Chapter 230: Return To Kisaragi High School
A figure wearing a trench coat and a khaki hat walked away from the hospital with light steps, soon slipping into the crowded crowd and quickly disappearing.
Regarding this, in the alley across the street from the hospital entrance, several figures emerged from the darkness of the alley. One of them turned back to the person leaning against the wall with half their body still hidden in the darkness and said, “Senior Matsumoto, do we really not need to chase after him? Just leave him alone like this?”
“Heh, anyway, he’s definitely going back to that place. Instead of wasting effort tracking him, it’s better to let everyone rest well.” Matsumoto Gin walked under the sun with his hands in his pockets, his squinting eyes opening into a slit—eyes full of confidence. “Moreover, after interrogating He Jia’an and Misaki Naomi, I’ve roughly figured out the dark cloud hanging over Taomuki City lately. That’s really dangerous.”
After passing through the bustling crowd, He Jia’an turned into a slightly less crowded street corner. After winding through several turns, he finally entered a street with sparse foot traffic.
He adjusted his ill-fitting hat, glancing back sideways at a sleeve that flashed by at a corner, the corner of his mouth curling up slightly.
He Jia’an knew someone was tracking him and had been following him for a long time, but they hadn’t shown themselves. He didn’t care.
He didn’t show any flustered behavior due to the tracking, nor did he quicken his pace to shake them off.
“Hey—has school suspended classes?” After circling around, He Jia’an surprisingly returned to the starting point. He narrowed his eyes and read the notice posted at the entrance of Kisaragi High School.
The notice stated that classes were suspended due to a burst water pipe causing unstable wiring, making it impossible for the entire school to conduct normal teaching. Offline classes were thus suspended for three days, switching to online teaching.
However, the real reason for suspending classes was naturally not as stated on the notice. On the night before last, not only Kisaragi High School in the Inner World, but even the school in reality had been invaded by unknown factors, and the school had discovered injuries and even deaths as a result.
For the sake of the teachers and students, and for the school’s reputation, Kisaragi High School would not resume classes until the crisis was resolved.
Presumably, until the Chosen Alliance resolved the school’s crisis, these three days of suspension were destined to become three days after three days, with no clear end time.
Now, there wasn’t even a security guard at the gate. They had probably heard some rumors through quick channels.
A month was only a few hundred alliance coins—not worth risking their life for.
Of course, it wasn’t impossible that the Chosen Alliance had done it deliberately.
He Jia’an entered the current Kisaragi High School as if it were deserted, with no one able to stop him or daring to stop his behavior. He boldly walked into the school and even took most of the school’s keys from the security room.
“That biology classroom must be here.” He Jia’an thought to himself as he returned to the chemistry laboratory he had visited the night before last and opened the laboratory door.
The empty, unoccupied chemistry laboratory was somewhat stuffy, with the air still carrying the indistinct smell of chemical reagents. He walked in and carefully observed the environment here.
“Compared to Kisaragi High School during the Showa period, the room structure has been modified a lot—about a quarter larger than the former biology classroom.” He Jia’an walked past the position of the classroom lectern; that was originally supposed to be the wall of the biology classroom, but now the wall had been pushed back.
He Jia’an tried to pass through this door into the crisis-ridden Inner World as he had the night before, but the space channel seemed to only work at night and had no effect during the day.
“As expected, during the Showa period, Hanako’s mother, Takayama Keika, held the Ritual of Wishing related to Thousand Illusions Moon in the biology classroom. That’s why Takayama Keika said she did something sorry to the students.” Thinking of how Takayama Keika toyed with Kikuhide Ichi in the palm of her hand, directly driving a student to a deformed mentality of revenge through breakdown, He Jia’an felt his guess was very likely.
Takayama Keika was clearly somewhat crazy. There was a head to every grievance and a master to every debt. That pervert school worker and the cowardly Kikuhide Ichi had done something sorry to her daughter. If she only targeted those two, it would all be reasonable, but she didn’t seem to plan on considering the feelings of the innocent.
Perhaps in her view, the entire school was not innocent, so she wanted to drag everyone down with her.
Whether it was the rumored “biology classroom you can’t walk out of” or even “Hanako of the Toilet,” both campus ghost story-like rumors had appeared because of Takayama Keika.
Regarding Takayama Keika, He Jia’an had actually done a fairly detailed investigation on her past before coming and discovered that she had mysteriously disappeared the day before the media announced the true culprit who killed her daughter.
If He Jia’an wasn’t wrong, Takayama Keika had probably offered herself to the Abnormal God at that time, in exchange for equivalent power—that is, those cursed rumors.
“Is Hanako’s curse source you, Teacher Takayama Keika?” He Jia’an muttered to himself, then tried to find traces left by someone who no longer existed in this completely different spacetime.
According to Boss Lin, the source of the curse might not be the person themselves, but the one who activated the curse must have a close relationship with the deceased, even empathizing deeply.
If anyone would be angry and resentful for Hanako, and who had the most motive to deliberately use the power of blessing, it had to be Hanako’s family—that is, Hanako’s single mother.
With a guessed target, it was naturally easy to lock onto and act.
He Jia’an planned to search in this chemistry laboratory that was once the biology classroom. As he walked around the laboratory, after getting used to the pungent smell of some chemical agents, he finally detected an unusual smell in the environment.
“Is this the smell of blood?” He Jia’an sniffed hard, following the intermittent bloody scent. He finally found the source of the blood smell under the foot of an experimental bench: a pool of dried, sticky blood, and unknown burn marks that had scorched a human shape into the floor.
He Jia’an fell slightly silent; he could roughly guess who the person who died here was.
In the private office next to the laboratory, he found a cowhide notebook that was open, with only half of a Ritual of Wishing pattern drawn inside—the complete pattern had been erased halfway.
The cover and useless inner pages of the cowhide notebook had the name “Mano Daichi” written on them. Observing the brushstrokes of the drawing, it was confirmed that Mano Daichi had drawn the pattern himself.
Too tired today, can’t code much. Stopping here for now.
