Chapter 018 - Moonlit Mirage 05

  No. 137 whispered, her voice barely audible over the tension tightening in the air. “Brother… don’t scare me.”

  I didn’t answer her. My focus was elsewhere.

  Instead, I turned to Elliot Vance and said in a low, steady voice, “Hold onto me.”

  Without waiting for a response, I leaned halfway out of the wooden window beside me, my upper body dangling precariously over the edge while my lower legs remained inside. The night air rushed against my face as I gripped the frame with one hand.

  Elliot didn’t hesitate. He understood instantly, his fingers locking tightly around my ankle to keep me from slipping.

  The world outside the window felt eerily different—quieter, detached from the chaotic murmurs and stifled breaths inside. The layered eaves of the ancient building loomed above me, stacked like dark, undulating waves. And beyond them, the moon.

  Huge. Luminous. So close it seemed I could reach out and pluck it from the sky.

  With most of the noise muffled behind me, I could hear the rhythmic thudding from above more clearly. The sound had been a steady, methodical pulse. Now, it came to an abrupt halt.

  On the ninth floor.

  I scanned the dark expanse beyond the building. The water stretched endlessly on both sides, an obsidian mirror reflecting the frozen glow of the moon. Along the eaves, small wind chimes swayed in the faint breeze, their fragile tinkling swallowed by the weight of the silence.

  I tensed. “If you feel like you can’t hold on, let me know,” I warned.

  Elliot gave a quick nod, his grip unwavering.

  Then—

  Something cold and wet landed on my cheek.

  A raindrop?

  I lifted a hand instinctively to wipe it away, but before I could glance up, my peripheral vision caught a flash of movement—something plummeting from above at terrifying speed.

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  My body reacted before my mind could process it. I twisted sharply, yanking myself sideways just in time.

  The object rushed past me, barely missing my head.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  It was a body.

  For the briefest moment, my gaze locked onto a human face contorted in death. The neck was twisted a full 180 degrees, the once-prominent spiderweb tattoo on the skin now faded, almost erased.

  Then came the impact.

  A deafening crash shattered the stillness as the corpse hit the water below. Ripples exploded outward in a perfect web, disturbing the moon’s reflection with violent, jagged fractures.

  At the center of that spreading distortion lay the broken body, limbs askew in an unnatural sprawl.

  Blood surged outward in slow, curling tendrils, blooming like a crimson flower on the water’s surface.

  Under the pale moonlight—cold and unfeeling as frost—the corpse began to dissolve. The reflection, however, remained. A lonely, ghostly red flower lingering in the liquid mirror.

  Then—

  The song began again.

  The first time I heard it, it had been unsettling. Now, it carried something worse. A weight. A meaning that felt deeper, more ominous.

  A lullaby for the dead.

  “My distant lover has died; I have preserved his skin as a keepsake…

  The moon is like white frost, while floral drums resound in bursts…

  Oh, restless ghost of a troubled soul, when will you finally be laid to rest?

  I whisper softly, fearing it might take forever…

  Perhaps we are waiting for an illusion as fleeting as moonlight on water…

  Oh, my restless, burning anger—when will it finally dissipate?

  I speak slowly, afraid it will end with everyone scattered, leaving nothing behind…

  Scattered and empty…”

  The melody drifted down from above, seeping into my bones.

  And in that moment, I knew—

  Whatever was waiting on the ninth floor, it wasn’t human.