They found nothing on the first floor. Both of them were growing irritated and restless, but they still turned their attention toward the second floor.
The second floor was even dimmer than the first. Downstairs, at least, faint slivers of streetlight or moonlight seeped in through the gaps in doors and along the window ledges, barely tracing out the outlines of objects.
But at the top of the stairs leading to the second floor lay a purer, more absolute darkness.
That darkness was not still—it seemed to have weight, slowly flowing out from the depths of the corridor.
As the Ikiryo of Ago and Azuki drifted toward the staircase, the two of them suddenly caught it—that cloying, iron-rust scent growing thicker and thicker, as if it were drifting down from the second floor.
After floating up to the second floor, they found the short, narrow corridor held two doors. One was shut tight, its panel old and worn; the other looked wider, likely the bedroom door, left slightly ajar. The darkness leaking through that crack was denser than the corridor itself.
The source of that cloying iron-rust smell was right there.
The Ikiryo did not hesitate. They passed through the crack of the half-open door and entered the bedroom.
Inside the room, moonlight seeped in from the edges of curtains that hadn't been drawn tight, sketching out the shape of the space.
The floor was dark wooden planking, but its color varied in depth. Great swaths of it took on an unnatural dark brown, the grain blurred, as if some viscous liquid had soaked it over and over until it dried and fused with the wood itself.
The walls were the same. The original wallpaper had peeled away for the most part, exposing an ashen-white surface marked with splatter-shaped and smear-shaped dark stains that stretched upward from the floor—some even reaching the ceiling.
Even the bed and the closet were the same, tainted with heavy stains.
And yet, just as on the first floor, there was no one to be found here—not even a trace that anyone had come here in the last few days.
The only thing that could be discerned was this: some time ago, an utterly horrifying murder had taken place here, and the victim's blood had all but drenched the entire room!
"Don't tell me we've been played?"
Ago crossed her arms over her chest, her face slightly twisted, impatience and suppressed anger flickering in her eyes.
"It doesn't look at all like anyone's been in here recently! In the end, what did that unknown, mysterious person lure us here for?"
Azuki's agitation ran even deeper than Ago's.
Though they wielded power that towered above countless espers, this innate power did not make their minds any stronger than an ordinary person's.
Quite the opposite—their minds were weaker than a normal person's. Before coming here, they had thought of nothing but killing to silence witnesses, nothing else at all.
"Bakayarou! Where the hell is that guy?"
Ago's brow was tightly furrowed—more at a loss than truly angry, because they didn't even know where to direct their fury.
"Let's just burn this house down. If that unidentified guy sent us here, then this place must be connected to him somehow."
Azuki put forward the idea.
As for what exactly the connection was—who cares? If we can't kill anyone, can't we at least burn the place? Vent first, worry about the rest later.
Before the words had even faded, Ago and Azuki both felt a gaze upon them.
A cold, sticky stare, brimming with resentment and malice, fell upon them from some corner of the room.
That gaze had no physical form, yet it weighed heavier than anything solid.
The Ikiryo whipped around toward the direction the gaze came from.
It was that closet!
"Tap."
A faint sound came from somewhere in the room.
Very slight, like a small pebble dropping onto the wooden floor.
They hurriedly searched for where the sound had come from, but found nothing. More than a dozen Ikiryo nearly filled over half the room, and every one of them could confirm the sound had not come from anywhere near them.
"Shhh…"
Just then, a sound like something rubbing against a rough surface began to rise.
This time, they discovered it—it was above them!
The sound was coming from above the ceiling.
And it wasn't just the sound; that sensation of being watched seemed to come from above as well.
A presence steeped in resentment cast its gaze down from overhead.
That "shhh…" scraping continued, drifting from within the ceiling—muffled and intermittent, as if something heavy were moving with excruciating slowness.
Or perhaps… as if something were crawling, straining its body through the cramped crawlspace.
The sound had no rhythm, stopping and starting, and each time it rose, the air in the room grew a degree more stagnant.
Ago and Azuki felt it—that faint, cold dread that had been coiling around them ever since they entered this house was now steadily intensifying.
It was no longer merely filth of scent and sight, but an intangible pressure.
This pressure did not come from any single, definite direction. It permeated the entire bedroom—seeping up from beneath the stain-soaked floor, oozing out from the mark-riddled walls, bearing down heavily from the dark crawlspace of the ceiling where those strange noises emerged.
The air grew impossibly heavy. Even the normally light, drifting movements of the Ikiryo felt a trace of resistance.
"So it's finally shown itself!"
And yet, Ago and Azuki felt no pressure, no tension whatsoever—instead, they grew excited.
After all, being far too powerful, they had never to this day understood what fear was, nor had they ever encountered a being stronger than themselves.
Even if they could sense that some threat seemed to lurk within the room, they would feel no dread or panic over it—there was only one situation that could stir such emotions in them, and that was ruin and disgrace.
But right now, the situation was the very opposite!
As long as they could kill the one who had lured them here, the possibility of ruin and disgrace would vanish!
As for whether the thing above was actually the one who had lured them here—who cares? Silence it first; if they killed the wrong thing, so be it.
In the bedroom, five or six Ikiryo drifted together toward the old Japanese-style closet, passing through the gap in the cabinet doors to enter its interior.
Inside, it was empty—only dust and a stale, rotten odor. It looked up toward where the top of the closet met the ceiling; that spot was open, so she wouldn't have to strain to pry it apart.
One Ikiryo floated upward, its upper body sinking into the shadows at the top of the cabinet, preparing to survey the crawlspace.
But the very instant her head slipped into the darkness of the compartment, a face—at nearly point-blank range—pressed itself up to her!
That was by no means the face of a living person.
Swollen, pale and bluish, covered in deep purple bruises and dried, blackened bloodstains.
The hair was greasy and tangled together, like countless long, thin black tentacles, writhing faintly in the cramped space of the compartment.
The skin was split in many places, exposing the dubiously colored subcutaneous tissue beneath.
Its features were twisted and warped, its eyeballs cloudy and bulging, glaring fixedly at the intruding Ikiryo, its gaze radiating an incomparably profound malice, murderous intent, and resentment.
Meeting these eyes head-on, even Ago—whose spiritual power was strong beyond imagination—could not help but freeze for a moment.
The next second, those dense strands of black hair lunged at the Ikiryo like living black sludge, instantly ensnaring the one that had lifted its head to investigate inside the closet. Giving it no chance to react, they dragged the Ikiryo into the darkness of the compartment.
____
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