"Takumi-san, would you mind if I asked you a question?"
Kaguya, sitting not far from him, suddenly spoke up.
"What question?"
Takumi first turned his head toward Kaguya, confirming that it was indeed her speaking and not something imitating her voice, before he opened his mouth to reply.
"You like Maki a lot, don't you? Do you have feelings for her?"
The next moment, Kaguya's calm, level voice made Takumi freeze in place.
What kind of strange question was that? Was this really the set of a Horror Story of Rules and not some dating-sim scenario?
Or was she perhaps trying to ease the tension that had built up over the past two days with a question like this?
Takumi couldn't quite figure out why Kaguya would ask something like that.
But answering it was actually easy enough—questions like these never troubled him.
"Of course I like her. How could I not like such a cute girl?"
"My liking for Maki, you see, is the kind where I want to marry her—take her home and make her my wife."
Takumi's tone was utterly serious, without a trace of joking.
"R-really? It's gotten to that extent?"
Even the Ice Princess Kaguya, in her composed state, clearly found herself a bit flustered by such an answer; there was a faint quiver in her voice.
"Of course it was true."
"Just like how I'll always love Laffey, Yukikaze, Akashi, Amiya, Rosemary, Skadi, Artoria, Tohsaka Rin, Illya, Jeanne Alter, Chino Kafuu, Rem, Emilia, Nagisa Furukawa, Mai Sakurajima, Megumi Katō, Eriri, Reimu Hakurei, Kanna, Ruri Gokō, Kurumi Tokisaki, Misaka Mikoto… ah, maybe that's a bit too many to finish listing."
"Ahem, well, that's just my personal beautiful wish. For now, let's focus on surviving first."
Takumi coughed lightly, effectively putting the topic to rest for the time being.
"I see…"
Kaguya also fell silent, seemingly lost in thought. The room then grew completely quiet.
That was how it should have been—quiet.
[BOOM!!!]
A violent explosion suddenly echoed through the second-floor corridor.
Amid the intense rumbling, Takumi was thrown to the floor, while Kaguya, startled, braced herself against the wall and stood up abruptly.
And then, before the two of them could react further, a rapid series of gunshots—"bang, bang, bang, bang!"—rang out from the corridor, accompanied by the sound of someone sprinting past.
Along with it came a sinister, icy presence spreading through the entire second floor.
It was Tanaka.
The instant Takumi heard the explosion, he had already realized what had happened.
That veteran player—the one who, in the previous cycle, had accelerated the first day into a fast-forward, forcing everyone into the most dangerous situation; the one who had been killed by the anomaly that replaced Kaguya's identity on the third floor, dying in a massive explosion—he had actually survived until the second night this time? And now there were explosions and gunfire again—was he planning to draw every anomaly in the building to the second floor?
[Crack—crack, crack, crack—]
The sound of the wall breaking echoed at that moment.
Takumi turned his head and saw cracks spreading across the wall of the living room that faced the same direction as the main door.
Outside came Maki's startled cry and Green's heart-rending scream.
The main door had been blown down?!
Takumi could already hear footsteps rapidly approaching the living room door from the corridor—one after another, sounding like there were at least seven or eight people.
[Thud!]
A dull sound rang out along with the tremor of the floor, and then continued one after another from all directions.
The corpses in every room were each clashing violently with something.
Without a doubt, the countless monstrous movements Takumi had heard on the third floor during the first night of the previous cycle had now shifted to the second floor.
If that was the case, this door wouldn't be able to hold.
"Kaguya-san!"
In that fleeting instant of a few seconds, Takumi shouted toward the girl in the room without the slightest hesitation.
No further words were needed.
With just that single call, Kaguya immediately understood what Takumi meant.
She reached out her hand.
Grasped the clock's pointer.
Without any hesitation, Kaguya turned the hand of the clock.
[Click!]
With a crisp sound, Takumi opened his eyes to see that the light outside the window had almost vanished; darkness had already partially engulfed the surroundings.
Time had been rewound to around 18:00 in the evening.
Pale-faced, Kaguya stepped aside from the wall clock lying on the floor—clearly, in her sight, that clock had already become something terrifying.
Takumi had no time to worry about that. He hurriedly opened the living room door, rushed through the corridor, then opened the main door and looked toward the hallway outside.
And there he saw Tanaka, face gloomy, slowly walking down the corridor. Seeing Takumi come out, he only cast him a cold glance, not even bothering to say a word, and just kept walking all the way to the end of the hallway before descending the stairs.
"…"
Takumi stood still without speaking, only watching the man's back as it disappeared.
Just now, when he had been about to say something, he had seen from Tanaka's coat pocket something sticking out—something that looked like a doll or puppet.
At that instant, the moment he sensed the gaze of that doll, Takumi realized that if he had actually spoken just now—if he had said anything that displeased Tanaka—he might have died right there in the corridor.
So that's how it is. The reason he threw the grenade and fired the gun earlier was to drag us into it, forcing us to turn the clock's hand and rewind time, so that he could escape from danger in advance.
His exploration on the third floor must have ended in failure just like in the previous loop. Only this time, since Kaguya hadn't turned into an anomaly, he likely hadn't fallen into immediate danger—just found the situation unfavorable and his actions thwarted.
So this bastard who kept shouting "Don't block my way" actually turns back to mess with other players when things go wrong?
At this moment, Takumi had countless curses bubbling up in his throat, but he had neither a powerful obsession-bound supernatural item nor any offensive weapon like a gun or a grenade. And now that it was getting later and darker, he could only take a deep breath in the direction Tanaka had vanished, then close the door and return to the living room.
This grudge had to be avenged.
If, before this, Tanaka had merely seemed troublesome to Takumi—just some idiot trying to act cool in a Rules-based Horror Story—then now, Tanaka had become the single greatest danger factor in the entire scenario. Takumi had no doubt that this man would continue to stir up more trouble for the group of survivors. As long as someone like him kept surviving inside the instance, everyone's risk level would rise another notch with each passing day.
"We were used, weren't we?"
When Kaguya saw Takumi return to the living room, she softly asked.
"Yeah…"
Seeing that Kaguya had already guessed the truth, Takumi could only give a bitter smile, lean against the wall, and continue resting.
There was Green, useless at crucial moments; Yamamoto Hiroshi, who could only handle logistics; Maeda Miwa, a total deadweight; the Black guy who got sweet-talked into following Tanaka; and that so-called veteran player, Tanaka himself, who did nothing but cause chaos and trouble for everyone…
When counted carefully, among all the supposed teammates in this so-called game, every one of them had problems except for Kaguya and Maki, the two 2D anime girls. And aside from Yamamoto Hiroshi—who was at least honest, easy to communicate with, and capable of offering help—the rest were all complete burdens and troublemakers in every sense of the word.
Come on, just finding clues and reasoning through intel in this deadly Rules-based Horror Story is already hard enough—could you people please stop making it even harder for us?
Takumi wanted to shout that aloud, but in the end, he only let out a silent sigh and closed his eyes to rest as night fell.
That night, Takumi didn't play the role of someone from the past, reliving some event that had once happened.
Because in his dream, there was a little girl standing outside the living room door, quietly crying.
Her sobs were muffled, as if her mouth were covered, so that only faint, stifled weeping could be heard.
Takumi stood before the living room door… No—was this really the living room door? It seemed to be a strange door, one he had never seen before. And she was right outside it, as though waiting for him to open it—as though waiting for him to open this door and bring her inside.
Why would I dream of something like this?
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