How To Survive A Cute Ghost Yandere
Chapter 3: Cute Ghost (3)

Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Cute Ghost (3)

"GAH?!"

The young man jolted upright. His eyes went wide open. His heart pounded, his breath came in ragged bursts, and cold sweat crawled across every inch of his body.

His neck and stomach showed no trace of a wound. But the blood that had spilled didn’t vanish along with it—it stayed, pooling into a fresh red stain.

His body trembled. His mind spun in chaos as his awareness thrashed around, unable to settle. So much had happened in such a short span of time, and he hadn’t been given a single second to breathe.

In the end, he couldn’t make sense of anything happening to him.

’Why am I here? W-why am I alive again? What’s happening to me?’

At this point, his mind had shattered into pieces, scrambling in the messiest way possible just to understand what was going on.

He realized he was in a body that wasn’t his own. He realized he probably wasn’t even in his own world anymore. But he couldn’t think through why he was here, why he kept coming back to life, or... how to get out of this situation.

His breath caught as he felt the pale white woman’s gaze land on him from ten steps away. She stared at him with a blank expression, but the swirling black vortex spinning inside her pale white pupils betrayed a madness that drained the color from his face.

At this point, he was certain he was about to die again. He’d be killed in some brutal, wretched way by that woman.

And then... and then...

It was going to hurt so much.

"Heugh...!"

His legs gave out. He couldn’t let this just happen again—but his legs were so weak he couldn’t even push himself up.

"Why... are you still alive...?"

That soft, sweet voice rang out again, followed by the sound of slow footsteps drawing closer.

’No. No. No. No.’

He had to get away, no matter what, one way or another.

The young man forced himself upright. Trembling, he grabbed whatever he could reach. The warehouse was packed with discarded junk.

A weathered piece of wood, cut at a crooked, uneven angle. He grabbed it without even glancing at it and hurled it forward.

"Stay back, damn it!"

Whoosh—!!

The chunk of wood shot through the air, striking the pale white woman. But nothing happened. The pale white woman used her sharp nails to slice the piece of wood clean into several pieces.

His heart sank as he watched it happen.

"Ah... no way...!"

Cutting through wood with a fingernail?

That was impossible...!

The young man couldn’t accept it. But his tangled, frantic thoughts eventually landed on one conclusion.

’T-that’s right... This is that kind of world. A fantasy world.’

He swallowed hard.

That meant the pale white woman wasn’t just some ordinary ghost. She had power that could kill him in an instant.

"Darling...? Won’t you tell me your little secret? How is it that you keep coming back to life after I kill you?"

Her voice sounded so innocent that, if her words hadn’t been so horrifying, nothing about it would have seemed wrong at all.

The young man grabbed anything within reach, deaf to whatever the woman was saying.

Item after item, he hurled them one after another. But none of it slowed the pale white woman down in the slightest. Every single thing was sliced clean through, or simply passed straight through her as if she wasn’t even there at all.

Muffled cries were the only sound filling the background, mixing with the clatter of objects crashing onto the cold floor.

In the end, the young man understood perfectly well. He wasn’t going to survive. He was going to die all over again, just like that.

That pain was going to come for him again.

"Ah...hahah...ahaha..."

He laughed.

At last, he gave in to his fate. Watching the woman loom over him, her smile pale, and yet somehow gentle.

"You won’t tell me? Fine, I’ll just find out myself."

Then, those sharp nails sank through the flesh of his throat once again. Blood sprayed out, and everything went dark.

A second later, his consciousness was yanked back by force. His eyes snapped wide open as he found himself, once again, perfectly fine.

No heartbeat. No breath. He simply existed there, a soul with no body at all.

"...What the hell...?!"

The young man burst out laughing, feeling his sanity crumble away, piece by piece.

He questioned his own fate, about to sit and dwell on what was actually happening—but once again, a transparent blue screen appeared before him.

[You have died.]

[Would you like to revive now?]

[Yes] // [Wait a Moment]

The sight of it froze him solid. His face darkened as his memory replayed everything that had just happened.

This was the thing that kept bringing him back to life. And it would happen again if he didn’t respond within ten seconds.

He’d come back to life, face that pale white woman again, and get killed all over again, brutally, again and again.

"D-damn it!"

Without a moment’s hesitation, the young man tried to press [Wait a Moment], but his finger passed straight through the transparent screen.

His face went rigid. He bit down on his own lip as hard as he could, then screamed out:

"Wait a moment! Wait a damn moment!"

If he’d still had a heart right now, it would have been pounding wildly out of sheer terror.

Luckily, he managed to pull it off.

[Revival has been postponed by the Host.]

[Please confirm when the Host is ready to revive.]

Seeing that, the young man let out a ragged breath, letting his stiff shoulders relax. His body was still tense, but far more at ease than it had been just moments ago.

He raised his hands, rubbing his own face, utterly overwhelmed by how insane this whole situation was.

There was a limit to how much strangeness he could process and understand. But what was happening to him right now went far beyond the edge of any sanity he had left.

His frantic mind gradually began to settle. Bit by bit, clarity started returning to his thoughts. In that moment, the young man simply decided to let his mind rest after everything that had just happened.

Until, finally...

"Not here... Not here either...? Hmmm..."

He heard the pale white woman muttering to herself. The young man, still deeply traumatized by her, immediately tensed up.

Had she noticed him?

That was his first thought. Slowly, he turned to look behind him, where the woman sat with a blank expression.

Seeing that she seemed focused on something else, he let out a sigh of relief.

’She hasn’t noticed me...!’

And it seemed she couldn’t see him at all. The young man felt a surge of hopeful gratitude.

He saw a real chance to survive.

Then, he turned his focus back to what the woman was doing.

She was searching through the corpse the young man had previously occupied—going through its clothes, its pockets—clearly looking for something.

But there was nothing to find except the ordinary odds and ends any student might carry.

The woman pressed a finger to her own cheek, rolling her eyes in confusion.

"Hm... Did that thing already break down completely?"

Her pale white eyes stayed locked on the now-cold body. She fell silent, as if waiting for the student’s corpse to rise back up again like before.

"I see... So whatever he was using must have a limit on how many times it can be used. And he’s already used it all up. That means my darling is truly, completely dead this time."

A crooked smile spread across the woman’s face, making the young man flinch, gripped with dread at the thought of being discovered.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

The woman stood, brushing off her pale white dress. Then she turned and walked away.

The young man watched it all unfold. His shoulders sagged as the anxiety and fear that had been piling up inside him slowly drained away on their own.

But it still left its mark. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and the pain of those sharp nails piercing through the flesh of his throat left him with a lingering, unsettling sensation, as if something was still wrong with his neck.

He ignored all of it. He pulled his knees into his chest, hiding his face by ducking his head down.

All that madness was finally over.

And now, he finally had time to think, to process what had actually just happened to him.

***