BXBX NOVEL Chapter 131: Diary
Chapter 131: Diary
There is a big difference between a sailing diary and a normal diary.
A proper sailing diary would not only record information about the ship, it would also include the ships cargo, information about the crew and the everyday events.
The one recording the diary could be the captain or it could be someone else.
In fact, Su Min wasn’t certain whether this was a sailing diary but even if it only recorded the owners own experiences, it would be useful to them.
A movie wouldn’t include something that is useless.
Xia He Yin watched on nervously, “Hurry and open it.”
She couldn’t stand watching him open it at such a slow speed. She felt as if she was watching a show where they would delay the announcement of the winner for as long as they could. It was too frustrating.
Su Min said: “I’m just afraid of opening it too fast and tearing it.”
After all that time, the pages may have become stuck together. If he forcefully opened it, the information inside could be completely destroyed.
The first page that appeared was a faded photograph.
The edges of the photo had become blurred and the centre of had turned severely yellow, but you could still make out the appearance of the owner of the notebook. He appeared to be a young man aged about twenty-three or twenty-four.
Qin Mu Yin leaned over, “He’s quite young.”
Below the photo was his name and some other information. They were all general information. His job and other information weren’t revealed so this was probably a personal diary.
What Su Min couldn’t understand was that since the captain was still alive, why did he keep the diary with that skeleton? Or was it because he didn’t know of the diary’s existence?
When he thought this, he felt it sounded reasonable.
He had only found that diary because the clothes were tattered. If the clothes were still intact when the captain discovered them, he probably wouldn’t have been able to find this diary.
But this wasn’t the main point.
Su Min turned to the next page.
The book was small so there were only a few lines written on each page. The first entry was dated twenty-five years ago. It documented the first day at sea.
“Today is my first time going out to sea. They only took me on after I begged them for a very long time. I wonder if it would be like the movies? Seeing the ship leave the shore, my mood was complicated, but I also couldn’t help but feel excited.”
“The weather on the second day was fine. The captain said that it would be like this for the rest of this month, so I felt reassured. I plan to go fishing this afternoon.”
“Day 5. I can’t see anything except for the sea.........”
Su Min continued to go through the entries. At first, the entries were diligently recorded every day. It later reduced into every two days, then every three days and so on.
Qin Mu Yin stared at it for a long time until his eyes almost went blind.
Many of the writings had faded with time. Just deciphering the words gave him a headache. They could only guess the content based on the context.
Many were trivial and useless.
“Why is this all about the sea? Are there anything about the ship?” Qin Mu Yin couldn’t help but speak up: “You can tell that this young man is very excited.”
Su Min said: “Don’t worry, there’s more to come.”
Su Ying was focused on something else, “They actually had a movie about this twenty-five years ago. Their lives must have been really abundant.”
Su Min said: “Twenty-five years ago was only the nineties. Movies have already become commonplace back then. What are you thinking?”
And whether the person was recording events from this ship was still a question.
It was completely possible that he was originally on a different ship and was recording events occurring on that ship only to be rescued by this one later.
As Su Min turned the pages, the contents became to change.
“The weather seemed to have suddenly changed. Hearing their discussions, it seems to be getting worse. My god, I hope nothing serious happens.”
He recorded again later that afternoon.
“It turned out to be a storm. The captains’ expressios didn’t look good. It’s as if this storm would be very bad but I believe our Victoria can successfully get through it......”
Xia He Yin pointed at the word Victoria, “He was originally on this ship. So that means this ship was from 25 years ago!”
Then is the current captain still the same captain from before?
Qin Mu Yin shuddered and asked: “Then is the captain now still the same captain from before?”
Su Min felt that he probably is.
A captain couldn’t have appeared out of thin air. Since it is a ghost ship, the people originally from the ship are probably those people on the deck right now.
The captain should also be the captain from 25 years ago.
Su Min turned another page. The owner of this notebook was clearly very agitated. His records were messy.
“The ship seems to be leaking.......Didn’t they say that it was construction with the best skill and materials? Why would such a large ship be leaking?!!! AH!!!”
There was only one line on the next page: “I don’t want to die.”
Su Min continued to flip through it. It was completely blank after that. There were no more diary entries: “This is the last page.”
Qin Mu Yin was a little dumbfounded: “He died after that?”
Xia He Yin said: “That’s too fast. He died but why are the captain and the others still alive?”
Xu Min closed the book, “So it looks like the captain and the others have a way to live. It probably has something to do with us.”
Hearing him say that, the two of them became fearful.
What kind of method would allow them to survive through the storm and still be okay despite drifting at sea for 25 years? The ship itself had become a ghost ship. It was like a horror story.
“We get eaten?”
Qin Mu Yin eventually suggested this.
With his abilities, he could only guess this far. The captain and the others have no food at sea so that would mean that any newcomers would be their source of food.
He didn’t know if this guess of his was correct.
Xia He Yin shook her head, “I don’t think that’s likely. Do you still remember our meals the past few days? There wasn’t much meat.”
In fact, there were some, but it could be seen at a glance.
Human flesh and ordinary meat are easy to distinguish. Not to mention, they are also directly frozen and untreated.
Most were vegetables, though they were a little old.
Su Min also didn’t think that this was the case mainly because that scenario was too ordinary. If this horror movie really was like that, people would probably grow tired of it.
For a moment, the room was silent.
Su Ying stared at the notebook in Su Min’s hand. She suddenly pointed something out with her finger, “Here. Do you see something here? Turn it around and take a look.”
***
The diary indeed had other records.
When Su Min turned and saw that the pages afterwards were blank, he had just roughly flipped through it. There were many pages stuck together so he didn’t notice.
After Su Ying mentioned this, he checked it again.
There was a new record written on the back and it was written upside down. Many of the pages were stuck together so he had to tear them apart to see.
Qin Mu Yin no lingered dared to even breath. He watched Su Min carefully tear the pages apart and smoothen it out.
The first page consisted of smudged handwriting.
Qin Mu Yin leaned over and read: “’I feel like I just had a dream.......’ His way off speaking is strange. He later said, ‘the ship is messy, but the ship is still intact’ but I’m only guessing.”
Su Min nodded: “Yes.”
He stared at it for a while and then spoke up: “This entry didn’t mention much. It’s a little difficult to decipher. The previous record mentioned that the ship was leaking but this record seemed to mention that everything has become normal.”
Was the ship leaking really a dream?
Su Min felt that it wasn’t the case.
He again tore apart another page, the records here became even more strange, “Why is it like this..............I thought I.........”
Qin Mu Yin said: “What’s that last word?”
The word was too faint. It really was too wicked.
Xia He Yin mused: “He thought he died?”
Su Ying tip-toed and looked at the entry, “Why do you that he thought he died? I think he probably thought he was still alive?”
Qin Mu Yin said: “Doesn’t that mean the same thing?”
Su Ying looked at him with reproach: “Was your Chinese taught by your physical education teacher?”
“It’s different.” Su Min thought for a moment and said: “Dead and alive have two different meanings.”
He thought he was alive yet what was revealed here was that he was actually dead. For a dead person to continue writing a diary, what on earth was going on?
Qin Mu Yin felt goosebumps forming, “No way.........”
Xia He Yin said: “Let’s hurry and look at the next one.”
The next record was a month after the storm. There were noticeable marks on the page.
“I.......I seem to have become strange......”
It was just that short sentence.
“Become strange?” Qin Mu Yin didn’t understand. He turned over a few blank pages before finally finding a new entry.
The new entry was densely filled with words. It was a complete contrast to the former entries.
Because it was too dense, all the words in the middle blended into black and there was even a hole.
Su Min squinted and read: “The captain and them actually did that. It’s too scary. It turned out to be like that. I don’t want to become a mon.......I want to go home. I want to leave this ship.....that word earlier probably is the word monster.”
The monster description was too specific.
To what extent does a human have to go to be considered a monster?
Su Min pursed his lips. He furrowed his brows and continued to flip through. He finally found a calmer entry: “I think I’m really going to die this time.”
All the entries stopped at this point.
After that were blank pages and then it was the initial entries they read earlier when he was excited about going to sea.
Su Ying asked, “Does he mean that the captains and the others have all become monsters?”
He didn’t want to become a monster so that would mean that someone had already become a monster and he found out. That was the reason why he had those thoughts.
Qin Mu Yin guessed: “Should be.”
Su Ying flipped back to the “monster” page, “He said ‘it turned out to be like this’. That probably has something to do with his earlier thought that he had thought that he was either dead or alive.”
Qin Mu Yin scratched his head, “If you don’t become a monster, you die?”
Su Ying pursed her lips and pointed outside. She said: “Since they’re not dead yet, they must have become monsters.”
The room fell silent. Su Min spoke calmly: “I also have another guess: They’re already dead. If they don’t become a monster, they would die again, and it would be their true death.”
The meaning hidden behind that was obvious.
After this person managed to live after dying the first time, he didn’t want to become a monster, so he truly died 25 year ago and became a skeleton. The captain’s group had not died yet, so they have probably already become monsters.
It was similar to Qin Mu Yin’s suggestion but the starting point was different.
One was a living person turning into a monster, the other was a dead person turning into a monster.
Xia He Yin’s heart pounded nervously. She murmured: “In any case, doesn’t that mean that we are staying on the same ship as a group of monsters right now?”