Clue

Matsuki Yuya, his mind nearly frozen by fear, stared fixedly at the figure in the woods behind him on the screen. He no longer had the heart to look at the scrolling comments. Under his unblinking gaze, the figure remained completely still, nothing more than a silhouette.

As time passed, a thought inevitably surfaced in Matsuki Yuya's mind. Could that figure just be something that looked like that from afar? Or perhaps one of his fans was deliberately stirring things up? After all, he had announced where he was going before the stream started.

But just as he gathered his courage to turn around and take a look, the image on the screen sent a chill pouring in from the top of his head, soaking his entire body in icy cold.

Matsuki Yuya could swear that he had not been seeing things. The shadow in the woods had vanished in an instant!

Coming back to his senses, he hurriedly checked the comments and found that his viewers were discussing it too. Unlike him, who was there in person, most of them still thought it was some kind of scripted prop. Of course, some were seriously talking about ghosts and gods, though it was hard to say whether they truly believed it or were merely going along with the mood.

Matsuki Yuya raised his head toward his two assistants, intending to confirm it with them as well. But the moment he looked up, his expression froze. A humanoid shadow was walking toward them from behind the two assistants, but... there were no footsteps at all!

That was why his two assistants still wore expressions of terror gradually turning into disbelief. Upon noticing Matsuki Yuya's gaze, they had yet to recover when a voice sounded behind them.

"You've got some nerve."

Matsuki Yuya, whose heart had leaped into his throat, suddenly stiffened. He spoke. He was human! Realizing that, Matsuki Yuya turned his fear into anger. He rose to demand an explanation, but the glint reflected from something cut off his words.

"Th-That's a knife, right? It's fake, right? What era is this? Does anyone still carry a real knife around?"

Looking at the figure, clearly human but with most of his face hidden in darkness, Matsuki Yuya could not help thinking of another explanation for the people who had disappeared here—a serial killer.

Why did a murderer feel even scarier than those vague, intangible ghosts? Matsuki Yuya forced a smile. "Sir, we're here doing a livestream. If we've disturbed you, how about we leave right now?"

The cameraman, however, seemed to have been scared out of his wits earlier. Once he realized it was a human being, he immediately cursed and prepared to turn around. But then he felt an arm like cast iron clamp around the back of his neck, leaving him unable to move in the slightest.

"Don't turn the camera toward me. Didn't your mother teach you not to film people without permission? Learn some manners."

With one hand gripping his neck and nearly lifting him off the ground, the cameraman naturally did not dare say a word. He was a fairly big and sturdy man himself, so he understood exactly what kind of person could lift him with one hand.

Matsuki Yuya became even more suspicious that he was a killer. Even if he was not, he definitely was not one of his fans. He did not want to be on camera, appeared extremely strong, and was carrying weapons.

He swallowed and discreetly set the other phone in his pocket to emergency dialing, ready to call the police at any moment. He did not act immediately because he was afraid of provoking the other man into harming the three of them.

Matsuki Yuya tried once more to force a smile, pretending to scold his assistant. "He doesn't want to be on camera, so don't invade his privacy. This gentleman must be out sightseeing or exploring too. We shouldn't disturb you any longer, sir. We'll be leaving now."

Shen Yuanyi put down the man carrying the camera, then patted him on the shoulder. Hearing the streamer's words, he felt a little puzzled. What was this guy talking about now?

He had initially intended to walk straight out, but then he remembered that the streamer might capture him on camera. He was carrying two swords and had appeared here in the middle of the night. To avoid unnecessary trouble, he had moved into a blind spot outside the stream and the camera's view before coming out.

Sound did not matter. As long as he was not filmed, it was fine. In fact, if he would not get lectured over it afterward, Shen Yuanyi would not have minded being filmed either. He had another reason for coming out to find this streamer, though it seemed he had frightened him just now.

"Wait."

He stopped Matsuki Yuya, who had been preparing to pack up and leave as if nothing had happened. Then a voice that sounded like a death sentence to Matsuki Yuya followed. "Have you been doing these ghost-hunting streams around here lately? And recording them with a camera? Other than this place, where else have you gone?"

Matsuki Yuya swallowed. "No—" Under the other man's intimidating gaze, he chose to tell the truth instead. "We've gone to several well-known places nearby, but this is the only place where ghosts are most likely to appear..."

Getting carried away, Matsuki Yuya had slipped into the mindset he usually had while streaming. Once he realized it, he stopped speaking and saw the man step out from the shadows behind his assistant. He was startled for a moment. It was a young man—or perhaps a teenager—whose looks alone could earn him a living as a streamer.

But before he could think further, he saw the full view of the swords at the other man's waist and in his hand. He had previously used swords and knives to drive away ghosts, so he knew a little about them. In his opinion, the unsheathed sword in the man's hand was very likely a genuine weapon. If it was sharpened, it could be used as a murder weapon.

Still not daring to be careless, Matsuki Yuya told him every place where they had conducted ghost-hunting sessions over the past few days. Who knew whether a person who came to a place like this at midnight carrying weapons was a killer or some mentally unstable lunatic? Weren't people who came here to commit suicide supposed to be those who had already broken down and grown sick of this world?

What if this man was one of them? If he decided to take a few people with him before leaving, would they not be completely doomed? They really should have brought some self-defense tools. It was all Shinji's fault. He had suddenly fallen ill, and as a result, they had failed to prepare so many things for this trip.

Shen Yuanyi reached out and tapped the phone he was using for the livestream, signaling for him to turn it off. Sweat seeped from Matsuki Yuya's temples. He nearly thought the other man was about to make a move, but after thinking it over, he lowered his head and hurriedly said a few words to the screen. Then, ignoring all the comments flooding in from viewers, he shut off the stream.

Then the teenager asked, "Have you encountered anything strange these past few days? Think carefully."

Matsuki Yuya dearly wanted to blurt out, You're the strangest thing we've encountered these past few days, but the sword in the other man's hand cut those words off before they could leave his mouth. Still, he breathed a little easier. The man's questions, along with the way he had wandered around after the stream and camera were turned off, gave him some reassurance.

At least he did not seem like a serial killer. Aside from grabbing his assistant by the neck at the beginning, he had not forced them to do anything. If he were a murderer, he would probably have tried to take away their ability to act.

So Matsuki Yuya cooperated and began racking his brains. But he really had not encountered anything strange or supernatural. Although he made ghost-hunting livestreams, he had never experienced any paranormal incidents in all his years in the business. Some of his peers claimed they had, but he had always scoffed at them, believing they fabricated such half-true stories for attention.

Just as he was growing nervous because he could not think of anything, his other assistant, the one in charge of props, spoke with difficulty. "Yuya, if we're talking about strange things... does Shinji count?"

An idea flashed through Matsuki Yuya's mind, and he quickly said, "Oh, right, there was something like that. Though it might not be all that strange."

"Tell me."

Shen Yuanyi had been walking around, inspecting the props they had set up. Hearing that there might actually be a clue, he turned and stared at Matsuki Yuya, telling him to continue.

Matsuki Yuya then told him everything. Their team actually had one more member, mainly responsible for miscellaneous tasks. His name was Shinji. The day before yesterday, after they went to an abandoned temple on the only famous mountain nearby, Shinji came down with a high fever and remained in a dazed state of mind. At first, they had merely assumed that Shinji had caught a chill.

So they packed up, took him to a nearby hospital, then came back to continue their ghost-hunting stream. After all, he had already put out the stream announcement. If he stood his viewers up, his livelihood would take a hit.

Shen Yuanyi looked thoughtful. "Delirious ramblings... What exactly did he say? Did you go there with him? Didn't any of you feel anything unusual?"

Matsuki Yuya gave a bitter smile and shook his head. He thought he understood a little now. The man before him seemed deeply interested in ghosts and monsters, apparently hoping to hear supernatural stories from him. Unlike his fans, who only wanted stories, this man wanted something "real." But where in this world were there any ghosts?

Is that so?

Those words flashed through the depths of his mind, but the situation left him no time to think about them. He roughly repeated some of the delirious things Shinji had said while burning with fever.

Then he watched the young man across from him fall into thought. After a while, amid the unnerving silence, the other man spoke again.

"Did your camera record everything from start to finish?"

Matsuki Yuya paused. "Most of the time, yes. It's mainly for us to edit behind-the-scenes footage or add supplementary material later..."

Shen Yuanyi nodded and said in a tone that allowed no refusal, "Let me see it."

Matsuki Yuya truly wanted to say that there was a lot of footage, and it might take quite a while to watch it all. Why not leave first and review it somewhere else? Somewhere safe, preferably at a police station.

But when the words reached his mouth, all that came out was a short, "Okay." Shen Yuanyi then took the camera and began flipping through the recordings. To save time, he even used his technique to skim through nearly all of the footage in an extremely short amount of time.

Then, under Matsuki Yuya's baffled gaze, he handed it back to them.

"Thank you."

Shen Yuanyi politely thanked them, then added, "Go home quickly. Goodbye."

He turned and left. Matsuki Yuya let out a sigh of relief and thought, Let's never meet again.

Then he hurriedly called for his assistants to leave. He would have plenty of headaches to deal with afterward, but being able to return safely was already enough to thank heaven for.