Chapter 222: Red Cloak
Chapter 222: Red Cloak
When Nishizuka Satsuki arrived in Naomori Town, she noticed the town’s streets were not very wide. Rows of single-family houses were arranged neatly, but they clearly were not very modern.
Most of the utility poles along the roads were made of wood, giving off an old, dusty atmosphere.
It was obvious that the town consisted mainly of residential homes, with not many shops around.
On the outskirts of Naomori Town, there were many fields, rice paddies, fruit trees, and plantations. It seemed most people here made their living from farming.
…The term “countryside” really fit this place well.
“But it should still be early in the day! Why are all the houses closed up?”
The whole street was empty.
Every house had its doors shut tight.
After the bus left, there were no more man-made noises. The surroundings became eerily quiet.
Although it was a small town and not a big city… it was strange that there wasn’t a single person in sight on the entire street.
A faint unease rose in Nishizuka Satsuki’s heart.
She had a bad feeling, as if there wasn’t a single “person” left in the whole town.
Yes, there was no sign of living people!
“I’ll go check the town office.”
The rain had almost stopped. She started walking, planning to head toward the town center.
The town’s layout was simple, but there were also many small alleyways. As she turned into one narrow alley, she glanced sideways and vaguely saw something…
Tap!
She stopped walking.
She heard some kind of noise.
At that moment, Satsuki tilted her head.
Screech!
She heard the sound of nails scratching against a wall.
They were very sharp nails, extending out and scraping bit by bit against the wall. The sound was harsh and grating.
In that moment, her heart tightened with fear, beating as loud as pounding drums.
A red figure slowly emerged from the alley.
Intense terror ate away at her insides.
“A… a Red Cloak!”
Terror made her let out a frightened scream. To escape the figure, she desperately ran forward.
She ran straight down the street, which ahead widened into a gentle sloping road.
The red figure was chasing her.
Through the reflection in a glass door that looked like it belonged to a toy store, she could see the weird person in the Red Cloak quickly catching up to her.
She nearly tripped over something underfoot. Looking down, she saw a broken toy bus. She paid it no mind and kept running as fast as she could.
She passed through a fence ahead, rounded a corner past a camellia tree, and broke into a jog along a small path.
The sound of nails scratching the wall followed close behind.
This made her even more frightened.
There were footsteps—tap, tap, tap, tap—the thing’s footsteps.
Don’t follow me, don’t come, don’t come.
She kept shouting inside her heart.
She turned a corner.
As she rounded it, she rushed so fast she almost crashed into a brick wall, forcing her to stop awkwardly.
This was—!
Ahead, there seemed to be no way out. At the end of the alley, behind a rusty blue wall made of metal sheets or something similar, past a thick, jungle-like grove of trees, stood an old, dark, gloomy house.
Satsuki had little choice. She could only dash inside the house.
She didn’t take off her shoes. She pulled the door open with all her strength, then shoved it shut.
The footsteps stopped.
Once the door was closed, she held her breath, not daring to make a sound.
After a long while, the footsteps started again, seeming to pass by the door and fade into the distance…
She finally relaxed, slumping to the floor.
“Who… are you?”
Candlelight appeared from the dark entrance hall.
A face emerged from the darkness.
Satsuki covered her mouth, unable to hold back a scream.
“Hey! I asked you a question. Don’t play dumb!”
The person holding the candle was a girl with short hair, frowning with displeasure.
“Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
“Suzuname, what’s going on?”
Behind her appeared another girl with long hair, wearing a dress.
She tilted her head and peered out from behind the short-haired girl named Suzuname.
“Hmm… it looks like she’s new here?”
The long-haired girl looked Satsuki up and down, then nodded to herself as if confirming something.
————————
The Japanese-style room was filled with the scent of incense.
The smell likely came from a household shrine—a kind of decaying fragrance.
Just like the mansion before her, it was full of a rotten, worm-eaten atmosphere.
The hallway was dim and, as expected, terribly dirty, as if no one had cleaned it for a long time.
The floorboards inside had shrunk, leaving gaps filled with grime.
Keeping her shoes on had definitely been the right choice.
In one unused tatami room, there were only Daruma dolls, wooden boxes, and clothes stuffed in plastic bags.
On one corner of a table stood several old photographs of people from the past.
Sliding open the paper door of the tatami room revealed the interior.
There was a somewhat tidied-up broken table, and a white candle flickering with light. Thanks to that candle, the room had some illumination.
Several cushions were placed on the tatami mats on the floor.
A few girls were kneeling or sitting on them.
“Everyone, this Nishizuka here also stumbled into this place by accident, just like us…”
The long-haired girl was named Serizawa, with hair so black it reached her waist. The skin glimpsed through the gaps of her uniform was as white as the first snow.
She was a classical beauty.
She was only one year older than me, yet she had a maturity far beyond her age.
“It’s not exactly a ‘collision.’ The bus we were on broke down halfway, and we had no choice but to walk. After walking for a long time, we only managed to find this town.”
The one who spoke next was a girl with glasses and curly hair. She skillfully peeled an orange with her fingers as she talked.
“The phones are completely dead. There’s no signal here at all.”
A fashionable girl sat cross-legged on the zabuton cushion. She had dyed her hair a bright golden color and wore exaggerated eye makeup. Holding a phone with a flashy, vivid-colored case, she muttered under her breath.
“It’s been hours, and there’s still no signal. I can’t even update my blog.”
She couldn’t help but complain.
“Alright, these are just minor issues.”
The short-haired girl who spoke earlier also sat down.
She was 170 centimeters tall, with a slender figure and shoulder-length, neat short hair. She had a striking appearance that didn’t require much makeup to attract attention.
“I’m Suzuname. This is Hanakomachi and Mikame.”
“Hanakomachi” was the bespectacled, curly-haired girl currently eating an orange, while the other girl, with a gyaru style, was “Mikame.”
Serizawa, Suzuname, Hanakomachi, and Mikame, along with myself—that made five people in this house.
Like me, they were stranded in Naomori Town because the bus they were on had broken down halfway.
The four of them seemed to be on a trip together when the accident happened.
The phones couldn’t make calls.
Even the landline in this house didn’t work.
It felt as if all connections to the outside world had been cut off.
Suzuname pointed out this fact.
“It’s already night, and there’s no one in the town. It’s almost impossible to leave…”
“Couldn’t we just walk back?”
“Naomori Town… seems to be a very rural area near Fubian. I think it would take a very long time to leave on foot.”
Hanakomachi peeled the orange, and the citrus scent spread through the room.
She said she grew up in the countryside with her grandmother and was relatively familiar with the nearby towns and villages because she often helped with family deliveries.
“Even if we reached a deserted road, it would be hard to catch a ride into the city.”
“But we can’t just stay here forever!”
Mikame frowned, her tone unfriendly.
“We just have to wait until tomorrow. We can wait for the bus at the bus stop.”
Hanakomachi responded in a lazy tone, her attitude seeming dismissive toward Mikame.
“Ha… What’s with that attitude, Hanakomachi? Are you looking for a fight?”
Mikame seemed like the type to explode easily. She slammed her hand on the table, unable to hold back her temper.
“Enough!”
Suzuname stood up and placed a hand on Mikame’s shoulder.
“She didn’t mean it that way. Don’t overreact.”
“Tch!”
Mikame, who had been about to erupt, snorted coldly and sat back down.
“Now isn’t the time to argue about such trivial matters.”
Serizawa noticed this and coughed lightly. She lowered her voice and said, “Don’t any of you think something is strange? Why is there no one in Naomori Town at all?”
“Um, what about this house? Isn’t the owner here?”
Satsuki asked timidly.
“There’s no one in this house.”
Serizawa explained with a bitter smile. They had stumbled in by accident.
“Although we didn’t want to disturb the owner, we had no choice because of what happened along the way.”
Satsuki had no idea what had happened, so her face was full of questions.
“It must have been a pervert! A guy wearing a red cloak seemed to be chasing us…”
Mikame recalled something, her expression filled with disgust.
“We had no choice but to run all the way here without realizing it.”
“Yeah! That was really a weirdo.”
Suzuname nodded, agreeing with Mikame.
After arriving in Naomori Town, they had encountered that strange man in the red cloak.
Frightened, the four of them ran quickly and ended up at this old house without even realizing it.
(Isn’t this strange? First, the entire Naomori Town is empty, and why did the five of us end up in this house… It all feels a bit too coincidental!)
Though Satsuki was kind-hearted and overly simple, that didn’t mean she was stupid. In some ways, she was very perceptive. Unlike the other four, who were still confused, she had clearly realized something—or noticed something the others hadn’t.
“By the way, there’s something I want to ask. Did any of you notice?”
Hanakomachi, who had been quiet for a long time, adjusted her glasses.
“That Red Cloak man who was chasing us earlier… Doesn’t he seem a bit like the ‘Hunterghost’ from that recent email?”
Hunterghost?!
Hanakomachi’s words triggered a memory in everyone’s minds.
—That’s right, Hunterghost.
Come to think of it… There are some similarities to the Hunterghost described in that email—a mysterious weirdo in a red cloak.
The more they thought about it, the more terrified the girls felt.
Suddenly, multiple phone rings went off.
“Wah!”
Nishizuka Satsuki was startled. She reached for her phone and found it ringing.
The other four were the same. They had all received an email at the same time.
It was an email written in bright red letters—”I’m coming for you now.”
A male corpse, bloody and torn open with a cross-shaped gash on its stomach, suddenly fell from the ceiling and landed heavily on the floor!
“Ahhhhhhh!”
The girls screamed in unison.
Satsuki’s legs went weak, and she nearly collapsed onto the table.
There was no hole in the ceiling, yet the corpse had appeared out of nowhere.
Moreover, she recognized it almost immediately—it was the bus driver they had seen earlier.
“No, no… I can’t take this!”
Mikame held her head, muttering incessantly as if she couldn’t bear it.
And she wasn’t the only one. Every girl present felt as if their minds were on the verge of breaking after witnessing this scene.
No one could have expected such a sudden, bizarre turn of events.
Abruptly, a faint, mocking laugh seemed to come from somewhere.
“Hehe, hehehe!”
The laughter grew louder, as if it was coming from the ceiling.
This was the last straw, completely shattering their fragile wills.
The next second, the terrified girls flung open the paper door and rushed out of the house.
They had to leave. They had to get away from here.
Without a second thought, they made that decision.
As they ran out of the house, the sky, shrouded in dark rain clouds, seemed to faintly seep with a weak, blood-red glow.
————————
“In a major traffic accident in the highway tunnel between Matsubara City and our city, a car collided with a small bus. The accident resulted in one death and several injuries. The details are still under investigation.”
“A private residence in the Omi suburban foothills of our city caught fire. Fortunately, no one was injured. Firefighters extinguished the blaze promptly, and local community groups cooperated fully—”
“The Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) in our city issued a statement demanding that school staff provide a psychological evaluation report during the selection process…”
An old radio was turned off by a finger, and the sound cut out abruptly.
“Hey!”
Like a startled cat, the “Maeda Girl” jumped up from the sofa.
“Why did you turn off my radio?”
“Aow!”
She almost lunged forward.
But unfortunately, Fang Jing flicked her forehead, making her cover it and roll around on the sofa.
“I agreed to let you rest here, but if you cause too much trouble, I’ll have to kick you out.”
This was a time when he needed to focus, but the girl downstairs was listening to the news on her radio, which naturally distracted him.
It slowed down his work progress.
(No choice… Given that we’re dealing with a contagious Third Category, it’s better for me to handle the information screening personally…)
But it wasn’t just that simple.
Fang Jing had also spent time increasing his Stamina Attribute.
Because so far, his attribute points had hit a ceiling—the limit of human potential.
Fang Jing had no choice but to try pushing all his attributes to 10 points to see if anything changed.
After this attribute boost, his perception, memory, mental agility, and the knowledge he had mastered all improved significantly.
However, increasing his Stamina Attribute didn’t grant him superhuman intelligence, because Stamina didn’t equate to “wisdom.” It represented memory and academic knowledge to a greater extent.
Through this enhancement, his memory abilities reached a remarkably high level.
With this capability, screening information was much more efficient than having ordinary people investigate.
Moreover, when it came to information related to Strange Phenomenon, ordinary people lacked his sharp intuition to extract the necessary details from documents.