??Chapter 407: 406. Ho of Happiness_1
Chapter 407: 406. Ho of Happiness_1
Happy Ho Apartnts was actually far from happy.
It was decrepit, aging, and long neglected, yet it was packed to the brim with residents to the point of overcrowding.
“We’ve never had such a person living here.”
The apartnt manager, likely a middle-aged man hired for the job, shook his head after looking at Flora’s photo.
“Could we take a look at the empty rooms here?”
Cui Siter produced a low-denomination banknote and handed it to the manager.
“No problem, follow .”
The mont the manager took the money, a smile spread across his face; he led Cui Siter and the others upstairs to a vacant room on the top floor.
“I figure you’re not going to rent, so I’ll just be straight with you—soone died in this room a while back. I’m not too clear on the details, but since then, the people who’ve lived here have been having a lot of problems, so eventually, it was left vacant.”
After giving a brief introduction, the manager opened the door.
Lu Ban saw a dilapidated but relatively clean room that seed to have been repainted recently, different from the other rooms they had passed on the way up.
The room was tiny, with only a bed, a desk, and a chair, not even a wardrobe, but at least it had a door that could isolate it from the outside world.
The windowsill was bathed in sunlight, casting dazzling golden hues on the bedsheet. On the windowsill sat a sowhat damaged bottle, empty.
“Strange, was there a bottle here before?”
The manager picked up the bottle, preventing it from falling to the ground should the wind blow it over.
Cui Siter stood frozen in his tracks, staring at the windowsill, seeing the smoke from the factory outside, watching the curtain flutter in the breeze—he felt as if he could see that young girl smiling at him.
This was the very room from his dreams!
Exactly the sa!
It was the sa one!
Cui Siter walked into the room as if he had been there countless tis before; he sat on the bed, right where he had been in his dream.
Everything felt like a reenactnt.
“Sothing happened here before? Who died? Is there a record of it?”
Cui Siter asked hastily.
“I-I’ll check.”
The manager, intimidated by Cui Siter’s deanor, forgot to ask for money and staggered downstairs, and Shia followed him. After a while, she ca back with a thick file.
“Room 404, the previous tenant was a textile factory worker nad John…”
“Not him.”
Cui Siter imdiately denied it, taking the file to check the previous records of the room.
Fortunately, the apartnt’s managent was relatively formal; each room’s record was on its own page, showing the traces of tenant turnover.
It was just that the records contained only textual information, lacking photos for comparison.
Soon, Cui Siter ca across an entry.
“Tenant’s na, Liz, moved in May of the 25th year, died in an accident in October…”
Cui Siter had found a record of death.
It was now the spring of the 26th year; the incident had happened a year before.
“Strange, why is there only one person?”
Shia rembered that there should have been two people in Cui Siter’s dream.
Yet, the rental record only ntioned one person.
“That’s pretty normal around here. As long as a na is registered, anyone can move in. It doesn’t matter whether one person or two live here, as long as they don’t disturb the others.”
The manager casually remarked.
“So people rent an apartnt and sublet their bed to soone else. They’ll even rent out the space under the bed. It’s no big deal.”
“This sub-landlord is a bit over the top.”
Lu Ban probably knew that these people couldn’t afford enough money on their own, so they had to find soone to “split the bill,” just like the many group rentals in big cities nowadays.
Many people work hard, only for all their earnings to beco rent paid to the landlord.
There will always be rent collectors, no matter the era.
He remarked.
“Now that we have the na, we can go investigate the police archives.”
Shia said, glancing at the paint in the room.
“When was this paint applied?”
The color of the paint wasn’t the sa as the one on the victim; it wasn’t as colorful and vivid.
“It must have been after the incident. The manager at the ti is gone, no one knows where, but I heard it was pretty serious around here. There were even gang mbers injured, and there have always been problems with the pipes in this apartnt.”
The manager recalled as he spoke.
“Gang mbers lived here too?”
Shia found it a bit inconceivable. Naturally, there were no gangs in Night Country, but according to Shia’s understanding, these should be so kind of loosely disciplined military organizations, which should have their own gathering places to live, not in such ssy apartnts.
“Yes, of course, but most apartnts don’t really welco those guys, as they tend to bring trouble. The gang that ca here that ti, I rember, was the Catania Family,”
the manager scratched his head.
“The Catania Family?”
Cui Siter felt as if sothing was connecting everything together in the dark.
“Are you saying the Catania Family ca here and got injured when the accident in this room happened?”
“I think so, but I’m not certain.”
The manager beca uncertain under Cui Siter’s questioning.
“But there were definitely injuries at that ti because the people next door were from the gang.”
He pointed to the tenant record.
It recorded, “Tuck, moved in November of ’23, left in October of ’25.”
It was October as well!
“Oh, I rember now, I saw it in the newspapers at the ti. Two gangs clashed, and quite a number of people died.”
The manager seed to have just rembered.
“Because of this, the big shots in Abandoned Capital even cracked down on the gangs for a while, but they only wiped out the insignificant ones; the real players were unaffected.”
“Thank you for the explanation.”
Cui Siter handed a banknote to the manager and then looked at Lu Ban and Shia.
“We need to figure out where this Tuck went, how this Liz person died, and what the Catania Family was doing here at that ti.”
“Then we should go to the police station first.”
Lu Ban suggested.
“Indeed.”
Cui Siter took one last look at the room, thinking as he descended the stairs.
“If that girl is Flora, she wouldn’t have changed so much in just one year’s ti, so the girl in my dream must be Liz. But how did the pendant end up with Flora?”
“Or could it be, that the main perspective of my dream was Flora, and the gaze I felt in the basent was the lingering will of Flora after her death due to extraordinary powers, and she has taken residence in , trying to tell
the answer?”
“At least it’s certain, the murderer didn’t pick their targets at random. Flora, Doctor Howes, the deceased of the Catania Family, these people are connected. If we can figure out the connections, we will know who killed them, and…”
“The murderer’s next target…”
Cui Siter thought of the upcoming charity banquet, where the mbers of the Catania Family would all be present.
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