Rose Hotel 3

“What?” Kang Fu turned his head instinctively. Lin Hui’s face was only a few finger-widths away.

He let out a scream and scrambled away on all fours.

“Help! Help! Miss Su, help me!”

Kang Fu was scared half to death.

Su Man did not move. She only stared at Lin Hui.

Lin Hui’s gaze, however, remained fixed on Kang Fu. When she saw the disgust and fear in his eyes, a trace of sorrow rose in hers. The next second, she vanished back into the villa.

A breeze drifted in through the window. Su Man glanced toward it, her brows drawing together slightly.

But they soon relaxed again.

She turned to Kang Fu, who looked as though he had been frightened senseless, and asked, “Now, are you still going to say that you have never owed anyone an emotional debt?”

“Every word you say will determine what happens to you.”

Kang Fu was practically petrified. Yet upon hearing Su Man’s words, he forced himself to regain his composure and desperately searched his memory for the woman’s face.

No matter how hard he tried, he felt certain he had never seen her before.

“I’m sorry, I really… I…”

He looked deeply aggrieved. “I truly don’t know that woman!”

After all, he was a man who had weathered countless storms in the business world. Now that he knew what the woman looked like, he gradually calmed down instead.

“Miss Su, has that woman been following me all this time?”

There was nothing about his expression that suggested he was pretending.

“Lin Hui,” Su Man reminded him.

“What?” Even after hearing the name, Kang Fu remained bewildered.

“That is the name of the woman who has been hounding you,” Su Man explained, watching every expression and movement of his.

But Kang Fu still looked utterly confused. “I’m sorry, I… I don’t remember her.”

He truly did not know her?

What on earth was going on?

Could this be some melodramatic story in which Lin Hui had merely glimpsed Kang Fu from afar, become hopelessly obsessed with him, and eventually developed an obsession that drove her to torment him?

Ridiculous.

She studied Kang Fu carefully. To be honest, he was not the sort of man who was strikingly handsome at first glance. At most, he possessed a distinctive air—that refined, exceptional elegance peculiar to an older man.

But after enduring Lin Hui’s relentless psychological attacks for so many days, he looked rather haggard now and had little charm left.

“Does your wife know that Lin Hui exists? Have you ever told her?”

Kang Fu shook his head. “Beijia is terribly jealous. If I told her, she would certainly throw a little tantrum, and I would be too busy coaxing her to let her find out. How could I dare tell her?”

The moment Beijia came up, Kang Fu seemed unable to stop talking.

“Beijia is a celebrity. She’s very busy with work and has to deal with all kinds of public scrutiny. I just didn’t want to put any more pressure on her, so I thought I would deal with that woman myself as quickly as possible.”

“Miss Su, I wasn’t angry with you earlier. It’s just that this matter is truly urgent. You know how it is—if someone else seized on this incident and made an issue of it, the public pressure would come crashing down on my wife.”

Kang Fu sighed. “I don’t even know how I managed to attract that woman’s attention. I only hope that my wife and I can have our wedding as planned. It took us so much to finally reach this point together.”

Nine out of every ten sentences Kang Fu spoke had something to do with his wife.

At least, he gave Su Man the impression that he truly loved her.

“If she comes looking for you again, contact me. I’ll go back to the Rose Hotel and investigate further.”

Just as she was about to walk out, Su Man thought of something and turned back to him.

“Don’t worry about this affecting your wife. After all, she’s already dead…”

She paused.

“Of course, that is all based on the premise that you truly have no emotional debts, as you claim.”

Kang Fu hurriedly said, “I really—”

Su Man cut him off. “You don’t need to assure me, and you don’t need to swear anything. You know the truth in your own heart.”

When she returned to the Rose Hotel, the old landlady was nowhere to be seen. Su Man went back to her room, intending to speak with Lin Hui again.

She remained there for quite some time. She even called Lin Hui’s name, but there was still no response. The mirror remained bright and empty, without a single word appearing upon it.

Su Man did not know whether Lin Hui was hiding from her or deliberately refusing to show herself. Either way, it was not good news. Her trail had ended there.

She spent the entire afternoon in the room and even took a short nap, but nothing happened.

Su Man truly could not make sense of what this scenario was meant to be. Every person involved was so willful.

When she went downstairs again, the old landlady was still absent. On the counter, Su Man found a newspaper.

She glanced at the date. It was still fresh.

She had originally intended to see whether it contained any useful clues, but instead, she came across an unexpected piece of news.

The article had nothing to do with this game scenario. It was a report about the Ai family.

She had assumed she would never learn what happened afterward, but she had unexpectedly found the answer here.

The article detailed every wicked thing Qian Ji had done, including his impersonation of the celebrity Chai Hu. It also cleared Jinghua’s name.

It even revealed some of the truth about Hu Nian, and the account was remarkably accurate.

What surprised Su Man most was Qing Nian’s fate.

The article described all of Qing Nian’s actions as well and asked readers what they thought of them.

It seemed the piece had first been published online, where it had directly exposed the ending. After Qing Nian was revealed to be a fake master, everyone had turned against him. No one knew where he had fled. Perhaps he would find some secluded place and make another attempt at rising again. Perhaps he would simply remain in decline for the rest of his life.

At the very end, Su Man glanced at the byline.

All of this had actually been written by Rongrong!

It seemed Rongrong had kept her promise to them.

There was also a telephone number printed beneath the article. Su Man made a note of it. Perhaps she would need it someday.

She set the newspaper aside, then took advantage of the empty reception desk to look through some of the papers propping up one corner of the table.

They were all old newspapers, apparently collected by the old landlady. Every one of them contained reports about the Rose Hotel.

Su Man read them carefully and counted the articles. The hotel had truly been the site of countless incidents, large and small—most of them murders.

But most of those murders had been caused by the ghosts themselves. Just as the old landlady had said, this place had witnessed the resentment and regrets of far too many people.

Su Man also found the report about Lin Hui.

The reporter claimed to have interviewed Lin Hui’s family.

Su Man was skeptical, but continued reading.

The interview’s general account matched what the old landlady had told her earlier. Lin Hui had loved her boyfriend deeply, but he had cheated on her. Unable to bear the psychological blow, she had suffered a breakdown. After being rejected countless times when she tried to see him, she had lost all hope and hanged herself here.

The article also contained a photograph of the scene, though it had been pixelated. What caught Su Man’s attention most was the figure she spotted among the crowd.

It was Kang Fu.