Conan: I am really a good person

Chapter 405 My Terrible Wife ①
The hour hand clicked away, it was a little past five fifty in the morning, the chill of the night was still quietly lingering in the air, the morning sun had not yet jumped out to dispel the darkness of the night.

Yukiko Kinoshita curled up on the mat at the door, nervously and fearfully capturing every movement outside the door.

This is an apartment located in a bustling area of ​​Tokyo. It has tight security, frequent charges and high prices. Logically speaking, the residents here do not need to squat at the door after five o'clock every day, and be terrified and alert as if they had seen a ghost.

Logically speaking.

——She really saw a ghost.

This story begins in the second year after Sachiko Hayashita moved into this apartment. That year she had new neighbors, an unmarried couple. They had a very close and loving relationship. Often one person would understand what the other meant without saying anything, and their every move was full of affection.

When they visited, the man was gentlemanly and steady, and the woman was lively and lovely. They were a perfect match, which left a deep impression on Sachiko Kinoshita. To this day, she can still recall the look on Miss Suzuki's face when she curved her eyes and handed over the gift. She was so lively that even her green eyes seemed to be sparkling with happiness.

Because the couple settled here mainly because it was close to their workplace, they only appeared in the apartment on weekdays, and most of the time they would go out on a date after get off work and then return hand in hand. They almost never ran into Sachiko Hayashita. In the nearly one year since they became neighbors, she only ran into the couple three or four times.

She was impressed by the first meeting and the last meeting.

At that time, Mr. Ichijo seemed to be away on a business trip for a few days, and the only person who went in and out of the apartment was Miss Suzuki. She didn't seem to need to work overtime, and she got off work much earlier than Sachiko Kinoshita. She was also warm and cheerful, and on the first day of living alone, she came to visit with some sushi she had made herself.

It was a sumptuous sushi that must have taken a long time to prepare. From the sushi, Sachiko Hayashita once again glimpsed the class identity of the couple and concluded that either the man was a chaebol's son or the woman was a chaebol's daughter, or both.

So a few days later, when she found a large puddle of water in front of her neighbor's door, she didn't hesitate for a moment before knocking on the door to ask, intending to see if the rich girl had encountered some trouble while cooking and made a mess at home, and whether she needed someone to help clean up.

But no one responded from inside the door.

Sachiko Hayashita stayed at the door for a full ten minutes, but Miss Suzuki, who was usually enthusiastic and unpretentious, did not respond. There was a heavy silence inside the door, with only a few drops of water overflowing from the gap from time to time, bringing out light pink bloodstains.

……

After the apartment manager broke into the room, Hayashita Sachiko finally saw Miss Suzuki. She was lying stiffly outside the living room. Her short light-colored hair, which used to be as bright as chestnuts in the sun, hung on the carpet, with the ends of her hair stained by blood. Her once lively green eyes were now open out of focus, with the corners of her lips still raised. One of her hands was clenched in the air, as if holding something, and hung limply to one side. There was a red hole on her forehead.

The blood spread on the carpet beneath her, making the cute animals on the carpet look somewhat hideous. There were traces of dragging on the carpet and a pool of blood at the door.

According to the apartment manager, someone must have come to rob the house, and the intruder opened fire the moment Miss Suzuki opened the door, so she fell to the ground in a daze without even having time to retract her smile. The murderer must have wanted to delay the discovery of the body, so he cleaned the bloodstains at the door with water.

The police who arrived later also agreed with this speculation after carefully investigating the case, and asked Sachiko Hayashita if she knew who her neighbor had a grudge against.

Sachiko Hayashita didn't know that from the moment she saw the body, she was frightened out of her wits. She watched the police come and go in a daze, and watched Mr. Ichijo who received the notice rush back. She drank two cups of hot water under the comfort of the police, and she developed a high fever that night.

The fever lasted for seven or eight days, forcing her to lie weakly in bed and sleep constantly. But this was actually a good thing, as she was lucky enough to escape the Great Purge...

When thinking of the 'Great Purge', Sachiko Hayashita shuddered unconsciously, and quickly shifted her attention to think about something relatively less terrifying.

No matter from which angle you look at it, Miss Suzuki is unfortunate. Sachiko Hayashita feels pity and regret for her. During those days when she was in a coma, her bright smile and the image of her lying on the cold floor would flash before her eyes almost every day.

But soon, this pity was completely replaced by a horror that was distorted to the point of losing one's voice: Miss Suzuki was back.

It was a weekend, and there were not many people in the apartment. Only Sachiko Hayashita was still there. She was lying on her bed, eating dry bread and counting her food supplies pitifully when she heard a knock on the door. She moved cautiously to the door in fear and tried to see who was coming through the peephole. Then she saw Miss Suzuki.

Miss Suzuki was wearing the dress she often wore not long after she moved in, which was not very suitable for the somewhat cold weather. She hugged her arms and seemed to have noticed someone behind the peephole, so she smiled brightly at the peephole, as lively and cute as when they first met.

Her face flushed, and she bent her bright lips, and opened her mouth a little embarrassedly: "Miss Lin Xia, are you there?"

"I was in such a hurry when I came out that I forgot to bring my keys... I don't know why, but I couldn't contact my husband on my phone..."

"Excuse me, can you lend me your cell phone?"

After being distorted by the cat's eye, the harmless and bright smiling face became terrifying. Sachiko Hayashita stared blankly at the cat's eye, watching Miss Suzuki's mouth opening and closing as she spoke.

She didn't wear lipstick, and her lips were a normal light red. Under the glaring light and the distortion of the cat's eyes, her white teeth and red tongue were revealed as her mouth opened and closed, just like the light blood that overflowed from the crack in the door that day.

……

That day, Hayashita Sachiko, who had fainted after screaming, was woken up by someone. She opened her eyes weakly and looked for Miss Suzuki the first time. She breathed a sigh of relief when she found that Miss Suzuki was not there. Then she noticed that it was Mr. Ichijo who woke her up.

After not seeing each other for a long time, Mr. Ichijo became gentlemanly again, with an extremely gentle expression, just like a normal person. He gave some gifts to calm the nerves, politely apologized and thanked Miss Suzuki for coming to borrow her phone, and promised that he would remember to reserve the key next time and not trouble the neighbors again.

This doesn't seem to be the point.

Sachiko Hayashita was thinking when she suddenly heard a sound of electricity with her ear against the door. She hurriedly looked at the time and found that it was already six o'clock. Her cheeks immediately tightened.

Every day at six o'clock, the dead Miss Suzuki would miraculously 'come back to life', bringing fear or comfort to the living.

This was a terrifying thing for Sachiko Hayashita. She stood up with the help of the door and quietly looked outside.

The incandescent lamps in the corridor were flickering, on and off, and the corridor was sometimes clear and sometimes dark. Between the light and the dark, something gradually appeared, like a TV with a broken screen, and the picture was discontinuous each time between blurry and clear.

The lights flickered rapidly, then stabilized and flickered slowly amid a huge sound of electric current.

When the lights came on again, a slender figure stood at the end of the corridor.

She stood there motionless, completely dark from head to toe, like a mannequin, or a lifeless still photograph.

As the lights flickered, the black on the figure gradually faded, revealing fair skin, blue uniform, short brown hair, red lips, white teeth and a pair of green eyes.

Suzuki Sonoko still stood quietly in the same place, as if the network delay was too high. After a few flashes of light, she slowly and stiffly moved, forcing a smile and walking forward step by step.

In just a few steps, she went from stiff to lively, and then completely came back to her senses. She looked around blankly, "...Huh, huh?"

"here it is?"

(End of this chapter)