Chapter 71 Monkey’s Paw: She Was Far Richer Than Imagined

Chapter 71: The Monkey's Paw: She Was Richer Than She Ever Imagined

Jessica clearly misread why the four of them had come and was thrilled someone had come to visit her.

To keep her in a good mood and make sure she'd cooperate during the subsequent interview—instead of making up nonsense that could throw off the interview—the four of them had no choice but to rally and make small talk with Jessica.

The News Club members came from various classes across the school. Of the four of them, only Leo was in Jessica's class.

Therefore, under the other three's expectant stares, Leo had to suck it up and take the lead in shooting the breeze about random class stuff, while the other three played their part as the "hype squad."

Thanks to their hard work, even though the conversation was totally shallow, Jessica was still cracking up, doubled over laughing. Her kinda fake laugh echoed through the whole room.

Too bad Leo and Jessica were in the same class but barely ever talked. Leo was outgoing and popular, while Jessica was basically invisible in class. So, after racking their brains and coming up empty, Leo traded looks with the others and decided to bring up the interview.

"Interview me?"

"Yeah. As you know, I'm a member of the News Club. The whole thing where you got your face scratched up by some unknown beast in the dorm has everyone freaked out. People really wanna know what went down that day. Maybe you could..."

"Heh... heh..."

Before Leo could finish, a creepy laugh cut him off. All four of them, Misha included, stared at Jessica in bed, terrified. Her head hung low, shoulders slumped like they were dislocated, her body shaking in the hospital gown with every laugh. The harsh hospital light from above made her look like some vengeful ghost clawing her way out of hell.

"Fake... it's all fake... And here I was thinking someone at school actually remembered me. Turns out it was all a bunch of lies. Watching me get the wrong idea, you must think I'm hilarious, huh? Hahaha... Jessica, the girl nobody notices, the girl nobody loves—how pathetic is that? Just 'cause I'm not pretty enough, I deserve to be ignored, is that it?!"

"No, Jessica, of course we care about you..." Leo stammered, trying to explain. But a pillow flying straight at his face cut him off.

"Don't lie to me! What caring, what visiting—it's all fake, all lies! You, including Edward who kept saying I was so special—you're all liars, liars, liars! Only the pretty ones get attention, 'cause in this world, skin color is everything, looks are everything. The only reason you'd mess with me like this is 'cause I'm ugly..." Jessica screamed hysterically, venting her inner negativity without restraint.

Everyone was caught off guard by her sudden outburst, so when Jessica looked up, curled her fingers into claws, and went to town on her own face, they all just stood there, frozen, too shocked to even try to stop her.

"It's all this face's fault, this stupid face's fault, this damn face's fault..."

Jessica screamed as she furiously clawed at the wounds on her face. The scabs on the scratches got ripped off chunk by chunk, exposing the raw, bloody flesh underneath. The pustules around the wounds also burst, thick yellow pus oozing out in globs and dripping into the wounds, making an already ugly face look even more horrifying.

"J-Jessica! Don't do this! It's all our fault—we're useless as parents. Let's save up some money, and when you're older, you can get plastic surgery, how about that..." Finally, Jessica's dad snapped out of it first, rushing over and asking timidly.

All he got in return was his daughter baring her teeth in a venomous smile.

"Too late! I already found a better way... You look down on me, huh? You won't accept me 'cause of how I look? I'll show you who the most beautiful person in the world really is!"

With that, Jessica yanked open her collar and pulled out a necklace on a leather cord from around her neck.

"The News Club photographer happened to snap a pic, and I asked him for the digital copy. Take a look—is this the monkey's paw Rebecca was talking about?" At this point, Misha paused her story, pulled out her phone, and sent a photo to Everly.

Everly tapped on it to open it. Ignoring Jessica's unhinged, terrifying face in the photo, the thing that stood out most was definitely the necklace on the girl's chest.

The pendant was a mummified animal paw, all dried up and shriveled. The paw consisted of two parts: the forearm and the palm. The forearm, connected to the leather cord, was wrapped in yellowed bandages, with sparse black hairs sticking out through the gaps. Below the forearm, the withered palm had five fingers that somewhat resembled a human hand, but differed fundamentally in both size and shape. The thumb and middle finger curved inward, the index finger was broken, and the remaining two fingers extended straight out.

The monkey's paw was elusive and mysterious, existing mostly only in rumors—even Rebecca had never seen the real thing. However, Rebecca had described to Everly what the monkey's paw looked like as recorded in literature, and it matched what was in the photo. Combined with the fact that the broken index finger perfectly matched the monkey spirit's finger in Everly's dream, Everly was convinced that it was indeed the monkey's paw.

So she nodded to Misha, signaling her to continue.

"Jessica grabbed the monkey's paw and loudly made her wish: she wanted to become the most beautiful person in the world. The moment the words left her mouth, everyone saw the ring finger of the monkey's paw, which had been pointing straight up, bend down with a 'crack'..."

Before everyone could recover from the horrifying sight of the monkey's paw moving on its own, a crackling sound of unstable electricity filled the air. The light overhead suddenly began to flicker violently, the frequency increasing rapidly until, unable to bear it any longer, it shattered with a "pop."

At the same time, panicked shouts came from the corridor outside. Through the frosted glass, they could see that it was pitch black outside the ward as well. Misha realized that it wasn't just this room—the corridor just beyond the door, and even the electrical appliances throughout the entire building, had all malfunctioned at that moment.

The curtains were drawn, and after the light broke, the ward was plunged into momentary darkness. Fortunately, Leo reacted quickly, rushing to the window and pulling open the curtains.

As the sunlight from outside streamed into the ward, everyone's vision was restored. They all turned to look at Jessica, who was leaning against the bed, and before they could even ask what on earth had just happened, they were stunned into silence by the sight before them.

"What did you see?"

"Yeah, what did we see..." Misha sighed, picked up her cup, and took a gulp of hot milk, a dazed expression on her face. "I'm not trying to be mysterious on purpose, but the scene at that moment was just too bizarre—I don't know how to describe it..."

Misha saw Everly—yes, that's right, Everly.

The girl on the hospital bed had golden hair smoother than satin, clear blue eyes like the sea, healthy skin with a slight tan, and delicate, well-defined features. Her hands clutched a monkey's paw necklace, and her arms beneath the hospital gown looked slender but were actually covered with a thin layer of muscle—strong and sturdy.

Misha was still puzzled as to why she was seeing her friend in the hospital room when, beside her, Leo shouted in surprise: "Angela, what are you doing here?!"

As he spoke, he couldn't help but step forward, wanting to walk to the bedside.

The camera student standing to Misha's right was also acting strangely. His eyes brimmed with tears, staring intently at the girl on the bed, his cheeks flushed, his expression fervent, muttering passionately under his breath, "So Seradia really isn't dead," and raised his camera to snap photo after photo of "Everly" on the bed.

The three people present each saw a different appearance for Jessica.

Misha knew Angela—she was Leo's girlfriend. The two of them had attended the same school since elementary school and had a very close relationship.

As for the camera student, Misha had heard from the club president that he seemed to be a die-hard fan of Seradia.

Combining this with Jessica's wish to the monkey's paw—"make me the most beautiful person in the world"—Misha suddenly understood.

"Beauty" was inherently a highly subjective concept. A female celebrity who was stunningly gorgeous in some people's eyes might not even compare, in others' eyes, to the friendly neighbor next door who smiled and offered delicious pastries. Some people preferred thin figures, while others liked those who were overweight...

So the monkey's paw took a clever shortcut. It didn't give Jessica a face that conformed to the aesthetic standards of the vast majority. Instead, it changed how Jessica appeared in each person's eyes: in Misha's mind, her friend Everly was the most beautiful person in the world, so Misha saw Everly in Jessica; Leo was deeply in love with his girlfriend Angela, so in his eyes, Jessica transformed into Angela; and as for the camera student, clearly, he was a devoted fan of Seradia, and his idol was number one in the world...

"You know what the funniest part is?"

Everly shook her head.

So Misha continued with a hint of slyness: "Jessica noticed something was off from our reactions. She picked up a mirror to look at herself, then screamed, threw the mirror away, and demanded loudly, 'Why have I turned into Everly!'—In her mind, you're the most beautiful person in the world! Hahahahaha!"

"..." Everly made a face like she'd eaten something sour.

Although Jessica acknowledging her looks was, to some extent, a form of recognition, Everly really wanted to advise Jessica to watch more TV and read more magazines. She was pretty in this life, sure, but not to the point of being the world's number one—she was just about the level of an average school beauty from her past life. If only Jessica had seen more of the world, she wouldn't have come up with such a terrifying idea!

"After we snapped out of it, everyone thought it was amazing that Jessica had suddenly changed like that, and we all pulled out our phones to take pictures of her. Then, a peculiar thing happened—even though in the camera's viewfinder, we still saw Jessica as the person we each considered most beautiful, when we pressed the shutter button, the photos that appeared in our albums clearly showed Jessica's own face... See, like this."

Misha opened her phone's photo album and showed the three of them a picture of Jessica with crisscrossing scars and pus-covered blood all over her face.

"Maybe the monkey spirit's power is limited and can't deceive the mechanical devices of the material world... Or perhaps it's unwilling to waste more energy perfecting Jessica's wish?" Everly speculated.

From the monkey spirit's method of attack, one could see that its abilities leaned toward mental manipulation. By distorting Everly's perception in the spiritual world, making her believe she had been disfigured, when Everly woke up, her face would indeed be covered in scars just like in the dream.

The second wish worked similarly—the monkey spirit didn't actually change Jessica's face; it only changed the images that appeared in other people's minds when they saw her. Changing what a camera captured in a photograph, however, involved interfering with the material world, which required a different kind of power.

Misha nodded in agreement, then said with some emotion: "Because of this distortion, even the doctors saw a different Jessica. They couldn't see the wounds on her face, so they couldn't treat her burst lacerations. In the end, it was Jessica's parents who took alcohol and cotton swabs and personally cleaned Jessica's wounds."

"Even though everyone else saw Jessica as someone else entirely, even though the real Jessica's face was covered in wounds and hideously ugly, in her parents' eyes, she still looked exactly as she always had, because in their hearts, their daughter Jessica was the most beautiful person in the world... Sigh, it's really something to reflect on."

Everly fell silent too.

There were all kinds of people in this world—girls like Jessica who were insecure, vain, and greedy; children like Natalie who would willingly curse themselves for their mother's sake; parents like Shelley who neglected their children entirely; and parents like Jessica's who devoted everything to their child...

If only Jessica could have realized it sooner and used her final wish to turn everything that had spiraled out of control back onto the right track. She was far richer than she had ever imagined.

...