Atlas Vance released Sadako’s cold hand and turned toward the front door.
Someone had suddenly started knocking in the middle of the night, and for one ridiculous second his first thought was that another ghost had shown up.
Then he glanced back at the genuine female ghost sitting silently on his sofa and nearly laughed at himself.
“Who is it?” Atlas called.
A man’s voice answered from outside.
“Building security.
We received a noise complaint from one of your neighbors.
They said it sounded like furniture was being thrown around and things were exploding, so we came up to make sure everything’s okay.”
Atlas immediately recognized the voice as one of the security guards assigned to the apartment building.
“Everything’s fine.
I was just doing some cleaning.”
“At one in the morning?” the guard asked suspiciously.
“Could you open the door so we can confirm there isn’t an emergency?”
Atlas sighed helplessly and opened the door only a few inches.
Two building security guards stood in the hallway, accompanied by a middle-aged woman with her arms crossed over her chest.
Atlas recognized her as the neighbor living in the apartment next door, although they had barely spoken before tonight.
“What the hell are you doing in there?” the woman demanded.
“My son has school tomorrow, and you’ve been making enough noise to wake the entire floor.
You scared him half to death.”
“Sorry about that,” Atlas replied.
“It won’t happen again.”
One of the guards stepped closer.
“Mr.
Vance, we’d still like to take a look inside.
The complaint mentioned repeated crashing sounds, and we need to make sure nobody is injured.”
The neighbor quickly added, “It sounded like half his apartment was exploding.”
Hearing that, both guards became noticeably more alert.
Atlas felt a bead of cold sweat run down his back and instinctively looked toward the living room, where Sadako was still sitting motionless on the sofa with her long black hair covering her face.
After hesitating for a moment, he finally stepped aside and opened the door completely.
“Fine.
Take a look.”
With Atlas’s permission, the two guards cautiously entered the apartment while the neighbor followed close behind.
Thanks to Sadako’s psychokinesis, the living room had already been restored after her earlier rampage, leaving almost no evidence of the destruction.
Atlas spread his hands as though the whole complaint had been an obvious misunderstanding.
“See?
Everything’s perfectly normal.”
One guard was about to respond when he suddenly froze.
“Hey, Mike…
who’s the woman sitting over there?”
The other guard followed his gaze.
In the dim living room, Sadako sat silently on the sofa.
Her long black hair covered her entire face, and her white dress looked especially unsettling beneath the weak nighttime lighting.
Considering it was nearly one in the morning, the sight immediately sent goosebumps crawling across all three visitors.
The neighbor lowered her voice.
“Who is she?”
Atlas glanced toward the sofa and deliberately put on a confused expression.
“Who?”
“The woman sitting in your living room.”
Atlas looked directly at Sadako before turning back toward them.
“There’s nobody sitting there.”
The neighbor’s expression instantly stiffened.
Atlas continued with perfect seriousness, “Are you sure you’re not seeing something?”
A visible chill ran through the woman, and she instinctively stepped closer to the security guards.
Her fear lasted only a second before irritation took over again.
“Don’t try that creepy nonsense with me.
Whatever you were doing scared my son, and I expect an apology in the building residents’ group tomorrow.
You should compensate us too for waking him up like this.”
Before Atlas could answer, he noticed movement behind her.
Sadako slowly rose from the sofa.
Atlas’s expression changed.
What was she planning now?
“Okay, you’ve confirmed there’s no emergency,” Atlas said quickly as he moved toward the visitors.
“It’s late.
Everyone should probably go home.”
The neighbor pushed his hand aside.
“We’re not finished.
You haven’t even agreed to compensate us.”
As she argued with Atlas, one of the security guards suddenly noticed something behind her.
The long-haired woman who had been sitting across the room was somehow standing only a few feet behind the neighbor now, yet he hadn’t heard a single footstep.
His face went pale.
“Ma’am…
behind you.”
The neighbor slowly turned.
Sadako stood directly behind her.
Her face remained hidden beneath her long black hair while her white dress hung completely still around her body.
The woman screamed and immediately collapsed onto the floor, scrambling backward in terror.
Atlas quickly stepped between them.
“Sorry!
She’s my girlfriend.
She’s been really into horror cosplay lately.”
The two guards stared at him.
Atlas turned his head slightly toward Sadako and lowered his voice.
“Sadako, don’t kill anyone.”
The supernatural pressure surrounding her disappeared immediately.
If Atlas had given that command only a few seconds later, the three visitors might have experienced something far worse than a simple scare.
Sadako’s psychic presence was already pressing against their minds, and another moment of exposure could easily have driven their terror to a dangerous level.
The neighbor sat on the floor breathing rapidly while cold sweat covered her forehead.
She couldn’t explain why, but she felt as if she had somehow escaped something genuinely fatal.
The feeling was so intense that even her anger disappeared.
She immediately stood up.
“Forget it.”
Without demanding compensation again, she hurried out of the apartment.
The two security guards weren’t doing much better.
Standing only several feet away from Sadako gave both men an inexplicable feeling of coldness that seemed to penetrate directly into their bones.
One of them forced an awkward smile and began backing toward the door.
“Sorry for bothering you this late, Mr.
Vance.
Everything seems…
fine.”
He grabbed his partner’s arm, and both men quickly followed the neighbor into the hallway.
Once the apartment door closed behind them, the guards finally released the breaths they had been holding.
“Mike, why are you walking so fast?”
“You didn’t notice?”
“Notice what?”
“That woman.” The guard lowered his voice.
“I don’t think her feet were touching the floor.”
His partner stopped.
“What?”
“I only saw it from the corner of my eye, but when she moved behind that woman, it looked like she floated across the room.”
“Don’t say shit like that at one in the morning.”
“I’m serious.”
The other guard’s legs suddenly felt weaker.
“You imagined it.
Ghosts aren’t real.”
“Yeah.”
Both men glanced back toward Atlas’s apartment.
“I definitely imagined it.”
Inside, Atlas locked the door and finally sighed in relief.
He turned toward Sadako, who was still standing in the living room as though nothing unusual had happened.
“Sadako…
were you actually planning to kill them?”
Sadako nodded without hesitation.
Atlas rubbed his forehead.
“From now on, don’t kill people indiscriminately without my permission.”
Sadako showed no visible reaction, but the contract accepted the command.
After everything that had happened tonight, exhaustion was finally catching up with Atlas.
Tomorrow would be his first day officially taking control of Vance Horror Pictures, and judging from the company’s financial condition, he was going to have more than enough problems waiting for him.
He needed at least a few hours of sleep before dealing with creditors, employees, and whatever remained of his father’s production company.
Then he looked at Sadako.
Since she had already agreed to cooperate with him, Atlas intended to bring her to the company tomorrow.
If she was going to become the first supernatural actress under Vance Horror Pictures, she would eventually need to meet the staff.
Unfortunately, taking her outside in her current condition would probably cause an incident before they even reached the parking lot.
Her long hair was tangled and damp-looking, while the white dress she had crawled out of the cursed videotape wearing was stained and dirty.
Even ignoring the supernatural atmosphere around her, Sadako looked exactly like someone who had just climbed out of an old well.
Atlas stared at her for several seconds.
“Sadako, go take a shower.”
She tilted her head slightly.
Atlas walked closer and cautiously leaned forward enough to smell her.
His expression immediately became complicated.
The scent was difficult to describe, but “fresh” certainly wasn’t the word he would have chosen.
Her white dress was also covered in grime, which made Atlas wonder whether a vengeful ghost who spent most of her existence around a well ever bothered with ordinary human hygiene.
“Yeah.
Definitely shower.”
Atlas guided Sadako toward the bathroom.
Since he obviously didn’t own any women’s clothing that would fit her, he grabbed one of his clean T-shirts and a pair of loose sweatpants for her to wear afterward.
He also placed shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and a clean towel into her hands.
“Wash your hair properly too,” Atlas instructed.
“You’ve probably got twenty years’ worth of well water in there.”
Sadako stared at him.
Atlas wisely chose not to comment further.
He demonstrated how to operate the shower, placed the toiletries where she could reach them, and then stepped outside.
“Take your time.
Don’t come out until you’re actually clean.”
Atlas closed the bathroom door behind him.
A few moments later, the sound of running water filled the apartment.
He returned to the living-room sofa and picked up his phone.
Sitting there while listening to water running in the bathroom created an indescribably strange feeling.
Less than two hours ago, he had been an ordinary man watching Ringu, and now Sadako Yamamura herself was apparently taking a shower in his apartment.
“Transmigration really is ridiculous.”
Atlas leaned back against the sofa and began checking his phone.
About half an hour later, the sound of running water suddenly stopped.
Atlas waited.
One minute passed.
Then another.
Sadako still didn’t come out.
Atlas frowned.
She couldn’t have phased through the bathroom wall and escaped again, could she?
“Sadako?”
No response.
Atlas waited another few seconds.
“Sadako?”
Still nothing.
His expression changed immediately.
Atlas stood up, hurried across the apartment, and reached the bathroom door.
After knocking once and receiving no answer, he grabbed the handle and pushed it open.
The instant he saw what was inside, Atlas froze.
His eyes widened.
“What the hell…?”
Enjoyed the chapter?
A review helps a lot.
P1treon: