Chapter 25: The Red and White Gaze
How much time had passed? Kagehara Tetsuya wasn’t sure. He moved his fingers slightly, then slowly got up from the floor.
His head felt heavy. He shook it, trying to clear his mind.
Strands of hair brushed against his cheeks and shoulders. He reached up and touched it—unsurprisingly, it was his own hair.
The hair swap with senpai had already happened while he was unconscious.
Tetsuya took a few seconds to fully wake up. The surroundings were still pitch black, and the air was even colder than before. It was likely this chill that had roused him.
"First, I need to check if it’s really a power outage."
Tetsuya went into the study on the right and looked out the window. The streets were completely dark. The streetlights were out, and the neighboring houses showed no signs of light. It seemed the power was indeed out.
However, the sound he had faintly heard before losing consciousness, along with the strange smell, couldn’t have been his imagination.
"Let’s check the basement."
The villa was completely dark. Tetsuya had to feel his way forward, carefully descending the stairs. When he was two steps from the bottom, he noticed that the basement door was closed.
Had the heavy creature not come from the basement?
He frowned and pushed the door open—*creak*.
The sharp sound was especially noticeable in the darkness. The basement seemed even darker, and Tetsuya could barely make out the floor. The furniture, like the table and cabinets, were completely hidden in the darkness, their outlines invisible.
Relying on memory, he groped his way forward and soon found the flashlight on the table.
He pressed the switch, and a beam of white light instantly cut through the darkness. Tetsuya squinted, his eyes adjusting.
"Nothing seems out of place."
Using the flashlight, he scanned the basement. Nothing was added or missing, and more importantly, there was no strange smell.
In the basement, he didn’t detect that sticky, indescribable odor.
Returning to the basement door, Tetsuya shone the flashlight from the bottom up, examining each wooden step. He clearly remembered that the sound, though mixed with the ringing in his ears, had definitely come from this direction.
Moreover, in the entire villa, only this wooden staircase could produce such a sound.
At that time, there must have been something—or someone—here.
Step by step, Tetsuya’s frown deepened. There were twelve steps in total, and he examined each one. But there were no footprints, water stains, or even a single strand of hair.
"Did I miss something?"
Unwilling to give up, Tetsuya went back and checked again, but the result was the same.
"I definitely heard it. That thing’s weight must have exceeded a human’s. With that kind of weight on an old, creaky floor, there’s no way it wouldn’t leave any traces. Even if there were no footprints, there should be cracks on the sides or where the wood connects."
"But why isn’t there anything?"
"Was it really my imagination?"
Tetsuya stood silently at the foot of the stairs, replaying the memory in his mind. That thing was definitely related to Lord Mask-Taker. It had come close to midnight and left without a trace, and after it left, the hair swap with his senpai had been completed. This couldn’t be a coincidence.
"Also, the villa was completely sealed. Because of the rain, I made sure to close all the windows and doors. How did that thing get in?"
There were no secret passages in the villa—Tetsuya had checked thoroughly on his first day, especially in the basement. He had even moved the cabinets to inspect the walls multiple times.
"Could it really be a ghost? In the legend, Hanako died full of resentment and became Lord Mask-Taker, haunting people ever since?"
Returning to the living room, Tetsuya thought it over and still felt something was off. The smell and the sound were evidence. How could a ghost have a smell? And how could it make noise?
"That smell had a powerful anesthetic effect. As soon as I smelled it, I started losing consciousness."
This evidence proved that whatever had been in the villa earlier was definitely not Hanako’s ghost.
"It must have been some living creature—or even a person."
Tonight, the entire villa had been a locked room. How had that thing gotten in?
He had changed the locks, so in theory, no one but him could have entered—not even senpai.
"How did it leave? Maybe through a window?"
Tetsuya began inspecting all the windows in the villa. Before he lost consciousness, it had been raining heavily, and it was still raining now. If a window had been opened, even for a moment, rainwater would have gotten in, leaving traces.
Starting from the first floor, the more he checked, the more puzzled he became. All the windows in the villa were intact, with no signs of rainwater having entered. Additionally, the second-floor windows had bars, with gaps too narrow for anything larger than a baby to pass through.
If he couldn’t find how it had entered, how could he find how it had left?
Tetsuya was losing hope. He walked to the entrance and swept the flashlight beam across the area. Suddenly, a dark red color caught his eye.
"Huh?"
He directed the light toward the source. The dark red came from the entrance rug.
"This rug… no, the smell isn’t blood." The left edge of the rug was darker than the surrounding area. At first, Tetsuya thought it might be blood, but upon touching it, although it was damp, it didn’t smell like blood.
"It’s water. Because the rug is dark red, when it’s wet, it looks like it’s soaked in blood."
The wet mark was in a strip, stretching from the edge of the rug to the floor. Tetsuya thought for a moment, then stepped to the right to make space. Using the flashlight, he opened the security door, allowing rainwater to seep in through the gap. He observed the rug.
"It’s definitely rainwater. The door was opened earlier, and the wet mark isn’t large, so the door wasn’t opened wide."
After testing, he realized that to create the mark on the rug, the security door could only have been opened a crack—no wider than a fist. Not even a child could pass through, let alone an infant. The only things he could think of that could fit through such a gap were small animals like cats or dogs.
"But how could a cat or dog open the door…" Though it was still strange, at least he had some clues. Whatever that thing was, it had opened the door, proving it wasn’t capable of walking through walls or floors. It definitely wasn’t Hanako’s ghost.
Staring at the wet mark for a while longer, Tetsuya hoped to find something like hair, but he wasn’t that lucky. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the heavy rain tonight, he wouldn’t have even known the security door had been opened.
He could only investigate this far for now. Just as he thought this, he absentmindedly swept the flashlight beam across the dark space around him.
Above him, a red and white glow silently appeared.
Tetsuya’s head snapped up. Hanging just a foot above him was a kitsune mask, its hollow eyes staring down at him. The void within the mask’s eye sockets seemed to peer into him, as if something was hiding behind it, watching him.
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