Sota thought that the appearance of his party right now was quite disheveled.
No, it wasn’t just disheveled. It looked almost criminal.
Yuka was scratched and bruised all over from the fighting. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any major wounds, but that didn’t mean they were insignificant either.
There was a bit of blood seeping through her school uniform.
And then there was Kurosawa’s mother—who seemed to be called ‘Kagami-san’—still struggling to break free from the chains around her neck. Of course it made sense; there was no way she could cut thick steel chains with a Japanese sword.
Her cheeks were sunken in, and her arms and legs looked scrawny, yet somehow she still exuded an aura of a misfortunate beauty. It wasn’t exactly the time to be thinking about that seriously, though.
“Sota.”
Nanami grabbed Sota’s hand with a very serious expression.
Blood was flowing from Sota’s hand too. Looking at the wounds, they could be said to be worse than Yuka’s. There were irregular scratches here and there, and there was even a small shard of glass still stuck in one part.
Nanami’s eyes were brimming with tears as she looked at his hand, completely at a loss. There was no way to pull out the glass, nor was there anything immediately available to bandage the wound.
“Let’s go to the hospital first. We need to treat those wounds!”
Nanami said that while looking back at the group.
Fukuda was still in a daze and couldn’t respond, but Yuka nodded her head in agreement.
Just a while ago, Sota had been so rushed that he barely felt the pain of his injuries, but as the tension eased a bit, his body began to tremble. He felt the stinging of his wounds gradually starting up, and thought it wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t hold it in anymore.
How was he going to explain this to Shii when he got home?
Thinking that way suggested that perhaps the tension had eased a little.
…There were a lot of things to do going forward, but at least for now, wasn’t it okay to feel relieved that they had all survived?
*
Even so, when a group of people who didn’t look normal in any way visited the clinic, the few people inside were utterly horrified.
Perhaps they thought the group had just come from a life-or-death battle—actually, in a way, they were right—as the doctor removed shards of glass from Sota’s hand, he asked all sorts of questions. He mentioned that some stitches would be needed, and if luck ran out, a rather large scar could remain.
Sota had to sit across from the doctor for a considerable time, but he could hardly explain what had happened.
Yuka, on the other hand, didn’t have any major wounds. Naturally, her treatment didn’t take that long.
“…”
Sitting next to Sota, Yuka suddenly opened her mouth while waiting for Kurosawa-san, who had just entered for treatment.
“I’m sorry.”
“Uh?”
Sota looked at her, caught off guard by the sudden apology.
Yuka was staring down at the floor, unable to meet Sota’s gaze.
“I was careless. I was too… too caught up in an ordinary life.”
“Um, well, if I remember correctly, it hasn’t even been a year since you last fought against those kinds of things, right?”
Sota thought what he said was pretty undeniable, but Yuka shook her head vigorously.
“If we were going to Kurosawa’s house, I should have at least known it would be dangerous. I was just… lost in my daily life. It shouldn’t have been just a simple visit like going to a friend’s house.”
Yuka leaned forward and rubbed her face before continuing. “And the window. I could have broken it with something other than my body.”
“There was nothing inside to throw.”
In truth, Sota only remembered the backpack after the fact. If he had swung his bag around with his arm in it, he probably wouldn’t have gotten hurt this badly. Or at the very least, if he had wrapped his clothes around himself.
But that was all in the past now. Everyone was in a panic and trying to escape, and they did manage to get away in the end.
It was far better to get a few scratches than to be caught and eaten alive.
“The sword case. Yeah, if I had at least handed over the sword case.”
“Yuka.”
Sota said, “It’s okay. It’s already happened.”
“…”
With that, Yuka decided not to bring it up any further.
A brief silence fell.
Sota sought to break the awkwardness and quickly changed the subject.
“By the way, what happened to the mattress that was below? Was it there originally?”
“No, it was just lying around,” Nanami said.
“Or maybe it was left there to be thrown away. Either way, it was just standing right next to it. I, Fukuda, went down first to lay it down since Kurosawa’s mother was still caught up. Well, I suppose in the end, she came down alone, but at least it helped when you fell… but hey, are your bones okay? Maybe we should have gone to the orthopedist.”
“I’ll check that out separately later.”
Seeing Yuka shrink even more at that, Sota quickly changed the topic again.
“Anyway, that was amazing. I didn’t know Nanami could move like that.”
“You told me to go out there without knowing?”
“…Well, it seemed like that was the only way.”
“That’s true,” Nanami said as she sighed briefly and smiled a little.
“Yes. I put in a lot of effort. I figured that if I was going to deal with Sota, I should be prepared. I may not be able to fight against those kinds of monsters, but at least I can run away. It helped today, didn’t it?”
“Without Nanami, who knows what might have happened?”
“Fufu.”
“…Hey, you two.”
At that moment, Fukuda, who had been quietly listening, interjected into the conversation.
“How can you talk and smile like that right now?”
“Uh?”
Nanami looked up at Fukuda, a bit flustered.
Sota glanced at Fukuda for the first time since entering the clinic.
Fukuda’s face had turned pale. His hands were trembling a little, and his hair was disheveled, making him look even more exhausted.
He didn’t seem to have pulled his hair out as Kurosawa’s mother had, but Fukuda had clearly messed with his hair quite a bit as well.
He must have had a lot on his mind.
“I just saw it, right? That wasn’t human! What was that… a monster? Can you even call something like that a simple word? How could something like that even exist in reality?”
That was right.
Normally, this would be the expected response. Seeing such a thing, an average person would naturally be in a panic, pulling their hair out.
Even in modern society, many lose their lives to animal attacks. Just in Japan, there are quite a few cases of people who go hiking and end up assaulted by a bear.
Just the fact that a bear could show up in the middle of a city would send people into a panic, but if something far more vicious than that bear were roaming around the city…
If one thought they might get dragged through the window and eaten from their toes, it would be impossible not to be scared.
“…”
Sota and Nanami understood that, which is why they were unsure of how to respond. What could they possibly say? They certainly wouldn’t want to hear that they would get used to it soon.
Nurses glanced at Sota and Nanami in reaction to Fukuda’s voice. There weren’t any other patients since it was still a weekday afternoon, but they were still aware that it felt a bit awkward.
“…”
Seeing Sota and Nanami not respond, Fukuda scratched his head again and then plopped down into the nearest chair.
Even in the midst of his panic, it seemed Fukuda wasn’t planning to just walk away.
Perhaps it was because he was somehow unaffected after witnessing such things.
Kurosawa was a friend to Fukuda… probably that kind of relationship.
As the awkward silence hung over them again, Kurosawa’s mother stepped out from inside.
The chain around her neck had already come off. She had a bandage wrapped around her neck, indicating she might have incurred an injury under the skin beneath the chain.
Her clothes were still a bit tattered, but at least she was much less noticeable now that one chain was gone.
“If you could please wait here for a moment.”
The doctor followed her out to speak to Sota.
“Uh?”
“I called the police. In this kind of situation, we really can’t ignore it—um, it’s actually a requirement,” he said.
“That’s fine.”
Yuka nodded her head.
“That’s usually the right way to think.”
After some silence, Yuka seemed to have sorted through her thoughts to some extent and took a deep breath.
“…Is it okay?”
Fukuda asked a bit cautiously. Yuka nodded at him.
“The person who told us to come here knows someone in the police.”
“…What? Is there someone high up they know?”
“They’re the kind of person who would know such things.”
The doctor and nurses looked a bit odd in response to what Yuka said, but she spoke without paying it much mind.
However, despite how those people reacted, Yuka seemed to ponder for a moment about what fact to reveal to Fukuda before finally speaking up with a firm resolve.
“And, you might know them too.”
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