Chapter 43: Return

By evening, Fang Jing finally returned to Kitsuwa City.

After leaving the station, he simply took a ride home, as he was simply too tired, his physical condition quite terrible.

His wrist still hurt a bit, but it was much better than before. With bone-setting and massage, there wasn’t really any major problem.

After getting home, he didn’t even have time to think about anything; he just unlocked the door with his key, collapsed onto the bed, and fell asleep.

Right at that moment, he sensed something, or rather, his ears heard some kind of movement.

The windowsill… it was the window area.

His whole body jolted up instantly, and he took one step to the window, pulling aside the closed curtain.

With a swish, something slid down past the side of the window.

Fang Jing hurriedly opened the window, but he found nothing outside.

“Strange… I brought the Wooden Buddha Statue back, so the Curse’s effect should have lessened, so why—?”

He took off his shirt, and the handprint on his chest had also disappeared. The diary recorded that this was a sign the Curse had vanished.

Yuasa Junichi had said that after the handprint disappeared, the Curse would disappear along with it, and during this period, supernatural phenomena would also cease; the Apartment would enter a relatively safe period.

Then… what was that just now?

______

After sleeping, his mental state was quite good.

He had sealed the window tightly; he found a sunshade and blocked the entire window.

His own apartment door had been broken by him earlier, and Fang Jing didn’t have a very good solution; he just patched it up with wood glue and other materials.

His mother Motoko didn’t ask in detail about this matter.

But it didn’t feel easy to fool her about the door being damaged.

Fang Jing felt around the bedside table, wanting to find his glasses, but he soon remembered that on Sagirimiyama, his glasses had been lost somewhere.

“Actually, I don’t really need glasses that much, but for someone who is quite nearsighted, suddenly not wearing glasses does feel a bit strange…”

He casually found a spare pair of glasses in the drawer and put them on his nose… this pair had a lower prescription, which happened to match his current eyesight.

Fang Jing stood up and got out of bed. He moved his injured hand around a bit; it felt almost healed.

When he opened the door, he just happened to find Satsuki poking her head in from the doorway. She looked like a little squirrel checking out an unfamiliar environment.

“What are you doing?”

He was in the middle of changing clothes, and had even taken his shirt off, revealing his increasingly toned upper body.

Satsuki made a strange noise and quickly closed the door.

“…”

Fang Jing didn’t say anything, just sighed.

He pushed the door open and asked, “Satsuki, did you need something?”

“…No.”

His younger sister Satsuki lowered her eyes, her face turning completely red, as if steam could puff out from the top of her head with a “pop.”

“Ha! Welcome back.”

“…Did Mom notice I wasn’t home?”

“It was okay. She asked a few questions, but I just said you were at cram school.”

Mother Motoko worked at a Convenience Store and also had another part-time job. Her schedule was often day and night reversed; even when she came home, she just rested a bit, so she wasn’t often home. On the contrary, she often worked night shifts and slept at home during the day.

This way, according to her schedule, she naturally wouldn’t overlap with her son Nishizuka Tsukasa, who went to cram school every day.

“Good job.”

He yawned, patted Satsuki’s head, then turned and left, heading toward the bathroom.

“Brother…”

Satsuki seemed a bit pleasantly surprised. In her memory, aside from elementary school days, her brother hadn’t had such affectionate contact with her.

Fang Jing clearly didn’t notice this point; he sometimes forgot that the relationship between the siblings wasn’t actually very good.

After a simple breakfast, he headed to school. Arriving in the classroom and sitting in his familiar seat, he suddenly felt a sense of unreality.

Come to think of it, just a few days ago he was tangled up in supernatural events in deep, remote mountains, and in the blink of an eye, he was back to his usual mundane life. This really was… how to say it, if it were a character in an anime, they might be glad to have returned to ordinary life.

“But for some reason, I feel a bit out of place instead…”

It should be called a sense of unreality! After going through life-and-death situations, returning to reality made him feel somewhat disconnected from the peaceful atmosphere in the classroom.

Actually, the disconnect had been there for a long time. Every day when he came to the classroom, everyone ignored him as if he were a puff of air.

It didn’t really matter anyway. For the original Nishizuka Tsukasa, the people around him were also just puffs of air; everyone was pretty much the same, no difference.

But just then, while Fang Jing was organizing his books, he heard people talking.

“Did you hear? The English teacher Sasamori committed suicide, apparently by jumping off a building.”

“No way! Wasn’t she fine recently?”

“I heard it was because of work pressure.”

“Really?!”

The English teacher Sasamori—could it be that female teacher connected to Fujiwara?

Fang Jing thought for a moment; he vaguely had an image of that female teacher in his mind: quite petite, with a rather nice-looking face, a trainee teacher.

It seemed Fujiwara really was just playing around with her; who would have thought it would lead to a death.

He was pondering this matter when he heard someone call his name nearby.

“Nishizuka, can you come out for a moment?”

The person calling him was Shokuba Haruka, which surprised Fang Jing a bit, but Shokuba was someone who got along fairly well with him at school.

“…What’s up?”

“Sort of.”

Shokuba Haruka’s expression was a bit heavy.

“Can you come out for a bit?”

______

“Go ahead! What did you need to see me about?”

He was a bit surprised that Shokuba Haruka had called him out, and what came next made him even more surprised.

“Well, about the situation with Teacher Sasamori, Nishizuka, have you heard?”

“The English teacher Sasamori—she really committed suicide.”

Fang Jing raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, but… it wasn’t suicide.”

Shokuba Haruka shook her head, pressing her lips tightly together.

“The suicide conclusion was given by the police, but actually, Teacher Sasamori’s body was like… it had been eaten by a beast.”

Her brows were tightly furrowed, and Fang Jing could sense the anger emanating from her.

“What a scumbag… that murderer, really no different from a beast!”

“Wait, what do you mean by that?”

Eaten by a beast—what kind of beast could there be in a big city?

Fang Jing was greatly shocked. He tried to press for more details.

Shokuba Haruka shook her head. She just lifted her face and said seriously to Fang Jing, “Nishizuka, I heard from Uezawa and the others that you beat up Fujiwara and took his Phone, is that right?”

“Correct.”

Fang Jing just remembered that incident. He nodded and said quietly, “Fujiwara hasn’t come to school for a while. What, could he be connected to the case…?”

“He’s the prime suspect.”

Shokuba Haruka sighed. “He’s been missing for several days; no one knows where he is. Can you give me his old Phone?”

“I can, but, Shokuba, I don’t really understand, why do you want to investigate this matter?”

Fang Jing asked, somewhat puzzled, “Wouldn’t it be better to leave these things to the police?”