Tokyo Detective Chronicles

The rain showed no signs of letting up.

Large raindrops pounded against the umbrella, making a dull thud, like countless hands knocking.

Fushimi Iori, holding a long-handled black umbrella, got out of a taxi and walked alone on the street leading to the Third General Hospital of Katsushika Ward. Rainwater gathered along the ribs of the umbrella, splashing into tiny droplets at his feet.

The time is 10:47 PM.

The streets were deserted; the shops on both sides had closed early, except for the convenience store, which still had its lights on. A thin layer of rainwater accumulated on the asphalt, reflecting the dim yellow glow of the streetlights, only to be crushed by his footsteps.

He walked slowly, his black sneakers gliding over puddles.

The umbrella tilted slightly forward, obscuring most of her face.

Only when he occasionally looks up to check the direction can you see his emotionless eyes beneath the hair hanging down his forehead.

"It's exactly like the foreplay in a horror movie..."

The headset kept playing Hoshizaki Rina's muttering voice. At first, she was crying and acting like a young widow about to face a life-or-death separation.

Then, after realizing that she could talk to Fushimi the whole time, she regained some of her liveliness.

The first-person perspective of Fushimi also gave her the feeling of controlling Fushimi while playing a game, which was a very strange experience.

The hospital was even quieter tonight than last time.

Perhaps due to the weather, or perhaps for some other reason, only one side door was open at the main entrance. Behind the glass door, the nurse on duty was sleeping on the table, breathing evenly.

Fushimi folded his umbrella and shook off the raindrops under the eaves outside the door.

He didn't go in immediately, but stood there, quietly watching the rain.

Raindrops were blown in by the wind and dampened his trouser legs.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the glass door.

"Squeak—"

The old hinges made a harsh, scraping sound.

The nurse on duty was immediately awakened. She groggily raised her head, looked around, but found nothing...

The nurse rubbed her eyes and leaned back onto the table.

But what she didn't notice was that there were several inconspicuous watermarks on the ground.

The second-floor corridor was even darker than last time.

Several energy-saving lamps were broken, with only the last one still lit. The smell of disinfectant in the air was diluted by the moisture brought by the rain, mixed with the musty smell of the old building.

Fushimi walked up to the metal handrail and stopped.

He took a deep breath, turned on all his equipment, and made one last check to see if the action camera on his chest was working properly.

After confirming with Rina Hoshizaki, I reached out and grasped the metal surface of the armrest.

Fushimi closed his eyes.

In the darkness, other senses are amplified.

The sound of raindrops tapping on the window seemed distant, as if muffled by a thick pane of glass. From the nurses' station at the end of the corridor came the soft snoring of an elderly patient coughing in a ward, the gentle creak of a trolley wheel rolling across the floor…

"Has the scene changed?" Fushimi asked.

"Not yet," Hoshizaki said. "It's still the scene of a hospital corridor."

"it is good."

Even now, Hoshizaki Rina consciously kept quiet. From now on, she would only answer or offer reminders when necessary, or when Fushimi asked a question.

Then, Fushimi heard it.

A faint, fishy breeze blew from the direction the handrail extended.

And... the rustling sound of ropes rubbing together.

Exactly the same as last time.

Without hesitation, Fushimi placed his right hand on the railing and took his first step.

One step, two steps...

In the real world.

But on Hoshizaki's screen, Fushimi's figure suddenly blurred for a moment, the image flickering like a picture with a poor signal.

"Iori," Hoshizaki said urgently, "the screen is starting to flicker and shake..."

Fushimi's silhouette appeared doubled, as if two of him were overlapping. The background of the corridor also began to become unstable, the lines of the walls slightly distorted, like a scene seen through hot air.

The screen began to display snow frequently, and the picture gradually lost signal...

"Hey! Iori!"

In Fushimi's earpiece, Hoshizaki Rina's voice began to become muffled and choppy, until... he crossed a certain threshold...

The crackling sound of electricity came through and subsided after about ten seconds.

"Rina, can you hear me?" His voice echoed.

"Yes, yes, that's fine..."

Hoshizaki's voice became clear again, but it trembled noticeably...

Fushimi breathed a sigh of relief; at least communication was working normally.

"What's going on now? What did you see?"

Fushimi waited for a long time, but received no reply from Hoshizaki Rina.

But through the earpiece came the sound of a girl's tense breathing. She seemed afraid that if she screamed, she would frighten Fushimi, so she immediately covered her mouth.

What did she see?

"Rina?"

"You...you're still in the hallway."

Rina Hoshizaki finally mustered her courage and calmed herself down, but her voice was still tight:

"But the green walls of the corridor have been replaced with white checkered tiles, the facilities are old and dilapidated, and have been abandoned for many years. And..."

She paused again.

Fushimi could hear her swallowing.

"And what?"

"The ceiling..." Hoshizaki's voice was low, as if he were saying some secret that shouldn't be spoken aloud: "is covered with things."

"What is it?"

"...the hanging rope."

Hoshizaki's voice was so soft it was almost inaudible.

In the noisy footage, all four sides are covered with smooth, white square tiles, which were originally the ceiling of a hospital corridor...

It was covered with a dense array of hanging ropes and paper pendants!

There were nylon, hemp rope, steel wire, and even strips of cloth that looked like they were torn from a bed sheet...

These were not mass-produced replicas, but rather items that looked as if they had been specially collected from Yingzhou... or even from all over the world, covered in dark brown bloodstains...

There were so many that even if Fushimi bent down to look, he couldn't see the end of them.

And among these layers of ropes and paper hangings, there were also pairs of hands hanging down from the ceiling... pale, swollen, with stiff, bent knuckles.

Some hands were still moving, their fingers twitching unconsciously, like the last struggle of a drowning person.

In the folk customs of Yingzhou, a person who dies by hanging is called "rope-attached," which is one of the most unclean and ominous taboos.

People believed that the souls of those who hanged themselves would be bound to the rope, unable to be reborn, and would only wander in the same place, reliving the pain of death.

Those ropes absorb the resentment of the dead, becoming a medium that attracts more deaths.

Therefore, whether in the purification rituals of shrines or in folk taboos, hanging ropes are taboo items that must be thoroughly burned and purified.

At this moment, the sheer number of them here is breathtaking.

Hoshizaki opened his mouth, but in the end, he described the things above Fushimi's head in as precise and steady a tone as possible.

The state and number of the hanging ropes here serve as a warning to Fushimi that something extremely terrible and dangerous is about to happen.

Fushimi nodded: "Very good. No matter what you see, stay calm."

"Pay close attention to the candles in the same fate array."

Upon hearing this, Hoshizaki immediately turned his head to look. The eight candles were burning quietly, their dark blue flames as steady as ever, without the slightest tremor.

"The candles are fine," she said.

After thinking for a moment, Fushimi asked, "Did you see any creature... or anything that looked like a creature?"

Hoshizaki then mentioned the hand above his head.

Fushimi was somewhat puzzled.

According to Hoshizaki's description, these hands were clearly not the monsters he had encountered when he last entered this place... nor did he feel that kind of breathing that was pressed tightly against his back...

Guided by Hoshizaki, he made his way through several corners.

The corridor seemed endless, with repeated white tiled walls on both sides. Occasionally, a closed door could be seen, the words on the doorplate already blurred and illegible.

The fishy and moldy smell in the air grew stronger.

There's a fork in the road ahead.

Hoshizaki said, "The left and right sides look the same."

Without hesitation, Fushimi cleaved the wall with an axe to mark the spot, then walked to the left.

Because in the ordinary world, there are many such places, making it impossible to judge.

He leaned against the wall, feeling its cold, damp touch, with a sticky liquid seeping from the grout lines of the tiles, and continued walking forward.

As they were walking, Hoshizaki suddenly gasped.

Two pale, deformed hands gripped the edge of the wall, their knuckles bent at an unnatural angle, and then the body slowly climbed down.

The creature had limbs similar to those of a human, but the proportions were abnormally deformed. Its arms were excessively long, almost as long as its body, while its legs were short and atrophied.

His body was emaciated, with his ribs protruding from the surface of his skin.

Its skin is grayish-white and smooth without any hair.

Its head rotated 360 degrees in an extremely illogical manner. Its eyes were so small as to be almost non-existent. It had no nose, only a slit that ran across its entire face, filled with countless tiny, sharp teeth.

He stared intently at Fushimi.