Chapter 15 Head Balloons (8) "At that time, I saw the west..."

"At that time, I saw Yuko Nishimura come out of the principal's office. Her collar was disheveled, her skirt was wrinkled, and her hair looked like it had been pulled out of shape."

"Anyway, his clothes were all disheveled." Sato Yota's tone was somewhat ambiguous, as if it were none of his business, but he deliberately emphasized the words "disheveled."

"For the next few days, I saw Yuko Nishimura walking out of the principal's office. It seemed like she was having some kind of mental problem."

“When I was causing her trouble before, she always walked with her head down at school, but after those few days, her head drooped even lower, her back was hunched, and her mental state visibly became dazed.” Sato Yota took out a cigarette case from his pocket, put a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it with a lighter.

Smoke rings slowly drifted out of his mouth, and Zhu Yi frowned slightly in displeasure.

"Because I witnessed it all, that person gave me a lot of money to keep quiet about it."

"I agreed. After all, who wouldn't want money?"

He glanced at the three people opposite him, and was annoyed by their gazes: "Don't look at me like that. If you were in their shoes, you would also find it hard not to be tempted by this money."

Yota Sato took a deep drag on his cigarette, the butt glowing red, and continued in an agitated tone, "Just to be on the safe side, I was afraid he would change his mind, so I dropped out of school."

"Who knows if that person will regret coming after me?" Yota Sato scoffed.

Then, his voice lowered slightly: "Later, I learned that Yuko Nishimura had committed suicide by jumping into the river."

“I’m not an accomplice,” he emphasized, raising his voice as he shoved the unfinished cigarette into the ashtray, his tone becoming agitated.

“I have no obligation to help her. Her real cause of death wasn’t me. I just took that person’s money.”

"I've said everything I needed to say." Sato Yota, who was sitting on the sofa, straightened up and looked at Dazai Osamu and the other two with an unfriendly gaze, as if he was eager to get rid of them: "When are you leaving? You're not going to stay here forever, are you?"

"Is that so?" Dazai Osamu smiled at him, making Sato Yota feel uneasy. He glared back defiantly, "Anyway, I don't know what you guys are thinking. I'm just telling the truth. If you don't believe me, go and investigate."

"As for Yuko Nishimura..." He paused, then chuckled, a dry and cold laugh: "She came to bother me, probably because I knew about this but didn't help her. How ridiculous. I was the one who bullied her, how could I possibly help her? She's become that inhuman, ghostly state, yet she still insists on coming to me. Why doesn't she seek revenge on that person?"

"We will investigate." Kunikida Doppo clenched his fist. He hadn't expected that there was such a terrible incident behind Nishimura Yuko's suicide by jumping into the river. He was completely unaware of the hidden story behind it.

"Okay, you guys go ahead." Sato Yota waved his hand dismissively, his gaze sweeping over the three of them with a hint of mockery.

The three of them left Yota Sato's house.

Kunikida Doppo took a deep breath, his brows furrowed tightly: "Can we really believe what he says?"

Dazai Osamu walked slowly forward with his hands in his pockets. He turned his head to the side, and the sunlight shone on his face, making it half bright and half dark. His voice was light and airy: "Half true, half false."

"It's highly likely that he took the money, dropped out of school, and knew about Yuko Nishimura's suicide. He first used his tragic background to gain sympathy, and then distanced himself by saying that he only took the money."

“But it seems there’s still a lot hidden—” Dazai Osamu stopped and turned to look at Kunikida Doppo behind him. His tone was calm: “You could say that a lot of things have been confused. But we’ve investigated enough background information on ghost stories, and moreover, several decades have passed… Kunikida-kun, do you still want to continue the investigation?”

Kunikida Doppo stood in the shadows, his hand gripping the notebook with the word "ideal" written on it tightly. After a long while, he slowly raised his head, his slightly furrowed brows relaxing, but his eyes gleamed with an increasingly bright and determined light: "Investigate."

“Even if these things have been buried by time for more than a decade, even if investigating them might only uncover something worse, I cannot sit idly by.”

"Ah—" Dazai Osamu suddenly laughed, his eyes filled with genuine warmth. He reached out and patted Kunikida Doppo on the shoulder: "As expected of Kunikida-kun."

"Let's go then. Since Kunikida-kun wants to investigate, as your partner, I should accompany you. Maybe we can uncover something more interesting than ghost stories."

“Sigh.” Takeichi stepped forward and nudged Kunikida Doppo with his elbow: “Since you say so, I’ll go with you.”

*

Yota Sato slumped into the sofa, his back arched, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, but all he could see was the shadow of that balloon and the outline of a pale human face.

After the three left, he couldn't help but recall the various things that had happened while he was entangled with the human head balloon.

Actually, at first, he just wanted to scam some money to relieve his boredom.

That day, he took the health supplements to a target, an elderly woman. He had previously befriended her by chance encounters. Because she lived alone, he knew that just a little companionship would make her completely trust Yota Sato.

"Look, this stuff is good for your joints. My grandma ate it for half a year, and she doesn't need anyone to help her up and down the stairs anymore." He grinned, deliberately softening his voice as if coaxing a child, already planning in his mind which crowded road he would take the money from.

The old woman believed her without hesitation. She squinted, her eyes crinkling with wrinkles, and chuckled as she prepared to hand the money to Sato Yota: "If it really works..."

"It will work! It will definitely work!" He reached out to take it, and just as he touched the edge of the banknote, he caught a glimpse of the old woman's face swaying out of the corner of his eye.

Looking at it again, the face was no longer covered in wrinkles.

Instead, it transformed into Yuko Nishimura's face.

She looks exactly the same as she did in high school, unchanged.

At this moment, she was staring at Yota Sato with bloodshot eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks, tears that were actually red blood.

“It’s wrong to do this. How could you cheat her out of her money? She’s so lonely… so lonely.” Her voice was faint, with soft sobs, as if it came from a very far place.

Sato Yota was so startled that his hand trembled, and the money scattered on the ground.

He didn't even dare to pick it up. He turned around and ran towards the crowded street, feeling as if the wind was chasing him from behind and that he was being watched.

He felt as if Nishimura Yuko's cries were right next to his ear. He ran for two blocks before daring to stop. When he leaned against the wall, panting, his clothes were soaked with sweat.

After that failure, he began to believe in Yuko Nishimura's existence a little, but he still didn't take it seriously.

Until that day.

Yota Sato straightened his suit collar and watched the single mother from a short distance away; she was another target of his.

The mother was holding her sleeping daughter in her arms and carrying a canvas bag full of things. He had already figured it out when he followed her that afternoon.

That box contained all the savings he had withdrawn from the bank, money he had set aside to save his daughter for surgery.

Then he forced a gentle smile and quickly stepped forward to block the single mother's path.

"Madam, may I have two minutes of your time?" He deliberately softened his voice, pulled out a counterfeit brochure for a stable financial product from his briefcase, held it up in front of her and explained, "I see that it's not easy for you to raise your child alone. Our company happens to have a product specifically for single-parent families. It guarantees principal and interest, and it's much more cost-effective than keeping money in the bank."

"Would you like to take a look?"

The single mother stopped in her tracks. She looked down at her sleeping daughter in her arms, her eyes softening. When she looked at Yota Sato again, her eyes were full of hesitation and conflict.

Just as she was about to ask Yota Sato for some details, a strong wind suddenly blew up from the clear sky, and then a balloon slowly floated by, a huge balloon with a human face was placed directly between the two of them.

There was a human face on the balloon; it was Yuko Nishimura's face.

The face was so close that Yota Sato could see the pitted pores on the balloon's skin. Its skin was deathly pale, without a trace of blood, like rotting flesh that had been soaked in formaldehyde and was swelling up.

The eyes were like two bottomless black holes, with gray-black, dried blood crusts clinging to their edges. There was no light in the depths of the black holes, only sticky, wet darkness writhing within.

It just stared straight at Sato, without dodging or avoiding him.

Sato's breath caught in his throat, and he couldn't even scream.

A foul, fishy smell filled his nostrils, and he found himself unable to move due to fear.

She came to me.

She's contacted me again?

"No!"

"It wasn't me!"

Fear spread throughout my body.

Yota Sato suddenly erupted, waving his hands wildly with his eyes closed, grabbing at empty air. His face was ashen, and cold sweat streamed down his face. "It's your own stupidity! What does it have to do with me! Don't come any closer! Don't come any closer!"

The single mother was startled by Sato Yota's appearance and instinctively took a few steps back while holding her daughter, then quickly left with her canvas bag.

A passerby took a picture of him looking like this and posted it on social media, which quickly attracted a lot of comments.

"Is this guy drunk? Is he acting crazy by staring at thin air?"

"Could this be a new way to create a stir? Are they desperate for fame?"

"Is there something in the sky?"

"Where is it? I can't see it."

"It looks like a balloon...?"

"How terrifying! I zoomed in and it looks like there's a blurry human face."

When Yota Sato opened his eyes, there were no human head balloons in front of him.

...

Yota Sato stumbled home that day. He sat on the sofa and shakily took out his phone.

But as soon as I swiped my finger across the screen, a notification popped up with a blinding light.

That was a video.

The camera was shaky, but he still recognized himself at a glance.

In the video, Yota Sato is seen waving his arms wildly at the empty street in front of him, shouting "Don't come any closer!" and yelling like a madman.

“No…” he murmured, staring intently at his own terrified and distorted face on the screen, “There was… there was Yuko Nishimura right there…”

Then he noticed a small black dot in the sky in the video. He took a screenshot and zoomed in repeatedly. Even though the face was blurry, he still recognized it—it was Yuko Nishimura.

He involuntarily shrank his neck, and his teeth began to chatter uncontrollably.

From that day on, he stopped lying to people, went to work honestly, and stopped drinking after get off work.

They rarely even go out.

My house is piled high with fast food, just so I can avoid going out to buy groceries and encountering huge crowds when the company is on holiday.

Dazai Osamu was right; he was hiding a lot of things that he didn't want to admit.

Yota Sato lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, and instinctively looked out the window, but there was nothing there.

From Sato Yota's perspective, the human-shaped balloon floated beside the window, its dark eyes staring at Sato Yota, its mouth opening and closing.

Yota Sato seemed to faintly hear Yuko Nishimura sobbing again.

Perhaps it's just my imagination.

A note from the author:

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