Chapter 189: “Disappearance”: A String of Consecutive Deaths

Chapter 189 "Disappeared": A String of Consecutive Death Cases

Everly thought that since the Cursed Witch Natalie's task for her was to "find the client," the person who originally owned the Bianca account should have already gone missing.

Whoever was currently using this account was probably some impostor from who-knows-where, and nine times out of ten, it was almost certainly the culprit responsible for making Bianca's presence vanish. After all, that's how horror movies always went.

Worried about tipping off the suspect, Everly didn't follow the account or interact with it in any way.

She saved a screenshot of Natalie's private message, then switched to her chat interface and sent the image to her usual hacker, Orff.

Everly: [Do me a favor. Look up who owns this account, where they usually log in from, and whether they've recently gone missing. Also, check if this account has switched login devices or changed login locations in the past four days.]

Orff: [OK.]

After the time loop incident, Orff had joined Everly and Misha in hiding out at the ranger's cabin during a parasite crisis. During that time, the three of them often gathered to play board games to pass the time.

They'd grown close from all that time together. After spending so much time together, the three had become fairly close friends. Whenever Everly needed something investigated, she'd go straight to Orff for help, and Orff never refused—he'd handle whatever needed doing without complaint. Occasionally, when Orff ran into trouble that required backup, Everly would step in and handle it.

Hacking a Twitter account was no big deal for Orff.

In under ten minutes, he sent Everly what she needed.

The data showed that the owner of "@Biance" was a college girl named Bianca. Her school was also in New Osebah, but it was a step up from Everly's state university—it was Most College, in the state capital, Konkard.

Most College was a private university and one of the Ivy League schools. Its flagship program was business, and it was the top university in all of New Osebah.

According to the information Orff provided, the "@Biance" account hadn't changed login devices in the past month, and its login locations had basically stayed within the Most College campus. There was no sign of the account being hacked.

Looking further into Bianca, she was a freshman studying economics at Most College. Her grades were decent, but she was introverted and withdrawn, kept to herself on campus, and had no real friends. It seemed that because of this, Bianca had become the target of bullying by several male and female students in a club—methods including but not limited to verbal abuse, physical mistreatment, and financial exploitation...

That was probably why Bianca had reached out to the Cursed Witch Natalie.

Unfortunately, no matter how powerful Natalie was, she was still just a witch, not a deity. With the @Cursed Witch account blowing up, countless people went online every day to beg Natalie for help. Natalie had to pick out the ones who genuinely needed help, then handle their requests in order of when they came in.

No matter how capable she was, she was just one person and couldn't be everywhere at once. So Natalie's clients often had to wait their turn before getting her help.

By the queue, today was supposed to be Bianca's day to get help and be freed from her bullies. But when Natalie tried to sense her through the account, she couldn't pick up even a trace of the girl anymore.

Orff: [But it doesn't look like Bianca's missing? Or maybe she just vanished and it hasn't hit the news yet? Either way, I didn't find anything online.]

A few seconds later, Everly's phone buzzed again.

Orff: [Oh, by the way, while digging into Bianca, I stumbled on some news about Most College. Not sure if they'll help, but take a look.]

Orff: [(Link) (Link) (Link) (Link)]

Orff sent over several news links—some written by students from the school's news department, others published by outside media.

Everly opened them and saw that Most College had been pretty chaotic lately, with several people dying in a row.

The first death happened in late January. A girl named Bethany hadn't been seen at school for days, and her family and friends couldn't get ahold of her either. Worried, her family reported her missing.

After receiving the call, the police dispatched an officer to the single apartment Bethany had rented off-campus. The officer had barely reached the door when he caught a whiff of something foul.

Used to dealing with murder cases, the officer quickly recognized the smell of a decomposing body.

Sensing something was off, and after knocking with no answer, he forced the door open and went in. Sure enough, they found Bethany's body inside—she'd been dead for a while.

She was slumped on the sofa, a makeup mirror beside her, the TV still playing some mindless soap opera. If not for the rotting smell, you'd have thought she was just watching TV.

It was cold out, and the apartment was sealed up tight with the heat on. That made the body decompose fast—by the time the officer got in, half the skin on her face had already rotted off.

A wrinkled flap of skin hung down like a torn poster, exposing the raw, bloody flesh and the white bone beneath. The rest of the body was just as bad; fluids had soaked her pajamas and the couch, pooling into a brownish puddle at her feet.

The autopsy showed Bethany had died three days earlier from organ failure caused by severe dehydration.

Basically, she'd died of thirst.

Forensic science generally says that at room temperature, a person can last about three days without water.

The ME then checked Bethany's stomach and found it empty, with only faint traces of food and fluids left in her intestines. Testing showed the food had been eaten seven days before she died.

So for at least three days, Bethany hadn't eaten or drunk a thing. She was starving and parched, her organs failing from dehydration, until she died a miserable death.

Oddly enough, Bethany came from a well-off family and had no money problems. Her apartment had normal running water, and her fridge was stocked full of food and drinks. All she had to do was get up, walk a few steps to the fridge, and she'd have had all the food and water she needed.

So why would she die of thirst in her own apartment? Was someone controlling her?

With all kinds of theories, the police searched the room and pulled footage from the building's entrance and the cameras across the street. The footage showed no one suspicious entering the building during that time, and there were no signs of forced entry—a perfect locked-room mystery.

Her autopsy also showed no signs of restraint, binding, or any external injuries.

After a thorough investigation turned up nothing, the police could only close the case with the ridiculous ruling of "suicide."

Not long after Bethany's case, on February 3rd, someone else died.

Unlike Bethany, this one happened in a campus dorm.

In the communal bathroom, a girl named Cassandra slipped suddenly while showering, hit her head on the floor, and blood—foul-smelling and dark—spread across the ground.

It was around four in the afternoon. Besides Cassandra, two other girls were also showering in the bathroom.

Hearing the sound of the fall, the two girls, ignoring the soap suds on their bodies, rushed over to Cassandra and tried to help her up.

But when they grabbed her arms, all they felt was an icy coldness.

"She was lying there like that, half on her side, with blood pooling under her head—about the size of a washbasin. The color was dark and murky, and it gave off an indescribable stench. I saw she was still clutching the showerhead, so I tried to take it from her, but her hand was freezing cold and her joints were stiff—it felt like touching a corpse, and I was too scared to move. Oh, and I also saw a lot of purplish-red patches on her back. I don't know if she was sick or something..."

The school news department interviewed one of the girls who had been at the scene and got this description.

The two girls thought Cassandra looked strange—her body was ice cold, and she didn't respond when they called her name. Remembering from some first-aid knowledge that you shouldn't move someone immediately after a fall, as it could cause secondary injury, they split up—one stayed to watch over Cassandra while the other threw on some clothes and ran out of the bathroom to call the school doctor.

But they were still too late. When the school doctor rushed to the dorm and examined Cassandra, the girl had already stopped breathing.

For this death case, the police ultimately released their findings as "primary brain injury caused by accidental fall."

Cassandra's death seemed to be just the beginning.

After her, on February 10th and February 16th, two more girls died on campus.

One of them died suddenly during class. Her friend was sitting beside her, head down taking notes, when she suddenly heard a sharp "thud." Turning around, she saw the girl slumped forward, her head resting on the desk, completely motionless.

The slow-reacting friend assumed the girl had stayed up too late and was just drowsy, so she didn't think much of it.

But even after class ended, the girl remained in that forward-leaning position, completely still.

The friend nudged her shoulder—no response. Then she tried lifting the girl's forehead. As the head tilted up, beneath the messy brown hair, she met a pair of dull eyes with white pupils and sunken sockets.

At some point, the girl had already died in her seat.

In this case, the police publicly listed the cause of death as sudden cardiac arrest.

Next up was the fourth girl, Abby. Compared to the previous three, her death caused a much bigger stir—Abby was gorgeous and a member of the school's drama club.

On February 16th, the drama club put on a modernized adaptation of "A Doll's House" on the school's outdoor stage, with Abby in the lead role of Nora.

In the third act, she sees her husband Torvald for the hypocrite he is and realizes she's just a trivial appendage in the marriage. She musses up the doll's hair right in front of him, walks to the mirror, and tells her reflection: "From now on, I believe that first and foremost, I am a person, just like you!"

This scene was the key moment of Nora's transformation and self-awakening, and Abby threw herself into it completely—her expressions, movements, and delivery were incredibly powerful.

Just as the audience, blown away by her performance, started clapping on instinct, Abby's body lurched hard from side to side. The next second, with a soft thump, amid the crowd's screams, Abby pitched forward and slammed face-down onto the stage.

The police's autopsy results showed that Abby died of organ failure caused by severe dehydration.

Yes, that's right—just like the first victim, Bethany, she had "died of thirst."

Since Abby had seemed completely fine beforehand and showed no signs of being controlled or forced, the police ultimately had no choice but to write "dehydration from extreme dieting" on the report and wrap the case up in a hurry.

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