Chapter 2: The Eerily Smiling Doll and Yotsuya Miko
"I agree."
With that simple thought, Haruto was ripped from Gensokyo.
In an instant, the world dissolved into a nauseating vortex of color and light. His vision blurred into an beyond understanding smear, yet his consciousness remained unnervingly sharp, a lone island of clarity in the storm. It felt as though his very soul was being unspooled from his body, pulled taut by an invisible thread.
When his senses finally stabilized, he found himself plunged into near-total blackness.
The only illumination came from a pitifully faint sliver of gray light, a ghost of a moonbeam peeking through a gap in a set of heavy, drawn curtains. The air was thick and cloying, a cocktail of damp mustiness and the faint, coppery tang of old blood. A wet, sticky sensation squelched beneath his feet with every slight shift of his weight.
A frantic rhythm hammered against Haruto's ribs, but he forced it down, sliding a finger through the empty air before him, attempting to open a Gap.
The first try.
Nothing. The void remained stubbornly intact.
A jolt of panic, cold and sharp, shot through him. He channeled more power into his fingertips, his brow furrowed in concentration. This time, reality conceded, and he successfully tore a small, jagged rift in the fabric of space.
From within the Gap, a dense multitude of hideous, mismatched eyes slowly swiveled to stare at him in perfect, unnerving unison. A wave of deep relief washed over Haruto. It was a grotesque sight, but it was a familiar one. It was home.
He reached into the dimensional tear and retrieved a flashlight, one of a dozen potentially useful props he'd purchased from Kourindou just in case.
Haruto thumbed the switch, and a brilliant beam of light sliced through the oppressive darkness. Though the room remained shrouded in deep shadow, he could finally make out his surroundings.
He appeared to be in a storage room.
It was cluttered with a chaotic assortment of tools, dust-caked wooden furniture, and even a rusty, long-abandoned motorcycle. As he took a cautious step forward, the floorboards groaned under his weight, the sound echoing with an exceptional eeriness in the dead silence.
Feeling the persistent stickiness on his soles, Haruto aimed the light downward. His shoes were caked in a viscous, two-toned liquid of red and green. It wasn't just under his feet—the entire floor of the storage room was saturated with the stuff.
'Blood?' he wondered, but immediately dismissed the thought. If the floor were truly coated in this much blood, the stench would be overwhelming, a thick, iron-rich miasma he couldn't possibly ignore.
His initial fear subsiding into a more manageable caution, he began a careful sweep of the room. The windows were sealed shut with thick iron bars, and the only door was secured with a heavy, archaic-looking lock.
If there was a lock, there had to be a key.
Haruto's gaze drifted to the left corner, where a heap of wooden furniture was piled haphazardly. The most conspicuous item in the jumble was a doll.
It was crafted with a disturbing realism. The texture of its porcelain skin was unnervingly delicate, its facial features so lifelike it seemed as though a living child had been forcibly shrunk down to this size. The corners of its mouth were pulled into a stiff, unnatural smile by crude stitches, but the threads were partially torn. It was as if an invisible pair of hands had once tried to violently rip the grin from its face, leaving it in this ghastly, half-smiling, half-agonized expression.
A cocktail of pure instinct and years spent binging supernatural horror told Haruto that something was deeply wrong with that doll. Frankly, anyone with a pulse could probably guess that much.
The rest of the room was barren. Barring the absurd possibility of the key being hidden within the floorboards or walls, it had to be somewhere in this mess of discarded junk.
Cold sweat slicked his palms. Haruto could only chant Shikieiki's name in his heart, praying that the Yama of Gensokyo wouldn't let him be so unlucky. In a place like this, praying to the judge of the dead seemed far more practical than praying to any god.
If only the Death Game's rules didn't prevent you from bringing bound targets until after you officially became a player—meaning, after clearing the first instance—he would have given Kaguya a swift kick and sent her in to scout ahead. As a Person of Penglai, that idiot princess was immortal. She wouldn't die.
Of course, whether Kaguya would have actually been willing was another question entirely. That girl was, in many ways, just like him.
She was terrified of ghosts.
He distinctly remembered the times they'd played horror games together. She always screamed louder and ran faster than he did.
Boxes, chairs, a derelict refrigerator, a wheelchair, the motorcycle… Haruto searched nearly everything, his gaze finally landing on a large wardrobe looming in the far corner. It was huge, a full two meters tall, a dark monolith against the wall.
It was a prime spot to hide a key. It was also a prime spot to hide a ghost.
Between that and the creepy, smiling doll, Haruto decided the wardrobe was the lesser of two evils.
"Creak—"
He pulled the door open, wincing at the sound. No vengeful spirit leaped out to claw at his face, as his overactive imagination had predicted. The wardrobe was simply filled with heavy, musty-smelling clothes. Haruto began to rummage through them, his fingers brushing against something with an unusual texture.
It felt like skin. And it was warm.
Haruto subconsciously poked it again. The moment his brain registered the sensation, his expression twisted in horror. He yanked his hand back, pulling a tangle of clothes with him. In his haste, he lost his balance and stumbled backward, sending the entire wardrobe crashing to the floor.
BOOM—
The impact was deafening, a thunderclap in the silent room. That, combined with what he had just touched, sent a jolt of pure terror through him. He scrambled back several steps, putting a good three or four meters between himself and the wreckage before he dared to stop.
'Did I just touch a ghost?!'
He frantically chanted Shikieiki's name again, hoping the Yama could hear him. For the sake of that one time he'd treated her to fried shrimp, surely she could offer a little long-distance protection.
As the thin cloud of disturbed dust began to settle, a figure slowly stirred and rose from the pile of fallen clothes.
It seemed to be… a young girl.
Her face was turned toward the floor, but her gaze flickered sideways, her peripheral vision catching him. The moment their eyes met, a violent shudder ran through her. She immediately snapped her head away, bowing it so low her chin nearly touched her chest. The tears that had been swirling in her wide, golden eyes welled up and began to drip silently onto the grimy floorboards. She bit her lip, hard, fighting to suppress any sound that might betray her overwhelming fear.
"Yotsuya Miko!"
Haruto's excited shout cut through the tension. The name was enough to make the girl flinch and pause. She raised her head in surprise, a flicker of confusion in her eyes, but then, as if remembering some unseen horror, she immediately buried her face again in terror.
He cautiously approached her. The warm, living sensation from before and her current, terrified state confirmed it. This had to be his teammate.
He just hadn't expected her to be a character from an anime he'd watched in his past life.
The memory was distant, but that perfectly still, expressionless posture, undermined by the constant, minute trembling that wracked her body… it was too iconic to mistake.
The setting of that series was a world teeming with ghosts. And as an ordinary high school student, Yotsuya Miko had the misfortune of awakening her Yin-Yang Eyes, granting her the ability to see every last one of them.
She could see them, but she possessed no power to fight back.
This cruel twist of fate had forced Miko to live every day in a state of constant, silent fear, pretending she was oblivious to the horrors that surrounded her.
Haruto stopped in front of her. Seeing her still hiding her face like an ostrich, he couldn't resist reaching out and gently poking her soft cheek.
"Don't worry. If I were a ghost, by your own logic, I would have attacked you the moment you looked up," he said, his tone surprisingly gentle. "Besides, I can touch you directly. How could I be a ghost?"
"You… you're really not a ghost?" Her voice was a fragile whisper.
"Nonsense. If I were a ghost, why would I be wasting my breath on you?" Haruto rolled his eyes, his usual sarcastic nature resurfacing.
Yotsuya Miko let out a shaky breath, the crushing tension in her body easing just a fraction. After a moment of silence, she asked weakly, "Who are you? Why am I here? And… how do you know my name?"
"Didn't you get here after receiving an invitation from the Death Game?" Haruto asked, genuinely surprised.
"...A voice asked if I would agree to something. I asked back what would happen if I agreed, and then… I don't remember anything else."
"Hmm…"
Haruto was momentarily speechless. He could guess what happened. The Death Game's automated system must have heard the word 'agree' in her question, interpreted it as consent, and unceremoniously yanked her into the instance.
He glanced down at her. Not only was she completely empty-handed, but she was still wearing her school uniform. It was painfully obvious she'd been teleported here without a shred of preparation.
"You were teleported into a horror instance by something called the Death Game," he explained bluntly. "As long as you agree to that voice, you get sent here."
He paused, letting that sink in. "And don't even think about going back. Ever heard of 'transmigration'? You can think of it like that. You've been dropped into a real-life horror game. Of course, if you die here, you're really dead, so there's no difference between this and the real world."
"As for how I know you," he added, waving a dismissive hand, "that's not what you should be worried about right now. You should be worried about how you're going to survive. You need to understand: this is a horror instance. People can die at any moment."
Hearing this, what little color had returned to Yotsuya Miko's face drained away completely. The fragile calm she had managed to gather was shattered, and her wide, golden eyes filled once more with pure, unadulterated fear.
A horror instance?
A horror game where you could die at any moment!?
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