Chapter 52 Butterfly: A New Video Was Posted

Chapter 52: Butterfly: A New Video Posted

West truly possessed exceptional intelligence-gathering abilities.

From speculating that the culprit was Natalie to investigating the situation until he had it nearly figured out, it took him only two short days. One had to remember, this was an old matter from the 1930s—not to mention that some information had been deliberately deleted, but also that a large amount of data had been lost over the years due to changing circumstances. Everly really couldn't figure out how he managed to do it.

It was truly amazing... Everly had asked Rebecca, and aside from the lack of information regarding the mannequin that West hadn't been able to uncover, every other detail matched West's deductions almost perfectly with the memories in the pendant!

Although she had witnessed West's capabilities before, his extraordinary intelligence and keen insight in this incident once again refreshed Everly's impression of this exorcist. Perhaps in the future, if she encountered an unsolvable case, she could seek out West—but he was very expensive, so she would need to save up more money for emergencies...

Unfortunately, although the full story of the incident had been investigated, the deceased employer couldn't be brought back to life, and the promised commission would never be collected. Additionally, since the witch Natalie had clearly already left Mikano City, taking with her the wooden mannequin from the storage room and Kelly's lame father, all of whom had vanished without a trace, the exorcist—who rarely came up short—finally pulled out of Mikano, fuming, after lingering there for a while longer.

Not long after West left, the Church's exorcists finished writing their incident report and hightailed it out of that backwater town as well.

The witch incident was thus declared over, but its consequences continued to affect the school.

Under Natalie's curse, a large number of teachers and students at Fino Middle School had suffered both physical and psychological torment, forcing them to take leave and be hospitalized. After recovering from their ailments, only a small portion of students returned to school; the rest either moved away with their families or transferred to other middle schools. As a result, Fino Middle School's 7th grade class was cut in half, and the faculty got a major shake-up, with a bunch of new faces taking over.

But this was good news for Everly.

Fewer people meant a quieter environment and fewer troubles. Thanks to the witch revenge incident caused by bullying, those kids with nowhere to burn off their teenage energy finally learned to think before they acted and quit while they were ahead, no longer stirring up trouble just because they were bored. Some who habitually enjoyed bullying their classmates, fearing they might be cursed, even went out of their way to apologize to those they had bullied.

Whether they actually meant it or not, at least bullying at Fino Middle School dried up for a while.

Meanwhile, with the advancement of information technology and the widespread adoption of touchscreen phones, the internet was becoming a bigger and bigger part of kids' lives.

In 8th grade, Everly's family finally got broadband and a computer set up at home. Old John put on his glasses and started fumbling his way through buying stuff online for the shelter.

That same year, Everly's touchscreen phone got an upgrade—she swapped it for a newer model with a bigger screen and better specs. Although it was still far from the phones she had used in her previous life, it was at least significantly better than the previous one, and Everly was seriously grateful.

Unfortunately, the school had no WiFi, and backwater towns like Mikano didn't have any carriers with cheap data plans. Although Everly wasn't short on money, data was stupid expensive back then—she couldn't just blow money on it, even if she had it; it would hurt her soul!

Therefore, while her classmates were all upgrading to touchscreen phones and gradually becoming addicted to posting stuff and making friends on social media like school forums and Twitter, Everly kept living like some kind of monk. She hadn't installed a single social media app on her phone, spending her days reading, studying, or working out to build muscle, living a super disciplined life. Only occasionally, when she encountered knowledge points in books she couldn't understand, would she grudgingly turn on her data to look something up.

Little did Everly know that her totally offline lifestyle was exactly what kept her out of the biggest nationwide mess that year.

She still remembered the day: May 23rd. In the morning, while everyone was in math class, a guy suddenly yelled, breaking the silence.

"Oh my God, Seradia is dead!"

"What? Really?"

"Why? Didn't they say she was getting better? How could this happen..."

"It's true, look at her Twitter!"

As soon as the boy spoke, the whole classroom went nuts. Nobody paid any attention to the teacher at the front of the room, whispering and buzzing about it. Some, upon being reminded, took out their phones, opened Twitter, and straight-up checked Seradia's page.

In the middle of all the chaos, Everly just sat there quietly, trading helpless looks with the annoyed teacher.

Everly knew of Seradia. She was an incredible singer, known as "the Queen of Sad Songs" and "the Walking Nightingale," and was one of America's best-selling female singers.

Seradia had a one-of-a-kind voice—sweet, smooth, and almost angelic. She was especially good at singing heartbreaking songs. It was said that when listening to her singing, a lot of sensitive listeners would get choked up and start crying without meaning to. At one outdoor concert, more than ten people in the crowd actually passed out from getting too emotional. Everly wasn't a fan, but she had to admit Seradia's songs were really something.

Right when her career was blowing up, Seradia got diagnosed with end-stage esophageal cancer. From then on, she totally vanished from the spotlight. Some said she'd gone into hiding to live out her last days in peace; others said she was receiving secret treatment at some facility. All sorts of rumors circulated, but even with reporters tearing the whole country apart, nobody could find her.

It wasn't until last month that a verified Seradia account suddenly appeared on Twitter.

The account was brand new, with only one post—a message reassuring everyone of her safety, roughly saying thank you for everyone's concern, that after nearly a year of treatment, her condition had improved, and she had found a way to recover, and so on—Everly had only overheard this in passing and wasn't entirely sure, because in her impression, end-stage esophageal cancer was incurable.

Seradia had many devoted fans. From that day on, countless fans flocked to Seradia's Twitter daily, leaving messages wishing her a speedy recovery and hoping she would return to the stage soon... Of course, there were also rational people like Everly who weren't fans, believing that curing esophageal cancer was nothing short of fantasy, and hoping Seradia wouldn't make baseless claims that misled her fans and gave false hope to other esophageal cancer patients.

This kicked off a full-on flame war on Twitter, drawing even more attention to Seradia's account.

And just this morning, Seradia's account, which had been silent for nearly a month, finally posted a new video. The content of the video was unknown, but checking the Twitter trending list, one could see the trend "#SeradiaDeath" glowing red-hot at the top. Therefore, that boy didn't even need to click on the video to learn of Seradia's death first.

Seradia's fans spanned all age groups, with students being especially numerous. After several failed attempts to recapture the students' attention, the teacher at the podium shrugged awkwardly and simply told everyone to browse Twitter as much as they wanted, and he would continue the lesson once they were done.

With that, the teacher also pulled out his phone and, without a care, opened his Twitter right at the podium.

Everly didn't have Twitter, nor did she have the data to download it... and besides, she had no friends in class.

Of course, if she were truly curious, she could shamelessly sidle up to other classmates and mooch off their phones to watch the video. But Everly felt that going through all that trouble simply wasn't worth it.

It was just a singer dying, after all. So many people died every day in this world; she didn't have the energy to care. In comparison, she would rather worry about the people around her, because their deaths often meant danger might be lurking nearby.

With that thought, Everly stood up out of boredom, left the classroom, and headed to the restroom.

It wasn't just her classroom. All the way down the hall, nearly every occupied classroom was noisy. Everyone was exclaiming, lamenting, and murmuring the name "Seradia." That was just how energetic middle schoolers were—always chasing the latest trends, a bit passionate, and a bit superficial.

After finishing at the restroom and stepping back into the classroom, Everly noticed something was off.

The classroom was too quiet.

The math classroom, which had been as loud as a marketplace just moments ago, had fallen so silent you could hear a pin drop. No one was talking anymore. Everyone had their heads lowered, eyes fixed intently on the screens in their hands, expressions both sorrowful and entranced. In their differently colored pupils reflected identical white rectangular screens.

The video had no sound... or rather, when it played, it only emitted a faint "hissing" static that was barely audible unless you listened closely. As they watched, occasionally someone would suddenly sob, large teardrops spilling from their wide-open eyes.

Everly had never seen such an eerie scene before. She was so startled that she immediately stepped back, her hair standing on end and a cold sweat breaking out on her back.

This was too abnormal—what on earth was happening...

Everly didn't dare make a sound to alert her classmates, nor did she dare spare even a glance at the still-glowing screens in their hands. Even though her curiosity had swelled to its limit, she firmly remembered one thing: never look at what you shouldn't.

Because it was obvious that all the strangeness had begun after the students watched the video Seradia had posted on Twitter.

Could this be a horror movie plot? If so, what kind of horror movie was it? She didn't think she'd ever seen a plot like this...

While thinking, she kept her footsteps light, cautiously retreating to a hidden corner, pulling out her phone, and first calling Old John.

Thankfully, Old John was busy tidying up the shelter and had no time to browse the internet at the moment. After telling her grandfather not to go online recently and not to watch any videos anyone shared with him, Everly hung up and walked through the eerily silent school building.

She noticed that the classrooms that had been bustling with noise when she passed them on her way to the restroom were now, like the math classroom, plunged into a deathly silence. Through the glass doors, Everly could see that nearly everyone in each class had their heads bowed, staring intently at the screens before them, motionless like puppets.

She walked through the silence like this, until finally, she encountered Mr. Miller, the disciplinary director, who was on patrol.