Constantine slowly turned his head towards the door.
After two rings, the ringtone of the mobile phone outside the door suddenly stopped - she lowered her head and glanced, and the screen of her mobile phone showed "Call in progress" and a timer appeared.
"...Mother?"
The pianist's voice rang outside the door and on the phone at the same time; when he called her, his tone was no different from before.
The young man named Inmaruji turned to look at her.
Constantine didn't say a word. For the first time in her life, she felt at a loss as to what to do next.
"Why did you turn off the lights? It's so dark." The pianist shouted slowly from outside the door, "It's me, open the door."
As he spoke, the doorknob turned half a circle silently - no matter how many times it was locked, it seemed that it could not stop it from turning as smoothly as a piece of hot butter.
Inmaru Tsugumi immediately grabbed the door handle and pressed his shoulder against the door, his muscles all tense and bulging in the light of sweat and shadow; but Constantine held the phone and remained motionless.
The call "Mother" was full of respect and awe, just like before; when he questioned why the lights were turned off, his tone seemed to be asking his peers; when it came to the half sentence of "It's me, open the door", his tone was intimate.
He felt much more relaxed, as if the person behind the door was not the controller of the mafia organization, but his girlfriend.
It's like piecing together the performance in three situations.
The face that was repelled by gunfire just now, and what he said was another report made forty minutes ago... Thinking of this, Constantine had a vague guess.
"Let go," she ordered to Inmaruji, "and stand over here."
He hesitated for a moment, and then he walked to her obediently again, like a well-trained wolf dog - even though both parties knew clearly that this was his disguise of obedience.
"What do you think?" he asked in a low voice.
Constantine cut off the call, did not answer him, but called towards the door: "Come in."
Inumaruji stretched his body slightly.
She had pushed open the door of the dressing room countless times, and she knew very well that when this old and heavy door was turning, it had never been as quiet and smooth as it was now, as if it had suddenly lost its weight.
Above the hand that slowly pushed the door open, there was half a body leaning out from the darkness.
On the pianist's face, the upper and lower eyelids seemed to be opened roundly by invisible fingers, without blinking.
"Mother," the first one called, respectfully, and after a pause, the second sentence turned into an instruction to his subordinates: "Come here."
Constantine couldn't help it and laughed.
"What's going on...?" Inmaruji looked at that face and then at her, "Why doesn't he come in?"
"I don't know why he didn't come in." Constantine's eyes stayed motionless on the pianist, who was leaning out a shoulder behind the door and stretching out his arms - as if he knew he couldn't reach the pianist.
People, he also wanted to reach out and give it a try. "People who fell into the darkness... should all be dead."
Inmaruji didn't look very surprised.
"They are dead and can no longer talk like humans. Every word they said was what they said at different times during their lifetime... I think it should be like a replay."
Constantine looked at the white and bloodless hand reaching into the light of the dressing room and swaying up and down a few times; the pianist seemed to be a little unwilling, and stretched out his neck a little more, and stretched his whole head out of the door.
Come in.
This scene would be almost funny if it weren't too weird.
"Put together what I said at different times and on different occasions in the past, and then say it to us..." Constantine said in a low voice, "In addition to trying to trick us into relaxing our guard, I really can't think of a second thought.
An explanation.”
"Look at his appearance," Inmaruji tilted his head and said, "It seems like he wants to catch us? But even though he is so far away, he doesn't come in..."
His eyes turned to the half of the pianist's body that disappeared into the darkness, and he guessed: "Is it because he...can't completely leave the darkness?"
"I think it should be the darkness that is supporting his body and speaking with his mouth." Constantine murmured. Such lines like a fantasy novel would one day come out of his own mouth.
."Of course the bag doll can't escape from the stick on its back, right?"
"Then why doesn't the darkness come in by itself?" Inmaruji asked with a frown.
None of them had an answer to this question.
"We can try," Constantine laughed softly again, "let's turn off the light for a second or two, then turn it on again and see where the darkness goes... If the darkness has already clung to us when we turn on the light
face, then the reason why it doesn’t come in is obviously because of the light.”
Inmaruji trembled slightly without any trace, so slightly that she thought she just felt the tremor on his skin.
"You...don't you know how to be afraid?"
"Want to try it?" Costinette turned to look at him, his hand already touching the side of the mirror of the dressing table. "The light switch of the dressing table is right here -"
She didn't know whether it was the movement she caught in her peripheral vision, or the sudden electric current in her nerve endings when she realized something was wrong. She suddenly felt nervous and turned her head hastily - her heart was still pounding in her chest, before her eyes.
But it's still the same as before, as if there is no difference.
What...what's going on?
What made her alert?
This time, it was Inmaruji's turn to laugh lowly in her ear. "So you can be nervous too... I can see it," he said hoarsely, without any intention of explaining. "What about you?"
What did you see?
Constantine's hand was still on the light switch, and her palms were clammy. She didn't dare to look away anymore, she just stared straight at the half of the pianist emerging from the darkness, and the darkness underneath him was rolling like thick ink.
, and the door opened a crack...
She also saw it, but she didn't understand it for a moment.
If there is any difference from before, it is that there is a little darkness flowing in through the crack in the door.
As if a strip of plasticine had been pinched out, a small piece of black flowing in was floating in the air a few centimeters behind the door, like a tentacle or a finger, slowly rolling and floating under the light.
- and the direction the finger was pointing seemed to be more towards Constantine, rather than the center of the dressing table where the two of them were leaning.
"Haven't you figured it out yet?" Inmaru Tsugumi said with a smile as if it was nothing to do with him, "Didn't you play 'One, Two, Three, Wooden Man' when you were a kid?"
Constantine stared blankly into the darkness, unable to say the word "no".
"When you don't look back and turn your back to your playmate, your playmate will sneak up behind you... When you turn your head, your eyes will make the other person stay in place." Tsugumi Inmaru
He whispered, "Didn't you just...turn your head away? Although it was only for a short moment, I saw it."
She listened to his voice, which echoed in the small dressing room.
"The moment your eyes leave the darkness, it stretches out a little towards you."
I spent three days working on this chapter, revised it several times, and finally it’s out, but it’s so short that I’m almost sorry for everyone... In fact, part of the reason why it’s so difficult to write is because I have so many little problems, and I didn’t have any problems in the first two days.
I suddenly feel tired and weak without warning, causing my brain to not work very well... My mother is like this. She is not good here and there every other day. I used to think that she was too busy, but I didn't expect that it would start to happen to me as time goes by?
