Chapter 4: An Awkward Meeting (Seeking Collections!!!)

Slowly approaching the old, mottled and dilapidated building, Niino Li stood sideways in the shadow beneath the eaves, took out his phone, and checked the time:

4:30 PM — the time they had arranged to meet in advance.

Whether the occupants of this building were busy office workers or young people who had arranged to go out and have a good time, this was clearly not the best moment to be heading home.

Safe, secluded, and it wouldn't interfere with his daytime work.

Unlocking the phone, Niino Li switched it to vibrate mode, then lifted his gaze, his eyes sweeping over a few passersby not far away who were bathed in the evening sun and walking slowly.

Their expressions were natural, their steps relaxed — they didn't look like people with an appointment.

"Have I been... stood up?" His brow furrowing slightly, he unwillingly took out his phone again and tried to send a message to the other party on LINE.

Like tossing a pebble into a lake — not a ripple.

Watching the setting sun being swallowed bit by bit by the buildings, Niino Li stopped waiting, turned, and slipped into the pitch-dark stairwell.

Unlike the warmth outside, the first sensation Niino Li felt upon stepping in was a chill, as if countless rustling insects were piercing through his sleeves and burrowing into his flesh.

"Can people really live here?"

With darkness as a catalyst, the chill and cold of the stairwell were magnified infinitely. The wall surfaces were far from smooth, covered with obvious grain, as if they had been painted over many times, and a faint smell of dust drifted in the air.

Following Okura Sa'u's description, Niino Li kept walking along the wall on the other side of the handrail up to the third floor, arriving before the door of the room deep in the corridor.

The door was pitch-black, and under the glow of his phone's flashlight, patches of congealed grime were revealed, like scars left on human flesh after being burned by a great fire.

"Nagasawa?" Niino Li's gaze was calm as he took out a tissue he had prepared, brushed the dust off the 'white' nameplate on the door, and stared at what was revealed beneath.

Island-nation residences habitually write the family name on the doorplate so the post office can find the house without trouble.

After jiggling the lock a few times, his right hand applied a little force, ignoring the faint creak from the mechanism, and he pulled open the door of the Nagasawa Residence.

There was none of the imagined bloodiness or gloom — what unfolded before Niino Li was a living room that looked warm and comfortable under the evening sun, fully furnished and arranged neatly and orderly.

It looked more like a home than his own dwelling.

"Not a speck of dust — does anyone still live here?" Passing the dining table, Niino Li crouched down, his sight level with the tabletop as he observed carefully, feeling it was somewhat unbelievable.

This room had very obvious signs of habitation — could that Mantis Spirit have been possessing the owner and living here all along?

Arriving before the bedroom door, Niino Li noticed several relatively fresh, jagged scratch marks rubbed into the white porcelain floor beside the door frame. His mind stirred, and he took out his phone to snap a photo.

He stared at the floor, where wisps of black aura drifted up from the marks, lingering and dissipating into the air — the lingering resentment left behind by a spirit's passage.

Since Inotori Park, the world in his eyes had begun to grow more varied.

Thoughts spinning in his mind, Niino Li hesitated for a moment, but still pushed open the door.

In the room, which carried a faint, delicate fragrance, there was only a small bed with a few pieces of women's underwear and bedding tossed on it, a desk piled with documents, and a simple clothes rack hung with different styles of light, summery garments.

Besides these, several jagged marks similar to those outside the door remained on the ceiling, chaotic and deep, and Niino Li could even imagine the posture of a mantis stretching its body from the scratches.

He tried his best to keep his eyes from meeting the underwear on the bed, softened his breathing, and brazenly inspected the other spots in the room, stopping before the window Okura Sa'u had mentioned.

The fine window gauze had been cut with a single slit, the edge neat and clean.

Looking out at the angle of the window, through a dappled play of light and shadow, he saw a girl with shoulder-length hair standing where he had originally been.

In an instant, their gazes met!

Those were a pair of eyes as clear as an autumn sky.

Then, very naturally, Niino Li drew his gaze back, looked from the bedroom door toward the living room, and pretended nothing had happened, though a storm was already raging inside him.

He was, after all, a stranger who had broken into someone else's home!