Chapter 12 Club Activities 3
Saturday, April 25th
Not addressing it in advance can be very problematic.
Kurosaki Utsuki stood at the entrance of the apartment courtyard, looking up at the female earthbound spirit on the rooftop. The spiritual field around her was in chaos and she seemed to be only one step away from becoming a Hollow. The corners of her mouth twitched uncontrollably.
The club activity was supposed to gather in an hour, but she had come a little early on purpose, and happened to witness the Earthbound Spirit's transition from being unstable to being extremely unstable.
If I don't bury her soul now, I'm afraid I'll have no choice but to point the knife at her.
It turns out that work is never finished.
Suddenly, Hagiwara Kenji's voice came from not far away. The boy stuck his head out of his room window: "Kurosaki-san? There should be some time before the gathering-"
Before he could finish his words, the orange-haired girl turned to look at him and raised her hand to gesture to stop.
"I'm almost asleep." The girl looked at him with a serious expression, not joking at all. "Can you help me take care of my body for a while?"
·
"Hey, Hagi? Wake up—everyone is gathered—"
After being exposed to a burst of sound, Kenji Hagiwara opened his eyes with difficulty. The moment the light shone into his eyes, he jumped out of bed and rushed straight to the window.
From his perspective, he could just see the orange-haired girl, wearing a white dress, squatting in the yard, petting a cat. Not far away was Nagi Rokudo, also squatting beside the cat. The girl had changed her usual style and had a pineapple-like hairstyle.
Yuji Itadori was also there, but he was observing the entire apartment building - so it seemed that everyone was indeed there.
A friend's puzzled voice came from behind him: "Hey Hagi, it's evening now, why are you sleeping at this time?"
He was about to retort: "No, I just clearly..."
Wait, what was he about to do?
"Um?"
"...Nothing." He shook his head and suddenly smiled bitterly. "I seem to have had a very strange dream."
Matsuda Jinpei was stunned: "Huh?"
Hagiwara Kenji thought carefully and slowly recalled, "I dreamed that I was swept into the air by a strong wind, and chains extended from my chest, connecting me to another me lying on the ground. It was as if I was already dead, the one on the ground was my body, and I was just a soul."
After a pause, he continued, "But soon, an angel flew into the air and caught me."
Just like he once caught an angel that fell from heaven.
The friend next to him grinned: "And then?"
"The angel returned me to my body and scolded me harshly—and then I woke up." He shrugged regretfully and asked casually while taking his coat. "But Zhenping-chan, why are you here? Didn't you say that you didn't like the apartment and wouldn't be attending?"
"I can't let you guys take risks without feeling anything, can I?" Matsuda Jinpei said, curling his lips. "There's something on the roof of that apartment building. I can occasionally see the outline of a human figure, and chains extending to the eaves. It doesn't feel good, but it's nowhere near as dangerous as the building last Friday."
"is that so?"
Suddenly remembering the girl who had lost her vital signs that day, Kenji Hagiwara frowned almost inaudibly.
Matsuda Jinpei, however, didn't notice his friend's abnormality: "Otherwise, Irie-senpai wouldn't have become so weak—that being said, last Saturday when Yuji and I went to help Irie-senpai find his phone, I couldn't feel anything anymore."
"Huh?"
"It's the same today," the curly-haired boy said, pointing out the window towards the rooftop of the apartment building, then closing the window. "Whatever existed there has also disappeared."
Through the transparent glass, Hagiwara Kenji's gaze fell on the orange-haired girl in the courtyard outside.
In fact, the dream he just described to his friend omitted a lot of content. It was a blurry picture like thick fog when he just woke up, but it gradually became clearer as time passed.
What initially threw him into the sky wasn't the sudden gust of wind in his memory, but humans with sharp claws—this was something he began to see after ascending to heaven, probably a unique perspective of a soul.
The angel who then carried him down from the sky like a princess and returned him to his body was Utsuki Kurosaki, dressed in black.
After he returned to his body, there should have been a sequel, but his memory was still slowly recovering and he couldn't recall it yet. He just had a vague feeling that it might not have been just a dream.
But if it wasn't a dream...
Hagiwara Kenji looked away. "Isn't that great? He must have been purified or liberated by someone, an expert in exorcising evil spirits or something like that."
"Maybe," Matsuda Jinpei curled his lips and laughed, "It just feels like a coincidence. I could clearly feel it when I passed by here last night... Okay, let's go and meet up with them."
·
After the five members of the Paranormal Research Department finally gathered, Vice Director Utaha Kurosaki, who had been indulging in petting cats for a long time, stood up and looked at the abandoned apartment just a few steps away. She suddenly said, "Have you heard of any of the cases that happened here before?"
Rokudo Nagi, who stood up right after her, raised her hand: "I've heard about it from Mukuro-sama."
Everyone's eyes immediately turned to him. The girl nervously and shyly took a half step back, pausing for two seconds before speaking. "About ten years ago, at the end of June, six households, a total of ten people, living in this apartment were all murdered overnight. The murderer's method was extremely brutal, using a variety of weapons including kitchen knives, scissors, ashtrays, and folding chairs."
Yuji Itadori's eyes widened immediately: "So this is the case."
"The whereabouts of the perpetrator remain unknown," added Hagiwara Kenji, who lives nearby. "I heard that the landlord was planning to demolish the entire apartment building and rebuild it a few years ago, but the victim's family asked them not to disturb the scene before the statute of limitations expired, so the plan was put on hold."
He remembered.
In a "dream" not long ago, Kurosaki Utahara in a black kimono also said these words to him.
The only difference is that the premise is not "I heard" but "She said", as if she had just obtained the information from someone.
In addition, she told a story with an expression that was not sure whether to say it was regretful or pity -
"Three days before the murder, a young woman who was about to study abroad and was temporarily staying at her best friend's house in this apartment was dragging her suitcase to catch her flight early in the morning when she discovered a high school-aged girl who had been ill for a long time."
He was stunned at that time, and for a moment he didn't understand the relationship between the two events.
But the girl looked like she needed someone to share this story with, so he thought he shouldn't interrupt her mid-sentence.
So she continued: "Although she called an ambulance immediately, it was too late. The girl had been dead an hour before she arrived."
"Friends and neighbors were called to help, but there was no doctor among them. They could only watch helplessly as the girl passed away."
"This was the first time for most of them to witness the passing of a life. They felt regretful but also resistant, so they didn't pay attention to the follow-up."
"They didn't know the girl's name, they hadn't seen her family, and they didn't know why she ran to this area so late at night or why she collapsed."
"The person who called the ambulance said goodbye to her best friend and left the next evening. The residents of the apartment thought they would gradually forget this misfortune, but three days later, a man disguised as a courier knocked on one of the doors and, while cursing "the bastards who killed my daughter," smashed her head with a wrench he had taken from somewhere."
After hearing this, he completely understood.
"Is this what the police found?" he asked.
But he clearly remembered that this case was still unsolved——
The girl next to him shook her head and said calmly, "If the police knew about this, how could they not have caught the criminal in ten years?"
"Then this is——"
"Just sharing a story I just made up."
He watched the girl squat down and rub the heads of the cats at her feet one by one. The aura around her was extremely gentle, yet so sad.
...something is wrong.
Kenji Hagiwara blinked as he came back to his senses from his memories and looked at the orange-haired girl not far in front of him.
At that time, Kurosaki Utsuki was no longer dressed in a black kimono, but had changed into the snow-white dress in front of him.
·
A group of five people entered the former murder scene at dusk.
Paranormal activity in the past, such as sudden shaking of apartment buildings, cries or curses heard by some but not others, was often attributed to earthbound spirits that once inhabited the rooftops. Of course, some cases were not "paranormal," but rather the age and lack of maintenance of the building itself.
Now that the earthbound spirits had disappeared, the only one the five people could encounter was the latter - but when they saw the shocking dark marks on the stairs with flashlights and connected it with the circumstances of the case they had heard about before, some of them still felt a chill down their spines.
"It ended up being a crime scene visit." Matsuda Jinpei shook his head, his hands in his pockets. "There's no such thing as a supernatural being."
Kenji Hagiwara glanced at his friend with amusement, but his eyes were still glued to Utsuki Kurosaki who was not far in front of him.
Yuji Itadori, who was holding a flashlight in the front, entered the room with the door ajar, and Nagi Rokudo followed in. After a brief hesitation, Kenji Hagiwara took a step forward and attracted the attention of Utaha Kurosaki.
"When did Kurosaki-san change his clothes?" he asked tentatively, pretending to be casual. "When I saw you just now, you were still wearing a black kimono."
After a brief pause, he described it in more detail: "The kind of black kimono that comes with a hakama, which is very convenient for movement."
Jinpei Matsuda stopped and looked over in confusion.
However, the girl who was asked did not respond. She just walked quickly to the window without glass at the end of the corridor, and quickly took out a canned object from her bag. With the light of the setting sun outside, she carefully looked for something on the packaging.
"Shelf life... do you know how to write it..." the girl muttered softly, trying to concentrate on something and ignore the classmates who were waiting for her answer behind her, "Hey... I found it..."
A second later, Kurosaki Uta fell into deep thought, looking at the bottle whose expiration date was during the Showa era.
Now...it's already the 20th year of Heisei, right?
How long has this product been expired? No wonder Manager Urahara gave her such a big bag!
Unscrupulous businessman!
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