Chapter 242: Mother-Child Doll
"Hurry and open the door. Save us."
The muffled voice bled through the wood, accompanied by a frantic, rhythmic knocking. This time, the plea carried a sharp, desperate edge.
Rin Setsu's face lit up with overwhelming relief. She scrambled to her feet, reaching for the latch, but Yotsuya Miko's hand shot out, clamping down hard on her wrist.
Miko slapped her other hand over Rin Setsu's mouth, letting out a sharp, barely audible 'shush'. She raised a finger to her own ear, gesturing wildly for the other girl to listen closely to the silence between the knocks.
Drip... drip...
A faint, rhythmic splashing echoed from the corridor outside. It sounded exactly as if the 'Haruto' standing on the other side of the door was completely drenched, with heavy droplets of water continuously pooling onto the floorboards.
Rin Setsu froze in place. Her eyes widened in the darkness.
Why would there be the sound of water?
A layer of cold sweat instantly soaked through her shirt, clinging uncomfortably to her back as a terrifying realization surfaced in her mind.
Just then, the voice outside the door called out again, its tone eerily flat.
"Hurry and open the door... It is about to catch up."
Miko and Rin Setsu held their breath, shrinking back into the shadows behind a stack of wooden crates in the corner. Neither dared to make a single sound.
Drip...
The knocking abruptly stopped.
In its place, the dripping noises grew increasingly dense and heavy, sounding exactly like soaked clothing being squeezed out by brute force, pressing wetly against the bottom of the door.
Suddenly, a swollen, deathly pale face slammed against the semi-transparent frosted glass of the door's upper window. Those empty, rotting eye sockets slowly rotated, scanning the dim room before the face slowly slid down the glass, leaving a trail of murky moisture.
Drip... drip... drip...
The sound of falling water gradually faded down the hallway, eventually disappearing into complete silence.
Only then did the two girls let out a long, trembling exhale.
"Brother Haruto would never say 'save me'," Miko whispered into Rin Setsu's ear, her voice barely a breath. "And there was absolutely no sound from Sister Kaguya from beginning to end. Besides, if he really came looking for us, he would just open a Gap right into the room. He would never just stand outside knocking like an idiot."
Rin Setsu nodded slowly, her heart still hammering against her ribs. "Then... should we go out and check?"
Miko hesitated. She pressed her ear toward the hallway, listening intently to confirm the dripping sound was truly gone. She glanced down at the red string tied around her wrist; the faint warning glow had completely faded.
"Let us head up to the sixth floor," Miko finally decided. "We can see if we can find Brother Haruto and Sister Kaguya there."
As Rin Setsu pushed herself up from the floor, her entire body suddenly went rigid.
"What is wrong?"
Miko followed her gaze toward the small ventilation window beside them. The next second, the blood drained from her face.
Two pale hands were reaching in through the narrow opening, fingers hooking tightly onto the wooden frame. The knuckles strained white, as if whatever was attached to them was trying desperately to hoist itself up and climb inside.
Miko shot Rin Setsu a sharp look that clearly screamed 'run at the first sign of trouble'. Her right hand slipped silently into her coat, her fingers wrapping tightly around the hilt of her hidden sword. She held her breath, waiting for the creature to show its face.
"Miko, you—"
Haruto's head had barely poked through the window frame when he found himself staring directly at the gleaming edge of Miko's drawn blade swinging straight toward his face. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"Sorry! Sorry!" Miko yelped, frantically yanking the blade back. "I thought you were a ghost!"
She quickly sheathed the weapon, while Rin Setsu patted her chest, letting out a massive sigh of relief.
"Ghost your head! How do I look anything like a ghost?" Haruto grumbled, looking thoroughly annoyed as he hung halfway through the window. "Do not just stand there staring. Hurry up and come outside."
"Alright."
Despite their lingering doubts about this bizarre entry method, Miko and Rin Setsu obediently climbed out through the narrow window.
The area behind the dormitory building was a desolate, overgrown patch of weeds. The air out here was not just quiet; it carried a heavy, suffocating eeriness that clung to the skin.
As soon as their boots touched the dirt, the two girls turned to Haruto, waiting for him to explain his grand plan.
Just as Haruto opened his mouth to speak, a sudden, freezing gust of wind swept through the courtyard. The dead branches of a nearby tree rustled violently, scraping against the glass like long fingernails.
Haruto violently shivered, his shoulders jumping up to his ears.
"Never mind. Let us go back inside and talk."
Miko stared at him in deadpan silence.
Rin Setsu blinked, completely speechless.
Before either of them could even formulate a retort, Haruto had already deftly vaulted back through the window into the room. Kaguya, looking highly amused, followed closely behind him. The two girls exchanged a tired glance and had no choice but to awkwardly climb right back through the window they had just exited.
Back in the relative safety of the room, Haruto glanced at his watch. The digital display read exactly 2:00 AM.
He looked up at Miko and Rin Setsu, his lazy demeanor fading into something slightly more serious. "We are going to make our move tonight. We need to get rid of that ghost."
"So soon?" Miko asked, genuine surprise coloring her tone.
While she had already guessed that a person with Haruto's overpowered, impatient personality would never wait until the final day of the survival game, she certainly did not expect him to initiate the boss fight on night one.
"We have no choice." Haruto spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "I am worried that if we wait until the end of the time limit, that thing is going to kill way too many players. If it absorbs enough victims, its strength will undergo a qualitative change, and then something genuinely annoying might happen."
Hearing his reasoning, Miko and Rin Setsu immediately recalled their terrifying encounter just minutes prior. Their chests tightened.
"It has already mastered three distinct abilities," Haruto continued, ticking them off on his fingers. "One is spatial perception, one is teleportation, and the other is sound mimicry."
The expressions on the two girls' faces turned incredibly grim.
Just those three abilities alone were a nightmare to deal with in a confined space. If the entity were allowed to farm more kills and gain even more terrifying powers...
Kaguya noticed their pale, nervous faces and could not help but offer a gentle, reassuring smile.
"Do not worry so much. Although each of its abilities sounds incredibly powerful on paper, they actually possess severe limitations."
She gestured gracefully toward the wooden door. "Take its teleportation, for example. Much like its perception, it can only roughly lock onto a general area. It cannot pinpoint a specific, exact coordinate. If it could, it would not have wasted time knocking on your door just now. It would have simply teleported directly inside the room and grabbed you by the necks."
Miko and Rin Setsu finally let out a collective breath they did not realize they were holding.
Kaguya was right. If the ghost were truly all-powerful, they would have been dead the moment it found them. Powerful supernatural abilities in these instances were almost always bound by strict, exploitable rules.
As for the sound mimicry, the flaws were even more glaring.
It could only copy the raw audio of a voice. The subtle details, the natural tone, the specific speech habits of the person—none of that could be replicated. Combined with the dead giveaway of the dripping water, distinguishing the fake from the real Haruto was actually quite simple.
"Exactly," Haruto nodded in agreement. "But it is still better to deal with this trash as early as possible before it evolves."
As he spoke, a thought seemed to cross his mind. He casually raised his hand, his fingers parting the very fabric of space to tear open a dark, ominous Gap.
At that exact moment, up on the sixth floor.
Andre was standing in the dark corridor, deeply conflicted about whether he should risk stepping out of his hiding spot, when a voice suddenly echoed right next to his ear.
"Moshi moshi~ Can you hear me?"
Even a man as stoic and battle-hardened as Andre violently flinched at the sudden, cheerful voice bypassing his defenses.
It was only when his brain registered the familiar, lazy cadence of Haruto's voice that his twitching eyelids settled, and he let out a heavy sigh of relief.
A few minutes later, Andre stepped out of a Gap on the first floor to regroup with the others. Miko quickly brought him up to speed, recounting the entire encounter and the tactical discussion they had just concluded.
While Andre felt that rushing the boss on the first night was a highly risky maneuver, he had to admit the Boundary Youkai's logic was sound.
They could not afford to drag this out.
The longer they waited in the shadows, the more fodder players would die, feeding the ghost's power until the scales tipped entirely out of their favor.
"I understand the situation." Andre nodded, his voice a deep, gravelly rumble. "Just tell me exactly what you need me to do, and consider it done."
"When the time comes, Kaguya and I will pin the bastard down so it cannot move a single inch," Haruto explained, mapping out the strategy with his hands. "Your and Miko's only task is to throw the Ghost-Catching Net directly over its head."
Kaguya chimed in, her tone light but absolute. "With its current level of strength, I can lock it in place for at least half a minute. With Ryuko assisting on the perimeter, you two just need to be extremely careful not to let your skin touch its physical body."
Half a minute?
Andre, Miko, and Rin Setsu all stared at the immortal princess in stunned silence. In a high-stakes horror instance, immobilizing a boss-level ghost for thirty entire seconds was practically serving it up on a silver platter.
If they could not manage to toss a net over a completely paralyzed target in half a minute, then even without Haruto and Kaguya carrying them, they never stood a chance of surviving this game to begin with.
With the action plan firmly set in stone, the group immediately sprang into motion, preparing to head out. One by one, they began climbing back out of the narrow ventilation window.
Miko's eyelids twitched violently as she watched them.
They could have literally just unlocked the main door and walked out like normal people...
Suddenly, as Haruto squeezed his way through the window frame, his movements were a bit too exaggerated. Something slipped from his pocket and tumbled silently into the dirt.
Miko quickly stepped forward, crouching down to pick the item up.
It was a small, chibi-style plush doll with long, vibrant golden hair. It looked incredibly soft, possessing a cute and delicate charm that felt entirely out of place in a death game.
"What a beautiful doll..."
She gently patted the dirt off its fabric dress, carefully blowing away the remaining dust. Ensuring it was perfectly clean, she tucked the doll safely into the inner breast pocket of her coat before hauling herself up to climb out the window and follow the others into the dark.
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