But Renji didn’t plan to leave the same way he came.
Instead, he locked the teachers’ office from the inside and jumped out the window.
Otherwise, the teacher would have noticed something wrong the next morning when opening the door.
With his superhuman physical abilities, a jump from the third floor wouldn’t cause any harm, and Renji had already scouted this area as a camera-free zone.
Then Renji returned the same way, climbing over the western wall, and as soon as he landed, he crouched in the shadows of the corner and remained still for another three seconds.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the city.
Shō Tobe lay in his solitary apartment, holding his phone and scrolling through short videos.
On the small table sat a large cup of cold cola and an unopened bag of potato chips.
He had just stepped out of the bathroom, his hair still half-wet, and was comfortably curled up on his bed, feeling that a Friday evening couldn’t get any better.
Suddenly, Tobe let out a loud sneeze out of nowhere.
“Achoo——!”
Tobe rubbed his nose and muttered.
“Who’s talking behind my back?” Probably those guys from Yamato or Ooka, bad-mouthing me again.
Tobe chuckled and continued scrolling through short videos.
Outside the window, the city’s night sky was deep and silent, with distant neon lights flickering on and off in the distance.
Occasionally, one or two cars drove down the street, tires humming softly against the road, before everything fell silent once more.
And soon, Saturday passed smoothly according to the planned schedule.
The sun set, and night fell once again at 10:30 PM.
In Tobe’s apartment, only the computer screen and a dim floor lamp were lit.
Tobe lay on his side on the bed, snack bags resting on his stomach, with his laptop placed on the small table by the window.
Takafumi Wakaba’s show was playing, and the audience’s laughter rang out one after another.
But Tobe wasn’t fully focused anymore — after all those snacks, he was starting to feel a little lightheaded.
The window was half-open.
Because Tobe had felt stuffy indoors that evening, he had pushed it open and simply drawn a thin layer of translucent mesh screen.
The night breeze drifted in, gently swaying the gauze curtain, like a tall, slender figure standing unsteadily on its feet, inexplicably making Tobe feel a bit uneasy.
“I’ll close it later.”
Then, in the corner Tobe couldn’t see, the window behind him silently opened, inch by inch.
The gauze curtain rose in a higher arc from the wind, and moonlight seeped through the gaps, casting a cool white band of light across the floor.
Then the band of light slowly widened as the window gradually opened from the outside.
Tobe didn’t turn around.
At that moment, Takafumi Wakaba on the show accidentally hit a punchline and burst into laughter.
Behind the gauze curtain, a hand in black gloves pressed softly against the edge of the window frame.
Tobe’s bachelor apartment was on the first floor, almost level with the ground, so Renji didn’t even need to climb.
No one heard the sound of the window opening; the evening wind drowned out the laughter from the program.
After Renji’s hand had opened the window fully,
With a strong push, a completely black figure landed silently on the windowsill, crouching there like a crow perched on a tree branch.
In Nightfall mode, Renji’s presence as Ghostface was significantly reduced.
So much so that Tobe didn’t notice Renji was less than ten steps away from him.
Renji crouched on the windowsill, letting the gauze curtain sway behind him.
He didn’t move at all, in no hurry to act.
The moonlight illuminated the Ghostface mask, its mouth forming an eternal, unmoving, long, stretched curve.
He just crouched there, watching Tobe from the edge of the bed, as Tobe lay on his side watching TV — like reading the last page of an already-written script.
He had already seen Tobe’s solitude, then pulled out his phone and took a picture of him, before sliding down from the windowsill.
He quietly approached Tobe’s door, planning to open it while Tobe was busy watching the show, and then send a threatening message.
At that moment, Takafumi Wakaba’s show went to commercial break.
Tobe stretched lazily, his neck cracking as he turned.
He was about to grab another bag of chips when he heard a soft sound behind him, like a button being pressed.
“Click.”
Tobe suddenly whipped his head around.
The gauze curtain was still swaying, and the window had become wider than before, but he didn’t think much of it, assuming it was just the wind.
Similarly, since he’d been watching the show, he’d forgotten to close the window and hadn’t noticed that it wasn’t originally that wide.
Tobe sat up, ready to go to the bathroom and come back to continue watching.
The show was about to enter its second segment, and if the host was about to introduce today’s mystery guest, he definitely didn’t want to miss it.
He stood up, slipped on his slippers, and was about to head to the bathroom at the end of the hallway when the commercial on the computer was still blaring hoarsely.
At that moment, his phone rang with a message notification.
Tobe picked it up, and on the lock screen, someone had sent him a photo, but the sender had no note attached.
Tobe thought it was a funny picture from a friend and casually swiped to open it.
But when he entered the chat and saw the image load, his movements and breathing stopped at the same time.
On the screen was a photo of him, taken from an unexpected angle.
The shooting angle seemed quite high, and it was taken from outside the window.
In the photo, he was lying on his side on the bed, facing away from the computer, completely exposed to the camera.
Tobe turned around and shot a sharp glance at the window.
The gauze curtain was still swaying, but there was nothing visible outside.
He looked back at his phone, and right below that photo was a message:
“Drawing the curtains helps you sleep better.”
Tobe stared at that message, and his heart suddenly clenched.
His first reaction was that it was a prank — probably some guy who liked jokes and had just passed by his window to sneak a photo.
But then another thought sent a chill down his spine.
The angle of the photo was very strange.
The photographer would have had to stand right in the middle of the window to get a full shot, and just now, when he was looking at the computer, the curtain had been moving.
If someone had been standing at the window, he wouldn’t have felt it or heard any sound.
The more he thought about it, the faster and heavier Tobe’s breathing became.
An inexplicable, trembling fear gripped his entire body, as if every dark corner was casting a malevolent glance at him at that very moment.