Maki Shijo looked up, gazing at the street outside the coffee shop.
She looked down again, tapped her feet lightly on the floor a couple of times, and shifted restlessly before looking back up at the street.
"So slow. How can he be this slow?"
The girl finally couldn't help but complain.
"There's still a full half hour before our scheduled meeting time, and you've already repeated that line over and over."
Sitting beside Maki, Kaguya glanced at her and spoke in a cool tone.
"Even so, he's taking too long. We got here forty minutes early, you know."
Maki, who had slumped her head onto the table, let out a dissatisfied "Mmmph," then propped her cheeks with her hands and lifted her head, muttering in a very displeased tone.
"...It seems you're truly captivated by him, Maki-san."
Kaguya's expression turned a little teasing.
"Who's captivated by that guy? I don't care about an idiot like him who's always trying to push his luck and has zero gentlemanly manners."
The girl took a large gulp of coffee and said this, grinding her teeth.
"Oh, really? I'm quite hurt to hear you say that."
A voice sounded from behind them just then.
Maki paused for a second, then, realizing something, she whipped her head around, her gaze quickly locking onto Gao Hai as he approached from behind.
From his hairstyle to his clothes, he looked completely different from yesterday.
Although he still had that same devil-may-care air about him, he actually listened to me and cleaned up his appearance.
Seeing Gao Hai like this, Maki's mood instantly brightened.
"You're late! If you're going to meet a girl, you should be a little early, you know."
Although her mood had improved, Maki showed no hint of happiness on the surface. She just shot Gao Hai a sidelong glance, scooted further into the booth, and reached over to pull the curtains closed, blocking the light from outside.
They were in a small private booth on the second floor of the coffee shop, a place frequented by people looking for a quiet, comfortable environment to chat or work.
Maki and Kaguya had chosen this spot to ensure their safety and privacy.
"Let's get down to business. There are quite a few things we need to discuss."
After closing the curtains, Maki's expression immediately turned serious.
Knowing the importance of the upcoming conversation, Gao Hai sat down next to Maki and nodded solemnly, refraining from his usual playful banter.
"Alright, I'll start. I've managed to gather some information about the Sacrificial Game and its players through my own means."
After taking a sip of coffee, Kaguya began to speak.
"The existence of players, or rather, a sizable population of players, has been around for at least two years."
"I didn't investigate the players themselves directly. Instead, after discovering that Obsession Items can be used in the real world, I had my assistant look into some of the more bizarre, unsolved death cases in Japan recently. It turns out that starting two years ago, the frequency of such cases began to rise rapidly, occurring in nearly every part of the country."
"Not only that, but the frequency of these cases has been increasing even more in the last six months. But the strange thing is, you can't find any discussion about them anywhere. If I hadn't specifically asked someone to search, I would never have believed that there have already been 85 homicides in Tokyo this month alone, and that the number of homicides last year exceeded 80,000. It's absolutely impossible for the Metropolitan Police Department to suppress such a large number of vicious crimes on their own. Yet the reality is that no one knows about these incidents. It's as if they happen, and that's it."
As Kaguya spoke, she placed some printed documents on the table.
Gao Hai flipped through some of them. There was a case where a family of three was found decapitated, but the investigation revealed that after being beheaded, they had walked to the living room and celebrated a birthday around the table, their tracheas stuffed with cream cake. Another case involved a man living alone who had a girl come to his door for a late-night service; the next day, he woke up to find only a bloody human skin in his bed, with the autopsy confirming the skin had been flayed the previous evening. There were also cries for help coming from a sewer pipe; when the pipe was broken open, a mass of human tissue stretching over ten meters was found crammed inside. The investigation revealed that this tissue had crawled for dozens of meters inside the pipe, and the person had only died when the pipe was opened...
Utterly illogical, terrifying cases that seemed impossible in the real world.
Not a single one had been solved.
And not a single one had garnered any attention; almost no one discussed them. Whether on public online platforms or in various hidden forums, no one talked about these things. Even though Kaguya's assistant had easily hacked into the police department's system and found these files, proving they weren't classified as top secret, they simply failed to attract public attention. It was as if everyone was turning a blind eye to these horrific events.
"My assistant... she acted abnormally regarding these matters as well."
Taking a deep breath, Kaguya's voice began to tremble slightly.
"When she first found this information, she was just like me—she thought it was incredible, couldn't understand why such things were happening, and couldn't understand why people weren't reacting to them."
"But half an hour after giving me the files, when I found her and asked about them again, she couldn't remember what she had done. No... she remembered, but she suddenly didn't care. It was as if some force, some invisible power, had directly erased these things that surpassed cognition from her consciousness, making it so she couldn't pay attention to them no matter what. Even when I reminded her, she would seem slow to react. She wouldn't truly remember unless she saw the files again, but as soon as she put them down and stopped focusing on them, she would revert to that state within half an hour."
At this point, Kaguya paused, took a sip of coffee, her expression extremely complicated.
"After discovering this anomaly, I conducted a further experiment."
"I used the Blood Puppet to trap one of the servants in my mansion, which caused a panic throughout the entire household at the time."
"But after I recalled the Blood Puppet, about three or four hours later, everyone had forgotten about it. Order in the mansion returned to normal, as if nothing had ever happened. Even the servant who was attacked was only panicked for about half an hour longer than the others before returning completely to his usual self."
Finally, Kaguya let out a long sigh, put down her coffee cup, and summarized in a low voice.
"I think only players can remember these things. These events that are beyond ordinary cognition, beyond the realm of normalcy, can only be known and remembered by players."
"It's like two separate islands. Ordinary people are on one, and we are on the other, separated from each other. No, this separation is actually one-sided. After all, we can know everything ordinary people know, but they can't possibly understand the world we see."
Judging from Kaguya's expression, this investigation had clearly had a significant impact on her, perhaps even more so than the life-or-death crisis she had faced in the Shirakawa Apartments.
Gao Hai immediately thought of Miwa Maeda.
That woman had died a brutal death in a hotel. She was a player, yet her death was reported. How could that be?
Was she killed by an ordinary person? Or did her killer act without using any supernatural powers?
He took out his phone to check and confirmed that the news article was still accessible.
This made Gao Hai feel a little wary.
"That's about it for my great-aunt's investigation. Now it's my turn. I've found a gathering place for players, or at least what appears to be an arranged meeting spot. It's in three days, located in an underground shopping plaza in the abandoned old district."
Maki calmly took a sip of her coffee. After confirming Kaguya had nothing more to say, she spoke slowly and placed a photo on the table.
It was a picture of a television screen showing a weather forecast commercial. But where the host should have been, the screen was filled with blood-red text, clearly marking a date and a set of coordinates. At the end, the word 'Market' was written in blood.
"This bloody text appears during the evening weather forecast every day, but no one else in my house can see it. To them, it's just the host. I believe this is a message left specifically for players."
"There's an organized group of players using television to send messages to other players and set up a trading market. But the exact situation there is completely unknown. I think we need to be very careful if we're going to investigate. There might be traps."
As Maki said this, she took another sip of coffee, her expression growing a bit more solemn.
"Another thing. I believe the Shijo family—no, it should be the Shinomiya family—has a player operating behind the scenes. My great-aunt was able to change her clothes without being noticed because she was alone indoors, but in my case, a lot of people saw me. As a result, a guest from the Shinomiya family came to our house last night. He seemed like an ordinary person, but I noticed his shadow was abnormal, as if he had two of them."
"My parents rarely entertain people from the Shinomiya family, but they were very welcoming to him. And that person seemed very interested in me, asking me a lot of questions. Some were normal, about my grades and school life, but others were strange. He asked if I felt relaxed, if the house felt crowded, or if I felt a sense of power surging through my body—all very odd questions. I suspect this might have been some kind of test, so I did my best to pretend I didn't know anything. As for my clothes, I just said I'd accidentally fallen in the activity room and gotten them dirty. I just don't know if that tactic worked."
A player secretly active in the Shinomiya family?
This piece of information made Kaguya's brows furrow tightly.
"If we're going to investigate that underground market, I'm afraid I won't be able to go. I'm under very strict supervision and can't leave the house easily, let alone go to such a suspicious place. This means that if you're going to investigate, it will have to be just you and Gao-kun."
After a moment of thought, Kaguya sighed and looked at the two of them as she spoke.
"I know. Hai-kun and I will investigate it together. We'll bring the Obsession Items, so I think we'll be able to fight back even if we encounter danger. Besides, with the physical abilities from this so-called A-rank evaluation, if we run into those two from the Shirakawa Apartments again, I'm absolutely confident I could take them on."
Maki let out a soft huff, a look of slight pride on her face.
In the end, after exchanging information and having Gao Hai retrieve the Obsession Items that were difficult to carry, the three of them left the private room.
Gao Hai noticed that all the other private rooms around theirs were empty and had 'Reserved' signs on them. He figured it was either Maki's or Kaguya's idea to prevent anyone from eavesdropping.
The real world, which he had thought would be more relaxed, didn't seem so easygoing after all.
Due to her strict family upbringing, Kaguya had to leave first and return to her grand mansion.
After Maki and Gao Hai saw her off, the former stomped her foot lightly, her gaze darting between the sky and the ground. She seemed somewhat uncomfortable but remained silent, stubbornly refusing to be the first to speak.
"So, want to take a walk and chat? I think this is the first time we've been together like this without having to worry about survival, right? And by the way, your outfit today is quite pretty."
Then, Gao Hai, standing beside her, turned his head and smiled at the girl. His eyes swept over Maki's casual dress, and after a moment's thought, he gave her a thumbs-up in praise.
"Your way of complimenting people is so old-fashioned. And instead of thinking about things like that, you should be thinking about what preparations we need to make before we investigate that abandoned underground plaza in three days. It's definitely not a place we can just walk in and out of."
Maki shot Gao Hai another sidelong glance, her words still carrying a sharp edge, but the corners of her mouth had already unconsciously curved into a slight smile, clearly showing she was a little happy.
"Good point. Then how about we check out the nearby shops? We should at least pick up some useful items. Let's see... like flashlights?"
Gao Hai thought for a moment and offered a suggestion.
"If that's really a player gathering place, ordinary items without supernatural power will be useless. But, you managed to come up with an idea, so I guess you deserve some praise for that. Fine, let's go have a look."
Maki mumbled as she nodded lightly, as if she were trying to convince herself with those words.
Then, she took a few steps toward the side of the street.
"What are you spacing out for? The great lady of the Shijo family is personally accompanying you on a shopping trip. Hurry up, you idiot."
She then turned her head and chided Gao Hai, who was following behind her, with some dissatisfaction.
"Hahaha, as you wish, my lady."
Hearing her slightly imperious yet endearing voice, Gao Hai couldn't help but chuckle quietly, quickening his pace to walk alongside Maki.
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