You Call This Mild Horror?

The movie opened.

A girl was hiding beside a desk, curled up in a ball.

"I've locked myself inside the house like this for an entire week...

There's no food left, either.

Ah... if this is a dream, I hope I wake up soon."

At that moment, quite a few viewers suddenly felt that something seemed off about this movie.

Everyone held their breath as they listened to the girl continue murmuring from the big screen:

"But I can't take even a single step outside this house. If I step out the door, that thing will definitely..."

A familiar voice came from outside the window:

"Hezi, just give it up and open the window!"

The voice was incredibly familiar—so familiar that the audience felt as though they had heard it just moments ago.

Wait, wasn't that the girl's own voice?

Some sharper viewers had already begun guessing that the voice belonged to the girl's mother.

Could it be that the mother was mentally unstable, and the girl was hiding from her abuse?

The familiar voice continued from outside the window:

"Sigh... you must be starving, right? If you don't come out and eat something, you'll starve to death!"

The voice sounded very gentle.

The concern in it made many viewers feel that its owner truly cared about the girl by the desk.

Resistance appeared on the girl's face, and the audience could hear her thoughts.

No. I'm absolutely not falling for that. If I go out there, I'm dead!

Some more softhearted viewers were already beginning to doubt.

Could it be that the girl, rather than the owner of that voice, was the abnormal one?

Soon, the voice outside became somewhat impatient:

"Hey, Hezi, can you hear me?"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The window was struck violently!

Hezi's body curled up even tighter in fear.

Quite a few people noticed that there was no one outside the window—only a lone Balloon.

Had the Balloon simply drifted here by chance?

Or was it some kind of communication device?

The girl continued hiding on the other side of the desk, avoiding the gaze cast in through the window.

"This is too terrifying... That voice isn't someone else's. It's mine..."

"My voice is calling out to me from outside the second-floor window..."

"This isn't a hallucination. It really is my voice speaking..."

"But... that isn't me..."

"Even now, I still don't know what that thing is... But the one thing I do know is that it wants my life...

It's been waiting outside the window..."

Many people who had entered the theater because of Love Confession Balloon felt a sense of foreboding.

This style was obviously nothing like Love Confession Balloon!

Yet they were still curious about what exactly was outside the window.

Was it a giant over three meters tall?

Or some strange person holding a Balloon?

Or perhaps a ghost?

Their curiosity drew them onward, making them eager to see how the story would develop.

"Ah, why did this happen?!

The cause of it all was...

Right, Fujino Terumi's death a month ago!"

The scene shifted outside a wall, where a female corpse hung from the electrical wires beside it.

"Gasp..."

That sound did not come from a character in the film, but from the audience in the theater, who all sucked in a breath of cold air.

The viewers in the front rows even began to feel short of breath.

The corpse's limbs hung limp, her hair was scattered over her face, and her features could not be seen. An aura of deathly silence surrounded her.

In the breeze, she swayed ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly.

"Her death caused a tremendous shock..."

"When she was found, she had hanged herself outside the apartment building where she lived."

"She had used a steel cable to hang herself, winding it irregularly around the electrical wires on the outside wall. But because her body had dropped down so heavily, her neck still looked as though it could snap at any moment..."

The scene shifted to a female reporter's interview.

The crowd had packed the crime scene so tightly that not even water could pass through, and their grief-stricken cries were occasionally picked up by the television station's microphones.

"Terumi!"

"Terumi!"

Standing outside the crowd, the reporter delivered the news to the public:

"Mm, I am now outside the apartment where Idol Star Fujino Terumi, who passed away last night, used to live."

"As you can see, numerous fans rushed here after hearing this terrible news, shrouding the scene in an unusual atmosphere."

"It appears that Fujino climbed out of her room's window, wrapped a steel cable around the electrical wires, and hanged herself!"

"She did not leave behind a suicide note. Her parents have stated that Miss Fujino may have been troubled by her career in show business."

The television station displayed a portrait of Fujino from the waist up.

She was an exceptionally pretty and delicate young woman. It was enough to make many viewers mourn her loss and even sympathize with the fans' frenzied behavior.

A girl with looks like hers had died so young. Going to her home to mourn her seemed perfectly understandable, didn't it?

The girl's inner narration continued.

"Fujino Terumi was an Idol Star, but she was also my classmate."

"And my best friend."

On the screen, beneath the sunlight, Fujino Terumi and the girl chatted with smiles on a grassy field.

The two innocent girls spoke warmly together, giving the audience a cozy feeling.

At the same time, however, many viewers found themselves with new questions.

The girl from the beginning actually knew a huge star—and they were best friends?

Could the mysterious killer outside the window have targeted the girl after killing Fujino Terumi?

But why would he use the girl's own voice to call out to her?

One question after another swirled through the viewers' minds.

"Terumi committed suicide? I really can't believe it..."

Onscreen, a much younger Hezi than the one from the beginning turned off the television.

Fujino Terumi's family had invited an eminent monk to perform rites for her soul.

At Terumi's funeral, masses of grieving fans wept as they tried to break through the security guards' blockade for one last look at Fujino Terumi.

Several female students talked about what they had seen at the funeral as they headed home.

"There were so many fans..."

"Of course. It's the funeral of one of today's Idols, after all."

"...But I wonder why Terumi killed herself?"

"She never seemed troubled by anything at school... Um... what do you think, Hezi?"

Hezi was among those female students.

However, she was clearly uninterested in joining their conversation, and her steps seemed weighed down by worry.

"Mm, I don't know..."

Hezi's gaze settled on the back of a lone man walking ahead of them.

The man was very handsome, though there was a trace of melancholy in his expression.

"Ah, Hezi, look. That's Shiraishi..."

"He looks so lonely... He must be devastated."

"...Ah..."

Hezi hesitated to speak.

She saw a large group of boys blocking Shiraishi's path, refusing to let him pass. Every one of them wore an angry expression.