NOVEL NEXT Chapter 41: Wanted List
It turned out, Heaven was way too big to list the names of all the people complicit in its maintenance. In addition, Alisha didn’t stop herself from claiming that some workers were actually nice and didn’t deserve any harm done to them, as one does. Overall, it did help to alleviate the slightest amount of anger rushing through Emika, if not by much.
“Why would they need me in the first place? Can they really not kill you any other way?”
Alisha began a long, drawn-out, “Well,” before continuing to explain the situation. “Kinda… we’re hard to kill. People have tried to get rid of us for, like, ages. But they can’t, because they suck.”
“I see,” replied Emika. “So, you’re immortal? Like me?”
Emika wasn’t really sure whether she was actually all that much immortal, but she might as well keep up the bluff.
“Yep!” Alisha confirmed, a big smile on her face. What was there to be happy about? Ever since she tried to calm Emika down from her fit of rage against the maintainers of this place, she’d been bouncing up and down, even going as far as to jump from the bed to look at Emika more closely.
“So… are you, like… evil, then? Did you kill people?” Emika asked. If they had, there was a chance they wouldn’t be honest with her, but she might as well try. It’s not like it truly mattered to Emika. Yes, of course, she wouldn’t be too thrilled if these three turned out to be abusive murderers, but then again, that wasn’t the only thing that mattered. Emika had never been too strong on the empathy-side, but she still retained some sense of morality out of pure principle. That said, even if there were incredibly good reasons to kill them, Emika still didn’t appreciate being used in this manner at all, especially not without any consent. She wasn’t some kind of weapon to be pointed where one wanted death to happen.
“Nope! No kill-count.” Alisha said. “At least for me. Can’t vouch for the other two, but considering their wishes, it sounds unlikely that they would have offed anyone.”
Blaike simply nodded, and Epse gave out a short affirming hum in their beautiful voice. Ever since Emika had heard that person speak, she’d placed them on spot three of her wanted-list; that is, the list of people she wanted to hug, with Melisande currently supremely occupying spot one and Eva being on spot two, if she’d still be alive. Somehow, Epse seemed just incredibly huggable, with that gloomy gaze and the short black hair and the numerous styled piercings all over their ears and the tips of a tattoo reaching out to their neck from the chest, as well as their stylish jacket and black ballerina shoes.
Emika absolutely loved hugs with no remorse, and she’d made her own personal hug-harem with her previous circle of friends, but now, no more hugs, especially not for random strangers that were her hugging-type, because the curse had taken it all from her, and she didn’t want her huggables to die. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with suffering and being angry over the past few weeks, her touch-starvation would have filled that gap anyway, and now that she saw Epse, it all came crashing back in.
Only after a while of derailing into that line of thought did Alisha’s full sentence parse in Emika’s mind, and she was able to take her eyes off Epse, who was just gazing back at her with no movement on their pretty face.
“Wait,” Emika said. “What do you mean, ‘Considering their wishes’?”
“Oh!” Alisha’s eyes widened a bit. “You don’t know what we are!”
And just as Emika was about to ask ‘what they were’, a sound issued from behind the glass panel in the corridor, and steps echoed from within. A few moments later, a woman appeared in front of their room, glancing inside.
She was wearing rather formal attire; a lab-coat over a pair of high-quality pants. Her messy and curly brunette-blonde hair was pulled together into a ponytail. She had tons of freckles on her face, light-brown skin and dark eyes, wore no make-up and looked immensely tired.
“Hasegawa Emika?” she asked, eyes on her target. After staring back at her for a few seconds, Emika nodded and got up, still wrapped in the blanket Alisha had thrown at her. “I’m Doctor Haur,” she said. “I am responsible for your rehabilitation. Please follow me.”
With that, and waving Emika towards herself, she made off to where she came from. Emika looked back at the others, though Blaike had preoccupied himself with reading a book, and Epse was daydreaming. All Emika got back was a shrug from Alisha.
After closing her eyes very shut for a moment, Emika angrily got up, whipped open the wardrobe, and fumbled through the clothes inside. She wasn’t going to try on things that might be too small, so she just grabbed a random pair of pants and a button shirt, both of which probably belonged to Blaike and were likely a little too large for her, and then hid between the open doors of the wardrobe to change. They were not large enough to conceal her, but all of the occupants of the room did their best to make her believe she had some privacy by pointedly finding things to stare in the room that were decidedly not her.
Oh, well, whatever. Emika was modest out of principle more than anything, and her anger right now made it hard for her to care in the first place. It was altogether humiliating, which she would have loved to avoid, especially with the camera gazing into the room and god-knows who behind that.
The pants ended up being so large that they would have slid down her legs, so she grew a tiny branch through the latches that a belt would usually go through to keep them on tight. Other than that and her right arm, she had almost completely pulled back her curse, so she looked almost human.
As she was closing in on the glass plane, she was wondering how the hell she was supposed to leave, but just as she was about to complain, a click issued from it, and it slid to the side, letting her pass. Just as she moved outside, the sterile smell of a hospital dug into her nose, devoid of any non-artificial nuance or sub-scent that would in any way indicate she was currently in a welcoming environment.
Emika was truly annoyed beyond relief. She looked back inside the room just as the glass panel slid back. That’s when she noticed that there was a door on the wall a few metres behind the summoning circle, and she almost wanted to die of embarrassment. Of course, there was a bathroom! This was not Maxime-level confinement. What had she changed in the room for? And none of these people had mentioned it to her, either…
Right before moving away, Emika’s eyes fell onto Alisha, who hesitantly waved her goodbye. Emika sighed. What a cutie. That girl was now spot four on her hug wanted-list. It wasn’t that hard to get on there, apparently, though Alisha really had done her best to make Emika’s arrival here the slightest bit less horrifying.
This was all so very messed up. Emika hated the fact that she had a stranger’s clothes on herself. Maybe it would have been fine if it was Epse’s or, god forbid, Melisande’s, but this Blaike guy, well, he was nice and all, but… The fabric was an intruder upon her senses, a heavy weight reminding her of all that was wrong with all of this.
Emika still very vividly felt the sensory remains of all the touches Melisande had recently littered all over her body, and it was almost driving her up the wall. What ticked her off the most about her situation was that among the three bunk-pals and the surveillance camera, Emika wasn’t likely to receive meaningful privacy anytime soon. Thus, it was going to be regrettably hard to pursue any Melisande-themed thought crimes.
She scrunched up her eyes. She’d messed up her priorities again. Yes, yes. Proper priorities. Right now, there was one very important thought forming in her head, and she did her best to put even the most benign thought crimes beneath it.
They had summoned her here not to help her, but to use her as a weapon, and then probably off her, too. Or, maybe this was a trial run, and they would keep pointing her wherever devastation was supposed to happen?
And Alisha was nice to her.
This could have ended just like that fateful day. With her going somewhere, and then accidentally killing off a bunch of people without having any intention to. Just like that, they would have made her repeat the very thing that caused her entire situation in the first place.
She was here to exploit the place and find a cure? Screw that. They really thought they could summon her to kill off some shelved immortals? No way.
Forget breaking out. She’d not ‘break out’, she’d break it all down. Brick by brick, until nothing of this Heaven nonsense island in the sky was left.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Emika made a conscious effort to calm down. First of all, she needed to follow Dr. Haur. The woman was still patiently waiting at the end of the long corridor, arms behind her back. Find out where each brick was first, then pull them apart. Emika swallowed hard, then set foot after foot to join the Doctor for whatever she was planning to do.