Chapter 215: All Sevens
Misaki Naomi had just turned the corner at the staircase when she suddenly turned back, showing an ugly smile, “Um, the stairs are too dark, I don’t want to walk alone… Also… if possible, Uncle, stay in my room tonight.”
He Jia’an was somewhat speechless, but still nodded.
Arriving at Misaki Naomi’s room, He Jia’an browsed Misaki Naomi’s boudoir, then looked at her back as she made the bed for him, thinking of the ghost hand he had just seen, he couldn’t help but ask: “That video call, you and Kurosawa answered it together, right?”
Misaki Naomi immediately stiffened, slowly turned her head to look at He Jia’an, and said with her head down: “You guessed it?”
“Probably.” He Jia’an couldn’t bear to tell her that he had seen an anomaly on her body, otherwise this girl would follow in the footsteps of that classmate Kurosawa, and before Miyako’s Curse took effect, she would end her own life first.
Only then did Misaki Naomi start to honestly explain the process of the thing: “During the convenience store incident yesterday, Kana’s mobile phone received the legendary Miyako’s video call invitation. Because this terror legend has been particularly prevalent recently, we were scared out of our wits for a moment, threw the mobile phone away, and didn’t dare to answer it. Then Uncle, you cautiously picked up the mobile phone and gave it back to Kana. Kana pulled me and ran out of the convenience store.
After that, the incoming call disappeared, with not even an unanswered call record prompt, as if it was just a hallucination. We breathed a sigh of relief temporarily. However, what happened next exceeded our cognition. Subsequently, Kana’s mobile phone received another video call invitation. We were all startled, but seeing that the caller was Kana’s mom, we breathed a sigh of relief again. We let our guard down and answered the call.
But the moment we answered, the caller ID turned into that hell number that shouldn’t exist. The legendary Miyako appeared, her destroyed flesh-and-blood blurry face and deformed posture appearing on the mobile phone screen. We were both terrified, tried to end the call but had no way, and could only watch her helplessly, listening to her say ‘In seven days, I’ll come find you’, before hanging up.
At this point, Miyako’s number became an undeletable contact list friend, and the call record also appeared and couldn’t be deleted. Then we all knew we had really become the protagonists in the urban legend, and we were about to be taken to hell by Miyako in seven days. After that, Kana ran away like crazy, and I spent this day and night alone in fear…”
After seriously listening to Misaki Naomi’s narration of her experience, He Jia’an pondered for a moment, then said gently to the girl: “Don’t think too much for now, go take a nice hot bath first.”
“Mm.” Misaki Naomi nodded somewhat dimly.
Afterward, the clichéd bathroom terror plot didn’t happen. Misaki Naomi took an exhilarating bath, but when it was He Jia’an’s turn, this girl insisted on going in together. She said she would be afraid to stay alone in the corridor and claimed she would turn her back and definitely not peep.
In public, He Jia’an might care about face, but in this enclosed scene with just the two of them, his morals weren’t that many. Since the girl had made such a bold request, he wouldn’t refuse, and he didn’t care if she really kept her promise not to peep.
Finally able to get into bed and sleep, He Jia’an lay down on the prepared futon, and Misaki Naomi also got into bed.
“Good night.” He Jia’an looked at the light still on in the room and got up to turn it off.
“Wait!” Misaki Naomi saw this, immediately got up from the bed to stop his behavior, and said glaring: “At least leave me one light.”
“Alright.” He Jia’an didn’t mind, left a small lamp for Misaki Naomi, then lay back in bed.
Afterward, this worried girl Misaki Naomi probably had trouble falling asleep, so she started chatting with He Jia’an about the past.
Most of the time it was Misaki Naomi talking and He Jia’an listening. Later, Misaki Naomi probably realized she had talked too much and feared He Jia’an would find her annoying, so she wanted to pass the “microphone” to He Jia’an, letting him talk about his own past.
He Jia’an naturally couldn’t tell it and didn’t dare to, after all, his experiences as a Mystic Investigator were far more terrifying than Misaki Naomi’s current encounter. If not careful, he would tell another terror story and scare the girl, so He Jia’an could only talk about some past fun things unrelated to his profession.
Just like that, the two of them went back and forth one sentence at a time, slowly forgetting the time. Misaki Naomi’s physiological instinct for sleep overcame the fear, and she fell asleep.
He Jia’an could finally relax. He then sat up, looked at the sleeping Misaki Naomi, hesitated slightly, reached into his pocket, took out that New Year’s red envelope, took a deep breath, and placed it on the tatami outside the futon.
The moment his hand left the red envelope, He Jia’an felt a chill rush straight into his brain from the gaps in his eyes. With a blink, the colors of the world changed, turning into the gloomy hue he was most familiar with these past years, dark, as if all vitality had decayed.
The eyes that had been peeping at him and troubling him in the mental sanatorium had all disappeared without a trace, but he could still sense some power from a dimension that shouldn’t exist permeating this world. He could see twisted, corrupted plant vines eroding this house, gray mist enveloping the sky over this city, and gray fluff constantly drifting down extremely slowly from the unknown depths of the mist.
He Jia’an was extremely familiar with all these abnormalities and had no emotional fluctuation.
When his gaze turned to Misaki Naomi, the scene before him suddenly made his pupils shrink. He saw side-sleeping Misaki Naomi exposing her back to him, and at the back of her head, two black hands stretched out from a torn gap, with an emotionless eye peering at him from between the gaps.
It was as if Misaki Naomi had turned into a cocoon, and some thing hiding in her body was about to crawl out from her body.
“Sure enough, not an illusion.” He Jia’an noticed that the two black hands had more of their parts extended out compared to when he first saw them; now almost the entire arms were stretching out.
If he guessed right, the thing about to crawl out from Misaki Naomi’s body was the Miyako from the urban legend. When Miyako crawled out from Misaki Naomi’s body… that would be the fulfillment of that legend.
“Seven days, just like the blessing from that previous video tape, it’s the number of this curse.” On this Miyako, He Jia’an found a familiar feeling.
