"Huff…"
Kaguya could feel how heavy her breathing was.
In that last moment, as she ran past the cardboard box, she had felt two gazes converge on her for a split second—two incredibly cold gazes. Though she hadn't met them directly, they were so intense she could feel them instantly and understand the consequences.
[If they see me, I'll die.]
A powerful instinct nearly caused Kaguya's body to freeze solid.
But at that very moment, the sound of music suddenly erupted from the other side of the living room, near the mouse hole from which they had first emerged.
The man's and woman's gazes slowly shifted, turning toward the source of the music.
Seizing the opportunity, Kaguya quickened her pace to get away. Maki, holding a phone, followed close behind her. One after the other, they slipped into the bedroom.
A foul stench.
That was their immediate, visceral impression upon entering.
A pile of dirty clothes was tossed in the corner.
On one side of the room, a bedsheet thrown on the floor had distinct yellow-orange stains.
A snot-nosed little boy, who looked to be about two years old, was lying on the only large bed in the room, snoring loudly. One of his feet dangled off the bed, also emitting an unbearable stench; who knew how many days it had been since it was last washed.
Kaguya's brow furrowed deeply, and the expression on Maki's face beside her was no better.
Regardless, it was time to investigate this place.
With that thought, Kaguya took a step forward, only to stop again.
No, that wasn't right. This wasn't the smell of poor hygiene.
It was the smell of a dead person rotting. That's why it was so unbearable, so much so that she could barely fight the urge to vomit.
Only then did Kaguya notice that the enormous boy wasn't sleeping—he was long dead.
His body was covered in purple blotches from which white maggots crawled, and then he opened his—
Tap.
Maki's hand gently patted Kaguya's shoulder, snapping her out of her trance.
The boy, who had been about to sit up on the bed, lay back down and once again fell into a deep, snoring sleep.
Was it because I heard the snoring that a weak interaction formed, causing me to hallucinate?
Realizing this, Kaguya quickly took out her earplugs. Maki, behind her, had already plugged her own ears.
She turned off the call on her phone.
Maki's phone, which she had left in the mouse hole in the living room, stopped ringing.
Although it was impossible to make calls to the outside world from this godforsaken place, for some reason, calls to other phones within the apartment complex could still connect. Therefore, Maki had left her own phone at the entrance when they came in, so it could be used as a decoy in an emergency.
Maki didn't understand the reason for this bizarre kind of 'normalcy' forcibly maintained amidst the abnormality, but that didn't stop her from exploiting it.
It was just a bit of a shame about her new phone; she wondered if she'd ever get a chance to retrieve it.
The trivial thought flickered through her mind and was gone.
The two girls were already heading deeper into the darkness under the bed.
It was covered in dust here.
Every step kicked up a thick cloud of it, almost enough to obscure their vision.
Meanwhile, in the living room on the floor below, Gao Hai had closed his eyes and was sitting silently on the sofa, his brow tightly furrowed.
The voices were growing stronger.
The voices that still lingered in that room, that continued to echo.
[Get the hell away from me, don't get in my sight!]
[What was the use of giving birth to you? You're nothing but trouble!]
The disgusted faces of the man and woman from when she was very, very young.
[Finally, a son! Haha, that's more like it!]
[We finally have one. Now this money-losing baggage is even more of an eyesore.]
The happy expressions on their faces after the second child was born, and the way they looked at her with even greater disgust.
[This candy is for your little brother, not you!]
[If you dare eat it, I'll beat you to death!]
And more, so many more of those ugly faces.
It's just endless.
Gao Hai opened his eyes, avoiding looking at the blurry figure standing on the ceiling above him.
He didn't want to see any more of this, but the senses from the doll's side were still relentlessly transmitting these images and sounds to him.
At first, he could still sever the connection with the doll and ignore the sights and sounds from over there. But after spending some time in Room 304, the doll seemed to have established a much closer link with him. Not only was he unable to block it, but the signal was getting stronger and stronger.
He now knew the child's age: five. The age at which her life stopped moving forward.
Before she was three, she had only suffered beatings and verbal abuse. In those blurry memories, her treatment wasn't exceptionally harsh, at least only to the extent of 'suffering.' But as she approached four, after her younger brother was born, she became a despised burden, and the torment she endured became increasingly severe.
It escalated from fists and kicks for a single wrong word to increasingly strict curfews, imposed purely for the amusement of tormenting her. Her father would even hit her a few times whenever he saw her, otherwise he wouldn't feel right. Her mother would point at the wall clock, scolding and hitting her for her faults, and would even prick her arm with a needle to watch her cry.
She didn't know how to fight back. In fact, for a child her age, the very concept of resistance was unrealistic.
Of course, she wasn't completely helpless. She had once secretly adjusted the clock, leaving her mother with no reason to punish her, who ended up just kicking her once before letting it go.
But on that one day—the day the debt collectors once again broke into their home, carried away the old television, and smashed the table, bed, and stove, scaring her brother who was home at the time into tears. The day her mother was beaten again by her angry father, leaving her furious for the entire day. What happened on that day was something she could never have predicted, could never have imagined. Who could have possibly imagined that something like that would happen?
"Tch…"
Gao Hai clutched his forehead, taking deep breaths to regulate his emotions.
Don't get sucked in.
He couldn't let his consciousness sink into this stuff.
These fragments of the room's past, saturated with intense contamination and curses, wouldn't help him solve the current problem. They would only make his situation worse. He couldn't let himself get too invested—not with sympathy, not with anger. He couldn't afford any thoughts that focused on it.
What existed here was, in the end, just an anomaly devoid of any humanity or emotion. These tragic memories would only contaminate anyone who learned of their contents and drag them into the abyss. They served no other purpose.
Gao Hai could feel his clothes starting to grow faintly hot, as if they were about to be soaked in boiling water.
Please, you have to find a useful clue.
Gao Hai prayed silently in his heart.
Meanwhile, Kaguya and Maki had stopped walking.
They had found a body.
Unlike the excessively large family of three, this was a corpse with a normal human physique, like Kaguya and Maki.
The person had been dead for a long time. It was basically just a skeleton with a few scraps of tissue still clinging to the bones. There was no longer any foul smell.
From the skeleton, it appeared to be a tall adult male. He was wearing an explorer's outfit designed for mobility, and a backpack lay beside him.
Kaguya stood guard cautiously to one side, holding the Blood Puppet, ready to throw it the instant the thing started to rise. Maki, meanwhile, carefully approached, picked up the backpack from beside the corpse, and unzipped it to check its contents.
The first thing she pulled out was a sheet of paper with writing on it.
[To whoever comes after]
[I am a fool who perished here, a sinner, Sanchez]
At the very top of the page, these words were written in a trembling hand.
Sanchez?
This is his body?
The discovery surprised both Kaguya and Maki, and it also made Gao Hai, who was watching the scene through the inescapably linked doll, freeze for a moment.
[This is my last will, the last thing I leave in this world]
[I made a mistake. Pride devoured my soul and judged my existence, turning it into the evidence of my fall into hell]
[I harmed many people, many poor souls trapped like me who hoped to one day leave this apartment. I dragged them down with me. My sin is unforgivable]
[I do not know if this sin will ever end after I have atoned in hell, nor if God and those I have harmed can ever forgive this sinner]
[But for the successor who may or may not arrive here, I must write down this last will]
[The true key is indeed 309, but 304 is also part of it. This cannot be solved by focusing on one isolated room; the two rooms must be combined]
[This room is constantly repeating the past, but it only repeats the events of six days. One day has been hidden. That is the final day, the day ■■■'s death began (A name was originally written here, but was later erased. From the lines, it appears the writer himself realized and scrubbed the name out)]
[Tear the calendar in the room to the 17th, and that day will arrive. The room will begin to play out the events of that day. The time in this room will accelerate from this moment until 1 AM on the night of the third day. That is the most critical opportunity to resolve everything. You cannot wait until the 7th day; by the time the rescue team arrives after 7 days, it's already too late. Only on the 3rd day can everything be saved. I am such a fool. Why did I not notice earlier that 3 is also a key number]
[Only someone wearing a rescue team uniform can open 309. I don't know if this was a method Xusheng came up with, but as the sole survivor of the rescue team back then, I truly should not have doubted him. But what's the point of saying all this now? By now, he should have completely become one with those dead rescue team members, no longer able to retain his selfhood as before]
[Open the door to 309. Open it a second time. Take her to that place of refuge, the place she believes she can find safety. This is the only flaw in her obsession, the only way to end this ceaseless regression and repetition. I tried to destroy this path. I listened to false information. I thought that by destroying the corpse that was the source, I could end everything. I soaked her in the boiling water she feared most. This did indeed destroy her body, but the result was that it only twisted her existence further, making this apartment even more insane than before]
[She no longer has a physically real form, but she still has things she cares about. Her existence will be attached to that thing. I believe it must be a treasure she held very dear, but I was never able to find it in the room. Perhaps it was thrown somewhere. I guess I might find it under the bed. But I can no longer go on■■■■■■ (The text here becomes disjointed, with a great deal of meaningless content and scribbles. The words "Mama," "I was wrong," and "don't" are barely discernible)]
[I■am going to die]
[I don't■want to become one of th■■■, I don't■■want to■harm people after■I die. I obtained■a kind of pill made of bone ash and some unknown■■■substance. It's said that if you■■eat this thing■you won't■turn into those horrible things after you die. Haha, those people lied to me and said destroying the corpse would end everything. I wonder if they lied to me about this too. In any case, I still have one bullet left. I suppose I can at least die as a human (the handwriting gradually becomes clear again after the chaos)]
[My daughter, I won't be able to see you again. I cannot fulfill my promise.]
[May my suffering in this life end here and no longer hinder your future path. I will go to hell to atone, to repay those I have harmed.]
[Farewell, then, to this damned world, this damned apartment.]
[——Sanchez]
The contents of the paper weren't particularly long; it didn't take much time to read.
Maki and Kaguya made no comment on this man, the culprit who caused the deterioration of the Shirakawa Apartments.
At this moment, they were more focused on the secret he left behind in his final moments, one that very likely pertained to ending everything within the apartment.
Could there really be something important under this dust-covered bed?
Just as Maki was thinking this and about to move, she felt the phone in her pocket—Kaguya Shinomiya's phone—start to vibrate.
Huh?
What's going on? Someone's calling her?
Calling in a place like this?!
Taking out the phone, Maki had no intention of answering it and tossed it directly onto the ground, then signaled to Kaguya to leave immediately.
But even so, they were a step too slow. The phone on the ground actually turned on by itself, its screen lighting up. The caller ID showed[Maki Shijo], and it connected the call on the spot, even activating the speakerphone.
[There are rats in the house again…]
A gloomy woman's voice rang out from the phone.
[There are rats in the house again…]
The voice, like a sigh, echoed faintly around the two of them.
THUD!
The giant, twisted, and sinister head of the woman suddenly dropped from somewhere, slamming down beside the bed. It landed facing the space underneath, staring directly at Maki and Kaguya. Then, its mouth slowly moved, forming a sound.
[There are rats in the house again…]
The next moment, the enormous head slowly rolled under the bed, blocking the light from outside and casting the entire space into even deeper darkness.
________________________________________
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