The slightly impatient urging from the customer at table 1 brought Higashino back to his senses.

"Sorry, I'm really sorry."

He quickly put down the food plate in his hand and turned back behind the counter.

You can see that those blue-purple feet with tiny red rashes are still standing straight outside the curtain.

"Mr. Gota, there is someone outside."

Dongye whispered to the boss who was busy at work.

The boss looked up. He obviously saw the pair of feet outside, but his reaction was not as big as Dongye's: "It's such a cold day, why don't you wear shoes? Did you want to stutter in the store? Xiao Zuo, go and see what happens.

thing."

"Me... me?"

To be honest, Dongye doesn't want to go near the entrance right now.

But at this time, the atmosphere in the store was as usual.

Others probably don't have Higashino's habit of carefully observing other people's feet. Like the boss, he seems to just regard the person outside the door as a poor wanderer who hesitates to enter the store to warm himself or ask for food.

"If it's just a homeless man whose skin is blue from the cold...and there are so many people in the store now."

Dongye thought like this, and walked towards the entrance again.

He stepped closer to the curtain, and a chill hit him. This was not the coldness brought by the cold air on the street, but a kind of fear that penetrated into the bone marrow.

No……

Something is very wrong.

Higashino lowered his head and looked at the gap under the curtain again. He finally noticed that something seemed to have changed in the street environment at this time.

He had just seen the situation outside the street, and the cocoon jade as New Year decorations on the street should have been lit up.

So just now I could see the lights outside and the falling snow.

But now, in the twenty-centimeter gap in the warm curtain, there is only a deep darkness behind the naked feet.

I don’t know if it was because I had read some weird supernatural topics on the Internet before. At this moment, Dongye started to think wildly, as if with the appearance of these feet, the familiar streets and alleys behind the curtain suddenly became unfamiliar...

…Or should I say, it no longer exists?

If you lift this thin warm curtain, what exactly is waiting for you outside?

"Boy, don't block the way."

The urging sound behind him brought Dongye back to his senses, who had started to feel frightened.

Behind him is the guest who was originally sitting at table 6.

A seemingly ordinary office worker has been drinking alone tonight. He is probably drinking so much now that he has even tied his tie on his head. He smells of alcohol and has a red face.

"Guest, I don't think you should go out now..." Dongye, realizing something was wrong, tried to stop him.

"Hey, I've already paid."

"But, outside, outside..."

"Huh?" The guest at table 6 glanced outside the curtain, let out a smelly wine burp, and didn't take it seriously, "Isn't he just a pretender? He's really sick, even though he's not here yet

To Dahui. You too, go away, go away, I want to go out, I want to go home."

Pretending to be a ghost.

This sentence awakened Higashinozuo.

Yes, the Great Dark Day celebration here in Akita Prefecture, the Amahaki Festival.

The so-called uncooked ghost is a traditional monster in Japan.

It is said that whenever the Great Dark Day approaches, the ghost will appear, go from house to house asking for food and drink, and scare the residents in the house.

The true meaning of the word "raw skin" means peeling off red skin. In the old Japanese concept, red rash on the skin means laziness. Because if you put your legs in a warm kotatsu and sit idle all day long, your skin will become damaged.

A rash appears.

The ghost will peel off the reddened skin to punish lazy people.

Here in Akita Prefecture, every time during the Namahaki Festival, young people are organized to wear Namahaki masks, raincoats and grass skirts, hold wooden knives and barrels, and dress up as Namahaki while shouting loudly.

Roaring and dancing, they walked through the streets and visited every house.

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! The head of the household dressed in formal attire, greeted him solemnly, and entertained him with good wine and rice cakes. After that, the young man playing the role of "raw ghost" will

Say some blessings and wish the family good health, plenty of food and clothing in the new year, and then get up and go to another home.

This is roughly the ritual process.

Generally speaking, those with red decorations on their bodies are male ghosts, and those with blue decorations are female ghosts.

The man outside the door has red beads on his feet, so he must be pretending to be a man.

I have to say that if the guest at table 6 was drunk, it felt like he explained the current situation.

Wow.

The guest at table 6 blushed and opened the curtain.

Then there was the sound of the outer glass door opening.

The cold wind flowed into the entrance hall, allowing Toye to wake up from his sleepiness caused by the warmth in the store.

What?

Scare yourself.

The street outside is still the same street, a black stone road, paved with white fine snow, and the cocoon jade hanging on the roadside is swaying in the wind, emitting a red and white light.

Everything is business as usual.

Nothing.

Nothing...nothing...

Including the person who was supposed to be standing behind the curtain, and the guest who just walked out, they all... do not exist...

call--

The wind blew down the raised curtain, and Higashinosa, who was so frightened that he could no longer make a sound, lowered his head again.

He saw that under the warm curtain, behind the gap of about twenty centimeters, it turned into a thick darkness again, without any light.

The only thing clearly visible is the feet.

The feet are still old, wrinkled, with curled blood vessels, grey-purple and rashy.

Two pairs, this time there are two pairs.

Facing the store, he stood quietly.

The things behind the curtain have been added.

Higashino wanted to scream and retreat, but his body no longer obeyed his control. He raised his right hand stiffly and pulled the corner of the curtain.

And just when the thin curtain was about to be opened from the inside again, a strong wind carrying water vapor blew in from outside the entrance.

A straw hat burst into Higashinosa's sight.

The one wearing a straw hat is a short girl.

It must be a girl. The other person rushed in from outside so fast that Dongye couldn't see clearly. But he seemed to have caught a glimpse of the smooth skin of the girl wearing a straw hat with a watery green light, and... her slender webbed feet?

Before Dongye could react, he heard the girl who rushed to him from outside shout:

"Uppercut!"
Chapter completed!