Evergreen Town.
Haunted house.
"Master, how do I install this?"
"Give it to me, I will."
Xia Yujie lowered his head and fiddled with the videotape player. Al and Gojo Satoru, who were unable to help much in this regard, quickly removed the talisman from the videotape.
The videotape was wrapped in layers of talisman paper and had a strange grease on it. When it was opened, it gave off an indescribable stench. It was obvious that it had been sealed for many years.
Gojo Satoru peeled off the last layer of talisman paper: "The legendary Zhenzi videotape - sees the light of day again! Ding ding ding!"
“…”
A gray, undecorated videotape appeared in the sight of the three people.
Al commented, "How ordinary."
Gojo Satoru himself wondered, "How ordinary."
Xia Yujie was speechless and said, "What else? Should I paint it in colors for you?"
"It's like weapons," he said, untangling the tangled wires behind an old TV. "The more ordinary the weapon looks, the more powerful it is. Maybe it's the same with videotapes?"
Gojo Satoru was convinced by him.
Al looked left and right, but still didn't feel anything unusual in the videotape. He raised his hand and poked the videotape, and asked Gojo Satoru: "Master No. 2, did your family suffocate Zhenzi to death in there?"
Gojo Satoru laughed: "We'll know after we try it out later, Jay, are you ready?"
"No, wait a minute, this line is different from the one in school, let me study it... Tsk, luckily the power in this house is still on, and the phone is still working. Listen carefully, after you finish watching the video, your home phone will receive a call, and you must answer it. Once these two steps are completed, the curse will be successful."
Landline...
It turns out that this is still an era where DVDs are popular and landlines and flip phones are prevalent.
Al, who hadn't touched a landline phone for more than ten years, said it was magical.
He looked at Geto squatting there untangling the mess of wires, and an idea suddenly occurred to him. He asked, "Master, can we move the TV to the attic to watch it?"
"……ah?"
Gojo Satoru's eyes lit up and he agreed, "Good idea, Al. Let's move the TV upstairs and let Kayako in the attic watch TV with us!"
Kagome: "...Be human beings, both of you."
Gojo Satoru rolled up his sleeves and said excitedly, "Come on, Jay, let's go to the attic and take a look!"
"Huh? Hey, stop moving, you messed it up again..."
Gojo Satoru easily lifted the heavy old-fashioned TV and ran upstairs, taking five steps at a time. Al picked up the landline phone beside him and followed Gojo Satoru up to the attic. Kagome Jie was annoyed by their impulsive behavior. He muttered to himself, "If there is no socket in the attic, I don't think you can even get air..."
Sure enough, as soon as he reached the second floor stairs, he heard Al yelling, "Master - there's no place to plug in here -!"
Xia Youjie rolled his eyes: "Watch me."
Twenty minutes later, they finally managed to power the TV using a power strip they had cobbled together.
The three older boys squeezed into the low attic and connected the player to the TV.
It really feels like watching a horror movie at home without my parents' knowledge.
"It would be nice if it wasn't so crowded. Why is the ceiling so low?"
"Well, the attic here was originally used as a warehouse..."
Al and Geto were fine, but the tallest one, Gojo Satoru, hit his head in the attic and shut himself off. He was lying behind them like a salted fish, with a look of despair on his face.
Seeing his pitiful look, Xia Yujie couldn't help but complain about him: "Are you just pretending to be so shameless? With your frequent head-banging movements, Kayako would have been scared away by you a long time ago."
Gojo Satoru was dissatisfied and said, "You can't walk upright in the attic even if you use the unlimited bottom! Ah, that's great, you guys are so short, I (おれ) really envy you to death."
The 1.80-meter-tall Xia Yujie: “…”
Al, who is also 1.8 meters tall, said calmly, "No more sarcasm. Everyone, pay attention. The videotape is about to be put in."
"put."
"put!"
Al slowly pushed the cursed videotape in.
The TV screen went black.
During the long black screen, the three of them couldn't help but hold their breath and concentrate.
A circle slowly emerged on the pitch-black screen, with ripples inside it, like... water? There was also a reflection of the moon on the water.
Xia Yujie said softly, "It looks like a well taken from above."
The other two nodded in agreement.
There was another rustling sound, and a woman combing her hair appeared on the screen.
The woman was very beautiful, wearing a traditional Japanese kimono, and was combing her hair in front of a mirror. Suddenly, the mirror hanging on the wall disappeared and appeared on the other side of the wall.
The shifted mirror reflected a little girl with disheveled hair.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…
The mirror appeared in front of the woman for a while, and then appeared in front of the little girl for a while, as if the woman and the little girl were fighting for the mirror with their minds.
Gojo Satoru asked curiously, "What are they doing? Using a technique to steal the camera?"
Xia Yujie analyzed: "Maybe this is the former Zhenzi and Zhenzi's mother?"
If they are really fighting for the mirror, it means that the mother and daughter's spells should be the same. Is their spell related to thoughts?
Then, the TV screen turned into a constantly flickering news newspaper. Before they could see clearly, the screen changed to... people crawling all over the ground?
What is this doing?
The scene changed again, showing a person covered in white cloth standing by the sea, and the noisy crackling sound in the ears turned into a strange crying sound.
An eye suddenly popped out of the TV.
"!!!"
The eye blinked, and blinked again, as if it was watching the three high school students outside through the TV. The picture changed again, showing a desolate open space with a small well in the center.
This is the well where the legendary Saneko Yamamura drowned!
Bell bell, bell bell -
Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru moved at the same time. They reached for the landline phones at the same time. Al took the lead and pressed the phone, making a "I'll do it" gesture to the two high school students.
He answered the phone.
"Hello?"
“——…”
There was dead silence on the other end of the line.
However, Gojo Satoru's six eyes clearly saw a circle of unfamiliar cursed energy surrounding the three of them.
The curse is complete.
He nodded to Al and Suguru.
Al hung up the phone carefully and stared intently at the well on TV, his whole body tense, waiting for Zhenzi to crawl out of there.
However……
One minute passed, three minutes passed, five minutes passed, and Zhenzi still showed no intention of crawling out.
Three people: "..."
The atmosphere gradually became a little awkward.
Gojo Satoru slapped the TV in dissatisfaction: "What's going on? Sister Zhenzi, you are not really suffocated to death?!"
Al turned to ask Kagome, "Master, why hasn't it come out yet?"
Xia Yujie belatedly remembered the record in the textbook: "…Why rush? It will come to claim your life within seven days, not now."
"Huh?" Gojo Satoru said unhappily, "Seven days?!"
Xia Yujie complained to him: "You should also understand a little bit about the nature of your family's curse."
Al: "...What should I do? Do I really have to live in the attic for seven days?"
"Impossible, seven days is too long. Mr. Yemo will surely get impatient and come to kill us. By then, not only will we fail to seal Kayako, but we will also release Zhenzi."
"Wow," Al said expectantly, "Are you going to get expelled from school?"
"..." Xia Yujie twitched his eyes and said, "Don't say that in such an expectant tone."
They looked at each other for a while, and no one could come up with a solution. Xia Yujie sighed, gave up and lay on the floor.
"Let me think, let me think..."
Now, Kayako failed to exorcise the evil spirit and even gave birth to a new chaste child.
Al looked at the distressed Master, then at Gojo Satoru who could no longer coexist peacefully with the attic ceiling. He thought for a moment and buried his head in the TV screen.
Gojo Satoru: “……?”
Summer Oil: “???”
What kind of magical operation is this? What’s even more amazing is that Al actually went in!
The two male high school students quickly got up and reached out to touch the screen, but they only touched a cold screen.
Gojo Satoru couldn't help but exclaimed: "Amazing, Al, you actually got in. Are Heroic Spirits so powerful?!"
Xia Yujie was shocked and asked, "Al, are you okay?"
The hero Al retracted his head and made an OK gesture to them: "I can go in, you wait outside."
After saying that, he quickly climbed into the TV and successfully hacked into Zhenzi's videotape as a heroic spirit!
The two high school boys stared in amazement as they watched Al climb into the TV set.
"...Heroic Spirits are really strong."
The world in the videotape was in black and white, and the temperature was so low that it seemed like winter. Al looked back and saw that there was indeed a TV where he had crawled out. The nervous and curious faces of Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru were flickering in the TV.
It's quite fun.
Al walked towards the well. The wasteland beneath his feet was hard and cold, and the chill penetrated his feet.
He walked to the well and looked down. Sure enough, the first scene of the videotape was a view from above the wellhead!
The blond-haired and blue-eyed boy put his head into the well, but he only saw the shimmering water, and there was no trace of the female ghost.
Al leaned down and shouted to the bottom of the well: "Sister! Sister Zhenzi! Are you home?"
Gojo Satoru & Kayuki Kagome: "..."