"Why did they all leave?" Susan Wright asked.

"They said they were going out to eat, Selena Adams is treating."

Susan Wright couldn't help but frown. If they're eating off campus, they won't be back soon. Does that mean that person isn't planning to make a move today?

"Selena Adams probably isn't the one," Fiona Bennett said. If Selena Adams were the poisoner, she wouldn't have initiated the dinner gathering.

Susan Wright thought for a moment, then shook her head. "Not necessarily. Maybe they arranged to eat together a long time ago, and it's not convenient to change plans."

The carefully prepared plan to lure the snake out of its hole didn't seem to have worked, but Fiona Bennett wasn't willing to give up. She told Susan Wright to go eat, while she herself insisted on returning to wait under that tree. Maybe that person would find an excuse to slip away.

Susan Wright ate this dinner especially slowly. When she finally returned, Fiona Bennett slowly walked out from behind the tree and shook her head at her.

Fiona Bennett ate the meal that Susan Wright brought her in the dorm. Well, that's good, she told Susan Wright, this way the soup wouldn't go to waste. Susan Wright took a porcelain spoon, opened the food container, and scooped a small spoonful.

"It should be heated up," Fiona Bennett said, head down as she ate, casually reminding her. She didn't hear Susan Wright's reply, and when she looked up, she saw the porcelain spoon slip from Susan Wright's hand. Time seemed to pause for a moment; Fiona Bennett clearly saw the spoon in midair, a stream of soup separating from it. In the next instant, the spoon was already shattered on the ground, soup splashing everywhere.

Fiona Bennett threw down her chopsticks and rushed over.

"Eyes," Susan Wright said with difficulty, her voice distorted, "eyes."

But Fiona Bennett saw nothing.

The food container, the soup, the broken spoon. Where were the eyes?

"Where?" she crouched down to look carefully.

Then she saw the eye. It was covered by a piece of white fungus.

It was a very beautiful eye, with dense lashes and a bright, warm pupil, but now it was smeared with slippery soup. Fiona Bennett usually liked to make her soup thick, but now she felt utterly disgusted.

She pinched the corner of the eye with her fingertips, picked it up, and wiped off the liquid.

"There are more inside," Susan Wright's chest was gradually calming, but the muscles in her throat were still spasming, her voice strange.

It was a two-inch ID photo that had been cut to pieces. Besides this eye, the other parts of the face were still in the soup.

Fiona Bennett's terror spread to her nerve endings, her skin tingling. She stared at the eye, and for a moment, she seemed to feel the pain of scissors cutting into her cheek—clear and sharp. If even an outsider could feel such a strong shock, then Susan Wright... Fiona Bennett glanced sideways; Susan Wright's ten fingers were twisted and tangled together, almost deformed, completely pale and bluish. Those hands must be as cold as ice.

After the shock, Fiona Bennett's first reaction was to wonder how those fragments had been put into the food container.

It couldn't have been while the soup was cooking; she had been by the stove the whole time.

"Did you go to the bathroom at any point?" Susan Wright asked.

Fiona Bennett froze for a moment. She had indeed gone to the bathroom once, but it was only for a minute or two at most. The bathroom was just a few steps from room 217. That person would have had to rush out the moment Fiona Bennett entered the bathroom, dash into the dorm, open the pot, throw in the photo fragments, and disappear down the hallway before Fiona Bennett came out. Besides, Fiona Bennett had been cautious and closed the dorm door when she went to the bathroom, which meant the person would also need time to unlock the door.

It was almost impossible. Even if that person could pull off such a high-difficulty operation like a secret agent, they'd have to spend the whole afternoon lurking nearby. If anyone checked who skipped class, they'd be exposed immediately. Taking such a huge risk just to throw in some photo fragments to scare people—only a fool would do that.

"And when I poured the soup into the container, I didn't notice anything in it," Fiona Bennett said.

So it must have been done afterward.

But during that time, Fiona Bennett's eyes had never left the food container for more than ten seconds—even when she was talking to her senior.

The only time she lost sight of it was when Selena Adams and the others turned off the lights and left. At most, it was fifteen seconds. Even if she couldn't see clearly, she could at least be sure that no one had approached the food container.

Most importantly, during that time, the other five people in the dorm were all there. There was no way someone could do this under everyone else's nose—unless all five were accomplices.

But now the fragments were there: eyes, nose, forehead... They floated on the surface of the soup, tainted with the same dark, mysterious aura as the poisoner—appearing out of nowhere, filling people with despair.

Fiona Bennett felt both fear and anger, while Susan Wright picked up the food container lid and examined it.

"Look," she said.

On the underside of the lid, four or five fragments were stuck. Fiona Bennett peeled them off one by one: a partially missing lip, an ear, a cheek, and so on.

The soup in the container wasn't very full, about two-thirds. How did those fragments get stuck to the lid?

"Did you pay attention to the lid when you poured the soup in?" Susan Wright asked.

Fiona Bennett hesitated, then answered uncertainly, "I'm not sure, I don't remember, maybe I didn't really notice."

"But that's the only possibility," Susan Wright said.

The food container was an off-white, semi-transparent plastic. The photo fragments were stuck face-down on the inside of the lid, so they didn't stand out much. If you weren't paying attention, it would be easy to miss. After the lid was closed, the steam from the soup melted the glue holding the photo fragments, and some of them fell into the soup. Maybe the person hoped all the fragments would fall in, but in the end, most stayed on the lid.

"It was last night," Susan Wright said, then added, "In the middle of the night, when we were all asleep."

"But... if she could think to stick the photo fragments on the lid, why didn't she just..." Fiona Bennett didn't finish, but her meaning was clear. Why not just poison the food, maybe with a bit of powder or some liquid smeared on the bottom of the container? Fiona Bennett thought she would probably have missed it, unless the poison was a noticeable color or had a strong smell.

But Susan Wright just stared at the photo fragments. Then she picked out as many as she could from the soup and began to piece them together.

Halfway through, Fiona Bennett covered her mouth and gasped.

It wasn't Susan Wright's photo. It was her own!

The person wasn't targeting Susan Wright; she had seen through Fiona Bennett and Susan Wright's trick. This shattered face was a warning.

The photo was eventually identified as the one from Fiona Bennett's library card. If Fiona Bennett had actually gone to the library that afternoon, she would have noticed the shocking blank spot on her card.

Fiona Bennett sat on her bed, clutching her library card tightly. She kept thinking about her face being cut to pieces, and waves of fear kept surging up. She couldn't help but cry.

Susan Wright came in, put the cleaned food container aside, and sat down next to Fiona Bennett. She gently stroked Fiona Bennett's hair, pried open her hand, and took out the library card. With a pen, she sketched a pretty face in the blank spot, added eyebrows, eyes, and an upturned mouth, then handed it back to Fiona Bennett.

Fiona Bennett was amused into a smile.

"That person is scared—only someone truly terrified would do something like this," Susan Wright said deliberately in a low voice.

Around eleven thirty, a rumbling noise started up in the hallway. The sound split at the second-floor stairwell; the girls, wrapped in the smell of alcohol, giggled and whispered, their footsteps unsteady. The clinking of keys lasted for a while, then the door was suddenly flung open, and the wave of odor that rushed in made Fiona Bennett, lying in bed, want to jump up and open the window.

She didn't move, nor did Susan Wright on the upper bunk. They acted as if nothing had happened, as if they were already fast asleep. Selena Adams loudly asked if they were asleep, Crystal Nelson vomited, Lily Carter cried loudly—none of this disturbed them. Only after an hour, when all the commotion gradually subsided, did things quiet down.

At 3:20 a.m., Fiona Bennett got up to use the bathroom and stood for a long time by the long table. Layers of secretive atmosphere wrapped around her; in the center of the darkness, she wondered, who could it be?

The white bed curtain floated before her eyes, the window was half open—she couldn't remember who had opened it.

The familiar faces from daily life, in this night, behind these curtains, what did they look like? The urge to peek slowly rose up—this was an evil temptation, Fiona Bennett thought.

She walked along the long table; Lily Carter was softly snoring. She usually didn't do that—probably because of the alcohol.

The snoring stopped. A hand reached out from the curtain and rested on Fiona Bennett's arm.

The curtain was blown open by the wind, revealing half of Lily Carter's face. She sat up, one eye wide open. The curtain drifted back, covering her face again.

"I'm going to close the window," Fiona Bennett whispered.

The hand slowly let go. Fiona Bennett closed the window and returned to her bed. After a while, when she could finally hear sounds other than her own heartbeat, Lily Carter's snoring had resumed its rhythm.

2

"We made a mistake yesterday," Susan Wright said. It was Friday morning. Usually, on the way to class, it was Fiona Bennett who talked and Susan Wright who listened, but today it was the other way around.