"Miss, don't be nervous. Hold the camera a bit steadier, and don't worry about exposing anything." Miles dropped his usual cynicism, his deep voice carrying a steady, comforting weight. "This is a Pokémon appraisal stream. No matter what bizarre things you've encountered, as long as it's related to Pokémon, I can figure it out for you."
Hearing his magnetic, confident tone, the beautiful girl on camera seemed to grasp a lifeline. She panted heavily, trying hard to calm her erratic breathing.
"S-Streamer, hello," she stammered, her voice carrying a distinct sob and tremor. "M-My name is Susie. I usually work in the city, but I recently took a long annual leave. Because I found the city too noisy, I moved back to this old, empty house in the countryside, wanting to relax for a while with my Pichu. Everything was fine the first few days. The country air was good, and Pichu was happy."
Susie swallowed hard, glancing fearfully at the closed wooden bedroom door. "But... but just three days ago, my Pichu suddenly started acting extremely abnormally. It trembled day and night. Even a slightly loud gust of wind would scare it into screaming. At first, I thought it was sick. Until the night before last. I got up to get water from the kitchen. Through the window, I saw... a dark shadow moving in the yard."
Her body began to shake violently as she hugged the Pichu in her arms tighter. "At the time, I thought it was a stray cat, so I shone my flashlight on it. But... I saw a Pikachu!"
The live chat immediately lit up.
[Viewer "Wild Electabuzz 373": Scared me! I thought you saw a ghost. So it was just a Pikachu! What's there to be afraid of? Isn't that the number one cutie in the Pokémon world?]
[Viewer "No Late Night Drinking": Miss, have you been in the city too long and gotten timid? It's just a Pikachu. Maybe it came to play with your Pichu!]
[Viewer "Frontline Gossip": Something's wrong. If it were just a normal Pikachu, how could Pichu be scared to the point of a breakdown? They wouldn't act like that with their own kind.]
Miles ignored the chat's teasing. He keenly caught the genuine terror in Susie's words and guided her with a low voice. "If you had seen a normal Pikachu, you wouldn't be reacting like this now. Tell me, what exactly was wrong with that 'Pikachu'?"
Watching the skepticism in the chat feed, Susie's tears finally fell. She continued, her voice thick with panic, "What's even more terrifying is that last night... I heard noises in the yard again. I gathered my courage and looked out through the crack in the door. That monster... it was standing in my yard, and it seemed to notice me watching. It suddenly turned its head..."
Crack!
Susie made a terrifying gesture of snapping her neck, her voice reaching a shrill, hysterical peak. "Its neck... right in front of my eyes, it made an extremely crisp snapping sound! Its head slumped directly onto its shoulder at an inhuman ninety-degree angle, just like a ragdoll with a broken neck! But not only did it not bleed a single drop, it actually carried that broken head and crawled quickly into the darkness in an extremely bizarre posture, as if it were gliding across the ground!"
"It... it wasn't a Pikachu at all!!!" Susie's emotions peaked, her voice sharp enough to pierce eardrums. "A normal Pikachu should be round and full of life! But that Pikachu... its body was limp, like a piece of rotting rag soaked in a sewer! Its eyes and mouth weren't even on its face; they looked like they were crookedly drawn onto burlap with a cheap black crayon! And its tail... that wasn't a lightning-shaped tail of flesh and blood, but a dry, blackened, broken wooden stick that looked like it had been pulled from a grave and forcefully shoved into its rear!"
Her incredibly detailed and vivid description instantly dropped the temperature in the livestream by a dozen degrees.
[Viewer "Outlaw John Doe": Holy crap... it's the middle of the night, and this description is making my scalp tingle! A rag-like body? Drawn-on eyes? What kind of hellish picture is this!]
[Viewer "Keyboard Holmes": The Uncanny Valley effect! This is definitely the Uncanny Valley effect! The more something resembles a living creature, but when you discover in the details that it's actually dead or a fake, the psychological terror grows exponentially!]
[Viewer "Forest Fawn": Mom, save me! I'm too scared to go to the bathroom! Is there really a Pokémon that looks like this in the world? Or... is this some kind of ghost?]
"Streamer, tell me..." Susie sobbed in despair. "How could there be a creature in this world that doesn't die and doesn't bleed after its neck is broken? That's not a Pokémon at all. That's a ghost possessing a corpse, right?! That's a vengeful spirit formed after a Pikachu died, right!!!"
Along with Susie's wailing, the entire livestream plunged into a deathly, terrifying atmosphere.
[Viewer "No Late Night Drinking": We're gonna die, we're gonna die! It can still run with a broken neck? And it doesn't bleed at all? She definitely ran into a ghost!]
[Viewer "Wild Electabuzz 373": I've pulled my blanket over my head! Run, miss! You can't stay in that house!]
However, sitting in front of his screen, Miles didn't feel the slightest bit of fear after listening to this horror movie-esque description. Instead, he almost laughed out loud. The blue fate entry provided by the System was indeed incredibly accurate! That terrifying "decapitation" scene wasn't some vengeful spirit claiming lives—it was simply the wooden stick Mimikyu used to prop up its headpiece snapping!
"A ghost? A possessed corpse?" Miles shook his head, picked up his cup, and took a slow sip of water. His tone was as relaxed as if he had just heard a bedtime story. "Miss Susie, let me teach you an invincible little trick to overcome fear."
"Wh-what trick?" Susie was taken aback by his strangely calm attitude.
"It's simple," Miles stated plainly, looking directly into the camera with a smug expression. "Just think about it. If there really are ghosts in this world, then you will eventually die one day too, and when you die, you'll become a ghost. Sooner or later, everyone will be in the same profession. We'll all be ghosts, so what the hell are you afraid of?"
A flood of question marks instantly overtook the screen.
[ ? ? ? ? ? ? ]
[Viewer "Random Dude": Holy crap! What kind of underworld logic is this?!]
[Viewer "Sleepless Owl": 'Sooner or later, we'll all be in the same profession'! Streamer, how exactly is your brain wired!]
[Viewer "Rationality 101": Although it sounds completely outrageous, it actually makes a bit of twisted sense! I'm suddenly not scared anymore. What is going on?!]
"Besides..." Miles shifted the conversation, looking at the highly provocative username at the bottom of the screen, and teased. "Your ID is 'Husband Isn't Home, I'm So Scared All Alone'. If you dare to use such a crime-inducing ID on the internet, shouldn't you be brave enough to handle this?"
Susie's face instantly turned red down to her neck. The sudden social death effectively diluted half of her previous fear. "Th-that was just a random screen name I picked! The full name was 'Husband Isn't Home, I'm Lonely Alone, Wanna Get Me Pregnant? Crazy Thursday Today, Send Me 50 Bucks.' It was meant to scam smelly men in video games for money to buy character skins! I've never even been married!"
[Viewer "Frontline Gossip": Pfft hahahaha! Amazing! Turns out she's an e-sports scammer!]
[Viewer "Keyboard Holmes": The clown was me all along! I actually thought she was a lonely housewife living by herself!]
Seeing that he had successfully pulled the livestream's atmosphere from a horror flick back to a comedy, Miles put away his jokes and spoke seriously. "Alright, I'll stop teasing you. Stop scaring yourself. What you saw wasn't the soul of a dead Pikachu. If I'm not mistaken, that's an extremely rare and deeply insecure Pokémon. Because it looks too terrifying and is afraid it won't be able to make friends, it deliberately found a piece of rag to disguise itself as the most popular Pokémon: Pikachu."
He paused, letting the information sink in. "Its neck didn't break. The rag on top of its head simply folded over."
Hearing Miles's explanation, not only Susie but the thousands of viewers in the livestream were stunned. A Pokémon wearing a rag to disguise itself as a Pikachu? Was there really such a humble and pitiful creature in this world?
Just as Miles was preparing to further educate everyone about the habits of this Ghost/Fairy-type Pokémon named Mimikyu, a sudden change occurred.
"Pika... Pika..."
An incredibly ethereal, hoarse, and twisted cry—like nails scratching against a chalkboard—echoed without warning from the depths of Susie's old house.
That sound wasn't coming through the window. It was right there in her living room!
"Ahhhhh!!!"
Susie's newly relaxed nerves instantly shattered. She let out a heart-wrenching scream and scrambled deep into her blankets, leaving only one trembling hand thrust in the air, tightly gripping the phone. "It came in! It came into my house! Streamer, save me!!!"
In the livestream, the chat feed that had just been spamming comments about a "pitiful Pokémon" instantly devolved back into a chorus of terrified screams.
[Viewer "Forest Deer": Holy crap! It's in the house! The monster is in the house!]
[Viewer "Wild Electabuzz 373": Streamer! Didn't you say it was timid?! How could a timid thing break into someone's house in the middle of the night!!!]
[Viewer "No Late Night Drinking": Call the police! Hurry and call the police!]
Listening to the bizarre, approaching sound of friction through the audio feed, Miles's eyes instantly sharpened like blades.
"Susie! Don't disconnect the call!" Miles's voice erupted with unprecedented authority, slicing through the panic. "Grab your Pichu and point your phone camera at the door! Today, I'll show you all exactly what kind of 'ghost' is hiding under this painted skin!"
Upto 20 chapters ahead on patreon :-
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