In the basement, Luo Shu rummaged through piles of old chairs and tables. Among a heap of worn-out cardboard boxes, he uncovered a stash of hidden photographs. Unlike the ones he'd found in the study, these photos seemed to bear the marks of someone's anger.
With his flashlight illuminating the dusty images, Luo Shu brushed off some of the debris, making the photos clearer.
"Look at these pictures," he said, holding them up. The backgrounds varied: a middle school, a restaurant, an amusement park, an arcade, and even the front of the villa. Yet the subjects were the same—a family of three: the father, mother, and daughter, all posed similarly in each picture. The father held his daughter's hand, while the mother leaned close to him, forming a picture-perfect image of happiness.
But each photo bore disturbing details. The father's eyes had been punctured, the mother's mouth cut away, and the daughter's face was scratched and slashed, though it was clear she'd been an adorable child.
Sylas took a closer look, shivering. "Creepy. But there's only the family of three here. Where's this 'fourth person' you mentioned?"
"Who do you think took these photos, hmm?" Luo Shu replied, raising an eyebrow.
A chill ran down Sylas's spine. "So… he's like an invisible part of the family, isn't he?"
"Exactly," Luo Shu replied with a sigh. "Always behind the camera, never in the frame."
With a bit of reflection, Sylas quickly pieced it together. "You figured this out early on, didn't you?"
Luo Shu nodded. "I started suspecting when I looked at the shoe cabinet by the entrance. There were dusty pairs belonging to the family of three, clearly unused for some time."
"But at the very bottom, in the corner, there was one clean shoeprint."
"Where'd that shoe go?" he continued. "The print was about a size 6, while the father's shoes were around a 9.5. This smaller shoe likely belonged to a teenage boy, not tall, probably a middle schooler."
"Given the little girl was around six or seven, this boy could easily be her older brother."
Sylas was astounded by Luo Shu's powers of observation. How could he deduce so much from a single clean shoeprint? She began to question her own intelligence.
"There's more," Luo Shu said. "The house is oddly clean inside. The exterior's run-down, and the shoe cabinets coated in dust, yet there's hardly any dirt indoors. Someone's clearly living here, but they're meticulous, leaving no traces—no stray hairs in the bathroom or anything. Either they're obsessively clean, or…"
"…or they've trained themselves to erase all signs of their existence, knowing they're unwelcome by their family," Luo Shu finished. "It's likely the latter, as I found his bedding hidden in the closet in the study."
Sylas blinked. "He was sleeping in a closet?"
"It's not too strange," Luo Shu explained, unfazed. "This scenario has a Japanese setting. Many families there have limited space, so kids often sleep in closets or smaller spaces. It's also safer during earthquakes, providing a protective shelter."
"But here's the twist," Luo Shu continued. "This house is fairly spacious. The second floor even has an entertainment room and a storage room, but they still made him sleep in a closet. That's not just favoritism toward the daughter—it's downright hostility toward the son."
Sylas felt a pang of pity for this invisible child. "But… aren't Japanese families usually more biased toward sons?"
"I don't know the exact reason," Luo Shu said, a bit lost in his own memories. "Maybe he was… unusual?"
Outside the villa, the wind swept through, lifting the boy's bangs, and revealing his unsettling eyes. His whites were stark, with black veins branching out from his irises, giving him the look of something otherworldly and menacing.
The boy raised his gaze to the darkening sky. Dusk had faded, and night was taking over.
"It's dark now, Grandpa. You can come out," he murmured.
Reaching into the pocket of his school uniform, he pulled out a small, intricately crafted six-eared jade bottle, popping the cork with a faint "click."
"Here's your dinner. I'm too tired to drag her all the way back, so make do with this."
As the bottle's mouth opened, a torrent of black and white mist spewed out, twisting, and swirling until it coalesced into the towering form of a ghost over three meters tall.
The ghost was grotesque, its skeleton thick and broad, with inky-black chunks of flesh wedged into the spaces between bones. Its mouth was massive, filled with a tangled mess of sharp, jagged teeth. Its eyes, dangling loosely, were disturbingly pale with tiny pinpricks of black pupils darting about.
Any ordinary person would lose half their Sanity Level at the sight of such a creature.
But to the boy, dressed in his school uniform, this monstrous spirit was familiar, even comforting.
His name was Hiroshi Toyokawa, born with the ability to see spirits and gifted with an exceptionally high spiritual awareness.
The monstrous ghost at his side, however, was even closer to him—it was his grandfather, Hiroshi Toyokawa, transformed into a Shikigami, a spirit servant bound to Hiroshi's will.
This book is provided by FunNovel Novel Book | Fan Fiction Novel [Beautiful Free Novel Book]