Antonio has a point. Looking closely at the missing person notice, it says this loli went out to meet someone from an online date and never returned. She didn't go home and couldn't be found—it's almost as if she evaporated from the face of the earth.
This is similar to what Gennaro said about meeting someone through online dating. Could it be...?
I don't dare to think further. If this kid deceived us, then I'm an accomplice in giving him the tattoo.
As the saying goes, if Gennaro killed that loli and she returns as a ghost for revenge, that's natural cause and effect. No one else should intervene, or I'll be tainted with karma too.
"Stein, send him a message on WeChat. Just ask him how well the Tattoo of Gods and Ghosts is working," I said.
"I'll send it." Stein opened his phone and messaged Gennaro directly on WeChat. But after just a few seconds, his face darkened. "What the hell? This kid deleted me. Well, it's normal—we only had a business relationship. Now that he's gotten the Tattoo of Gods and Ghosts, we're useless to him. Deleting WeChat isn't too surprising."
I shook my head. "That's not normal. The tattoo was only done a few days ago. Even if it worked, it wouldn't be so fast for him to delete us. Besides, he paid 20,000. If there's a problem later, what will he do? Who will he turn to?"
I don't know why, but I feel more and more that something is wrong with this Gennaro—and this feeling is growing stronger.
"Let's go find him." I couldn't hold back any longer and took Antonio and Stein to Gennaro's place.
When we arrived, we knocked for a long time before someone finally opened the door—but it wasn't Gennaro. It was the landlord.
I asked where Gennaro had gone. The landlord said he had checked out yesterday.
Checked out? What a coincidence—just got the Tattoo of Gods and Ghosts and moved out?
I asked where Gennaro had moved to. The landlord said he seemed to have gone back to his hometown but wasn't sure.
I pressed further, asking where Gennaro's hometown was. "We're his friends. We can't contact him now and need to find him urgently."
The landlord said he didn't know—he was just the landlord, not Gennaro's relative or anything.
I handed the landlord a few hundred dollars. "We need a copy of his ID for the rental records. The address is on it—please help us out."
The landlord seemed to think the amount was too little and shoved the money back at me. I had no choice but to raise it to a thousand dollars. He pretended to hesitate for a moment before finally accepting it with alacrity. Then he turned and went inside the house. It didn't take long for him to return with a photocopy of an ID card. Looking at the photo on it, it did indeed resemble Gennaro. I memorized the address and handed the copy back to the landlord.
"Little Boss, you're not actually planning to go all the way to Gennaro's hometown to find him, are you?" Stein thought it wasn't worth the trouble. The tattoo was already done, and there was no point in tracking Gennaro down now—why bother?
I said this matter had to be cleared up, or it would weigh on my heart like a rock. I couldn't just let it go! I hoped I wasn't an accomplice—I didn't want to be entangled in this karma.
If Gennaro had killed that loli, then it was only right for her ghost to seek revenge on him. If I interfered and stopped her, I'd be meddling in their karmic retribution, and who knew what consequences that might bring?
Stein couldn't argue with me, so he went along. It took nearly a day and a half by bus to reach Gennaro's hometown, and by the time we arrived, it was already dark.
There were no hotels in the countryside, so we had to find a household willing to take us in. After stuffing a few hundred dollars into their hands as lodging fees, we secured a place to stay.
I hadn't expected this trip to cost so much—between bus fares and other expenses, we'd already spent almost two thousand dollars, with a full thousand going to the landlord alone. The old man was starting to regret getting involved. Maybe we should've just let it go.
The one who took us in was an elderly man named Remmerink, already over sixty years old. Normally, he wouldn't have accepted strangers, but he needed money for his children's tuition, so he agreed to let us stay.
After eating and drinking at Remmerink's place, I asked him about Gennaro—whether he knew of someone by that name in the village.
Remmerink said he did know him, but Gennaro was a bit of a loner who hardly interacted with anyone in the village. His personality had something to do with his background.
When Gennaro was eight, his mother had an affair. His father was a butcher, and one day, he caught her in the pigsty with another man, doing indecent things. Enraged, his father killed the pair on the spot and dumped their bodies in a well.
His father's crime was eventually discovered. After a police investigation, the two bodies were recovered from the well, and Gennaro's father was arrested and later executed by firing squad.
Left without parents, Gennaro grew increasingly isolated. He was raised by his grandmother, and in recent years, he'd gone out to work, rarely returning home. Occasionally, he'd come back to visit his grandmother, but just a couple of months ago, he seemed to have brought a girl home—a lively, cute girl with twin ponytails.
Strangely, Gennaro left the village not long after that, but the girl was never seen again. Then, just yesterday, he returned, saying he wouldn't go out to work anymore and intended to stay home with his grandmother.
After hearing Remmerink's words, all three of us sucked in a sharp breath. That girl Gennaro had brought back—could it have been the missing loli?
Later, Gennaro left the village, but the loli disappeared. So where did she go?
Could it be that Gennaro...?
This was completely different from Gennaro's story. He never mentioned bringing her back to his hometown. What about the "seven times a night"? What about the spicy hot pot? Could it all have been lies? And what about the pig demon?
Discovering that Gennaro had lied cast doubt on everything he'd said—because if part of his story was false, all of it could be.
Late that night, after the Remmerinks had fallen asleep, the three of us sneaked out and followed the directions Remmerink had given us earlier to Gennaro's house.
Gennaro's house was a two-story building, though unrenovated. Behind the house stood a pigsty with only one pig—an exceptionally fat one—and not far from the house was a well.
Even before coming here, I had suspected that Gennaro might have killed the loli, just like his father, and dumped her body in the well. So we brought a rope and sent Antonio down to check if we could find her remains.
Antonio was a strong swimmer and had experience with wells. Even in the dead of night, he showed no fear. With the rope securely tied around him, he jumped in with a splash, instructing us that if the rope shook violently, we should pull him up immediately.
Not long after Antonio descended, the rope suddenly jerked with violent tremors. Stein and I immediately hauled him up with all our strength.
Antonio didn't come back empty-handed—he had brought up some bones with him. He said there were more at the bottom of the well, but they were too scattered to form a complete skeleton.
Stein confirmed that the bones were human remains—likely ones Gennaro hadn't fully disposed of. But if that was the case, where had the rest of the body gone?
Finding human bones in the well, combined with the fact that the loli had been brought here but never seen leaving, pointed to an obvious conclusion. The only question was—where was the rest of her body? What had Gennaro done with it?
At that moment, all three of us turned our gaze toward the pigsty.
That pig… could it be the perfect tool for disposing of a corpse?