"Brother… look, it's about to be completely dark," Shinju whispered anxiously, his small fingers pulling tightly on the coarse hemp of Sanju's sleeve.
"Yes, I know. Let's just hurry and help her quickly before the light vanishes entirely," Sanju responded, his boots crunching on the dirt as he strode toward the storefront. "Obaasan Gayu? Are you in there? I could have sworn I saw you leave earlier."
Sanju stood directly in front of the heavy wooden doors of the shop. They were sealed shut.
For a few agonising seconds, there was nothing but dead silence. Then, a heavy, violent vibration rattled the wood.
Thud!
"Mmmfffh... It hurts so much..."
Thud!
"Help me... Sanju..." The old woman's voice strained through the thick wood, sounding warped and deeply twisted with pain.
"Tch!" Sanju grabbed the rope handles, throwing his weight backwards to pull at the door. It didn't budge. He slammed his shoulder against it, pushing with all his might, but the wood remained completely unyielding. 'What the hell is wrong with this thing?' he thought frantically, leaning in closer to peer through a small knot-hole in the grain.
"Ha?! Is it locked? Obaasan, did you somehow lock it from the inside?" Sanju called out, panic finally leaking into his voice. "Shinju, come over here and help me pull!"
"Okay..." Shinju, who had been standing a few paces back, stepped forward into the gloom to assist.
But the very instant Shinju's small hands gripped the opposite rope handle and gave a light tug, the heavy wooden doors flung wide open with absolute, effortless ease as if nothing had ever been holding them shut in the first place.
"Huh?" Sanju stood frozen on the threshold, completely puzzled. 'What was that? I could have sworn the frame was completely jammed...'
Before he could even process the anomaly, a heavy, suffocating sensation washed over both siblings, throwing their minds into a sudden, disorienting daze. As they looked across the threshold, the entire interior of the shop was swallowed by a dense, pitch-black void. It defied all logic. Even with the sun dipping below the horizon outside, there should have still been faint traces of twilight reflecting off the street. Instead, the doorway led into nothing but absolute, unnatural darkness.
"Look..." Shinju whispered, pointing a trembling finger toward the floorboards.
"Blood," Sanju muttered. "She must be severely injured."
Seeing the dark crimson stains on the floor instantly shattered the boys' paralysing dread of the pitch-black room. Spurred by adrenaline and worry, they rushed across the threshold and into the deep gloom.
"Obaasan!"
"Obaasan, where are you?" both boys called out in unison, extending their hands blindly to navigate through the oppressive dark.
"Over here…" she responded smoothly.
This time, the voice originated from deep within the very back of the structure.
'Huh?' Sanju's footsteps suddenly faltered. 'She is all the way back there? But I distinctly heard her voice right next to the front doors just a moment ago.' For the first time since stepping inside, a cold, primordial instinct screamed in the back of Sanju's mind, making his stomach drop.
"Shinju, stop right there!" Sanju roared.
"Huh? Why?" Shinju asked, pausing but still leaning forward. "You can hear her, can't you? She's calling for us from deeper inside the shop."
The younger boy prepared to take another step forward into the void, but before his foot could touch the ground, Sanju violently yanked him backwards by his coarse sleeve.
"I said stop!" Sanju commanded, his entire demeanour rigid with terrifying realisation. His grip tightened like a vice around Shinju's arm.
"Brother… let go, you're hurting me," Shinju whimpered, squirming against the hold.
Sanju remained perfectly still, ignoring the plea as his wide eyes desperately scanned the deep, suffocating shadows ahead. 'Nothing about this makes sense. It felt deeply wrong from the very beginning. Why did the door only swing open when Shinju touched it? Why does her voice keep instantly shifting locations? And most importantly... I literally saw the real Obaasan Gayu walking out of the district with her cart just minutes ago!'
"Kukukuku..."
A loud, wet clicking sound echoed through the rafters, instantly fracturing the silence.
"You… you possess a little bit of talent, don't you, boy?"
The old woman's voice warped into a sickening, dual-toned rasp as the entity finally drifted into view from the abyssal darkness.
It was a monstrous, towering lump of pale flesh, its ghastly yellow skin bubbling violently with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of pulsing pustules(Also known as Breasts) that swelled and breathed with a sickening rhythm. The creature's face was a distorted mockery of Gayu, its eyes were swollen completely shut, stitched over with raw skin. Supporting this massive, rotting mass were a dozen long, segmented, spider-like legs that clanked loudly against the wooden floorboards with every agonising step it took toward the terrified brothers.
Without wasting a single fraction of a second, Sanju spun on his heel, scooped his little brother up into his arms, and sprinted for the exit. Behind them, the towering monstrosity came stumbling forward, its segmented limbs striking the wooden floorboards and rupturing the pustules on its skin, each wet burst echoing through the void like the chilling chime of a distant bell.
Sanju ran as he had never run before in his life. His vision blurred from sheer adrenaline and panic as he held his brother tightly against his chest, bounding out of the threshold and back into the dark streets.
"S-a-n-j-u... M-a-r-u..."
The voice slurred out from the darkness behind them, its cadence suddenly shifting, shedding the old woman's rasp and morphing perfectly into the warm, familiar tones of his own mother.
"Help me…!" his mother's voice screamed out in agony.
Sanju's boots faltered for a devastating millisecond, a pang of hesitation striking his heart, but he forced his legs to move. He didn't stop. He kept running.
'Don't look back. Just keep running. Don't look back, just keep running...' He chanted the words like a mantra in his mind, repeating them with every desperate breath until he finally breached the familiar perimeter of his own yard. He burst through the wooden gates and threw himself across the threshold of his home.
"Sanju Maru! Look at how dark it is outside. I explicitly told you to come back inside in ti—" His mother abruptly cut her lecture short, her eyes widening as she took in his pale, sweat-drenched face. "Hey… what is wrong with you?"
"Mother... Obaasan... the monster..." Sanju wheezed, his chest heaving violently as he tried to speak, but the words came out jumbled and fractured. He frantically looked down at his sibling. "Tell… tell her, Shinju!"
"Huh?"
"Tell her what we just saw!" Sanju urged, his voice cracking.
"What do you mean, 'what we saw'?" Shinju Maru responded. His voice was entirely calm, his expression perfectly normal, as if he hadn't just been carried away from a living nightmare.
"What do you mean?! The monster in the shop!" Sanju shouted, his voice rising to a panicked scream as he gripped his brother's shoulders.
"But... I didn't see any monster," Shinju replied blankly, tilting his head in genuine confusion.