Chapter 11: End of the Candy House
"Boundary of Far and Near—"
The youth's voice echoed through the hallway. The instant his words fell, the bloated, waterlogged specter in mid-air turned eerily translucent, then vanished completely, only to reappear a full five meters away.
Thud…
It slammed heavily onto the floorboards, splashing a sickening layer of greasy, foul-smelling fluid across the wood.
"What are you staring for!" Haruto yelled, already charging back the way they came. Seeing Miko frozen in a daze, he seized her wrist without breaking stride and pulled her along. "Run!"
The command snapped Miko out of her shock. She hastily wiped the tears from her eyes and began sprinting with every ounce of strength she possessed.
One hundred and twenty meters… ninety meters… fifty meters… The dozen or so seconds it took to cover the distance felt like an eternity. Finally, the familiar outline of the living room came into view.
We're almost there!
A flicker of joy ignited in both of them, but it was immediately extinguished by a sudden, frantic patter of footsteps from behind, accompanied by the grotesque sound of splashing water.
Haruto risked a glance over his shoulder. The creature was less than ten meters away, its body contorted as it scrambled across the floor on all fours, moving with terrifying speed.
He gritted his teeth, fully intending to force his way to the front door, but his eyes widened when he saw a figure squatting directly in their path.
Haruto's expression turned grim. Of all the places for Wanwan to appear, she just had to be blocking the only exit.
"Far and Near—"
Just as Haruto prepared to activate his boundary power again, a small figure let out a guttural roar. It lunged from the shadows, tackling the bloated specter from behind and pinning it to the ground a mere second before it could pounce.
It was a corpse.
It looked horribly young, its entire body a mangled canvas of raw, exposed flesh. It was as if its skin had been flayed completely off.
Pinned to the floor, the waterlogged horror seemed to writhe in fury. Its head and limbs twisted at unnatural angles as it began to viciously slam the small corpse against the floorboards again and again.
Almost simultaneously, Wanwan, who had been squatting motionlessly by the door, finally moved. She darted past Haruto and Miko, ignoring them completely, and threw herself at the specter. With her small dagger, she began frantically hacking at its arm until the limb was severed.
She then used her own body to shield the small, bloody corpse, absorbing the brutal, crushing blows that rained down upon her.
"Go!" she screamed.
Haruto didn't hesitate. He pulled the stunned Miko and bolted for the main door.
This time, it swung open with ease.
The moment their feet touched the grass outside, the bloated head of the specter inside twisted a full 180 degrees. It dropped the half-shattered skull it was holding and, with an explosive burst of terrifying power, launched itself toward the open doorway like a cannonball.
THUD!
With a dull, wet impact, the creature slammed into an invisible barrier. Its outstretched hands and half of its face instantly burst like overfilled water balloons, and it slumped bonelessly to the ground. Its one remaining eye glared out at them, burning with an intense, unforgettable malice, as if searing their faces into its memory.
Miko collapsed onto the lawn, panting heavily, her golden eyes still wide with the lingering terror of their narrow escape. After a moment, she managed to ask, "Brother Haruto… was that corpse… the doll?"
Haruto nodded silently.
Miko fell silent as well. She never would have imagined that the doll they had been forced to "kill" would be the one to save them in the final moments.
"Maybe we guessed wrong," Haruto said, his gaze fixed on the now deathly quiet doorway. He recalled the image of Wanwan desperately protecting her brother at the very end. "Perhaps the sister never hurt her brother out of jealousy."
The two of them lapsed into a heavy silence. After a while, Miko looked up, her voice small. "Brother Bai Liu, will I see you again?"
"Of course." Haruto patted her on the shoulder. For a fleeting instant, a tiny, single eye appeared on her fair, delicate skin before vanishing as if it were never there. It was a little trick he'd learned from Yakumo Yukari—a marker that functioned like a camera, a phone, and a portable anchor for travel between the ends of a Gap.
Then, a wry smile touched his lips as he pulled his phone from his pocket. "Were you scared silly? We can just add each other's contact info."
The mundane suggestion finally broke the spell. A blush crept up Miko's cheeks as she took the phone, quickly tapped in her information, and handed it back to Haruto.
"I'll accept it as soon as I get back," she promised.
After speaking, she turned to look at the road beyond the yard. A voice in her heart told her that as long as she stepped onto it, this nightmare would, for a time, be over. When she glanced back one last time, she was surprised to find a pile of white plastic buckets filled with a clear liquid stacked neatly beside Haruto.
Is his pocket really a four-dimensional treasure bag? Miko thought, her eyes wide with disbelief.
"Brother Bai Liu, what are these? Did you pull them out of your pocket, too?"
"Gasoline," Haruto answered curtly, already unscrewing a cap and beginning to splash the contents all around the wooden house. From the outside, the building, which held such a bizarre and twisted space within, looked like nothing more than a slightly oversized, dilapidated cabin.
"That thing's final look made it clear it's holding a grudge," Haruto said, his voice laced with annoyance. "And I'm not in the habit of letting grudges fester overnight. When you pull up weeds, you have to get the roots."
He tossed the empty buckets through the open door and stepped back to Miko's side. "Besides," he added, his tone softening slightly, "this is also for them. A way to help those two children find some real peace."
Miko wanted to dissuade him, worried that such an act might trigger some other anomaly, but the memory of the skinless doll's final, relieved expression and its selfless sacrifice kept her silent.
Just then, Haruto's hand reached into a Gap that had split the air beside him—a terrifying rift filled with a mass of hideous, staring eyeballs. Then, under Miko's utterly shocked gaze, he pulled out a simple lighter.
Whoosh—!
Flames erupted, rising instantly and greedily devouring the gasoline-soaked wood. The air filled with the acrid smell of charred timber and another, indescribable burning odor.
"It's over."
Haruto turned to leave, but at the last moment, he glanced back at Miko. A mysterious smile played on his lips as he finally answered the question that had been lingering in her mind.
"Me? I'm a youkai."
Having said that, he stepped onto the road, his figure slowly fading from view.
"Mr. Youkai…" Miko repeated softly.
Although she'd had a feeling, hearing the truth still sent a jolt through her. Yet, she felt not the slightest bit of fear… just as she hadn't when she first arrived.
Her vision blurred, and soon only her consciousness remained.
This time, Haruto didn't return directly to Gensokyo. Instead, he found himself in an old but tidy house, standing before a large, smooth wooden table.
His eyes widened, and he had to physically restrain himself from shouting, "Motherfucker!"
Don't tell me I'm being teleported to another instance right after finishing one? Don't I even get a break?
[Player Haruto has cleared the instance—Candy House—and has officially become a Death Game player.]
[Clear Evaluation: SS+]
A flood of information poured into his mind as several items materialized on the tabletop before him.
"Oh, so it's just the settlement screen." Haruto let out a long, shaky breath, a wave of post-adrenaline relief washing over him. His gaze immediately fell upon a strange, flesh-colored fruit among the rewards.
Longevity Ghost?
Carefully cultivated vengeful spirit fruit?
The two terms clicked in his mind, instantly connecting a series of scattered thoughts.
Originally, he had assumed this was just a simple tragedy born from parental favoritism, one that led a jealous sister to turn her brother into a human-skin doll. But what had just transpired proved that theory wrong. The sister, Wanwan, wasn't jealous at all. In the end, she had sacrificed herself to protect her brother; there was no way she would have been the one to kill him.
The existence of a "Longevity Ghost" and a "carefully cultivated" vengeful spirit fruit explained everything.
The true mastermind, the one who had orchestrated the entire scheme to harm the siblings, was that Longevity Ghost—the bloated, waterlogged specter that had appeared at the end.
The Ouija Spirit had said that stabbing the doll would trigger different effects. How could the final game possibly be so simple and non-threatening? The only explanation was that the human-skin doll itself—the brother's spirit—wanted to end it all. It was his original, skinless corpse that had tackled their father, buying precious time for him and Miko to escape.
To pursue its own twisted form of longevity, the ghost had exploited the family's pain and the players' fear, specifically cultivating this "vengeful spirit fruit" that was nourished by resentment and terror.
The Ouija Spirit was the guide.
The girl in the Hide-and-Seek game was the trigger for the players' fear of death.
And the human-skin doll was the very source of the terror. The ghost kept the doll in constant agony to breed resentment, while also using it as a tool to kill any player who stabbed it. If a player somehow survived that, the Longevity Ghost would personally emerge to eliminate the final survivor.
He realized now that the creature had created the illusion of being a non-corporeal entity from the very beginning, but it had been hiding near the storage room the entire time. The clues had been there all along. Why were the floors everywhere else intact, while the floor in the storage room was dilapidated and constantly seeping a yellowish-red liquid? Because that wasn't just water. It was corpse oil.
From start to finish, it had been a carefully laid trap by the Longevity Ghost.
The moment the entire storyline clicked into place, Haruto felt a cold sweat soak his back. He wanted to curse "Motherfucker" all over again.
Are you sure this was a novice instance?
If he hadn't possessed his unique abilities, or more, if the human-skin doll hadn't chosen to help them and end its own painful cycle… for anyone else, this would have been a guaranteed deathtrap.
But the instance was over. There was no point in dwelling on it.
Haruto shook his head, pushing the stray thoughts away. He casually tossed the reward items into a Gap, but then, as if feeling that wasn't secure enough, he took them out again. He carefully placed them into a small cloth bag and tied it securely to his waist.
The next moment, the familiar sensation of his vision blurring returned.
When the world sharpened again, he was back in Gensokyo, standing in the courtyard of the Yakumo Residence.
"Haruto-sama! Are you alright? Are you injured? Did anyone bully you?"
Before he could even take a deep breath of Gensokyo's fresh air, a figure dashed in front of him.
It was Yakumo Ran.
She circled him anxiously, her nine tails flicking with worry as she checked him over from head to toe, ensuring he was unharmed.
Haruto had originally planned to play it cool, to calmly state that everything was under control. But in the end, he couldn't hold it in. He lunged forward, buried his face in one of her big, fluffy tails, and wailed with theatrical grief and indignation.
"Ran! You have no idea how scary that instance was! I almost didn't make it back!"
Despite his composed performance during the game, that had been purely out of necessity. If he'd had a choice—and if that troublemaker Kaguya had been there—he would have kicked her out to scout at the very beginning and then happily squatted at the spawn point until it was all over.
He began to vividly recount his experiences, gesticulating wildly as he reached the most thrilling parts of the story.
Yakumo Ran proved to be the perfect audience. She would gasp and offer praise at all the right moments, and when she heard about the things that had frightened her young master, she would comfort him with soft, soothing words.
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