NOVEL NEXT Chapter 396
“……That’s strange. I don’t feel anything.”
Yuka muttered that way.
I felt the same.
The chills I usually felt near places where Yōkai were present weren’t there now.
I could feel the winter cold, though.
There were many people around.
“…….”
Yuka frowned and stared at the apartment for a while.
“Why?”
“Not only is it strange that I don’t feel anything, but the place is bigger than usual, there are more people, and above all, the person who requested us is different… it’s a government person, but still.”
“So you’re saying it’s different from usual.”
“That’s right.”
In this world, the government usually splits into two categories.
People who seem to be strong but end up being useless when a fight breaks out.
Or those who are incredibly strong and simply don’t care what’s happening below, thinking they can solve it whenever they want, leaving it alone for a while.
Either way, it’s almost a cliché that if you let your guard down, you’ll end up in the same mess.
“Is there no way we could refuse?”
“…….”
Yuka bitterly smiled at my question. That smile was enough of an answer.
Yeah. Either way, this world’s government wouldn’t just let us off easily.
“……Let’s go.”
“Yeah. I have no idea what those people want.”
Looking at the armed forces stationed around, Yuka said.
In a moment of panic, Yuka swung a knife in the air, but unlike when we normally entered a nest, the air didn’t split apart.
Yuka shook her head and walked ahead.
Click.
The door didn’t open. Turning back with a dissatisfied expression, the police seemed just as confused and stayed behind the police line.
Passersby looked at us with interest.
“……Let’s finish this as quickly as possible.”
“Yeah.”
Yuka murmured, and I nodded at her.
For now, there wasn’t a single open door on the lower floor.
We went up one flight. The upper floor was almost the same.
Still, there were about two rooms that were open.
One room—there were signs of someone living there. No, rather than just signs, it felt very lived in to the point where I wondered if the two of us could enter. However, since the police hadn’t said anything in particular this time, we decided to go in with a slight sense of guilt.
There wasn’t much in the fridge or closet. It looked like the person living there was a man.
“…….”
The two of us walked around the room with very uneasy expressions, thumping our feet against the floor as we moved. There wasn’t anything unusual.
Quickly leaving that room, we went to the next.
It was open too, but this one was just an empty room with absolutely nothing. There wasn’t even a need to check closely. The dust piled up on the floor clearly indicated it had been left unattended for quite a while.
The other two rooms were locked again.
“……Should we break down the door?”
“I wish they’d let us know something.”
“No, they probably wouldn’t know anything either. No one comes in here like us, right?”
Well, if we went in, we’d hardly have any way to respond. My blood wasn’t just something that Yōkai dislike; if it got on a knife, it could reliably cut through Yōkai like Yuka’s knife, so I had a way to fight, but for others, shooting a gun would almost be impossible to harm a Yōkai.
On the contrary, Yōkai can kill people, so it’s quite unfair.
“Um.”
Yuka paused in contemplation and headed to the edge of the second floor.
“Ah, here.”
At the end, there was a tiny gap.
It was a bit embarrassing to call it a staircase, but there was a very narrow metal ladder for going up, possibly to repair the roof.
“……Should we go up?”
“Since they probably wanted us to look around here, it might be good to check it out.”
As I murmured, Yuka answered like that.
We nodded at each other.
What on earth are we doing?
The sun was already setting. When it gets dark, at least people would pay less attention to us.
“Do you see anything?”
I asked Yuka,
“It’s almost pitch black so I can’t see much, but it’s not completely invisible. The space is… a little there. Do you want to come up too?”
Yuka leaned her head towards me and whispered quietly.
I followed her without a word.
As we climbed up and looked inside, it was indeed dark.
“……Do you have a flashlight?”
“No.”
Yuka answered my question.
“Oh, right.”
I took out my phone from my pocket and held it up.
It didn’t have a flash like the smartphones that would be popular in twenty years, but the light from the phone screen was better than nothing.
In a very dark place, even this little light was quite—
Sniff.
“…….”
—The light that was ‘quite’ visible ended there.
Both of us froze as we saw what was there.
Sniff sniff!
Had it heard even our voices? Without eyes, that huge—mass like a person’s nose, was facing us with its nostrils.
Cautiously, it was worming its way over here in a variety of grotesque ways.
Yuka and I exchanged glances.
Then, we moved slowly.
Without ears, it seemed to sense sound… in some other way. At least, it had no clue that we were watching it.
I had no idea what that thing was. Honestly, just looking at it was enough to give me the creeps in a different way.
Could it be a Yōkai? It didn’t feel like it… was it a different kind of Yōkai?
No, honestly.
To be honest, if it were the usual me, I would have just run away. If I hadn’t taken on this job, if Yuka wasn’t beside me. I’d probably just run and think I misjudged everything after.
Not to mention, I likely wouldn’t have any real reason to come this far in the first place.
How ridiculous it is to be consumed by the extraordinary, I pondered once more.
Slowly raising my body, I bent over to walk like that.
Crack.
Sniff?
With quite a loud noise, its nose froze.
Yuka and I stopped too.
It wasn’t that the nose was scary—more like… how should I put it?
Is it okay if we just move like this?
There are anecdotes of old Japanese apartments where a thumbtack stuck in the wall made someone scream from the other side. Even if it wasn’t that extreme—
“Run!”
Yuka shouted.
We both simultaneously leaped toward the nose.
Grrrrr!
Surprised, the nose took a big breath and tried to turn and escape—but—
“Ah.”
I let out a sound as I felt the floor suddenly collapse beneath me.
We had messed up.
The ceiling where we had been collapsed.
Yuka and I screamed as we fell down.
Thud!
My body hurt. It didn’t seem like anything was broken, but still.
As I got up, I saw the nose flattened against the light of the sunset coming in through the window.
It had been flattened. It looked like a wooden board had fallen on top of it.
Does it have a skeleton?
But before I could think about that, I was already rushing toward that nose.
Sniff! Sniff!
The nose squirmed and made those sounds.
“Ah, ow….”
Yuka, who had fallen on the refrigerator, got up while holding her waist and stumbled slightly.
“Um….”
Then, while looking at the nose in my hands that was flailing around, I couldn’t express the strange feelings I was having.
“…….”
The situation was, should I say, funny?
But before I could think that, the place we were in wasn’t really funny.
Everything was wrapped in plastic. The floor, the windows, the walls. And underneath were bright red substances smeared everywhere, with various drawings covering the floor made with that red stuff.
And in my hands—
“AAAAH!”
I almost dropped what I was holding due to that scream.
Crunch.
“OW!?”
And then in the end, I lost my grip.
It bit my finger.
“Kotone!?”
That ‘thing’ that fell to the floor rolled around and then began to bounce away.
I leaped again to catch it.
That massive nose had somehow become covered in something black…
It looked like hair.
No, it was definitely hair.
“AAAAH!”
It screamed again and started to gnash its teeth like it was trying to bite my hand.
Slice.
I heard a sound from behind me. It was the sound of Yuka drawing her sword.
“Yuka, wait, wait!”
I shouted instinctively and hid that—‘head’ from Yuka.
I don’t even know why I did that. Maybe, perhaps, the expression on that ‘face’ looking at me was just too eager to survive.
“…….”
I guess if it wanted to bite, it could have bitten. Even if it had thick clothes on, a determined bite could manage it.
“Kotone?”
Yuka looked at me in disbelief and said.
“Are you saying we report based on how that looks?”
……I saw it.
Of course.
It looked like my face.
“…….”
I lowered my gaze to look at it.
The thing I had accidentally embraced tightly was looking up at me with wide eyes.
I couldn’t tell if they were really eyes. Perhaps it thought changing its expression was an effective survival tactic.
But still, those eyes looking up at me were too pitiful.
“…….”
Ah, damn it.
Yeah, a dog that bites and kills people might feel a similar emotion looking up like that. But right now—
“……Yuka—”
As I raised my head to call Yuka,
“Yuka!?”
I screamed right away.
The refrigerator that had fallen with Yuka was slightly open.
And from inside, the ‘contents’ were spilling out.
Something that looked like chunks of meat wrapped in plastic.
But among them, there was something that wasn’t piled up properly.
It stretched out long and was rising.
By the time Yuka turned around, it was already trying to pounce on her.
Whoosh.
The hair of that thing in my arms moved faster.
The long black hair, moving like elongated flesh, met with whatever was extending behind Yuka and stuck together.
The wriggling mass that had been moving independently soon merged with my face and just drooped down like hair.
“…….”
Yuka and I stared at the head with our mouths agape.
“UuU?”
It muttered.
That sound seemed so harmless.
And above all, that voice sounded so much like mine.
I had no idea how to respond.