All of it happened within no more than two seconds.
Yoshino Rika only had time to let out a despairing scream. The next moment, together with the trash bin, she was flung into the air and sent flying by Takumi, thrown rolling toward one side of the classroom.
A bone-chilling cold followed immediately afterward. Even in the darkness, before Rika could see anything, the intense premonition of death had already made her understand that the Big Bad Wolf hidden in the darkness had appeared and was moving toward her to take her life.
'Am I going to die?'
In midair, the girl widened her eyes and saw only the man wearing the eerie sheep head, who looked extremely terrifying, and Yotsuya Miko, who was smiling at her with an innocent expression.
Is she smiling at me?
For a moment, Rika fell into a slight daze.
Boom!
A blood-red glow leaked from the eyes of the sheep head.
Amid a violent explosive sound, the sheep-headed man stomped down with one foot, actually crushing the entire classroom floor beneath him.
With a roaring crash, large chunks of rubble, along with the desks and chairs of the classroom, were thrown into the air before falling back down.
And under the faint light of the candle, Takumi could already see the shadow of a huge wolf moving among the rubble, see that thing approaching in Rika's direction.
'I can only see the shadow, but Miko can see the form of that thing. So could it be that the thing is merely invisible? Even if it has no visible form, perhaps it can still be touched—or even restrained and injured?'
Takumi stepped forward.
At this moment he had already pushed the power of the blessing to its limit. His physical abilities had reached a level absolutely impossible for humans, so in an instant he rushed to where the wolf's shadow had appeared and reached out to grab the air in front of him.
He could feel that he had grabbed something.
Rough—like some kind of animal's fur.
The thing was quite enormous. Judging by the force needed with both hands, its body length was at least over three meters, already the size of a lion or tiger—or even larger.
And its strength was truly immense. From the feeling, this thing's power was at least several tons, wasn't it?
"Get the hell out of here!"
In the next moment, Takumi directly hurled that thing away.
The intense aberrant aura stimulated his senses. He could feel that the invisible Big Bad Wolf was an extremely terrifying aberration. If a direct confrontation truly broke out, he might not necessarily be able to gain the upper hand against that ghostly thing. However, the monster had absolutely no intention of attacking Takumi. It seemed that all of its attention was focused on Rika, whose candle had gone out. Therefore, after being flung away by Takumi, it immediately rushed again toward the girl's position.
However, this time the thing stopped halfway through its charge.
Because Takumi had already picked up Rika's extinguished candle and relit it with his own candle.
Within the candlelight, the enormous shadow halted its steps, as if hesitating for a moment, then rushed toward the candle in Takumi's hand—the one that belonged to Rika.
But Takumi had no intention of giving it the chance to return to the candle. He placed the candle onto his watch, and the burning red candle instantly disappeared. As a result, the giant wolf's shadow halted once more. This time the thing stiffened in place as if it had crashed. The shadow cast by the candlelight trembled violently for a long while, then suddenly shattered apart and vanished just like that.
"When it's something tied to your life, you must protect it well."
Only then did Takumi turn around. He took the candle out again and handed it back to Rika, who was sitting on the ground beside him.
"Oh… oh…"
The girl took the candle, her expression still blank, as if she had not fully come back to her senses.
Just now, Takumi had fully activated his blessing, stomped the ground hard enough to shatter it, then grappled in midair with something invisible. While flinging it away, he used the force to propel himself toward Rika. Mid-flight he reached out and grabbed Rika's fallen, extinguished candle, then after landing quickly lit it. The entire process was completed in one continuous motion, lasting only three or four seconds, to the point that Rika—who had been violently thrown to the ground—had not understood what had happened at all.
"Once its action rules conflicted and it could no longer continue, it simply dissipated. It seems this thing has no true body—it's only a derivative aberration."
After handing the candle to Rika, Takumi no longer paid attention to her reaction. He merely looked thoughtfully toward the direction where the giant wolf had disappeared.
Takumi had mainly dealt with this kind of derivative aberration in the Shirakawa Apartments before—the invisible debt collector and the clean porcelain doll. These things were not aberrations formed from dead people. Rather, they were derivative aberrations born from distortions of the aberration's memories from before death. This type of aberration has no true body. Like an illusory dream, if one finds a way to jam their action rules, they can easily crash and stop functioning, or even be directly destroyed.
At present, the Big Bad Wolf—the aberration that, judging from the current situation, seems to be hidden inside every candle—could now be confirmed to be a derivative aberration. The question was that derivative aberrations inevitably originate from the memories and experiences of some aberration that has become one of the dead. What kind of person's experiences would produce such a strange derivative aberration?
Perhaps it was that Alice.
Thinking this, Takumi looked at Miko, who was standing not far ahead, on one side of the collapsed corridor.
No, that was no longer Miko.
Takumi was not quite sure exactly when she had become like this. By the time he noticed, her state had already become wrong. And right now, in order to resist the erosion of the sheep-head hood, he could not remove the Rescue Team Badge at all. Unable to think of any other method, Takumi could only probe her carefully. It was not until just now, when Rika's candle was blown out, that Takumi realized Miko's current condition no longer allowed him to keep observing, which was why he had decisively taken action.
[Teacher, why are you helping someone else light a candle?]
Miko, holding an umbrella, tilted her head curiously and asked Takumi.
"You're Alice, right?"
Takumi merely frowned and stared at her as he asked in an even tone.
[Wow, Teacher is so smart, but I'm Yotsuya Miko from Class 15, Year Two, not Alice. If it's Alice, she's right here. I'll let her talk to Teacher now~]
Miko smiled, reached up, grabbed her own head, and twisted it straight off, turning the back of her head toward Takumi.
A woman's face—bloody, as if it had been cut off alive—thus emerged from beneath Miko's hair and smiled at Takumi.
[Teacher, why are you helping someone else light a candle?]
That human face asked the same question.
So beautiful.
That was Takumi's first reaction after seeing that human face.
Such a lovely, such a beautiful face.
That voice was like heavenly music. Just hearing it made him feel as though his entire being had been redeemed.
'How did such a cute… fucking ghostly thing attach itself to Miko? Why did I not notice at all? Wait, my senses were deceived. I never put that umbrella back into the watch at all. In other words, is the problem with that umbrella? Tch, so that umbrella originally had some kind of connection to this Instance? But how could the Women-Face Gang possibly obtain an Obsession Item from a Red Moon-level Instance? And the strength of that Obsession Item is completely wrong too. An Obsession Item from a Dark Night-level Instance becomes ineffective after only a few uses, which proves that the black umbrella Obsession Item should be Dusk-level. So how did a Dusk-level Obsession Item end up connected to a Red Moon-level Instance?!'
At that moment, Takumi had many, many questions he wanted to ask.
But in the end, he merely took a deep breath and, while stepping backward, cautiously sensed the situation around him.
Alice possessed the ability to deceive the senses. From now on, he had to raise his vigilance to the utmost and could not fall for this thing's trick again.
A drop of cold sweat had already slid down Takumi's forehead.
Facing this extremely bizarre Alice, whose existence contained many incomprehensible aspects, Takumi felt extremely tense deep inside. Yet soon, he could not help but feel somewhat puzzled. He realized that he did not seem to sense from Alice the terrifying aura that only an Instance's core obsession could possess—the kind of heavy pressure that could make people feel incomparably dreadful merely by looking at its existence or merely by knowing its name.
Right now, he was focusing very intently on his own senses. Therefore, he truly was not feeling the kind of aura that only a core obsession should possess.
Did this Alice have some method of concealing her aura?
Or was this thing really not the core obsession of Fujihana Middle School?
No, putting that aside—was Alice even an aberration at all?
She understood how to hide. She deceived. She schemed. She set traps. She had even organized the Alice Game, that aberrant game filled with deadly dangers everywhere. She was too much like a human—far too much like a human. Could it be that, like Kyosei, Howard, Wilbur, and Vernon, she was someone who survived within the Instance with a human will and aberrant power?
Thinking about it that way seemed somewhat reasonable. But even so, it still felt far too outrageous. When Kyosei was still maintaining his clarity, he still had to return to the first floor every weekend to join the ranks of the rescue-team aberrations. As for Wilbur, the moment he saw Takumi he directly launched a pursuit to kill him. These existences that still retained a certain aspect of humanity were in fact unable to defy the instincts of their aberrant side. But this Alice—she was practically like a superpowered individual. There was no sign that she was constrained by any aberrant rules. Instead, it seemed as if she completely controlled aberrant power. Was she truly an aberration? What exactly was she? Why was she completely different from every aberration encountered so far? What exactly were the patterns and limitations governing her actions?
[Teacher, why aren't you speaking? Did Alice make Teacher feel troubled?]
Amid soft laughter, that thing had already emerged from Miko's body.
It was a piece of human skin.
From the cheeks, to the body, to the limbs—bloody human skin that had been peeled off.
The umbrella that Miko had been holding no longer had its canopy. And on that human skin attached to Miko, traces of black paint could still be seen.
Was it a human-skin umbrella? In other words, did the Obsession Item, the black umbrella, actually originate from Alice's skin?
Takumi frowned slightly. He saw the bloody knife marks on the human skin, and… some traces that looked like carved writing.
Words had been carved into that human skin. Those words could not be seen when it was in the form of the black umbrella, but after the thing reverted to a human-skin aberration, they appeared.
Those words read:
[I love you, Alice. You are the flame that ignites my soul.]
[My guardian angel, my only dream—you are my everything.]
[Please accept my love, Alice. Please stay by my side forever.]
[My savior, my god—even if you have already died, I will keep you. I will keep you forever.]
There were four different sets of handwriting in total.
They seemed to come from four different people. What kind of people had peeled off Alice's skin and left such words upon it?
Earlier, in the classroom of Class 1, Takumi had also seen an illusion scene similar to what had happened with Miko. He already knew that Alice had appeared abruptly after the twelve students of Year Two, Class 1 had killed one another until none remained alive, becoming the thirteenth person in that class. Therefore, in one of Takumi's conjectures, Alice might not have been human from the very beginning, but rather an aberration that had been created. However, this human-skin umbrella and the writing on it now overturned that idea. Alice seemed to have truly existed as a living person, and had already died, with her skin peeled off and made into the umbrella.
[Don't be afraid, Teacher. Alice won't hurt you. Alice will always be Teacher's good student.]
While Takumi was thinking, the composite formed by Miko and that female human skin had already taken a step toward him.
"What exactly are you?"
After remaining silent for a moment, Takumi finally decided to try communicating with the other side and asked.
[Alice is just Alice~]
The human skin swayed slightly, and Miko's head—already twisted off—swayed slightly along with it.
[Oh, I understand now. Teacher finds it strange—why I'm so special, right?]
Then, as if only now understanding Takumi's words, Miko lightly clapped her hands once, and the shriveled hands of that human skin also clapped once.
[To be honest, Alice herself isn't very sure either.]
[Alice's mother told Alice many times that Alice's father was actually a very good foreigner. She even took Alice to a very beautiful big airport several times, saying she would take Alice to find her father.]
[But every time, Alice and her mother were driven out by the soldier uncles at the gate. They didn't welcome Alice. They all said that Mother was a liar. Then when Mother returned home, she would beat Alice—she beat Alice very hard, very hard. Every time Alice would cry and beg Mother not to hit her anymore, but she just wouldn't listen.]
[Then, after that, Mother stopped giving Alice food and wouldn't let Alice come home anymore. So Alice could only pick food from the garbage heaps. But the garbage heaps at the airport had lots of delicious things. Those soldier uncles often threw away food after eating only half of it, so Alice was rarely hungry.]
[Alice had originally thought that Mother had already abandoned her. But one day Mother came back to find Alice again, bathed her, and bought her new clothes. Alice felt that Mother must have missed her. Next, she would surely be able to live together with Mother again. But Mother said that Alice was going to study at Fujihana Middle School, saying that all the older brothers and sisters here liked Alice. Mother brought Alice here and then left. Mother was also wearing new clothes, and the house had bought a lot of new furniture. Alice had originally wanted to live at home, but the school required students to live on campus. Waaa… what a pity.]
[However, life at school is also very happy. Everyone here is very, very kind, and Alice is living happily here as well. Moreover, every day the Principal comes to see me. He always smiles at me and says that I must grow up quickly, that I must grow up well. And then, and then, one day, the Principal took Alice to the basement. He said that he wanted to inherit Grandpa Fujii's aspirations, that he wanted to complete the unfulfilled wishes of those who came before, and that Alice was his hope…]
Sentence by sentence, Alice slowly walked until she was only five or six meters away from Takumi, speaking leisurely like this.
The eye sockets of the human skin opened. Inside there was only bloody flesh, yet Takumi felt as though a pair of eyes were staring at him.
Then the human skin suddenly stopped and no longer continued the narration. It tilted its head again and spoke once more with a faintly hopeful tone. Its hands were clasped together and raised, as if expressing its own sense of anticipation.
[Alice heard that as long as you tell your story to others, the person who listens to the story becomes your friend. Teacher has listened to Alice say so much, so has Teacher already become Alice's friend?]
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