At the TV station building, Ago and Azuki had just entered the lobby, arriving in front of the elevator doors.
The red numbers above the elevator doors were flickering, slowly descending from the upper floors.
Ago fished a compact out of her handbag and checked her makeup in the little mirror, touching up her lipstick, while Azuki twirled the ends of her hair around a finger out of boredom.
"Ding!"
A chime suddenly rang out—but not from the elevator. It came from Ago's handbag.
It was the notification tone of a text message.
Without pausing, she flipped open the bag's flap with one hand, pinched out her phone between two fingers, and swiped the screen open with her thumb.
Her gaze skimmed carelessly over the new message.
In just an instant, that slightly exaggerated smile on her face froze like dried plaster.
Azuki was about to ask what was wrong when her own phone rang from inside her bag.
The ringtone sounded especially piercing in the quiet lobby.
Azuki pulled out her phone, took a single glance, and the muscles in her cheeks began to twitch faintly.
She lifted her head and looked toward Ago. As their eyes met, each saw reflected in the other's gaze an almost identical expression—a distorted, ferocious look of terror.
The elevator doors had already opened, but Ago and Azuki still didn't step inside. The TV station staff were about to urge them on, only to see the vicious expressions on the two women's faces—their dark eyes burning with an evil flame, glaring so fixedly at their phone screens that it seemed they meant to pierce right through them with their stares.
The staff member was startled by their expressions, and the words on the tip of his tongue died there, unspoken.
The aura around Ago grew murky, and an invisible white wraith drifted out from within her body, seeping like smoke into the phone in her hand, chasing along the intangible radio waves between phones, tracing back toward the source of the number.
Yet, a few seconds later, Ago's Ikiryo came burrowing back out of the phone.
Ago's expression turned even uglier, and seeing her like this, Azuki realized the gravity of the situation as well.
"That end powered off?"
"It's a pretty terrible situation, all right."
Ago said with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Sorry about this—something urgent's come up. We have to step out for just a little bit."
Azuki looked over at the staff member beside them, who kept starting to speak but held back.
The staff standing to the side exchanged glances, thrown into confusion by the two women's instantly transformed attitudes.
"But, Miss Ago, Miss Azuki, the livestream schedule has already been set, and the director..."
"We'll explain to the director ourselves!"
Ago cut him off.
"Right now, please arrange a car for us—immediately!"
Her gaze swept over him, and that ordinarily comical, exaggerated face now carried a heart-stopping sense of pressure.
They would absolutely never allow their own scandal to be spread—yet, fixated as they were on such matters, they had no understanding of their true standing in the eyes of the authorities.
Of course, this too was something the authorities had deliberately arranged.
Under no circumstances could these two ignorant yet powerful comedians be allowed to realize what kind of privilege they possessed.
The staff member swallowed his saliva, not daring to ask anything more, and hurriedly nodded: "Yes, I'll go arrange it right away!"
A few minutes later, Ago and Azuki were already seated in the minivan the TV station had arranged, speeding toward Nerima Ward.
Across from the TV station building, inside a café, Amamiya Rin set down his teacup, picked up the cane resting beside the table, and rose to settle the bill.
Stepping out of the café, not far down the street, a somewhat aged-looking jeep was parked.
Amamiya Rin pulled open the car door, sat in the driver's seat, tossed the cane to the back, and turned the key. The engine growled to life, and the jeep trailed after that minivan, merging onto the city's main thoroughfare.
The sky gradually darkened, and the streetlights lit up one after another. Ago's car drove very fast, weaving almost at the edge of the speed limit, giving off an air of anxious urgency.
Amamiya Rin's jeep followed steadily behind, keeping a distance of nearly a hundred meters—neither too far nor too close.
According to his plan, if all went well, Ago's and Azuki's Ikiryo would enter that haunted house and become a thorn in Kayako's eye.
When the two of them, Ago and Azuki, came into conflict with Kayako, their power would inevitably be held in check—and that would be the moment for him to make his move.
In the worst case, Ago's and Azuki's bodies would enter the haunted house as well.
And naturally, Amamiya Rin had taken this scenario into account too—otherwise he wouldn't have taken action himself.
Because in Kayako's eyes, Kawakami Tomie was no different from a cockroach; she would never allow Kawakami Tomie to enter her home.
Not long after, the minivan carrying Ago and Azuki finally stopped at an intersection on a secluded street in Nerima Ward.
The two women hurriedly got out, looked at the street sign, and turned into an even narrower alley beside it.
The alley was wedged between two rows of old-style detached houses, no more than two meters wide, its ground made of aged concrete, with stubborn weeds sprouting from the cracks.
The streetlights were outside the alley; in its depths, only the moonlight could barely illuminate the ground beneath their feet.
"This is the place..."
Walking into the depths of the alley, Azuki lowered her voice, checking the address against the door plate by the light of her phone screen.
They stopped in front of one house.
Before them stood an ordinary Japanese detached house—a two-story standalone with a small courtyard. Only, this courtyard seemed to have gone uncleaned for far too long; withered vines crept over the top of the wall, and the lawn within had already grown wild.
On one of the second-floor windows, the curtains weren't fully drawn shut, leaving a gap.
Viewed from the alley, behind that gap was pure darkness.
But stare at it for a moment, and it would give one the illusion that someone was hidden there in the darkness, peering back out from behind the gap.
Ago and Azuki exchanged a glance, and the next moment, the air around them seemed to twist slightly.
Had anyone with the ability of spiritual sight been present, they would have seen white wraiths in the shape of human silhouettes drifting slowly out from above the two women's heads, like wisps of light smoke.
Those were precisely their Ikiryo. In an extremely crude and forceful manner, the two of them directly released more than a dozen Ikiryo. Their faces were blurred and their forms wavering; after lingering briefly in the air, they slipped soundlessly through the gaps in the iron fence, like fish returning to their nest, and sank into the courtyard of the Saeki house.
Immediately after, they passed through the cracks of the little building's tightly shut doors and entered inside.
The interior was dim; the tightly closed doors and windows blocked out the light from outside, yet Ago and Azuki could still faintly make out their surroundings.
Blurred footprints remained on the floor thick with dust, and there was a smell of dust in the air, along with... a somewhat cloying, rusty stench of iron.
The furniture lay toppled every which way, and stains and peeling wallpaper remained on the walls. In some places the colors varied in shade, like water stains, or like the marks left behind by some other filth after it had dried.
In the kitchen, the sink was dry, but a ring of dark yellow grime edged it. The cupboard door was half open, empty inside save for a few chipped bowls and plates. In the bathroom, a bucket lay overturned on the floor, and a nearly dried liquid pooled across the ground.
Ago and Azuki made a round through several rooms on the first floor. No matter how one looked at it, this didn't seem like a place anyone had lived in—there was no sign of any living person at all.
____
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