Chapter 431 - 387: Full of Suspicions

Chapter 431: Chapter 387: Full of Suspicions

After receiving a call from Guan Tong, Shangyuan Zi rushed to the rehab center.

When she arrived, Guan Tong and Shi Jingyi were in the monitoring room.

"Did you find anything?"

She asked Guan Tong, trying her best to keep her voice calm.

But inside, she was anything but calm.

Anyone who’d had a long conversation with someone just the day before, only to hear the terrible news of their suicide today, would find it impossible to accept. They might even wonder if they were somehow responsible. ’How could she have been fine all this time, only to kill herself the day after we talked?’

"We didn’t see anything in the surveillance footage. Aside from your visit, no one other than the doctors and nurses entered Suzuki’s room or made contact with her."

"..."

"Don’t read too much into it. I don’t suspect you," Guan Tong said with a frown. "But she wouldn’t have just committed suicide for no reason. There has to be a cause."

"How did she commit suicide?" Shangyuan Zi asked. "Her room shouldn’t have had..."

The doctor replied, "By hanging. She must have used some kind of item she bought with Sublimation Coins. Our center has a strict policy against placing any dangerous items in patients’ rooms—even the walls are padded."

The doctor finished and looked at Guan Tong. "Sir, if you’ll permit me to speak frankly, there was no conspiracy involved in Miss Suzuki’s case, and she certainly wasn’t murdered. It’s far more likely she just couldn’t bear the pain anymore."

"Pain?"

"...You may not be aware, but when the addiction to those Alien Spores flares up, it plunges a person into extreme agony, far worse than any other kind of withdrawal.

"A normal person can only endure it a few times before they break. Even Ascenders, despite being much stronger physically, can’t take it in the long run... Miss Suzuki is far from the only one who has chosen to end it all."

"Then why was she able to hold on all this time, but suddenly couldn’t after I met with her?" Shangyuan Zi demanded. "Yesterday she promised me she would wait for visits, wait for me to take her back to see her friends. Why such a huge change in just one day?"

The doctor said helplessly, "We don’t know about that. But perhaps Miss Suzuki had already had a mental breakdown, and your visit was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. My point is, the reason Miss Suzuki held on for so long was this obsession with ’waiting for someone to visit.’ Your appearance allowed her to fulfill that obsession, so..."

Shangyuan Zi fell silent.

She recalled the manuscript papers covering the floor and the Profile drawings all over the walls of Suzuki’s room. Their frenzied content certainly spoke to Suzuki’s mental state.

’Could it really be true? Did my visit end up killing her?’

She looked to Guan Tong, who shook his head slightly. "Let’s go see her room. Also, I’m going to need a copy of all this monitoring footage."

"A copy? Absolutely not!" The center’s director shook his head. "This data is all private. Technically, we’re already breaking the rules by letting you view it. Letting you back it up and take it with you is out of the question!"

"You can communicate that to your superior. If your superior doesn’t agree, have him contact his superior."

"This..."

The director’s expression soured. He pulled out his phone and stepped outside the monitoring room to make a call.

Guan Tong directed a wisp of Shadow to slink out from under his pant leg and follow the director outside to watch and listen in. At the same time, he took a backup device from his Storage Ring and began wirelessly copying the video files.

A staff member saw this and moved to intervene, but they immediately pulled their hand back after meeting Guan Tong’s icy glare, allowing him to continue with the copy.

Since Guan Tong was determined to investigate this to the end, he wouldn’t let a single detail slide. Just because he couldn’t see a problem with the footage didn’t mean there wasn’t one, so he would have a professional look at it.

Meanwhile, he was clearly eavesdropping on the conversation between the director and his superior outside.

"Chief, the man insists on copying all the surveillance videos."

"What? That’s sensitive data from the rehab center! How can you let him copy it?"

"That’s what I told him, but he told me to contact you. He also said... that if you don’t agree, you should contact your superior."

"That brat is acting completely lawless, thinking he can get away with anything because of his connections to the Strategy Research Room!"

"So, Chief, should I let him copy it or not?"

"...Fine. Don’t argue with him for now. I’ll figure out a way to handle this."

"Understood."

The director hung up the phone. When he turned around, Guan Tong was standing right behind him.

"Ah!"

He hadn’t heard the slightest footstep and jumped in fright.

Guan Tong stared at him for a few seconds, then joined Shi Jingyi and Shangyuan Zi as they came out of the monitoring room. Together with the doctor and nurse who had been responsible for Suzuki, they all went to the patient room where Suzuki had lived.

Pushing the door open, Guan Tong’s eyes immediately fell upon the Profile drawings covering the floor and walls, and the manuscript pages strewn across the floor.

The doctor said, "Miss Suzuki loved to draw. We saw it as her way of de-stressing, so we normally didn’t interfere."

"Guan Tong, look," Shi Jingyi said in surprise, picking up a sheet of paper and handing it to him.

On it was a large, tangled mass of pitch-black lines, all of them spreading out from a black, human-like figure.

"Isn’t this a drawing of..."

Shi Jingyi didn’t finish the thought aloud, but she knew very well that the drawing depicted Guan Tong’s ability, Shadow.

Guan Tong took the drawing and looked at it. The image was familiar. When Suzuki helped Mizusawa Chun find him before, she had used her Profile ability to draw his likeness and his powers.

But Suzuki had gotten to know him later, and she’d also seen Mizusawa Chun’s true colors. Why would she still be drawing this kind of picture?

No one could sense any goodwill from the drawing. Anyone’s first reaction upon seeing it would be to assume the black figure within was a chaotic, evil monster.