In this situation, saying such things is a bit awkward, but…
Honestly speaking, the feeling of liberation was tremendous.
It doesn’t mean I haven’t been able to live freely in this world. Compared to my past life, I’ve lived much more freely here.
In high school, I went to cram schools, did self-study, and participated in club activities or school festivals, which were truly wonderful experiences that could be called memories.
However, the sense of liberation I’m feeling right now is different from that.
“…I’ve experienced this before, but adapting is not easy.”
Yuka said with a somewhat sea-sick expression.
It’s the kind of speed that ordinary people could never reach.
That’s what I was capable of at this moment.
I don’t exactly understand the law behind it. It just felt different from simply ‘running.’
If I were to spring out at this speed, I’d expect a tremendous noise or maybe a big wind around me, but I felt nothing like that.
It felt almost as if I were… folding space itself to jump. Anyway, that’s the feeling. Similar to the chi manipulation techniques mentioned in martial arts.
Well, that’s not the important part right now.
“…Hah.”
Yuka exhaled.
In front of us was a fallen truck.
Maybe it was luck, or maybe it wasn’t, but it seemed there were no cars running nearby. The only car crumpled under the truck was parked.
And from inside the truck, blood was flowing out, pooling around it.
There was a gaping hole torn in the side of the truck.
I went right over to the truck and peered inside.
“Sa…save me.”
There was a survivor.
Though in a desperate state.
It was someone who would likely recognize my face… but did they know me as Koko, or did they even have the mental capacity to think that?
I jumped into the truck and pulled the person out.
Their side was torn open.
I could see some of their insides.
Yuka immediately knelt next to them, placed her hand over the wound, and then, still with one hand applying pressure, took out her phone, looking a bit flustered as she raised it high into the sky.
“…I can’t get a signal.”
Yuka said with a serious expression.
…If we leave them like this, they will definitely die. Even if an ambulance comes, we won’t know if they can be saved. Perhaps they might survive if there’s a spot available in the emergency room nearby—
I too knelt beside the person.
“What happened?”
I asked calmly to the man, whose eyes were starting to lose focus. Only then did he seem to properly see my face. His eyes widened.
“Y-you are?”
“…I’m not the corpse you were moving.”
The man seemed confused.
“…I don’t know.”
The man said.
“Something… like a big claw.”
A claw?
Does that mean it came from my corpse?
But the surroundings looked fine. If a monster that could destroy the world had appeared, this area wouldn’t be so intact.
“What about the corpse?”
“Deprivation…”
The man said that and then lost consciousness.
“Still alive.”
Yuka said, checking her hand over the man’s chest. When I placed my hand on his chest, I could still feel the heartbeat.
“…”
There might be an emergency kit inside the truck. But we were running out of time. We were currently ‘tracking’ something.
Then.
I plucked a single hair from my head. As I cut it with my fingernail, a sharper pain than usual shot through me. A bit of blood flowed, but it didn’t seem serious.
“Koto Ne?”
Koko, who had been watching me, gasped and called my name in surprise.
I placed the hair against the man’s side wound and imagined the image I desired.
Just like I had acted on the way here, instinctively.
The hair wriggled somewhat grotesquely and moved, burrowing into the man’s side.
As it slithered back and forth through the opened wound, the gash began to close like a zipper.
As the two sides meshed tightly, the bleeding lessened a bit.
…Whether this would be enough for the man to survive, I couldn’t say. Since the wound had already been opened, the infection could be severe, and this wasn’t a proper surgery—just a closing of the outer wound, so I had no idea what was happening inside.
But ultimately, if I left it alone, the man would just die.
For a brief moment, I thought that maybe I could save this man—or even everyone inside the truck.
But time itself might run short, and above all—
“…It’s quiet around here.”
“Uoo?”
When I made that somewhat out-of-context remark, Koko tilted her head.
Is this… Tokyo? It seems like it. While it’s not near the sea where my school is located, we could say it’s still a Tokyo close to Saitama.
Given that, even on a night like this, there should have been some noises.
Voices of people.
There should be some people wandering about. Even in a residential area, there’s bound to be someone out and about at dawn for some reason. Especially when such an accident has taken place, there should certainly be people around to hear it.
Hadn’t we heard that loud scream back in the apartment in Saitama? Yet there’s no one to come out and check?
The electricity was still on. The streetlights were lit.
The headlights of the fallen truck were also flickering.
I dashed over to the nearby house. There was a window on the first floor. Though there were curtains drawn, the interior lights were on.
“Koto Ne?”
Yuka came closer to me.
I pressed my face as close as possible to the window and peered inside. The curtains weren’t completely drawn across the window, so I could catch a glimpse of the inside. I could also hear faint sounds from within.
There was the sound of a TV.
And there were people inside. Sitting on a sofa and watching TV.
They didn’t seem very responsive to what was happening outside. I didn’t think it was strange for someone not to move while fixated on the TV. However, it was strange for their bodies to be completely still as if they were statues.
They might have fallen asleep, but…
I tapped on the window.
“Hey!”
There was no response.
After knocking harder, the window rattled as if it would break.
“Look over here!”
Yet still, no reaction.
“…”
“Have they lost consciousness?”
Yuka said, but I didn’t think that was the case.
If they had, the situation would have already escalated seriously. If the driver had fallen unconscious, an accident would have happened.
But it was too quiet, almost unnaturally so.
I glanced at the house next door. A family was sitting at the dining table. Though they were laughing, they sat still like mannequins, not moving at all. Next to that house, there was an elderly couple, both sitting on the sofa and staring at the TV without moving.
As if time had stopped.
“…Let’s go.”
When I said that, Yuka nodded seriously.
I wasn’t sure why the person in the truck could converse with us while everyone else was frozen.
If I had to guess, perhaps it was because that person had come into contact with the entity that stabbed him. The existence that attacked the truck couldn’t possibly be a mere ordinary beast.
Or perhaps my corpse had some effect.
I grabbed Yuka and Koko’s hands.
And followed the traces as we ran.
*
Time seems to be freezing.
That’s the sensation I felt.
While I couldn’t feel it properly back where the truck was, the closer we moved to our destination, the stronger that feeling became.
It was different from the chills I felt in my previous body.
It felt more… intertwined with a primal fear.
“…Everything has stopped.”
People passing by had all frozen mid-motion.
It wasn’t just that their actions had halted; it looked as if they were caught mid-step, unable to maintain their balance.
Flapping ties, fluttering hair. Everything stood still.
It seemed as if the laws of physics itself was affected, or maybe not. The streetlights were still on, and the TVs in stores continued to cast images.
What triggers this occurrence? The fact that electricity flows? That communication continues?
Or perhaps, it might be ‘the space perceived by individuals.’ It felt like everyone’s time had stopped.
Where we suddenly came to a halt was in a wide, open plaza.
It wasn’t particularly large, just a decent-sized park like one you’d find in a city.
“…”
In the very center, there lay a girl.
And cradling the corpse was one figure.
Yuka gasped.
Around them were people lying on the ground.
Perhaps they were the ones who had tried to block her?
Most of them wore uniforms similar to the ones that had come after us. I couldn’t tell whether they were police or military, but weapons like knives and guns were strewn all over the place.
And then—
“…”
Without hesitation, Yuka moved forward and picked up a discarded knife from the ground.
It was the ‘Mumei’ they had taken.
“Incidents like this happen when you carelessly swing your weapons around.”
Yuka said in a voice mixed with a sigh.
As she spoke, the one who had been wielding that sword lay on the ground, dead. The person who had been in the truck was alive, but this person was definitely a corpse.
There was a hole in their belly. Had they been unable to wield their weapon before dying?
“This sword is still in the process of being forged.”
Yuka shook the knife. The blood that had splattered on it flew to the side as the blade gleamed faintly in the moonlight.
“The names of weapons are usually given at the end.”
Noticing my gaze, Yuka smiled and spoke.
Isn’t she scared even in such a situation?
…No.
I briefly closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
No, she must be scared. Yuka said so herself.
She mentioned how she didn’t want to die. She said it’d be better to run than to wield a weapon.
Yet she could still laugh like that because she must have known that this was something no one else could do.
The ‘Mumei’ glimmered in Yuka’s hand.
Though the Yōkai’s blood had soaked into it for centuries, the sword was still incomplete.
Was that so? I had never read the story in its entirety. I had thought there would be breadcrumbs leading to that name.
In the end, I mused, it probably wouldn’t just suddenly emerge from nowhere and tie up all the loose ends in one go.
There must have been threads of clues scattered throughout the story I hadn’t noticed.
And at some point, everything must converge.
“…I have a question.”
I said to Kosuzu.
Of course, even as I spoke, my gaze was scanning diligently. I had to be ready to pounce at any moment. How could I attack effectively as well?
It felt like I could act at any moment.
But with all those people lying around, it wouldn’t be easy.
“Why did you create me?”
“…”
Kosuzu couldn’t respond.
“If it hadn’t been me but another existence that came here, what would you have done?”
Kosuzu stared at me silently until I approached closer, then she whipped her tentacle towards me.
The ground caved in deeply. It wasn’t just that a hole was forming; the cement had even cracked and was being pushed upward. I jumped back just in time to avoid the debris.
“You were supposed to be a bridge.”
Kosuzu glared at me as she spoke.
“You were supposed to serve as a bridge connecting us all.”
“…”
That must have been directed at me?
And she must be blaming me for not accomplishing that.
“But in the end, you were just a little child.”
So, a failure.
I understand now.
In the end, what Kosuzu wanted wasn’t Nirlas himself.
No, she might have wanted to use Nirlas as a final resort, but before that, she aimed to create something that would ‘connect the world and that existence.’
What would she have done afterward?
She would surely have taken that nearly brain-dead child and used him as she wished. Pouring knowledge into him, inflicting pain and coercion.
…The Kurozawa Koto Ne from the original work, who was never meant to exist in this world, would slowly have crumbled away.
She might have experienced everything Kagami did. Each piece of knowledge she possessed probably twisted inside her.
And that Koto Ne would have been in the same school as the protagonist.
Quietly, little by little, crumbling from within. Without anyone knowing.
With no Mako to take care of her, nor Yuka or Yu to play with her. She wouldn’t even have thought about participating in any clubs.
“…I think you’d have failed as well, even if things had flowed as you envisioned.”
I replied.
Yeah. I couldn’t read it all the way to the end.
But I know how Hyakki Yagyō ended.
Many people died. Although we somehow managed to stave it off, there couldn’t have been no victims at all.
When such an incident happened right in the middle of Tokyo, the government would have stepped in decisively, and that story would have ended.
Was Kosuzu safe at that time? What about Kagami?
…Perhaps at that time, everyone who could control ‘Koto Ne’ was dead.
Thus, an incident would occur that would lead to the destruction of the world, and the protagonist and heroine would heroically stop it; that’s what the original story was about.
Well, I haven’t read it directly, so it’s all speculation.
But now, I feel a bit regretful.
I should have read it to the end. Not for the sake of using the knowledge in this world, but simply because it seemed interesting.
It’s a shame that I never got to see the conclusion of one of the many novels that made my childhood enjoyable.
“Well, I understand why I’m here. About my abilities and such.”
When I said that, Kosuzu stared at me intently.
Crack, crack,
For reasons unknown, Nirlas showed no resistance. The corpse of Kurozawa Koto Ne was being pulled into Kosuzu, turning into a lump of meat.
“What’s most necessary to break free from already determined outcomes is ‘chaos.’”
I recalled what Kuro had said.
I thought of the events that unfolded because I was here.
That’s right.
By completely twisting the original developments, the relationships between characters fundamentally changed. In some sense, even the position of the ‘protagonist’ had shifted.
The time and space that were supposed to be the center of the play had been altered.
Looking back now, and knowing the original story, anyone could say that was ‘chaos.’
From the perspective of a being far away, too wise to know anything, perpetually asleep but foolish, that might be true.
Nothing can be determined. Nothing can be assured. It’s a thought that couldn’t arise for someone who had read everything in advance.
“…Koto Ne?”
Yuka and Koko called my name simultaneously, albeit rarely.
Slowly, I felt my feet lift off the ground.
If I truly am a being I could call ‘chaos,’ then…
…I should be able to disregard at least the rules that existed here to some extent.
Of course, all the beings present here were like that as well.
“I honestly still don’t understand what you plan to do.”
How do you intend to break the boundaries between the afterlife and this world?
Why do you need Nirlas’s power to break that? Well, avoiding that description is indeed part of the charm of the Cthulhu Mythos.
“But if you succeed, we’ll definitely be unable to live the lives we want.”
What I desire is similar to what Yuka desires.
Just to live a normal life, enjoying the ordinary.
I do yearn for the extraordinary. But that extraordinariness would be sufficient as a spice added on rare occasions. What’s most important is a sparkling, shining daily life.
“So, just like you, I’ll try my best too.”
Kosuzu’s tentacles started to move.
So did I.
Koko and Yuka would have moved too.
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