I asked Hozuki before, he said I have to wait until the night of the full moon to go back.
After learning that he had a job in Hell, Matsuda Jinpei had constantly harbored the intention of going back to take a look. While there, he wanted to find out what exactly had gone wrong that caused him to not only lose his memory when he came from Hell to the human world, but also end up inside the body of a yokai.
But due to the series of events that followed, the matter had been set aside until now, only after Matsuda Jinpei had confirmed that Kisaragi Chiyo had woken up from the Dreamscape safe and sound.
"The night of the full moon.. three days from now?" Kisaragi Chiyo calculated the date.
"Yes." Matsuda Jinpei rubbed his nose against Kisaragi Chiyo's cheek, just like a cat trying to leave its scent on its property.
He confirmed once again that love would erode one's willpower and make a person lazy.
Just like right now, Matsuda Jinpei really wanted to hold Kisaragi Chiyo and do nothing all day, but he considered that she had not yet eaten breakfast and that there were still serious matters to attend to.
Matsuda stood up still somewhat reluctantly, letting go of the young man.
“If you have some free time..” Kisaragi Chiyo naturally saw through his lover's little mood. As Matsuda stood up, she gently hooked her fingers with his, tilting her face up slightly, her misty gray eyes filled with a hint of a smile.
You wouldn't mind coming to help me organize some information in a bit?
"Of course." Matsuda Jinpei grinned, revealing a dazzling smile.
*
The breakfast Hara Kenji prepared today was garlic cheese toast paired with crispy fried sausages, along with shrimp scrambled eggs and roasted cherry tomatoes.
While Kisaragi Chiyo was eating breakfast, Matsuda Jinpei also heated a cup of oat milk for him, fearing he might choke.
After finishing breakfast with great satisfaction, it was time to start working.
Because the second-floor study was occupied by Hara Kenji, Kisaragi Chiyo temporarily moved her workspace into one of the secondary bedrooms.
There were several guest bedrooms on the second floor; even if they each used one for purposes other than sleeping, there would still be enough.
Matsuda's models and tools were piled up in one of the spare bedrooms.
"Take a look at this first." After Matsuda Jinpei entered, Kisaragi Chiyo pulled several hand-drawn sketches from the pile on the table and gave them to him.
Matsuda Jinpei took them and flipped through them. He stared at the sketches with strange patterns in his hands, feeling that the textures looked somewhat familiar; although they appeared messy, upon closer inspection, they seemed to possess a sense of order.
Does it look a bit familiar?" Seeing Matsuda Jinpei frown, Kisaragi Chiyo asked him with a smile, "Can you remember it?
"I've seen these patterns before." Matsuda Jinpei's tone was certain; he had definitely seen them somewhere, but that vague sense of familiarity in his mind always made it difficult for him to grasp the answer.
"How about trying to piece them together?" Kisaragi Chiyo teased, withholding an immediate answer. He first cleared the other items on the table to the side, then arranged several hand-drawn sketches in order to compare them.
"How does it look like this?" Kisaragi Chiyo said, his eyes cast downward, his finger tapping lightly on the pages.
It looks like a map of neural and vascular distribution?" Matsuda Jinpei's tone was somewhat hesitant. "But it's definitely not human.
Although this distribution map looks somewhat complex, it is actually simpler than a human's.
"This certainly isn't human." The smile on Kisaragi Chiyo's face faded slightly. He traced a circle on the map with his finger and then stopped, a hint of solemnity appearing in his eyes.
It belongs to this villa.
It sounded like something out of a ghost story.
“..”
Matsuda Jinpei fell silent for a moment, upon Kisaragi Chiyo's reminder, he finally realized why the patterns on those hand-drawn sketches felt so familiar to him.
So for what reason would one overlook such an obvious answer for a moment? Was it because of some influence that caused such a subconscious forgetting?
The answer was clearly hidden in a place they saw almost every day, a place where they could discover it just by looking up slightly.
What Kisaragi Chiyo drew was exactly the pattern on the ceiling of the villa.
-----------------------
Author's Note: Thanks to all the little angels for your support, mwah 030
Chapter 130
Since his death, Matsuda Jinpei had not experienced such a hair-raising sensation for a long time. As soon as he thought about how those strange patterns on the villa's ceiling were actually blood vessels and nerves, that they were currently living inside the body of an unknown monster, an intense sense of discomfort crawled all over his body like insects.
"When did you find out?" After a moment of silence, Matsuda Jinpei looked at Kisaragi Chiyo. The young man with raven-colored hair appeared calm, as if he were not surprised by this discovery.
"It hasn't been that long.." After hearing Matsuda Jinpei's question, Kisaragi Chiyo blanked for a few seconds. He let out a sigh and shook his head slightly.
“It was just yesterday.”
"Yesterday?" Matsuda Jinpei raised an eyebrow, clearly disbelieving him; after all, sketching out all the patterns on the villa's ceiling was not something that could be completed in a short amount of time.
Moreover, Kisaragi Chiyo had been with them all day yesterday. The three of them had been fooling around for quite a while. By the end, the young man was too exhausted to even move, lying there and letting them mess with him. Where would he have found the time for such a thing?
"Alright." Kisaragi Chiyo and Matsuda Jinpei locked eyes for a moment, but in the end, he couldn't withstand the other's burning gaze and was the first to look away.
"Let me think about how to put this." Kisaragi Chiyo curled her fingers and tapped lightly on the tabletop. She lowered her eyes, her gaze falling once again upon those hand-drawn sketches.
The completion time for these drawings was during the first week after I moved into this villa.
Kisaragi Chiyo's answer only made Matsuda Jinpei more suspicious, because given Kisaragi's personality, if she had discovered such a major problem with the villa earlier, she wouldn't have let it go until now before dealing with it.
"You're not planning to let the problem escalate just so you can haggle with the landlord and buy it at a lower price, are you?" Matsuda Jinpei looked at Kisaragi Chiyo with suspicion.
.." Kisaragi Chiyo pondered for a few seconds, stroking her chin thoughtfully. "That seems like a good idea..
"Of course, I was only joking." Seeing Matsuda Jinpei's expression gradually becoming complicated, Kisaragi Chiyo added another sentence.
Although I did think about using the fact that the house is haunted to drive the price down—after all, it's an undeniable fact, isn't it?" Kisaragi Chiyo shrugged. "But I'm not so reckless as to leave a major hidden danger for my future self just to get a discount.
"So.." Matsuda Jinpei couldn't help but look up at the ceiling. He didn't know if it was psychological, but the patterns that had previously just looked somewhat complex now seemed to possess a life of their own, making Matsuda wonder if blood would seep out if the ceiling were destroyed.
By the way, if a yokai were a house, would it bleed?
This is indeed a question worth pondering.
"I forgot." With those three simple words, Kisaragi Chiyo looked back at Matsuda Jinpei's puzzled gaze, her expression calm and unapologetic.
"Forgot?" Matsuda Jinpei laughed. He was about to say that with Kisaragi Chiyo's memory, there was no way she could have forgotten something like this. However, when he met her eyes, he couldn't find even a hint of a joke in those misty gray irises.
Matsuda Jinpei opened his mouth, his previously relaxed expression tinged with a hint of solemnity.
"You forgot?" Matsuda repeated.
Yes, I forgot," Kisaragi Chiyo nodded softly. "Although I haven't forgotten the rumors about the villa that I heard from Officer Date and Inspector Takagi.
But later, I forgot my suspicions regarding the villa's peculiarities; I forgot that I had once observed the patterns on the ceiling and drawn them down.
As she spoke, Kisaragi Chiyo sighed again. "I only remembered these things after Hozuki reminded me yesterday.. So I'm wondering, we've always thought that everything has been peaceful and nothing has happened since we moved into this villa.. Could it be that something actually did happen, but we've all forgotten it?"
“That sounds a bit terrifying..” Matsuda Jinpei's brow furrowed deeper and deeper as he began to scrutinize his own memories, but he truly couldn't find anything wrong.
“Don't worry too much,” Kisaragi Chiyo said with a smile, seeing Matsuda Jinpei's grim expression, comforted him. “It's just a guess of mine. Actually, I feel that the reason we haven't encountered anything strange might be thanks to you and Hara Kenji.”
A yokai, an evil spirit." Kisaragi Chiyo teased with a smile. "Perhaps in its eyes, one plus one is greater than one, it feels it can't win, so it hasn't made a move.
That possibility can't be ruled out either." Matsuda Jinpei's expression softened slightly, he continued to ask, "Why do you think it wants us to forget our suspicions about it?
"I have about two guesses." Kisaragi Chiyo curved her eyes slightly and raised two fingers.
First, just as I mentioned before. It is weaker than us, with my half-Exorcist status, I bring our combined combat power to about 2.5. Therefore, in order to protect itself, it used certain means to make us overlook its abnormalities, rationalizing what we saw within our memories.
"Second.." As Kisaragi Chiyo spoke, her expression became slightly more serious.
"Matsuda, do you know what a pitcher plant is?" Kisaragi Chiyo suddenly changed the subject halfway through her sentence, asking an entirely unrelated question.
"I know it, what about it?" Matsuda Jinpei asked, puzzled.
Then how does the pitcher plant capture its prey?
"First, it uses color and nectar-secreting glands to attract insects. Once the prey enters the pitcher, it becomes trapped because the slippery interior makes escape impossible, finally, it is digested," Matsuda replied after pondering for a moment.
"I probably haven't told you how I managed to rent this villa.." Kisaragi Chiyo's words were interrupted by Matsuda Jinpei before she could finish.
"Didn't Master Jing introduce it to you?" Matsuda Jinpei's eyes widened slightly.
".. Why would you think Editor Morofushi would introduce a haunted house to me?" Kisaragi Chiyo also widened her eyes, seemingly wondering what kind of image Morofushi Hiromitsu held in Matsuda Jinpei's mind.
"Then it must be that blonde bastard's fault." Matsuda Jinpei pointed the finger at another friend without hesitation.
"It has nothing to do with Mr. Amuro either." Kisaragi Chiyo waved her hand dismissively; she knew, of course, that Matsuda Jinpei was joking on purpose, or rather, trying to lighten the mood.
"I chose it myself," Kisaragi Chiyo said, mentioning the name of a website. Matsuda Jinpei checked it on his phone; it was just an ordinary rental website that even had a mobile app version now.
"Even back then, I felt something was a bit strange.." Kisaragi Chiyo recalled the scene of browsing through the rental listings on the website.
I thought it would take several days to find a suitable house, but as soon as I chose the city I wanted to rent in, the rental listing for this villa appeared right at the top of the first row.." Kisaragi Chiyo paused, "Can you understand? Everything was just too smooth.. Although I was a bit suspicious, being able to rent a sea-view villa at such a low price was just too tempting.
"Even though I know a murder occurred here and there are rumors of a haunting.. but at this price and under these conditions.." Kisaragi Chiyo didn't have much money on hand at that time, besides, she wasn't the type of person who was good at budgeting or saving.
Besides, how could an Exorcist be afraid of ghosts?
Matsuda Jinpei: ".."
Matsuda Jinpei couldn't help but press his forehead. He looked up at the young man across from him. Although his expression remained indifferent, after spending so much time together, their relationship had become so close that it was only a matter of time. He could naturally tell that Kisaragi Chiyo's tone held not a hint of regret, but only the lingering satisfaction of experiencing his hand speed.
"You.. never mind.." Matsuda Jinpei smiled helplessly, feeling no desire to blame the other person; he only felt that Kisaragi Chiyo, who had been so smug about renting a haunted house despite having no money back then, was actually quite cute.
By the way," Matsuda Jinpei recalled another question, "Did you sign the contract directly with the landlord? Or through a real estate agency?
Kisaragi Chiyo fell silent again.
Matsuda Jinpei: "?"
"Ahem.. Do you still remember the question I asked you about the pitcher plant before?" Kisaragi Chiyo coughed lightly.
There was no real estate agent, I didn't see a landlord. I simply expressed my intention to rent on the platform, the next day, I received a contract directly.
"And there's a contract?" Matsuda Jinpei thought that if this were a supernatural rental incident, it was actually quite legitimate.
Yes, there is even a seal on it, the name and phone number are all there.
Then the rent..
He just gave me an account and told me to transfer it directly there, so it was fine.
Speaking of which, Kisaragi Chiyo had not actually had any formal contact with the landlord during the process of renting the house.
“..”
Matsuda Jinpei blinked slowly, his lips twitching as he seemed to understand what Kisaragi wanted to express.
Are you trying to say that this house listed itself on the platform, after realizing that you met its criteria, it took the initiative to appear before you, just waiting for you to take the bait?