Chapter 9 Chapter 9 Pearl Tower

The next day at school, Shimada-kun and Kinoshita-kun talked about what happened last night as soon as they met. "It's getting more and more wrong. That guy must be eyeing your house." "Are you going to punish me?" "It's me who he wants to fix. I'm the one who caused him to be chased by a large group of people. He didn't come for you. You must have something he wants at home." "Well, what you said reminded me. Dad seems to have said that our family has a baby, but he didn't tell me what it was." "That's right. Shimada-kun, let's contact Kurokawa reporter from "Toyo Shimbun". Maybe he has a good idea."

"Well, you're right!" So the two explained the whole story to the teacher, contacted reporter Kurokawa on the school phone, and briefly introduced the whole story. "How about this, when your father comes home from get off work, I'll visit him at his house and learn more about the situation." Reporter Kurokawa confirmed the address of Shimada's house and hung up the phone. That evening, reporter Kurokawa visited as scheduled.It just so happened that the father had just returned home, and immediately invited the guests to the living room of the mansion, and he and his son took turns recalling what happened the day before yesterday.

"Hey, it really did show a shadow. He really hurt me." Speaking of the monster's shadow, reporter Kurokawa couldn't help but get angry. "It just happened two or three days ago. The weather was fine that day, and I went to the residential area of ​​the port area to do business. It was relatively remote, with long concrete walls on both sides of the road. It was evening, and the red sunset shone on the road on the right. The wall, of course there is my shadow on the wall. "Suddenly, I found that I had two shadows! I didn't know when I got an extra one. I wondered, looking around, there was no one else but me, why was there an extra shadow? I thought of astigmatism, that is, seeing The problem of double images. But this problem doesn’t just come. Besides, unless the astigmatism is very serious, it is impossible to see one shadow as two.

"I took a closer look at the extra shadow. I didn't wear a hat or clothes. It seemed to be naked. I immediately concluded that this shadow was not mine. Compared with my own shadow, it was a little blurry. For example, it is like the shadow formed by the light shining on the frosted glass. "I looked around again, but I still didn't see anyone, but the shadow followed me and walked close to my shadow. I panicked, speeded up, and it also speeded up. I stopped, and it stopped. I gave up and yelled With a voice: "Who is it!" Guess what? There was a burst of eerie laughter from nowhere, which scared me to the point where I got goosebumps all over my body.

"I was standing like this, and the shadow turned to face me. The two shadows faced each other. It spread its arms and grabbed my shadow. At the same time, I felt two invisible hands grabbing my shadow. It hurt my body. It felt so disgusting. My hairs stood on end, I took a quick step back, pushed the invisible guy with all my strength, and ran away, my mind blank. After running for about Two hundred meters away, when I came to the main road with people coming and going, I realized that my shadow had become one. I don’t know where that guy went. "I know the people in the air hate me. But he just plays tricks on people, he doesn't use knives and guns. It's undeniable that he's creepy, but some of his actions are quite funny. Maybe he just wants to play tricks on Shimada-kun."

"It would be great if this is the case, but it seems that things are not that simple." Mr. Shimada said in a low voice, and he could see that he was preoccupied. "Do you have any clues?" "I only thought of one thing. I lost a lot of treasures during the war, but I only kept one. It can be said to be a family heirloom." "Hey, so he's eyeing your family heirloom? What exactly is this family heirloom?" "Have you heard of the 'Pearl Tower'? It is a five-story pagoda about 20 centimeters high, inlaid with densely packed pearls, each of which is the best, and there are hundreds of them. This pearl pagoda is the king of pearls in Mie County. The exhibits launched at the Great Expo during the Taisho period were bought by my late father. Now the price has increased by two hundred times. I heard that the airman stole the jewelry from the jewelry store. My Pearl Tower is worth dozens of times more than that jewelry. He must have been on the move."

"So where is the Pearl Tower now?" "I hid it in a top-secret place. Everyone knows that I have the Pearl Tower, but no one knows where it is except me and my wife, not even Ichiro." "Are you at home?" "Yes. Our family still depends on your efforts. To be honest, this Pearl Tower is currently stored in a safe in the basement converted from an air-raid shelter." "Put it in a bomb shelter? How unsafe is that?" "Where is it? It's very safe. This air-raid shelter is made of cement, which is very strong. During the war, there was also an entrance in the yard. Now it is sealed with cement and covered with soil. Now there is only one entrance, which is in my yard. In the study. The floor at the entrance is detachable, and there is a carpet on it. Only I know which floor is detachable. Open the floor and go down. There is a thick iron door, which can only be opened with a special key Going down the steps behind the door, there is a cement room with a size of seven square meters. The safe I mentioned is in the center of the room. A special key is also required to open the safe, and there is also a combination lock. Can't open it.

"After I realized that the Pearl Tower was being targeted by bad guys, I thought about entrusting the bank to keep it. Needless to say, the bank is definitely safer, but I am worried that something will go wrong on the way to the bank. After all, we can't see that guy. Don't be afraid of ten thousand Just in case, I still think it’s better to keep it at home.” "I understand. With such strict security measures, it should be fine. Don't open the floor of the study now. Although that guy is invisible to the naked eye, he still has a body. As long as the entrance is closed, it can't get in. But That fellow is full of tricks, God knows what he will come up with. Let's be careful not to fall for him."

At this point in the conversation, there was a soft "click" from somewhere. Reporter Kurokawa was taken aback, his face sank, and he got up suddenly and rushed towards the open door, like a hungry tiger pouncing on food.But when he ran to the door, the door closed automatically with a bang!Hearing Kurokawa yell "Good guy", he staggered back a few steps, as if he was pushed hard by someone.At this moment, his hands were still stretched straight forward, trying to grab something. look!A piece of white paper floated down and was grabbed by Kurokawa with both hands.He stared intently for a while, said "Damn" angrily, returned to the table, and spread the white paper on the table in front of Shimada-kun's father.I saw a few large characters written in pencil on it:

I'll come tomorrow night to pick up what you just said.The time was set at nine o'clock. Kurokawa-kun, thank you for giving me a good name. air man