A Core Ship From The Start
/ A Core Ship From The Start Chapter 1217
Chapter 1217: Chapter 824: Haunted? Chapter 1217: Chapter 824: Haunted? “Mr. Inoue, is this the person who's going to be paired with me for the concert?”
Hearing the other party speak, Duanmu Ai looked directly at the agent next to her, and he hurriedly waved his hands.
“No, Little Lishe, this is Miss Duanmu Ai… she's a Demon Summoner we've hired to protect you.”
“She's a Demon Summoner?”
Hearing what her agent said, Kujikawa Rise showed a hint of surprise and stared at Duanmu Ai with wide eyes.
“Ah, sorry, I thought you were… my apologies.”
You thought I was what?
Although Duanmu Ai wanted to ask this question, it didn't really matter to her, and Mr. Inoue cleared his throat softly.
“We will announce that Mr. Duanmu is your personal assistant. She will accompany you until the end of the concert. Is that alright?”
“Of course not.”
Kujikawa Rise shook her head firmly, then bowed to Duanmu Ai again.
“Please take care of everything for me, Miss Duanmu.”
“No problem, but if you could, I'd like you to tell me the details.”
“This…”
Upon Duanmu Ai's inquiry, Kujikawa Rise looked somewhat troubled and glanced at Mr. Inoue, who tactfully stood up.
“Well then, you two take your time to talk. I'm going to check on the preparations for the concert.”
Saying this, Inoue stood up and left the room. Only then did Kujikawa Rise breathe a sigh of relief.
“Are you really a Demon Summoner? Can you show me your Zhongmo?”
“No problem.”
Duanmu Ai took out her phone, gave it a light spin, and the next moment a blonde, blue-eyed girl appeared in front of her. Kujikawa Rise stared with surprise at the little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.
“Wow, what a cute little girl…”
“You'd better not get too close to her.”
With a spin of her phone, Duanmu Ai kept Alice away again. Seeing Alice disappear, Kujikawa Rise felt a bit disappointed.
“Huh? But…”
“Electronic Demons cannot be considered with the same logic as humans. Now, tell me what exactly has been happening to you.”
“Okay.”
After hesitating for a moment, Kujikawa Rise nodded and began recounting her experiences to Duanmu Ai.
According to her, these troubles started after her first album was released. Her debut album had been an instant hit, making her an overnight success. Then, Kujikawa Rise began experiencing a series of strange problems.
For instance, sometimes her shoelaces would spontaneously break, or there would be malfunctioning microphones during recording sessions. Of course, these were minor issues in her work, and she just thought she was unlucky.
But then, the situations became more serious.
Aside from overcoming the small troubles at work, at home, Kujikawa Rise also encountered inexplicable weird occurrences.
While practicing singing and dancing at home, there would often be knocking sounds at the door. At first, Kujikawa Rise thought her practicing was disturbing the neighbors, but when she went to the door, she found nobody there.
Moreover, the knocking would occur intermittently, always when Li Shi was busy.
Like during meals, there would be sudden knocks at the door.
Or when she was sleeping, there would be knocking sounds.
Frustrated, she would go to the door, see through the intercom that no one was outside, and as she turned to go back to her room, the knocking would start again.
This sort of thing would drive anyone to the brink of a breakdown, and Kujikawa Rise was no exception. With no parents around, she had complained to her agent, who indeed had hired several female bodyguards to watch over her.
Kujikawa Rise thought this would solve the problem, but then–the knocking sound came again!
And when Kujikawa Rise stormed out to ask the bodyguards why they weren't doing their job, they affirmed they hadn't heard any noise!
That is to say, only Li Shi could hear that knocking!
This made Li Shi worry about her own health. She consulted a doctor who suggested that it might be auditory hallucinations due to excessive stress and prescribed her some medication to soothe her mind.
For a while, Li Shi wondered if it was all because she was under too much pressure, causing hallucinations. But soon she realized the problem wasn't that simple.
Despite the strange disturbances that meant Li Shi could hardly sleep at night, she still made an effort every day to cheer up and participate in her idol activities. Yet bizarre accidents happened from time to time, like once during a rehearsal, she heard mournful wails and screams mixed with the music coming from the speakers.
When she stopped to ask, she found that nobody else had noticed anything amiss.
Or sometimes, the voice coming through the microphone was different from what she had anticipated, sounding more like an angry man's roar.
There were even times during a performance when her microphone suddenly ran out of power, and although she managed to bluff her way through at the moment, once she got backstage she found the microphone was working just fine without any issues.
Of course, these could be dismissed as delusions caused by excessive stress, but it wasn't so easy to explain away what happened during a rehearsal when a stage light suddenly fell, nearly smashing Kujikawa Rise's head open. Luckily, she had veered off course because she was on the verge of fainting from lack of sleep, narrowly escaping disaster.
An inspection afterwards revealed that the bracket holding the stage light had been cut through by something.
That surely wasn't a figment of her imagination.
Of course, Kujikawa Rise could muscle through work-related difficulties with her professionalism, but problems in her life were another story.
Aside from knocking sounds, various other strange incidents had crept into Kujikawa Rise's life.
For instance, the food she ate tasted very odd. Even though it was the same kind of boxed lunch that others enjoyed, hers tasted like wax, or was just plain bad.
There were also times when she would see an unfamiliar woman's shadow in the mirror while she showered, and even when using the toilet, she would feel like hands were reaching out from the bowl to grope around her…
Uwaah… This is just like a nightmare.
Listening to Kujikawa Rise's complaints, Duanmu Ai couldn't help but be taken aback. Honestly, just hearing about it was enough to be terrifying, yet Kujikawa Rise had withstood it for so long… Her willpower was truly admirable.
But then again, could it be the doings of the Electronic Demon?
Although Duanmu Ai couldn't be sure it was impossible, based on what she knew, Electronic Demons were generally fickle, only persistent when ordered by their masters. Otherwise, they seldom kept up with anything.
According to Kujikawa Rise, these nightmarish experiences had been going on for nearly three months. A typical Electronic Demon wouldn't have that much patience, right?
But… it couldn't really be a haunting, could it?
After all, where in this world would there be real ghosts, haha…
…There aren't really ghosts, are there?
After all, in her sixty years in this future, she had never seen one.
But considering this was the future of that world–the Clock Tower did have a Spiritism department.
It couldn't possibly be a resurgence of spiritual energy, could it?
Naturally, just discussing it here wouldn't yield any answers. The best course of action was to follow Kujikawa Rise for a day to see what was really happening.
To be honest, Duanmu Ai wasn't particularly interested in idols, but she had to admit it was a tough job.
Once Mr. Inoue returned, Kujikawa Rise entered work mode.
First, they went to the studio to record new songs, then to the dance studio for practice. After that, it was lunchtime, a half-hour nap, and then off to a fan meeting in the afternoon, followed by a variety show on the street, and finally nighttime program recordings…
“Truth be told, seeing how busy you are all day, I'm starting to think your hallucinations might just be due to extreme fatigue,” Duanmu Ai commented as they sat in the car heading home.
“Is that so… To me, today felt unusually relaxing… since nothing troublesome happened…”
Kujikawa Rise spoke drowsily in the car. Indeed, as she had suggested, none of the troubles that she had mentioned occurred to Duanmu Ai, causing Duanmu Ai to really wonder whether what Kujikawa Rise had experienced was real or if she was just having delusions or paranoid thoughts…
However, just as Duanmu Ai thought this, suddenly, a loud 'bang' rang out. Then the car carrying the two of them shot off the road like a runaway horse and crashed into a utility pole!
“Boom!”
In the next moment, the car slammed hard into the pole, toppling it. The concrete and steel pole fell straight down, smashing like a hammer onto the roof of the car!
“Huh? What happened? What's going on?”
Only then did Kujikawa Rise, bleary-eyed from sleep, open her eyes. Incidentally, any ordinary person would surely have been dead, but at the crucial moment, Duanmu Ai summoned Alice to cast a physical rebound for her, Kujikawa Rise, and the driver, and they miraculously escaped unscathed.
“Let's get out of the car for now.”
Duanmu Ai grabbed the woozy Kujikawa Rise and left the car, and the driver climbed out too, his face ashen.
“How… how could this have happened?”
“What exactly is going on?”
“Seems like a blown tire…”
“A blown tire, huh.”
Duanmu Ai frowned, scanning the surrounding area. Perhaps because the pole was knocked down and had caused a blackout, the intersections nearby were pitch dark, with no streetlights, and even the nearby buildings were devoid of light. The world seemed engulfed in darkness, as if only the three of them were left.
Was it an accident? Or just a coincidence? Or perhaps…
Duanmu Ai quietly took out the Summoning Device, looking around and then back at Kujikawa Rise, who was still rubbing her eyes as if she hadn't slept enough.
It seems like something really is strange.
Chapter end
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