The streetlights lit the path only so far.
As I approached Earl Street, their glow began to fade.
Until… There was nothing left.
Only darkness remained, swallowing the street in silence, broken only by the faint, rhythmic echo of my own footsteps. Despite my best attempts at keeping quiet, the sound still echoed, and soon, I arrived at my destination.
‘The lights are off.’
I sighed in relief when I noticed that.
This made things easier for me as I carefully moved towards the house, slowly climbing the steps to the second floor without making any sound, eventually stepping by the door and lowering my body where I looked at the keyhole.
‘…There is no key on the other side, but I can tell that it’s locked.’
Standing up again, I carefully placed the tip of my finger over the keyhole as I activated my most recent skill, and a black film began to seep out from my finger, moving into the keyhole and filling the space completely.
Once I felt the entire space was filled, I solidified it before turning my finger.
Click!
And just like that, the door opened.
‘This sure is a handy skill.’
Perhaps…
I needed to be nicer to the Dreamwalker.
If the Dreamwalker evolved further, it would provide me with even more useful skills.
Crea—
“….!”
I nearly had a heart attack as a faint creaking sound echoed the moment the door moved, and I hastily reached out for it and stopped it from moving.
Silence returned once more after that.
…Or at least, I thought it did.
I wasn’t too sure since all I could hear was the rhythmic drumming of my own heart.
Looking into the house, I realized that the place was even darker than the world outside. Thankfully, I came prepared and slowly retrieved my glasses. With them, I was confident in seeing through the dark, but at the same time, I felt hesitant.
Recalling what had happened the previous time that I had used the glasses, I wasn’t so sure if it was such a great idea to use them.
But…
‘The circumstances back then were different. I was dealing with an anomaly back then. I’m just dealing with an old lady this time. I don’t think I need to worry too much.’
Taking a couple of deep breaths, I eventually put the glasses on, and the world around me turned blue, and the surrounding temperature plummeted even further, causing my lips to start to tremble.
‘Ah, f-fuck…’
Even with the new jacket and the thermal, I could feel the cold seeping right into my body.
‘I need to make this quick. I don’t think I can last long with how cold it is.’
Pulling the jacket around me tighter, I pulled out my shoes and crept into the house, a barely discernible creaking sound echoing as the wooden floor beneath my feet sank. At the same time, I slowly and carefully closed the door behind me, making sure not to create any sound in the meantime as I looked around me.
How could I even describe the place?
It was a mess. Clothes were strewn across the floor, tangled with rotting trash and half-crushed boxes that looked like they hadn’t been touched in weeks. The air was stale and heavy with something sour.
Everywhere I looked, there was filth.
Walls split with deep cracks, while the wallpaper curled and peeled like dead skin. It felt less like a home and more like an abandoned unit used by the homeless.
I had to start breathing from my mouth in order to stop myself from gagging. But even then, taking in the air, I felt myself secretly gagging.
‘Who can even live like this…?’
Perhaps, I started to understand the real reason why she didn’t allow me into the house.
‘No, it doesn’t matter. Let me start looking for clues. The faster I do this, the quicker I can get out of this place.’
Stepping over the trash that was littered on the floor, I moved from the kitchen area to the living room. The entire apartment wasn’t very large, with the kitchen and living room joined together.
A set of stairs appeared at the gap between the living room and the kitchen area, leading to another floor.
‘I presume the old lady is sleeping on the second floor.’
I couldn’t be too sure, but just in case, I set up the Dreamwalker to watch over in case she decided to come down.
As the Dreamwalker’s silhouette appeared before my eyes, I could tell it wasn’t looking at me in the friendliest of ways, but in the end, turning its head, it moved toward the stairs to do its job.
This made me feel a lot more at ease as I reached the living room, which was even more of a mess than the kitchen area.
There was even more garbage on the floor, and the moment I stepped into the room, I found myself pausing at the sight. Although I wasn’t breathing through my nose, it almost felt like I could smell the stench that lingered in the air.
It was nauseating and biting my lips, so I got to work.
‘I just need to find some sort of clue. A painting. A paper. Anything…’
Moving on top of the pile of garbage, I pulled a few apart and carefully sorted through everything. In order to make the least amount of noise, I tried to be as slow and careful as possible.
There were a lot of clothes, and a lot of other nonsense that didn’t seem useful.
But then…
‘Hm?’
I eventually pulled out what seemed to be a pair of pants. Looking at it, they seemed rather large.
‘…Perhaps it’s from her husband?’
They were certainly too large for the old woman, and looking through the clothes, there was indeed quite a lot of male apparel.
Seeing how old the clothes looked, it made sense to think that they were from her husband.
But where was he…?
Was he in the house? As far as I was aware, the only appeared to be only one person living in the house, however, it could very likely be that there was someone else living in this dumpster of a place.
Taking note of this information, I began my search once more.
The operation that I thought would only take a few minutes ended up taking a lot longer than I expected due to how much garbage had been piled up on the floor, and just as I started to think that there was nothing useful, I ended up picking up a certain frame.
‘This is…?’
It was quite dusty, but after a few swipes across the glass, an image gradually came into view.
It was an image of a couple.
A young couple standing by an old train, the man wearing a black suit and an eerily familiar top hat.
Wait…
I looked closer at the image, feeling my heart starting to slow down.
Those clothes. That top hat.
My eyes started to widen.
And then—
Flick!
Light flared into the room.