It had little to do with courage. When that sinister, grinning figure suddenly came hurtling at them, the sheer visual shock of it was enough to scare just about anyone.
"Aaaaahhh!!"
At the last possible instant, a crimson blur flashed out from behind Yoshida Saori. Red Hood's left leg, wrapped in a gale, snapped out so fast it left only an afterimage, tearing through the air like an arrow loosed from a bow.
"Boom!"
The sole of her black knee-high boot drove deep into the stomach of the balding middle-aged man who had charged at them. Rings of translucent air rippled outward, and a heavy impact cracked through the corridor.
The kick hit with such terrifying force that the man was blasted backward even faster than he had come, slamming hard into the wall not far away.
"Saori! Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine. It just startled me a little... Good thing Hood was there to protect me."
In response to Nagata Takaya's concern, Yoshida Saori shook her head and gave him a gentle smile to reassure him, then turned to thank Red Hood.
Seeing that Yoshida Saori was unharmed, Nagata Takaya finally let out a long breath, then turned to look at the balding middle-aged man who had suddenly lunged at them.
"This... counts as an anomaly too?"
"It should," Xu Fu said grimly, her eyes on the man as sharp as drawn blades. "But this one's different from the previous anomalies. If we're careless this time, the result won't be as simple as getting sent back to the start."
"You two, get behind me. That thing's coming again."
Red Hood's merciless kick had twisted the balding middle-aged man's body into an awful shape. He lay collapsed on the ground in a posture no human body should have been able to take, like a bamboo pole bent clean in half. It was hard to imagine that those slim, taut legs of Red Hood's could unleash such horrifying force in an instant.
And yet, despite injuries that would have killed any normal person on the spot, the man did not so much as let out a groan. Worse still, accompanied by a string of sickening cracks from his bones, he lurched back to his feet like a broken marionette, ignoring his wounds entirely. That eerie, cold smile was still plastered across his face, enough to make anyone's scalp crawl.
Xu Fu could clearly see the aura of resentment and hatred slowly seeping from him.
That thing was not human.
It was a ghost.
An evil spirit.
The balding middle-aged man was only an empty shell. The evil spirit inside him was the one moving it.
That said, it was a very weak evil spirit.
In this world, it was the first time Xu Fu had seen one so weak. There was no way she believed this endlessly looping "Exit 8" had been created by something like this.
"Is there someone else behind the scenes, or are they working as a group?"
Xu Fu was thinking.
The fighting, however, she left entirely to Red Hood.
No—calling it fighting would have been wrong.
It was slaughter.
That thing had just lunged at Yoshida Saori, and if it had managed to grab her, it might have inflicted some kind of curse. So Red Hood first hacked off both its hands, then severed its legs and stripped it of any ability to resist, and only then finished it with one clean, vicious stroke across the neck, completely ending that evil spirit.
Beneath her lowered lashes, Red Hood's blue eyes were cold as ice. Even with all killing intent fully reined in, she still sent a chill straight down the spine.
Xu Fu sidled up to her and whispered, "You always make things so bloody. There are people watching, you know."
Without changing expression, Red Hood flicked a glance toward Yoshida Saori and Nagata Takaya not far away. Her blue eyes shimmered faintly, then she replied as if nothing at all were out of the ordinary, "I'm just a useful blade. How the scene is handled afterward, and how to make it look less bloody, is the wielder's problem. Not mine."
"Mmph... you just threw off all responsibility in a single sentence?" Xu Fu puffed up her cheeks in displeasure. "Have you considered my feelings at all?"
Red Hood could not help but smile at Xu Fu's adorable little pout.
"Didn't I learn that from you?" she said, unable to resist reaching out and pinching Xu Fu's lips. "Hand everything over to someone more serious and more capable, dump all your responsibilities and worries on them, and that's the secret to living freely. Isn't that how you do things, as my master?"
"Hmph~! I made you because I wanted to live more easily," Xu Fu grumbled with a frown. "If you start picking up my bad habits too, then how am I supposed to slack off?"
"Then hurry up and make a second doll. Once you do, some sweet little fool will be willing to share the workload for both of us."
"...Let's worry about that later. I still want to reinforce you some more first." Xu Fu let out a helpless sigh.
This wasn't a game. You couldn't clear out the evil spirits in one area and expect them to respawn like monsters after some time had passed. The more she killed, the fewer there would be—especially the dangerous, powerful kind. Spirits like that needed time to grow strong.
And without evil spirits to kill, she would not be able to obtain the upgrade material, black souls. If she made more dolls at a time like this, it would just mean too many people competing for too little.
Since they had encountered an anomaly, the group headed back down the corridor. Just as expected, the number on the yellow sign changed from "5" to "6."
This time, the anomaly had been one of the posters on the wall. Yoshida Saori, Xu Fu, and Red Hood had all missed it. Only Nagata Takaya had noticed.
"Well," Nagata Takaya explained, "Saori and I watched the movie on that poster together, and it left a pretty strong impression on me. So when the movie poster got swapped out for a different one, I noticed right away."
"Ooh~! Who knew your memory was that good? I bet your grades at school are great too, huh?" Xu Fu praised him with a smile. "Nicely done. The cute Xu Fu-chan gives you a thumbs-up~!"
Back when she was in school, Xu Fu had probably been the type with terrible memory. She would memorize English vocabulary and forget it the moment she turned around.
"No, it's not really like that..." Nagata Takaya scratched his cheek awkwardly, his gaze drifting uncontrollably toward Yoshida Saori. "The only reason I remembered it so well is because Saori was the one who dragged me there in the first place. Then not long after the movie started, she decided it was boring and fell asleep in her seat."
"Uh... ahaha." Yoshida Saori looked away, suddenly a little guilty. "Sorry about that. I'd seen people online saying it was pretty interesting, so I wanted to drag you along. I didn't look up the plot because I wanted to watch it for the first time with you... but it ended up being way more boring than I expected, and before I knew it... I'd fallen asleep. Hehehe!"
Putting on a playfully impish act, Yoshida Saori stuck out her tongue at him.
They headed back once more, and this time the number on the sign became "7."
If their goal had simply been to get out of here, then success was already close at hand. But the truth was, they could leave whenever they wanted. The reason they were still wandering around in here was to see whether any other innocent people had been dragged in as well.
None of them felt discouraged. They stepped into the corridor again, and this time the anomaly was so obvious that anyone could have spotted it.
Standing in the middle of the corridor, directly beneath the bright yellow sign, were two little girls holding hands and staring fixedly at Xu Fu and the others.
The scene felt strangely familiar to Xu Fu, like she had seen it somewhere before.
Was this supposed to be a tribute to The Shining?
A river of blood wasn't about to come pouring out next, was it?
Red Hood's eyes instantly turned cold. Beneath her red cloak, both hands had already tightened around her weapons.
Red Hood did not even need to warn them. Nagata Takaya and Yoshida Saori had already slipped behind Xu Fu on their own.
"Come now... let's trade..."
Both little girls pulled their lips into strange smiles and spoke in eerie unison.
"Give me your body..."
"Let me live in your place..."
"I don't want to die here..."
"I want to return to the sunlight..."
With a sizzling sound like overloaded current, the fluorescent lights overhead suddenly began to flicker as though they were malfunctioning.
The lights went out.
And when they came back on, the space in front of Red Hood and the others was already empty.
The two smiling little girls had somehow appeared behind Yoshida Saori and Nagata Takaya. Pale little hands stretched out, reaching for the arms of the two in front of them.
And then, all at once, a fingertip lightly touched the forehead of the girl on the right, gentle as a dragonfly skimming water.
The vicious smile on that girl's face froze instantly. The malice in her eyes went out like a candle flame. Before she could react at all, her body disintegrated into drifting ash, as though she had never existed in the first place.
"Aaaahhh...!!"
Seeing her companion erased so effortlessly, the remaining little girl let out a scream full of terror. Her survival instinct had hit its limit. There was no courage left in her to attack Yoshida Saori and the others. All she wanted now was to escape.
Overcome with fear, she turned into a streak of black smoke and shot toward an iron door marked "Employees Only." But she had only pushed it halfway open when Red Hood fired once and blew her head apart, sending her after her companion.
The four of them gathered together and stared intently at the half-open iron door the little girl evil spirit had left behind.
"Employees Only?" Yoshida Saori rubbed her chin and guessed, "This place exists specifically for evil spirits to trap humans, right? So the 'employees' here... would be the evil spirits themselves?"
"In other words, only evil spirits can use this door?" Nagata Takaya cautiously peered inside. "It's pitch-black. I can't see a thing... Do they not turn the lights on in there?"
"Wouldn't it be normal for a place evil spirits hang out in to be pitch-black?" Yoshida Saori said. "I mean, even they're all black and shadowy."
Xu Fu tilted her head toward the silent Red Hood at her side.
"What do you think?"
"My thoughts?" Red Hood fell quiet for a moment before answering. "I think we should go in and take a look. We might find this group of evil spirits' lair."
"Heh~! Great minds think alike." Xu Fu nodded in satisfaction. "Just what I'd expect from a doll I made. She's every bit as clever and quick-witted as her master, Xu Fu."
That said, if what lay beyond the door really was the evil spirits' base of operations, bringing Yoshida Saori and Nagata Takaya along would not be appropriate.
Xu Fu was fully confident she could protect the two of them no matter how troublesome the enemy ahead turned out to be. But she also had to consider the psychological side of things. They were not hopelessly in love with horror the way Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki were. If possible, Xu Fu did not want them witnessing anything too bloody.
Once you got dragged in too deeply, it became very hard to return to the ordinary life you once had.
Yoshida Saori and Nagata Takaya were both considerate people, and they understood that if something unexpected happened, they would only be a burden to Xu Fu and Red Hood.
"This is kind of embarrassing. We really haven't helped you much at all," Nagata Takaya said with a bitter smile.
Xu Fu shook her head and smiled faintly. "You already have helped me. So just wait outside for a little while, okay? Once Xu Fu's done dealing with things over here, I'll come find you~!"
That was not merely an empty reassurance. Quite a few of the anomalies along the way had been spotted by Nagata Takaya and Yoshida Saori.
And besides, if only Xu Fu and Red Hood had been here, those timid, death-fearing evil spirits might not even have dared show themselves and attack in the first place. Without those attacks, Xu Fu and the others would never have discovered this iron door that only evil spirits used.
"Then we'll wait for you outside! Xu Fu-chan!" Yoshida Saori's eyes curved into crescents as she smiled softly. "By the time you come out, it'll probably be past mealtime, right? But that's fine. Restaurants are less crowded after the rush, and it's more comfortable to eat then too, so you don't need to hurry, okay? Bye-bye! See you in a bit!"
After a few simple farewells, Xu Fu used Taoism Arts to send the two of them back to the world of the living, leaving only herself and Red Hood in the endlessly looping corridor.
"Let's go~! Time to see whether what's behind this door is a dragon's pool or a tiger's den." Cradling the Yu Mei-ren Doll in her arms, Xu Fu skipped toward it.
But Red Hood raised a hand and stopped her.
"I'll go first." Expressionless, Red Hood glanced at Xu Fu. "If something really does happen, then I'd be the only one getting hurt, and you'd still have time to respond."
"Honestly~! Aren't you being a little too cautious, Red Hood?" Xu Fu asked in bafflement. "What are you, some kind of Cautious Hero? Buying three sets of armor—one to wear, one spare, and one spare for the spare?"
"No need. I have [Requiem], so I can be invincible for a short time. Armor would only get in the way."
"You know that's not what I meant..."
Red Hood said nothing more. She pushed open the iron door and stepped inside first.
Xu Fu blinked blankly where she stood, watching Red Hood's figure gradually swallowed by the shadows.
Then she started walking too and followed her in.