"Mm—mm—mm—"
The woman, eyes wide with rage, struggled to rise and fight back. Her strength was considerable—stronger than that of an ordinary adult man—but the power surging continuously through Takumi's body easily suppressed her, pinning her so she couldn't move.
His fist tightened once more.
The woman swung her knife, stabbing toward Takumi's face.
[Thud!]
But Takumi's longer reach meant his fist landed first, driving straight into the woman's left eye, the entire socket turning a bloody red.
Her struggling strength weakened somewhat, yet she still refused to give up and continued to swing the knife.
So Takumi's third punch, fourth punch, fifth punch began to land one after another, each one thrown with all his strength, mercilessly smashing into the woman's face until it was practically split open.
At first, the woman still tried with all her might to fight back.
The small knife cut across Takumi's cheek, slit his ear and arm, leaving several gashes on his body.
In return, Takumi's blows grew even more ferocious, each punch aimed directly at her head, each one landing with a dull, heavy sound.
Soon, the woman's eyes turned glassy, the hand holding the knife dropped, and she collapsed limply to the floor, motionless.
Panting heavily, Takumi grabbed the sharp knife from her hand with his left hand. The moment he held it, a shudder ran through his entire body, and he realized that his clothes had somehow turned into a life jacket. He quickly tore off the badge pinned to his chest.
It seemed to be a scalpel.
Just holding it gave the illusion of seeing a blood-covered doctor leaning over an operating table, cutting something apart with his knife.
He couldn't hold this blade for long—keeping it in hand would disturb his mind.
Realizing this, Takumi carefully brought the knife to the stitches on his mouth and began to cut them open. Fortunately, the thing was extraordinarily sharp; the moment the blade touched a thread, it snapped on its own, so Takumi didn't suffer much pain in the process.
As for the woman lying limp on the ground, Takumi was still a little afraid that after death she might turn into some kind of supernatural creature and come after him. So, out of goodwill, he didn't kill her outright—instead, he severed both of her leg bones, then searched her body again, pulling out a dark-red doll resembling a rag doll. Unsure whether this was another of her Obsession Items, Takumi decided to pocket it first, tucking it into his trousers before unsteadily getting to his feet.
As for the woman who had first pretended to be dead on the floor, then started struggling again when her legs were cut, only to receive a few more punches from Takumi—one could only say that the arrogance she had when she leapt out before was now reduced to the pitiful state of a dead dog.
"Peh! Thought you could swoop in and steal the prize, huh? Hah—damn it, you thought you could take my peach? You got the guts for that? Hah—"
Spitting on the woman and cursing, Takumi then winced from the pain in his injured mouth, turned around, and began to carefully observe the place before him.
It looked like the structure of an ordinary house that had been completely twisted out of shape.
There was no visible light source, yet he could still see the shape of the room—was it because his body had undergone some transformation after putting on the badge?
Takumi noticed that the burns on his body had noticeably subsided; the effect of that badge seemed to be far greater than he had imagined. After putting it on, it could even heal his injuries. However, as the time he wore it lengthened, his sense of self would inevitably begin to transform, so Takumi did not dare to wear it for long and could only move in his current state.
How was he supposed to get out of here?
As he pondered this question, Takumi looked around, his gaze passing over one steaming kettle after another.
And then, he saw something beyond the kettles.
Rising slowly from behind them was a deathly pale woman's face.
The woman held a kettle in one hand and a sewing kit in the other, her bloodless white face expressionless as she stared at Takumi. Her lips slowly began to move.
[Disobedient dog!]
...
It felt as if his consciousness had been torn in two.
Half of himself was trapped inside that twisted, chaotic room—seized by that pale figure, who poured scalding water over him little by little.
The other half stood in the shattered, distorted corridor—within the warped space on the 3rd floor he had once passed through during the first cycle—wearing that filthy life jacket, limping through the ruin with no exit.
The pain gnawed at his will.
The agony of his self being torn apart made his thoughts grow increasingly deranged, as though he had already fallen into madness.
"Huff… ah…"
Takumi knew exactly why this was happening.
After speaking aloud the most central anomaly of Shirakawa Apartments, he had effectively suffered the most severe curse erosion. He was dragged immediately into the 3rd floor of Shirakawa Apartments and very likely… into a certain area within the root itself—Room 304—where he was then subjected to execution by the power of the Horror Story in the form of some re-enactment of the past, about to be killed on the spot.
But he did not die immediately in the end.
Perhaps it was because his willpower truly was strong enough, or perhaps because he had not been killed instantly but was being executed instead, that he managed to regain consciousness for a moment before his final death—and in that crucial instant, he put on the badge.
That rescue team badge could gradually transform him into part of the Horror Story itself, turning him into one of the abnormal components within it—perhaps something akin to the Obsession Items possessed by Tanaka and that woman.
This made Takumi no longer be conceptually judged as human—he no longer met the condition for execution—and thus he temporarily gained the ability to act within that room.
But this could only last for a very short time. He guessed that because he had entered the root area of Shirakawa Apartments, even using an Obsession Item to temporarily alter his identity—like exploiting a corpse-identity bug on the 2nd floor to disguise himself as an anomaly—he would eventually still be recognized. And the result of that recognition was that Takumi seemed to have been torn into two halves—not physically in the real sense, but in some kind of conceptual transformation beyond words.
At this moment, he could clearly perceive the entire process of his execution in that room, the pain of every single moment vividly clear beyond measure.
The Takumi standing in the distorted corridor seemed to be undergoing a deeper level of transformation from the rescue team badge's effect. Even without wearing it anymore, thoughts of going to the first floor to evacuate civilians kept welling up in his mind—as if hundreds of people were chanting inside his head, torturing his senses with ever-growing intensity.
Takumi felt that he was probably about to go insane.
But he was still conscious.
Even though his split mind was on the verge of collapse, at this moment he still managed to remain lucid.
He even had the strength to glance at the veteran player being executed not far away, watching as she was submerged in boiling water amid her despairing screams.
'Am I going to repeat the way I died in the first cycle? No, this seems worse than the first time… Back then, at least I just drowned directly—it only hurt for a few minutes. But this boiling's been going on for more than ten minutes now; why am I still not dead…'
Wanting to make such a complaint, all Takumi managed to let out in the end was a weary breath.
He continued stepping forward down the corridor.
Footsteps sounded beside him; when he turned his head, there was nothing there.
The unseen footsteps went back and forth, yet no form could be seen.
His consciousness seemed to blur again, and then he saw people from all over the world—terrified individuals whose bodies began to fracture, whose minds fell into disarray, who turned into formless things wandering within the apartment. Some acted the role of debt collectors who had come from outside, some the role of enthusiastic neighbors, while others completely lost even the most basic trace of consciousness, shattering entirely to become part of the apartment itself.
"Using actors to reenact the apartment from memory?"
Takumi seemed to understand something.
He had already seen the root, had seen the cause behind the great upheaval of Shirakawa Apartments.
Though he didn't know why a tragedy of domestic violence—something hardly rare—had evolved into such a terrifying power, through his continued observation and exploration, he had gradually come to grasp the underlying logic governing all the apartment's anomalies.
Reenactment, interaction…
Reenacting the past in a distorted, chaotic form; distorting and corrupting through interactive means.
The interaction through spoken dialogue was the strongest in effect—was it because the child's young age made it more inclined toward language?
Reenactment… the memory twisted by the eerie force should serve as the foundation of that reenactment.
If I can maintain my consciousness—and on that basis deepen my connection with the apartment's core taboo, enduring an even stronger corruption—could I obtain deeper information about that taboo? Perhaps even directly comprehend the root of all this?
It sounded promising, but the problem was that he was already close to his limit. Even just staying conscious was almost impossibly difficult; he likely wouldn't have the strength to hold out that long.
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