Chapter 364: Inside and Outside the Villa |
Creak—
Stepping over the unsettling police tape and crossing the overgrown, desolate courtyard, Sasaki Ayane finally pushed open the sealed front door of the villa amidst a teeth-setting, scream-like grating noise.
She glanced back at Hoshino Gen, who was leaning against the car with his arms crossed, before turning around and stepping through the doorway with a calm expression.
Screech—
The heavy door swung shut again, like the bottomless maw of an abyss returning to silence after a meal.
......
"Hello? Yu-chan, are you ready yet?"
"If you are ready, come meet up at the station."
Her best friend Suzuki Sawami's urging voice came through the mobile phone. Sitting on her bedroom bed, having just changed into her tracksuit, Shimizu Yu inventoried the drinks, flashlight, and snacks in her backpack while replying, "I know, I know, I am coming right now."
"......"
Slightly speechless, Shimizu Yu hung up the phone, grabbed her backpack, and was about to leave. However, the moment she pulled her bedroom door open, she suddenly paused. After a brief hesitation, she turned back, walked over to her desk, and opened the second drawer.
Inside the drawer sat an exquisite and beautiful small wooden box. Undoing the combination lock on the box revealed a small stack of bright yellow talismans resting quietly within.
Even though Hoshino Gen had assured her there were no ghosts at this exploration site and she could safely accompany her friends, it was still a place that had been rumored to be haunted. Taking these along would definitely provide a greater sense of security...
......
The tall and spacious villa stood silently in its place, looking particularly dilapidated and desolate under the dim, golden light of the setting sun.
Its massive shadow was stretched long by the slanting sun, completely engulfing Hoshino Gen, who was already sitting in the car outside the gates, blasting the air conditioner and playing on his mobile phone.
He glanced up, then lowered his head again as if he had not noticed anything unusual.
Inside the villa, the scene was an absolute mess.
The moment Sasaki Ayane entered the house, her path through the foyer was blocked by a collapsed shoe cabinet and a multitude of dust-covered shoes.
There were many shoes: small leather shoes, large leather shoes, high heels, sneakers... big and small, men's and women's, in every style imaginable.
During the car ride, Hoshino Gen had told her the story of what had happened in this villa, so Sasaki Ayane could naturally distinguish who the owners of these shoes were.
The male head of the household who had run away, the adulterous wife who was murdered, the younger son beaten to death by the husband with a club, and the eldest daughter who was locked inside the villa, starving to the point of eating the decayed flesh of her mother and brother before ultimately dying of disease.
Sasaki Ayane did not step on these shoes to pass through the foyer. Instead, using the Sword Control Method Hoshino Gen had taught her, she manipulated the odachi her grandfather had given her, causing it to levitate horizontally about half a meter above the shoes.
She then lightly leaped up, stepping onto the suspended odachi with one foot, and used it as a springboard to vault across to the other side of the foyer. Her technique was not yet mastered, and her power output was limited. She could not use object control to carry passengers like Hoshino Gen, nor could she directly "control" herself to fly.
Reaching out to catch the trailing odachi, Sasaki Ayane walked into the first-floor living room of the villa, the very place where the other three residents of the house—aside from the male head of the household—had met their end.
There were naturally no corpses, but for some reason, the blood splattered all over the room had not been cleaned up. Compared to the foyer, the chaos here was even more severe: shattered glass covered the floor, a dining table with two broken legs leaned awkwardly on the ground, a large television was covered in cracks, and dust danced wildly in the air, creating a Tyndall effect as the setting sun slanted in.
Most of the sofas were overturned, and due to their torn upholstery, the cotton and sponge stuffing spilled out like vomit.
There was no need for ghosts, monsters, or supernatural incidents to add flavor; the scene itself was terrifying enough.
But that was the extent of it. At least for now, Sasaki Ayane had not found any traces left behind by supernatural forces here.
With a steady gait and a calm expression, she circled the living room, stopping several times to carefully inspect the blackened bloodstains on the floor and walls. After confirming she had found nothing, she proceeded to the first-floor kitchen, bathroom, and other areas.
Perhaps because the most violent conflict in this villa had been contained within the living room, the other areas were not very messy. Aside from the inevitably thick layer of dust, it was not hard to see the affluent quality of life this family had once enjoyed.
Having finished exploring the first floor, Sasaki Ayane ascended the spiral staircase to the second floor of the villa without pausing. She did not know whether it was due to the architectural structure of the villa or something else.
As soon as she reached the second floor, Sasaki Ayane noticed that compared to the stifling first floor, which shared the sweltering temperature of the outdoors, the second floor was much cooler.
However, this did not make her relax in the slightest. Both her grandfather, Sasaki Shinichiro, and her fiance, Hoshino Gen, had told her more than once that during a supernatural incident, any seemingly ordinary abnormality could be the fangs of a monster lurking in the shadows, ready to snap at her throat.
Subconsciously tightening her grip on her long blade, Sasaki Ayane carefully and vigilantly explored every area of the second floor bit by bit.
The master bedroom of the husband and wife, the secondary bedrooms of the son and daughter... the study, the home gym, the home theater. After inspecting every location, Sasaki Ayane still found nothing out of the ordinary
—except for the fact that compared to the first floor, the dust on the second floor was much, much less.
Finally, Sasaki Ayane returned to the second-floor master bedroom. If the most unusual thing about the second floor was the drastic lack of dust compared to the first floor, then this master bedroom was the most abnormal part of that anomaly—it was exceptionally clean, so pristine it looked as if someone had been regularly cleaning it...
The master bedroom was very spacious, with a large bed measuring roughly two meters in both length and width placed in the center. The mattress and bedding were all neatly arranged. A section of the wall next to the bed had been designated as a photo wall, displaying many photos. The majority of the pictures featured the wife posing with her son and daughter—at amusement parks, having picnics in the suburbs, and, of course, at school.
The few photos that included the husband were mostly formal family portraits, the kind you could tell at a glance were taken in a photography studio.
Considering the fact that the wife had cheated, even bearing a lover's child right under her husband's nose, it was not hard to guess that the husband was likely a workaholic who paid little attention to his family and never participated in ordinary family activities.
The brewing of this tragedy was clearly a shared responsibility between him and his wife. The wife committed adultery, and he murdered her, murdered the non-biological but innocent younger son, and locked his daughter inside the villa with the intent to starve her to death...
The three people who occupied the vast majority of the photo wall had all died in this villa. Only the husband remained missing to this day. As Sasaki Ayane looked at these photos, she could not help but feel the illusion that the dense myriad of eyes in the pictures were all staring back at her.
Calmly retracting her gaze, Sasaki Ayane walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows of the bedroom. From here, she had a direct view of the scene outside the villa's main gates.
But the moment she cast her sight outward, she noticed something was wrong.
Outside the villa gates, it was completely empty. She saw no sign of Hoshino Gen, nor did she see the Audi R8.
Did he... leave?
Tap-tap-tap—
Right at that moment, the sound of footsteps came from outside the master bedroom. Sasaki Ayane whipped her head around, only to see a bulge on the previously flat expanse of the large bed, looking exactly as if someone had hidden themselves under the bedding...