dare to accept Ma Xin, because he felt that he would not be happy and that sooner or later his retribution would come and he would have to drag a good girl into it.

For this reason, Luo Tian once did psychological counselling with Zhan Zhao on this subject. Unlike other people who counselled him, Zhan Zhao did not say anything like "don't think too much, it will get better, past mistakes are not your fault, you were forced to..." and so on. Such words had been heard everywhere, but instead, he firmly said: "That's right, you'll get your retribution sooner or later."

Luo Tian was dumbfounded and looked at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao patted him on the shoulder, "There will always be retribution, so enjoy the feeling of happiness before it happens."

As a result, Luo Tian was at peace with himself and was happy when he should be happy, loved his son and would marry a wife, so that when retribution comes, he can be happy and comfortable when he dies.

In fact, this kind of reasoning can only be understood when you grow up. In this life, most people are paying for the mistakes they made when they were young and ignorant. Some people make small mistakes, and fortunately they can live the rest of their lives with peace of mind, while some people make mistakes that cannot be undone, whether they are forced or voluntary, and are not immune to the guilt that cuts off the road to happiness.

"Those killers, awakened killers, escaped their original fate. It's not clear whether they were lucky or unlucky. After killing so many people, they were not killed or captured, they were just forgotten!" Zhan Zhao walked over to a sofa that had appeared in the middle of the stage at some point and sat down, elegantly crossing his legs and taking a sip from a cup of coffee, "The only way out for them was to pick a quieter town, hunker down and enjoy the only one of their three pursuits still left, freedom! In their own Peace Hotel, having a drink and a chat."

At this point, the sound of the wind and the melodious ringing of bells sounded in the background.

"Does this bell sound familiar?" Zhan Zhao prompted, "Listen carefully."

The students all listened attentively, and immediately, a few of them understood, "It's the church over in the abandoned area, isn't it? There's a cemetery behind it."

"That's right." Zhan Zhao nodded with a smile, "The cemetery over in the abandoned area, have you guys studied it carefully?"

Everyone found it funny, who would go to a slum and study the cemetery behind a dilapidated church.

"That place is very strange." Zhan Zhao held his chin and muttered to himself, "I heard more than one person tell me that the people buried there were all forgotten, and that no one could remember who was buried there."

Bai Chi and Luo Tian looked at each other – What was the connection to the case? That church.

Zhao Jue held his chin and looked at Bai Yutang who was leaning against the stage in silence; right now, he was extraordinarily quiet and calm, more so than ever before. Zhao Jue shook his head and sighed, the beautiful instincts of the Bai family, the genetic inheritance of all evils, the unpredictable talent, the life that was destined to be extraordinary and equally destined not to be lived in an ordinary way. Being a genius is a double-edged sword, and geniuses, for the most part, are not as happy and joyful as fools.

"So I'll give you two choices." Zhan Zhao stretched out two long, slender fingers, the huge spotlight causing the shadows of his fingers to fall on top of the curtain behind him, his knuckles crisp, clean and upright.

"First, the graves are filled with killers who died after pursuing peace over the years, no one will remember them, so they are buried in graves where no one goes to pay their respects." Seeing that the students seemed ready to nod, Zhan Zhao continued, "Secondly, those people were killed by the killers. The deceased who had died by their hands and whose names even they might no longer remember, and who have no corpses, only empty tombstones, where the sins belonging to the killers and their rights to happiness are buried."

The students stopped talking, both options were possible.

"Either one, that church, which means nothing to many, which has been forgotten by many yet remembered fondly by some, means a lot, as well as the abandoned area." Zhan Zhao smiled and asked, "Who grew up as a child in the abandoned district? Who really knows their parents? The parents that you think are honest, hard-working and diligent, successful or unsuccessful, content with the status quo or dynamic, do you know anything about their past? Could it be that they were once the ones who buried their right to happiness with their own hands, the formidable killers of the world?"

Many of the students laughed, but it was not necessarily impossible, most of them did not know much about their parents' lives when they were young.

"For example," Zhan Zhao continued, "you are the killers hiding in the Peace Hotel, the ones who buried the past and threw away the future but were lucky enough to give birth to the next generation, what do you want to see the most? What do you want your children to stay away from the most?"

The students were not stupid and each understood the reasoning behind it; if it was just a story, then the previous generation did not want their sins to continue to the next generation, nor did they want the next generation to repeat their suffering.

Luo Tian frowned slightly. What he wanted most was to see Luo Yang grow up healthy and well, and what he wanted more than anything was for Luo Yang to stay away from a life like his own, where he was forced to commit serious sins at an age when he was not yet in control of himself, so that he could no longer walk his own path with peace of mind.

At this point, a few students who couldn't help but be curious asked, "What does that have to do with the school?"

"Yeah, why do you say this school is a grave?"

Zhan Zhao faintly raised the corners of his mouth, "Because graves are not always used to bury the past, the sins in them may have been forced and regretted, or they may have been deserved and resurrected."

"Just twenty years ago!" Zhan Zhao suddenly raised his voice a few notches, startling those students who were drowning in their imagination into thumping their chests.

Zhao Hu was so shocked on the second floor that he kicked his legs, "Fuck, here we go again, this trick works every time, I'm scared to death!"

Ma Han was helpless. The so-called 'this trick' was a tactic often used by Zhan Zhao when telling ghost stories. First, he would lead people into a multiple choice question, letting them imagine a horrible hypothesis, and when they were concentrating on the two choices, a sudden stimulus would strike, stimulating the deeply buried fear in the person's self-protective state, which was indeed foolproof and always successful.

Zhan Zhao smiled and lowered his voice a few notches, "Those killers found a person, a secret, hidden in this school, a school that is too important to them and their next generation..."

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: February 17, 2023 by Angel

Edited: March 13, 2023 by Angel