"Very good. Then let's do that. Mr. Green, you know perfectly well that we can't kill you. A dead person in this place turns into a horrifying anomaly. But you've committed a grave mistake—one that makes it impossible for us to trust you. So now you have two choices. Either you go into your room alone, and we'll destroy the lock—so even if you can pick locks, you'll never be able to open that door again. From that point on, you can either stay inside, or break your own door down. Of course, no one will help you repair it."
As she spoke, Kaguya stood up and walked over to Green.
"Or, you can prove to me that you won't make another mistake. Words won't do for this kind of proof—it has to be an act. So, hold out your left hand and hand over your pinky. If you can manage not to scream, then I'll believe you still have some guts left—and that you still deserve to be of use to me."
By the end, Kaguya's cold voice carried a suffocating sense of danger.
Knowing what was about to happen, Maki frowned, covered the bandages on her head, and turned to leave the living room—like Yamamoto Hiroshi before her, she couldn't bear to watch.
Meanwhile, Takumi, who had a heavier taste, silently admired Kaguya's queenly aura while regretting that he didn't have popcorn in hand. He thought that watching a yakuza-style finger-cutting scene while eating something sweet would have been quite something. Of course, Takumi wasn't some bloodthirsty pervert—he preferred pure romance stories even when browsing dam sites—but since this guy's earlier antics had nearly gotten everyone killed, seeing him suffer now simply felt satisfying.
There was no need to describe what came next in detail.
Knowing there was no third option, Green, his face ashen, held out his left hand.
The sharp knife swung down in one clean stroke, slicing off Green's left pinky finger.
Of course, though the man desperately wanted to suppress his scream, the intense pain forced his mouth open in a silent howl.
But before any sound could escape, Kaguya's kick struck his neck with such force it nearly cracked bone, driving his scream back down his throat.
"Bandages and iodine are both here. Dress it yourself. The next exploration will begin in one hour. This time, you'll stand guard at the kitchen door. If there's another situation where the clock needs to be turned, you'd better not disappoint me again."
Leaving those words behind, Kaguya turned and walked out of Room 206's living room.
Takumi, who had been watching the whole scene like a spectator, left as well—partly because he disliked the smell of blood and partly because he was irritated by Green's whimpering.
'So she really did make him cut his finger, huh? Guess that's exactly what Oba-san would've done…'
Seeing the expression on Kaguya's face as she came out, Maki immediately guessed what had happened inside and shook her head with a sigh.
"Maki, you're sure your wound's all right?"
Following behind her, Takumi asked again about her injury, and she repeated her same answer: "I'm fine."
Takumi walked over to the front door just as Yamamoto Hiroshi came out of the bathroom. Judging by his expression, he must have just gone to release some stress, though he still looked grim—apparently, that kind of pressure wasn't so easily relieved.
"That foreign guy… he really cut it off?"
Nervously suppressing his fear, Yamamoto finally asked Takumi in a low voice.
"Yeah. After pulling a stunt that stupid, letting him off easy would've been the real problem."
Takumi spoke without reservation. Having no moral scruples about such things, he didn't feel any discomfort at all about Green cutting off his finger in atonement—in fact, he faintly thought that maybe one finger wasn't enough; two more would've been better.
"Ah… how did things end up like this? We'd just managed to gather everyone together, trying to find a way to survive and escape…"
Yamamoto sighed heavily, his expression filled with mixed feelings.
"There's no helping it. That Green guy's obviously some street thug or gangster type. Words like morality or honor don't work on people like him. Only when he really feels pain will he learn who he should listen to."
Knowing Yamamoto still couldn't quite accept what had happened, Takumi thought for a moment and explained a bit further. The fat man might not be able to run or jump, and he ate too much, but his skills with electrical circuits, mechanical locks, and simple carpentry were genuinely valuable. He couldn't be left stewing in confusion; someone had to make him understand how things really worked here.
"I get that… sigh, people really do like to make trouble for themselves even when they're alive and well."
Yamamoto said nothing more, shaking his head as he left, sighing under his breath.
An hour later, the bloodstains in the living room had mostly been cleaned up. For safety reasons, the severed finger had been returned to Green's own room. As for the door lock, it would only be reinstalled after the next exploration—both to prevent him from doing anything foolish again, and to make him fully realize that if he acted up once more, he wouldn't survive.
[Creak—]
The wooden boards covering the hole were lifted again.
Takumi looked down and saw one pale figure after another raising their heads toward him.
"They're still down there."
He turned to Maki, who was standing guard in the kitchen, and spoke.
"Takumi-kun, if those things are still there, then… maybe we should—"
Maki hesitated. Although they had already discussed all the details of the second exploration, now that it was time to actually move, she still couldn't bring herself to want Takumi taking such a risk.
"I know. But this is still the best option we've got. And don't forget—our Mr. Green still needs to redeem himself. I've got to give him a chance, don't I?"
As he said this, Takumi smiled and teased Green, who stood not far away at the kitchen doorway, looking pale and weak, his left hand wrapped in bandages. Then he turned back toward the gaping hole in the floor before him.
Letting Takumi handle the second exploration again was, indeed, an unavoidable decision.
According to their original plan, it should have been Maki or Kaguya going down this time.
But because of Green's self-serving stunt, Maki had been injured and was temporarily unfit for action. Kaguya, on the other hand, could no longer bring herself to trust that man. To keep an eye on this 1.9-meter-tall brute, the one with the highest combat ability had to stay behind—and that meant Kaguya. Yamamoto Hiroshi, meanwhile, was the team's logistics man, good only for "delivering snacks" to the Horror Story creatures downstairs. In the end, Takumi was the only one left to descend once more.
"Don't worry. Didn't we already go over the reasoning together? The floor below is dangerous, yes, but as long as it's during exploration, theoretically there shouldn't be a problem. All right, I'm heading out—we can't waste time, can we?"
Turning to give Maki one last smile, Takumi tugged the rope tied around his waist, then closed his eyes and jumped straight down through the hole in the floor.
[Splash—]
With a clear sound of falling into water, Takumi didn't touch any physical object.
The countless figures standing densely in the water seemed to be nonexistent—untouchable phantoms.
He kept his eyes closed, bracing himself against the wall as he slowly moved toward the kitchen exit.
[Creak—]
With a distinct sound, the kitchen door he had closed earlier slowly opened.
Of course, it wasn't Takumi who opened it; he had merely walked up to it when the door swung open on its own.
No attack occurred.
Even as he stepped into the living room, reached the open doorway, and walked out into the corridor, no assault came. The surroundings were utterly silent except for his own breathing and the gentle splashing of water.
Just as they had deduced from the beginning.
How very familiar this was.
Takumi couldn't help sighing inwardly.
Regarding the situation within Shirakawa Apartments and its shifts across different time periods, through their deductions from the clues so far, Takumi, Kaguya, and Maki had managed to piece together several ideas.
The earliest phase that existed was the period before Shirakawa Apartments experienced any anomalies—or at least before any abnormalities became known to the outside world. At that time, Shirakawa Apartments was still a normal place within the real world, directly connected to the outside.
The most straightforward proof of this was the newspaper report about the government's evacuation of Shirakawa's residents during the flood. It could thus be confirmed that the transition of the apartments from normalcy to abnormality occurred during that very evacuation. More precisely, it happened at the moment when rescue personnel were evacuating the residents of Room 304—just as they were about to take them out of the building. That was when this old apartment underwent a terrifying transformation, becoming an eerie domain that would from then on draw people from all over the world into it out of nowhere.
Room 304 was the origin of it all.
As for who had lived in that room, Takumi couldn't make a definitive judgment, but he believed it was a married couple, with at least one child—a girl, very young. And it was highly likely that she had suffered inhuman abuse, such as… being scalded with boiling water.
The child is the taboo of the Shirakawa Apartments—perhaps referring to the residents of Room 304, or rather, to that family's child.
Among the rescue team members who came to evacuate the residents of the Shirakawa Apartments, quite a number never managed to leave the building successfully. They were trapped on the first floor and became part of the apartment itself. Now it seemed that these rescuers had basically lost their humanity and sense of self, yet retained a certain degree of instinct and intelligence.
Therefore, when Takumi explored outward from the kitchen, his actions resembled those of the residents who had once been evacuated. At that time, he would not be attacked; even if anomalies appeared, they were generally harmless phenomena. However, when he tried to turn back and return indoors, the anomalies formed by those rescuers began to manifest. Whether it was the wall of people blocking him in the dark or that final voice that spoke, it was obvious that these anomalies were trying to prevent Takumi from going back inside, from returning to the second floor.
However, for the anomalies within the Shirakawa Apartments to take effect, interaction was indispensable. Thus, aside from that final voice—which caught Takumi off guard due to his inexperience with such phenomena and caused him to fall victim—the earlier wall of people, no matter how crowded, could not truly stop him.
Yet considering that had been the first manifestation of the first-floor anomaly, this time, if he went down again, returning would not be so easy.
But Takumi had already prepared himself for the possibility of not coming back.
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