Ooka kept muttering this as he reached out to flip the circuit breaker back on.
He still needed to get back to eating the pork bento he had bought at the store.
With a loud “click,” the power switch for room 403 was reconnected, and the current flowed again.
From the open door of room 403 came the hum of furniture and appliances resuming operation, but the hallway lights weren’t restored immediately — they were still flickering.
Ooka didn’t care whether the hallway lights were good or bad; as long as the apartment was fine, he closed the meter box door and turned to go back upstairs.
Since he didn’t have a key, the meter box couldn’t be locked.
Just as Ooka was about to leave, his phone rang.
It wasn’t the sound of a text message notification, but a ringtone.
Ooka looked at the incoming call notification on his phone — it was an unfamiliar number.
The phone screen lit up again in the darkness, and the number had no name attached; even the first digits didn’t belong to any area code he recognized.
Ooka was momentarily stunned, his finger hovering over the answer button, hesitating for a second.
Normally, a number with an unknown area code was one he would hang up on.
But now, a strange call had come in — an old residential building, right after the breaker had tripped, and the phone had come back on.
All these factors together made him feel uncomfortable at the base of his spine.
But he still answered.
After all, as a running forward on the rugby team, he had a strong and sturdy build, so he wasn’t afraid of a stranger’s call.
“Hello?”
“Hello?”
Ooka pressed the phone to his ear, a faint trace of wariness in his voice.
He asked several times, but no one answered on the other end.
Ooka’s voice echoed faintly in the narrow stairwell.
Just as Ooka thought it was just a prank and was about to hang up, a faint electrical static suddenly came from the other end, followed by a very piercing sound.
But it wasn’t a police siren — it was a harshness, as if someone was fiddling with equipment and suddenly distorting high-frequency noise.
The sharp sound made him pull the phone slightly away from his ear.
Just as the noise was almost fading, he heard a sound from the other end of the phone.
But it wasn’t a voice; it was rapid, chaotic breathing, like the moist breath of a small animal against the throat.
The breathing was mixed with barely audible, intermittent sobbing, as if someone was crying, or making a desperate, frantic plea, the throat producing a gurgling sound, like drowning in water.
At this moment, Ooka’s hand gripping the phone had already begun to tense up.
“Hello?!”
“Cut it out!”
“This joke isn’t funny at all!”
Listening to the sound on the phone, Ooka couldn’t help but think of the recently deceased Shō Tobe.
Meanwhile, the breathing on the other end continued, growing more intense and stronger, as if a person truly suffocating was experiencing incredible pain.
Then, amid the breathing sounds, Ooka heard a vague, almost incoherent murmur.
It was as if someone wanted to say something, but because their throat was full of fluid, they couldn’t form complete words, like the gurgling of a drowning person.
But even so, Ooka still recognized it.
That voice was too familiar — it was Shō Tobe’s voice, the one who always had the loudest voice, who laughed the loudest when their clique got together.
But at this moment, the voice on the phone was completely different from the usual Tobe.
He was no longer laughing, only the gasps of death and the sobs of despair.
Ooka was struck as if by lightning, goosebumps spreading all over his body the moment he realized it.
His hand trembled violently, and the phone nearly slipped to the floor.
The call he was receiving right now was from the killer.
“Ah!”
Almost reflexively, Ooka threw the phone away from his ear.
At the moment the phone flew out of his hands, the flashlight was still on, and the beam of light rolled through the air, wildly scanning the stairwell.
It shone on the peeling plaster on the ceiling, the dust accumulated in the corners, the red paint on the metal meter box, and the darkest shadow in the corner of the stairwell.
And then, at the moment the light swept past the edge of the shadow, Ooka saw it.
In that shadow stood a person, motionless, like a statue.
Then, with the phone’s flashlight, Ooka saw that face.
More precisely, it was a mask — a deathly pale mask, so white that it seemed like the last layer of frost on a dead person’s face.
On it was a distorted, screaming expression, the mouth wide open, the corners stretched to a level impossible for normal human bones, two hollow eye sockets staring directly at him, nothing visible inside, only two voids deeper than the surrounding darkness.
Seeing this, Ooka immediately guessed who this person was.
Ghostface.
Since Hachiman didn’t have internet access, Renji still had to tell him about the image of the Ghostface mask, but Ooka was different — he was one of the first to see it with his own eyes.
He knew all the rumors on the campus forum and the frightening images described under the deleted post.
Ooka suddenly felt his stomach clench sharply, his legs becoming heavy as if filled with lead, and his knees trembling desperately, as if stuffed with something.
The phone fell to the floor, and the flashlight beam shot straight up to the ceiling, illuminating Ooka’s face twisted with fear.
His lips trembled, his pupils contracted to two black dots the size of pinpricks, as if he wanted to scream, but his throat seemed to be gripped by an invisible hand, unable to utter a single word.
The voice-activated light came back on.
The dim yellow glow of the voice light filled the stairwell, and Ooka saw the full face of Ghostface: the black cloak covering his entire body, black gloves, black shoes, but the mask itself was not black.
Ooka felt his previously tightly clenched throat suddenly loosen, and he finally screamed.
“Hel——!”
But before Ooka’s scream could fully escape his throat, Ghostface moved from his spot.
The edge of the black cloak trembled, and the black figure burst out of the shadow at a speed incomprehensible to an ordinary person.
Ooka only vaguely saw a dark shadow bearing down on him.
Instinctively, he tried to turn and run, but his right foot slipped the moment he stepped onto the first stair.
His slipper slid on the floor, and he grabbed onto the stair railing, barely holding on.
And that stumble saved him.
Ghostface’s hand swept past behind him, the tips of his black gloves almost touching the fabric on the back of his T-shirt, nearly grabbing the collar of his shirt.