Murder At The Rainy Mansion ~The Never Ending 100 Tales~

Chapter 61: The memory about the storeroom

Ayano saw Natsu disappeared from in front of the toilet. “There is no record of a person named Sudo Satoshi living in this house. Uh- Shun?”

Ayano noticed that Shun’s spirit had become more transparent from time to time since a while ago. It would be great if it meant he was about to return to his body, otherwise—

“Shun. You want to run away from here, don’t you?” Ayano asked.

Shun stared at her and replied, “So annoying. A good person would just pretend that they didn’t notice anything.”

Ayano: “Uh- I don’t have any intention to be a good person. Anyway, I think it would be better for you to seek the truth. You are a fearless person, Shun. This is the chance for you to conquer the only thing that scared you. That is why you are here in that form. You can’t see ghost in your normal living body. Now that you are a living spirit, you can use this chance to discover the truth.”

Shun bent his head down while thinking for a while. “Alright then. It is my turn to tell my story. That day… I was staying in this mansion and woke up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet. I don’t have the ability to see ghost since before so I was not scared. I was walking down this wide hallway in front of the entrance towards the toilet by myself. Then suddenly I heard a groaning sound from somewhere nearby. I thought I was imagining things because it sounded like a ghost. But since I’m not psychic and shouldn’t be able to hear ghost, I assumed it was an auditory hallucination.”

“Hold on. When did this happened?” Ayano interrupted him.

“When I was 3 or 4 years old,” Shun replied.

What a cool toddler, Ayano thought to herself. It seemed something scary had happened at this place and caused a brave toddler to lost his memory. Based on Ayano’s memory, there was no ghost that like to make groaning sound. She had never heard such sound in this hallway before.

Shun stared fixedly at the storeroom and continued his story. “The sound came from inside this storeroom. It was a female voice gasping in pain. I heard someone was breathing heavily and the sound of clothes rustling. I wanted to run away but my knees felt weak and I couldn’t move.

And then, I felt someone grabbed both of my shoulders from behind. In that situation, a grown-up had come and touched me – I should be happy and looked at that person but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to turn around. To me, the hands that was grabbing me was scarier than whatever was happening inside the storeroom.

I felt like those ten slim fingers had sunk into my shoulders. I couldn’t move and couldn’t raise my voice. Eventually, the groaning sound stopped and the storeroom became quiet for a moment.

After that, I heard someone sobbing from inside the storeroom in the darkness. At that moment, the hand that was holding me loosened its grip. I was hesitating whether to look back or not because the scent that came from behind me smelled familiar. It was the smell of old wooden chests and kimono.

‘Shun…’ The person behind me called out my name before saying ‘don’t—’ ”

While he was immersed in his story, Shun suddenly heard a voice whispering into his ears. “Don’t tell this to anyone.”

Shun was startled by the voice. He didn’t know how long Natsu had been standing next to him.