Chapter 223: Blood Key
“So, the authenticity of this rumor still cannot be determined.” He Jia’an made a thoughtful expression, but he felt that it probably existed, after all, the toilet in Kisaragi High School in this dimension was indeed unusual.
Clang!
The blood text that appeared on the ceiling slowly faded after dripping for a while, and when the last drop of blood fell to the ground, the sharp-eyed He Jia’an noticed that a metal thing had also fallen to the ground along with the blood drop.
Misaki Naomi also noticed it, but she didn’t dare to go forward to check, and just asked in confusion, “What was that thing just now?”
He Jia’an took out a stack of paper towels from his pocket; they were ones he had taken from the hotel during the first few days after arriving on Sakura Island, and he still hadn’t used them all up. He generously pulled out three paper towels, wrapped them around his hand, and picked up the thing bathed in blood.
“It’s a key.” He Jia’an caressed and wiped the thing with the paper towel, feeling more and more that the texture was familiar. After wiping it clean, it was indeed a key.
“It doesn’t seem to be a room door key; it looks like a key for a cabinet lock or something.” Misaki Naomi immediately came forward curiously to look, examined it for a while, and guessed, “If it’s a cabinet lock, then in the school, it’s probably only the desk cabinets in the teachers’ classroom office, and the students’ shoe cabinets?”
“Could it be the lock for the changing room cabinets?” He Jia’an added inquiringly.
“That’s possible too.” Misaki Naomi nodded, somewhat puzzled. “Why did a key suddenly drop out? Could it be that it wants us to find clues?”
He Jia’an: “I don’t know, but probably.”
After leaving the toilet, the two headed straight for the door of the teaching building, where there was a large entrance hall, a place for students to change shoes before entering the school.
They randomly selected a cabinet and tried inserting the key, but found that it didn’t match the lock type of the shoe cabinet.
“Eh, this shoe cabinet has also been maliciously graffitied.” Although the two hadn’t found the right place, they made an unexpected discovery. Misaki Naomi pointed to one of the shoe cabinets on the right side of the second row.
The two leaned in to look and discovered that this shoe cabinet had already been violently damaged beforehand. The moment they opened the shoe cabinet, a large swarm of cockroaches and unidentified stink bugs poured out like a fountain, startling He Jia’an and Misaki Naomi into immediately stepping back. They watched helplessly as those disgusting bugs crawled into the crevices of the surrounding objects and disappeared in an instant. The scene of the myriad insects crawling was enough to make one’s scalp tingle.
“So excessive.” Misaki Naomi saw the text written on the inside of the shoe cabinet door: “Curse your whole family to die violently（lol）”, and felt the thick malice in it.
He Jia’an pushed the cabinet door back and glanced at the nameplate on the front of the cabinet door, which had the name “Kikuhide Ichi” written on it.
“If I’m not mistaken, the owner of this shoe cabinet and the student who suffered inhuman treatment in that male toilet stall earlier are the same person.” He Jia’an tapped his finger on the vicious text on the inside of the cabinet door and frowned slightly. “These handwriting were also seen in the toilet stall just now. If there’s no surprise, they were written by the same group of bastards.”
“Then, did Kikuhide Ichi die in the toilet, gotten by Hanako… like that?” Misaki Naomi’s voice trembled slightly.
“I don’t know if he was gotten by Hanako how, but this Kikuhide Ichi is probably already gone.” He Jia’an shook his head gently, then looked at Misaki Naomi and said seriously, “When contacting anomalies, if you want to survive, don’t overthink the unknowable things, and don’t empathize with anyone. I used to have a colleague who had a very strong empathy ability, but later…”
He didn’t continue, just sighed.
“Was that colleague your… lover?”
“A very important companion.” He Jia’an glanced at this girl; girls of this age were indeed prone to spring thoughts. Then he pulled her wrist and walked toward the first-floor teacher office, saying, “Let’s go. The longer we stay here, the less safe it is. Hurry up and find clues.”
They found the first-floor classroom office and pushed the door to enter. The scene inside matched the general impression of an office, just a bit more outdated, with no computers, replaced instead by lots of paper files and a large number of notebooks.
“The cabinets in this office are all the same; it seems they were uniformly procured models.” He Jia’an glanced around and confirmed it, then took the key and tried inserting it into a random keyhole. His eyes lit up with some surprise as he said, “Found it right; it’s the locked drawer of the desk in the classroom office.”
After some searching, the two quickly found a drawer that could be turned and opened with the key.
This desk belonged to a person named “Aso Shintaro,” probably a math teacher, because there were math teaching materials on the desk, as well as students’ math test papers that hadn’t been graded yet.
Of course, it might also possibly be the homeroom teacher of some class.
After opening the locked drawer, the two discovered personal graduation intentions survey forms for all students in the same class inside the drawer, which was rarely seen among general teaching teachers.
In addition to the collected student personal graduation intentions survey forms, there was also a black leather-bound notebook pressed on top of the information stack.
He Jia’an and Misaki Naomi divided the work: he flipped through the notebook, while Misaki Naomi checked the survey forms.
Meanwhile, Misaki Naomi had a faint feeling; she knew what she was looking for, because everything happening now had a very obvious guidance intent.
Then, Misaki Naomi raised her eyebrows, not overly surprised, with an “as expected” expression. She flipped through the stack of survey forms and found a familiar person—it was that student named Kikuhide Ichi again.
“Uncle, look.” Misaki Naomi tugged at He Jia’an’s sleeve and held up that form to show him.
After reading it, He Jia’an showed no unexpected expression and then showed his own discovery to her. He picked up the notebook and opened the page where he had a special find. “This Kikuhide Ichi indeed had an accident. The time he was cornered in the toilet stall, he suddenly let out a loud scream, and then disappeared. Those who cornered him only saw that after Kikuhide Ichi let out a scream, that toilet stall suddenly sprayed out a large amount of blood like a fountain, shooting straight to the ceiling… Later, after forensic identification, the DNA in the large amount of blood left at the scene all matched Kikuhide Ichi.
However, eerily, the blood identification results showed that in addition to Kikuhide Ichi, there was also blood from a second person. Subsequent tests confirmed it belonged to the daughter of a teacher named Takayama Keika, but this was actually impossible, because Takayama Keika’s daughter had already died long ago.”
Misaki Naomi trembled all over and widened her eyes: “Could that daughter be Hanako?”
“Hanako is a nickname; the actual name seems to be Kanon.” He Jia’an nodded, frowning as he said, “Whether Kikuhide Ichi’s mysterious disappearance is related to Hanako is another matter, but the reason he suffered that kind of treatment is greatly related to Hanako. This student was actually the sole eyewitness to the entire process of the pervert school worker killing Hanako. But he was threatened by the school worker and said nothing during the school-wide investigation at the time, keeping his mouth shut. It was only later, through the law enforcement officers’ relentless and meticulous pursuit of the case, that the school worker was finally brought to justice. The school worker, who confessed after being convicted, finally honestly admitted that Kikuhide Ichi was an eyewitness. After a confrontation, Kikuhide Ichi couldn’t withstand the pressure and subsequently had to admit the facts.”
