Chapter 55: Resentment of the Death Curse (Part 5)

Dressed in a bright yellow suit, the Stack Commando strode down the corridor of the Shuijing City Police Station, flipping through a thick stack of case files. Several local police officers followed closely by his side.

Normally, ordinary citizens had no access to official case files, so the Stack Commando had resorted to a few minor tricks—forging credentials and hacking into the police network to fabricate records, posing as a superintendent from the First Investigation Division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. This was the equivalent rank of Inspector Megure in Detective Conan.

Since he was a superintendent who had come all the way from Tokyo, the local police of Shuijing City received him with enthusiastic hospitality, granting him access to the archives room to review the files and assigning personnel to accompany him the entire time.

"...The origin of the serial deaths traces back to the Fujita family massacre that occurred twenty-four years ago in House Number Four, Chome 3. The thirty-four-year-old housewife, Yui Fujita, was found decapitated in the backyard. Her thirty-six-year-old husband, Takehiko Fujita, a slaughterhouse worker, had all four of his limbs severed and died on a mountain path. Their bodies were not discovered until the following morning. Their only daughter, nine-year-old Noriko Fujita, went missing without a trace."

"The police failed to catch the killer, and the local government organized volunteers to search everywhere for Noriko Fujita, yielding zero results. The Fujita residence consequently became a haunted house and remained uninhabited ever since. During this period, three middle school students wanted to play a haunted house exploration game and entered the former Fujita property. Two of them vanished, and the sole survivor was driven insane and sent to an asylum in the neighboring city, where he hanged himself after a short time."

"It wasn't until fifteen years ago that a construction company redeveloped the area, renovating and rebuilding the old house. A couple named Suzuki, who came from out of town, moved in, living there in peace for fifteen years."

"A month ago, the deaths suddenly began anew. First it was the Suzuki couple living in the house, followed by the mortician who prepared their bodies and two of his friends, and then the real estate agent Sakaibara and his wife."

Reviewing the files, the Stack Commando was led by the two local officers into the forensic laboratory.

The bodies of the Suzuki couple had already been cremated and their funerals held. The mortician, who had died of a heart attack, was deemed an accidental death and had also been cremated. The only bodies temporarily kept at the police station were those of Sakaibara and his wife.

The young forensic doctor in the laboratory received the Stack Commando. As he opened the refrigerated morgue lockers, he explained: "Ordinarily, in Sakaibara's uxorious murder case, both the perpetrator and the victim are clear-cut, making the case straightforward enough to close immediately. However, due to certain special circumstances, the bodies have remained at the police station. If you hadn't come today, they would have been sent for cremation..."

As the two bodies were pulled out of the refrigerator and the white sheets covering them were pulled back, the Stack Commando immediately understood what the "special circumstances" implied.

Both corpses remained in the exact state they were in at the moment of death. The woman had been stabbed multiple times, her eyelids shaved off by a blade, leaving her unseeing eyes staring straight upward.

As for the man who had died from a fall off a building, his limbs were shattered, and his neck was twisted by a full 360 degrees—an effect impossible to achieve through any normal fall from a height.

The postures of the corpses were far too bizarre. Aside from the experienced forensic doctor, who could barely maintain his composure, the two local officers instinctively averted their gazes, not daring to look directly.

The Stack Commando pressed his lips tightly together. A virtually imperceptible gleam flashed across the surface of his glasses as he rapidly scanned the bodies, discovering a ring of white residue around the mouths and noses of both corpses. "Wait, is this froth?"

"Yes, mushroom-like foam," the forensic doctor nodded.

The so-called mushroom-like foam is a white or light-reddish froth formed when respiratory tracts secrete mucus due to irritation, mixing with air and water during labored breathing. It frequently appears in cases of drowning, carbon monoxide poisoning, traumatic brain injury, strangulation, and drug overdose.

The two deceased individuals—one stabbed to death, the other killed by a fall—should not have exhibited mushroom-like foam.

The forensic doctor explained: "Sakaibara fell from the sixth floor. On his way down, he collided with external air conditioning units and other objects, which slowed his descent, meaning he did not die instantly upon hitting the ground. Rather than dying purely from the fall, a more accurate description would be internal hemorrhage combined with drowning—it was raining heavily at the time, and his head happened to be submerged in a puddle directly below."

The Stack Commando nodded. Just as he was about to resume scanning the corpses, he suddenly seemed to realize something, snapped his head up, and asked, "Raining? Didn't the newspapers say the murder took place on a clear day seven days ago?"

The forensic doctor clarified: "The newspapers reported the time the police discovered the bodies. The actual murder took place eight days ago, and it was raining then."

Rain... Rain...

A chill struck the Stack Commando's heart as a terrifying possibility flashed through his mind, and the case files raced across the inner display of his smart glasses.

The Fujita family massacre twenty-five years ago, the missing middle school students case, the deaths of the Suzuki couple, the death of the mortician, Sakaibara's murder of his wife, and even the exact time the players were teleported this afternoon—it was raining in every single instance.

Rustle—Rustle—

The thunder that had been brewing for so long finally broke, and fine, misty droplets of rain pattered against the glass windows of the forensic laboratory.

Disregarding the presence of the two local police officers, the Stack Commando whipped out his phone, opened a messaging app, and shouted into the receiver: "The amplifier is the rain! Once it starts raining, the power of that thing grows stronger! When we arrived this afternoon, it had just finished raining, which is why that van crashed into the water—we've already been targeted!"

The reason the killing ground set the teleportation node right after the car plunged into the water was to warn the players that the four TV station crew members had already been tainted by the curse.

"Inspector?"

The local officer beside him, failing to understand why the Stack Commando's emotions had suddenly surged to such a pitch, asked with a puzzled expression, "Are you alright?"

Snap!

Without any warning, the long fluorescent tube hanging from the ceiling of the room abruptly went dark. The refrigerated morgue lockers violently slammed shut, forcefully dragging the two corpses back inside their compartments.

Click-clack-clack-clack—

Dense and chaotic noises erupted from within the corpse storage lockers. Strands of long, black hair continuously wriggled out from the gaps in the cabinet doors.

The three ordinary people in the room were frightened out of their wits by the sudden turn of events. The forensic doctor shrieked, pulled open the door, and bolted out of the room.

"Don't go out there!"

The Stack Commando shouted a warning, but unfortunately, it was far too late.

The moment the forensic doctor stepped into the corridor, a pair of pale, bloodless hands seized him by either side of his head and violently dragged him into the dark shadows.

The Stack Commando lunged out in pursuit, only to find that all the lights in the corridor had been extinguished, leaving only the dim green glow of the emergency exit sign at the far end.

Beneath that feeble green light, a human figure could be vaguely seen hanging from the corridor ceiling. Its feet hovered in the air, its arms hung limply at its sides, and its neck was stretched to an absurd, unnatural length.

Bzzzt—Bzzzt—

The lights throughout the entire hallway flickered erratically as the ghostly figure glided toward the Stack Commando.