It looked vaguely like one of those pink, stubby Fall Guys— but far more grotesque.
Far filthier.
The Blue Oni stood naked, its limbs swollen out of proportion, its head enormous and misshapen. Its indigo skin was smeared with grime, dust, and streaks of dried, dark-red blood.
This was no game mascot.
It was a monster—pure, unfiltered horror.
Something that exuded menace so thick it drowned out every trace of humor the Candy Bean avatars once had.
The Blue Oni narrowed its eyes and smiled—almost pleasantly—before breaking into a long, loping run straight toward the four terrified people.
No one could stay calm before such a thing.
The four panicked and scattered, sprinting down the corridor in blind terror. But the Blue Oni was faster—much faster.
In moments, it had nearly caught the man and woman at the back—the two hosts, whose stamina was weakest.
The script guy, who'd been the most panicked from the start, hesitated only a heartbeat before gritting his teeth.
With a roar, he snatched the heavy camera off the cameraman's shoulder, hoisting it high despite the tremor in his sweat-slick arms.
"Run!"
He screamed the word—half terror, half fury—then hurled the camera straight at the monster's face.
The equipment—worth tens of thousands of yen—shattered on impact.
The male host ducked to avoid the flying debris and kept running, gasping, stumbling, desperate.
They bolted all the way to the end of the corridor—only to find that the staircase they thought led down to the first-floor hall didn't exist.
The entire fourth floor was sealed off.
The only way up or down was the narrow stairway at the far end.
At that moment, the Blue Oni lunged, one enormous hand reaching for the female host's head.
The male host—perhaps inspired by the script guy's courage—found strength he didn't know he had.
He grabbed the woman by her vest and yanked her backward, shoving her hard. "Run! Go!"
The four of them tore around the central hall and up the narrow stairs toward the clock tower.
The tower was pitch-black and eerily silent. They huddled together at the top while the Blue Oni stopped at the stairway entrance below, staring up at them.
Those emotionless, childlike eyes—huge, glassy, and cold—never blinked. The four shuddered under its gaze.
Hastily, they switched on the lights on their chest cameras and swept the beams around the clock tower.
The sight made their blood run cold.
Red strings crisscrossed the entire space like a web, slicing the room into countless compartments.
And in those compartments stood countless glass boxes, stacked from floor to ceiling, each about the size of a human head.
Inside every box… were heads. Some were nothing but skulls.
Others were gray, shriveled, and half-mummified—faces twisted in eternal horror, sealed
behind spotless glass.
In one corner lay several massive shovels—each so big they used saplings as handles. The sight conjured a vivid, sickening image:
A moonless night.
The Blue Oni dragging corpses into the mountains, wrenching small trees from the earth to
make shovels.
That same eerie grin on its face, its eyes glowing like twin lanterns as it dug grave after grave.
Then, tossing in mangled, half-eaten bodies—
and finally, bending down, twisting off each corpse's head as if harvesting perfect melons from a field.
Back in the manor, it would proudly arrange its fruits in the glass cabinets, like a meticulous chef plating his finest dish.
In the clock tower, under the cold moonlight filtering through frosted glass, it would smile, satisfied—
the red strings swirling around it, unable to restrain the monster in the slightest.
Was this tower the Blue Oni's trophy room? Or a shrine—to itself?
An altar of pride and madness?
The four humans, shaken to their core, understood only one thing. They weren't getting out.
This was a dead end. The heart of the manor.
The Oni's private sanctum.
They had stumbled straight into its lair.
The male host blinked rapidly.
The crushing fear suffocated them all.
No one dared glance back to see if the monster was climbing the stairs. No one dared to speak.
Even breathing felt dangerous.
The air itself was so tense that moving a single muscle seemed impossible.
At last, the male host's eyes landed on one of the massive shovels in the corner. Despite its size, it looked like something a human could still lift.
It was the only thing in the room that could even pretend to be a weapon. He swallowed hard, courage and terror warring in his chest.
His gaze flicked from the female host to the script guy, then to the exhausted cameraman.
He'd been the one to form this team.
Back then, they'd sat together in an izakaya—young, hopeful, planning out their paranormal channel.
And now, it had all gone to hell—literally.
"Guys… someone has to draw its attention. We… we can still make it out of here. We can."
A noble thought.
In a situation this far beyond reason, such resolve was admirable.
But then came the question—
Who?
Not me. You?
No one spoke.
The male host blinked once more. Then he clenched his teeth, lunged forward, and seized the shovel.
"Run! Run, damn it!"
He charged straight down the steps, gravity lending him speed like a knight on horseback, and rammed the shovel's blade into the grinning Blue Oni.
The others froze for a heartbeat before bolting down the stairs, sprinting into a side corridor without looking back.
The shovel struck the monster's chest with a dull, meaty thud, actually forcing it back two steps—
but that was all.
The host's eyes went wide with desperate fury as he leaned into the blow, using every ounce of strength to push the blade forward.
The Blue Oni casually batted the shovel aside with one hand. The man stumbled, lost his balance—
and fell straight into the monster's arms.
Those massive, blank eyes locked on him.
The creature's hooked nose flared with heavy breaths, and its thin, crescent lips curled upward in a grotesque smile.
Slowly, it leaned in—
—as if savoring him.
Savoring the fear blooming beneath his courage.
A moment later, a wet splurt echoed through the tower. Something heavy hit the floor behind the fleeing trio.
They turned—
and what they saw shattered their sanity.
The male host's upper body lay on the ground, intestines strewn across the stairwell. His lower half was still clenched in the Blue Oni's hand.
"R… run…"
He gurgled through a mouthful of blood, eyes glassy, voice barely a whisper—before it drowned in the crimson flood rising from his throat.
The three survivors ran again—running until the sound of the monster's heavy steps thundered right behind them.
The Blue Oni didn't seem in any hurry to kill them.
It was playing with them, its hands slick with blood, as if enjoying the chase. And just as despair was about to crush them completely—
A deafening boom echoed from somewhere else in the manor, followed by a loud, righteous roar that shook the air.
The Blue Oni froze.
Its thin lips peeled back, revealing rows of jagged teeth.
Then it threw back its head, opened its massive blue mouth, and let out a shriek— a monstrous, ear-splitting howl in answer to that defiant roar.
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