Chapter 010: Nightmare

Like a gecko clinging to the ceiling, Mako let out a chilling cackle from her throat. Her head had been reattached to her body, but a gruesome gash still marred her neck, thick blood oozing from the wound, dripping onto the classroom floor with a steady plop, forming a crimson pool.

“There’s a ghost—a ghost!”

Confronted with this terrifying and bizarre scene, Yamazaki was scared out of his wits, feeling a cold rush surge from his tailbone to his skull. It was as if he had been thrown into an icy pit, his entire body stiff and frozen.

Mako had returned from hell as a vengeful spirit, seeking him out!

“Hehehehe, we meet again, Yamazaki,” Mako’s pitch-black eyes glimmered with poisonous hatred as she stuck out a long, dark tongue. Like a gecko stalking its prey, she crept toward Yamazaki along the ceiling in a grotesque posture.

Yamazaki shrieked in terror and bolted for the classroom door without looking back. At that moment, he realized—when had the door been locked?

Strangely, the door was locked from the outside. In this building, only Yamazaki, Shiohara and Maruyama Kotaro should be present. Who, then, had locked this door?

“Damn it, who locked the door? Open it, hurry!” Yamazaki’s pupils widened in panic as he pounded the door, crying out for help. “Shiohara, Kotaro, anyone—come save me!”

Yet the classroom seemed severed from the outside world; no matter how loud he shouted, there was no response.

A silky curtain of black hair draped across Yamazaki’s face. He looked up in horror and saw a twisted, grotesque visage.

“Found you, Yamazaki.”

Mako’s head spun three hundred and sixty degrees atop her neck, viscous blood dripping from her hair onto Yamazaki’s eyes.

Suddenly, Yamazaki’s world turned blood-red; everywhere he looked, rivers of blood flowed as if he were truly in hell.

“No—don’t come any closer! I didn’t mean to kill you!”

Under this intense torment, Yamazaki’s face was contorted with terror, teetering on the edge of collapse. He staggered toward the window, desperate for escape. As Su Cheng had said, Yamazaki knew deep down he had caused Mako’s death, but he could not admit such a truth.

He had barely taken a few steps before Mako’s hair wrapped around his neck, hurling him violently to the ground.

The horrifying sensation of suffocation struck; Yamazaki frantically tried to tear the hair from his throat, but it only tightened, making it impossible for him to breathe.

Am I going to die?

In the dreadful, chilling classroom, Yamazaki lay sprawled like a dead dog, eyes rolled back, tongue lolling, legs limp, a foul-smelling liquid seeping from his trousers—he had been scared so badly that he wet himself.

“Please, don’t kill me—don’t!”

Yamazaki, sobbing and sniffling, begged Mako for mercy; he was truly terrified.

“Yamazaki, do you remember our child?”

The ghostly face hovered so close to his own, her voice chilling and cold.

“Our… child?” Yamazaki echoed, a look of confusion flickering in his eyes.

After a moment, he recalled that two months ago, Mako had told him she was pregnant. At the time, Yamazaki was at a critical point in his career and had no intention of keeping the child, so he forced Mako to go to the hospital and terminate the pregnancy.

He never realized how selfish and cold he had been then, sacrificing his own flesh and blood for the sake of his future.

“Do you… want to see him?”

Hearing Mako’s words, Yamazaki felt a sense of dread. Could it be that Mako had not aborted the child but instead planned to keep it from him?

But Mako was already dead—so the child must be…

In the next instant, Yamazaki’s eyes widened in horror. He saw Mako thrust her hand into her abdomen, slicing it open bit by bit as if performing a cesarean section.

The kind of scene found only in horror films unfolded before Yamazaki’s eyes, nearly driving him mad.

Then, a tiny figure crawled out from Mako’s belly.

A ghostly infant!

At this sight, Yamazaki was struck speechless with terror. Never in his wildest nightmares had he imagined meeting his “child” under such circumstances.

The infant crawling from Mako’s belly was incapable of speech, emitting only high-pitched squeaks. Yet it seemed to recognize its father’s scent, slowly crawling onto Yamazaki’s body.

The atmosphere in the classroom grew ever more horrific.

The child opened its mouth, revealing sharp teeth, and bit fiercely into Yamazaki’s neck, tearing off a chunk of flesh and chewing it.

Warm blood gushed from Yamazaki’s neck; as he watched his body being eaten bit by bit, his mind completely shattered.

“Kill me—just kill me!”

Driven by extreme terror, Yamazaki found strength he didn’t know he possessed, breaking free from his restraints and dashing madly toward the classroom window.

Meanwhile, as Shiohara and Maruyama Kotaro searched the teaching building, they suddenly heard a heavy thud from upstairs. Rushing outside, they saw Yamazaki fall from above.

They hurried downstairs to where Yamazaki had landed, but by the time they arrived, he was barely breathing.

“Yamazaki, what happened? Did you encounter the butcher in the building?” Shiohara examined Yamazaki, noticing that apart from injuries from the fall, there were no other wounds—he didn’t look like someone attacked by the butcher.

“It was Mako. She returned from hell.”

An expression of extreme terror lingered on Yamazaki’s face as he uttered his final words and stopped breathing. In his last moments, a thought surfaced in his mind—was this all retribution?

Shiohara and Maruyama exchanged bewildered glances, unable to make sense of Yamazaki’s words. Mako had clearly been beheaded by the butcher—how could she return from hell for vengeance?

Who knows what Yamazaki experienced before his death.

“Shiohara, look—someone’s up there.” Maruyama’s voice trembled as he pointed upwards, having noticed something unusual.

“Stop kidding around; there’s only the two of us in this building. Who else could be here?”

Just as Shiohara looked up, he saw at the window of the classroom where Yamazaki had fallen—a tall man in a trench coat, his face wrapped in bandages.

Because of the bandages, Shiohara could not see the man’s features. He only remembered the man’s eyes, which were especially cold, as if filled with hatred for the world.

“The… butcher?”

Shiohara was jolted with fright, but before he could react further, the eerie figure at the window had vanished.

Tap, tap, tap.

The sound of leather shoes echoed through the deserted teaching building. The tall man with the bandaged face prowled the halls like a specter.

He was the butcher, and also the nightmare.

He had come from hell.