As long as you work hard, you can probably change some things...

After Walter Reed had this thought, he started to care more about the band, but unfortunately, during this period, the once steadfast and reliable upperclassmen all changed.

“My parents are still counting on me to get into college. Even if I don’t quit the club now, I’ll have to leave by graduation anyway, right?”

“Oh, me? I’ll probably start interning at my dad’s factory in the last semester. Who knows how much longer we can play together...”

“Let’s just forget it. We all know deep down that no matter how hard we try, it’s something we’ll have to give up sooner or later. Do you really want to become a professional musician? You’ve only been learning for a little over a year—better give up on that idea early. There are even middle schoolers better than us upperclassmen, you know. Only those kids whose parents are musicians, who have the right family background and talent, will go down that path.”

“Walter Reed, you can’t imagine what it’s like to skip lunch for half a month just to buy a new set of strings. I’d love to say the same things as you, but the world is a harsh place. We upperclassmen have to compromise with our future. It’s an unwritten rule in the light music club—third-year students basically never stay until the end. So you’d better be ready to take over as club president at any time, and become someone the juniors can rely on.”

For the past few months, Walter Reed had been hearing things like this. He often thought, “A bunch of bastards—talking about being someone the juniors can rely on, but aren’t you all just running away?!”

He pushed aside these depressing thoughts and turned on the light.

There was a large envelope on his desk, and inside seemed to be a thick rectangular object.

“Tch... Mom came into my room without asking again.” Walter Reed grumbled to himself, then walked over to the desk and opened the envelope.

Inside was a videotape and a card.

On the front of the card were the capital letters: BOOKS; on the back were a few handwritten lines.

“So this is a videotape? It’s my first time seeing one. How am I supposed to watch it?” Walter Reed picked up the tape, not sure what to do. He knew that over a hundred years ago, people used something called a VCR as the main medium for recording and playing videos, but that had been replaced by several generations of products. Now, you’d probably only find one in a museum.

He had no choice but to set the tape aside and read the words on the back of the card: “After that incident, the Raymond Scott family moved to Okinawa to get far away from you. But three months later, on December 8, 2099—exactly one year ago—Raymond Scott stabbed his sleeping parents to death with a knife, then went downstairs and turned on the gas stove. In the end, all three of them were reduced to ashes.”

Walter Reed’s face turned pale, his temples throbbing, his hand holding the card trembling, and then his whole body started to shake. His neck had gone stiff as he slowly turned his head to stare at the videotape on the desk, unable to look away.

Suddenly, Walter Reed remembered a ghost story he’d once heard, from a time when people still used videotapes. He couldn’t recall the details, but there was one part he remembered clearly: a scene where a ghost attached to a videotape crawled out of the TV to claim someone’s life...

Five minutes later, he locked the card and the tape in a drawer, dashed out of his room, changed his shoes at the entrance, and left the house.

The night was very cold, but Walter Reed felt as if all the blood in his body had dropped to a temperature even lower than the air outside.

His family lived in a nice area, not too noisy around the house, but it only took a few minutes to walk to the bustling shopping street.

There were at least ten video stores nearby, though they were all a bit spread out. Walter Reed spent over an hour going from store to store, and finally, at the seventh shop, he got the answer he wanted.

“Huh? A VCR?” The young owner, with green hair and a nose ring, showed the exact same expression as every other shop owner before him. But his next words made Walter Reed perk up.

“Just yesterday, some stinky beggar brought one in. I stepped out for five minutes to take a dump, and my brainless old man paid over a hundred bucks for it. What, you want it?”

A rough voice shouted from the back room, “Ungrateful brat! Is that any way to talk about your own father?”

“Shut up, you old geezer! Want to get sent to the junkyard along with the antiques you bought?!” The owner yelled back at the top of his lungs, his voice as hoarse as his father’s. Then, as if nothing had happened, he turned back to Walter Reed and continued in a normal tone, “Hey, kid, I’ll give it to you for half price...”

Before he could finish, Walter Reed slapped two hundred bucks on the counter. “Keep the change. Just give me the thing.”

…………

December 9th, 1:00 a.m.

Walter Reed finally got the VCR set up and inserted the videotape.

He shouldn’t have needed so long to watch it, but after bringing the VCR home the first time, he had to go out again because he forgot to buy the right cables. After getting the cables, he had to go out a third time when he realized he needed another set of cables and an AV switch to make this ancient device compatible with the flat-screen TV in his room.