Volume 3 - CH 3.8

“Stop! Stop it already!” I bellowed. “What’s the point in killing more?!”

Aya twisted around and screamed, screamed in a voice brimming with deep sorrow.

“Because I killed her! I killed my only friend! I killed her! And then she returned. She came back to me! So I have to kill you!”

She howled like a child. The tip of the quivering blade bore into my palm.

“If I don’t, she’ll disappear!” she wailed, weeping. “And I don’t want that! We’ll always be together. Forever. I won’t let her disappear!”

Suddenly, Aya pulled her body back. The blade came off my hand, tearing through flesh. Choking back a scream, I planted my staggering legs firmly on the floor.

Aya gripped the knife with both hands and charged forward. “I made him a promise!”

A promise with the fox.

Just before the tip of the blade touched my stomach, I grabbed Aya‘s arm.

But I was just a little too late. The tip of the knife was buried in my stomach. Hot blood began to soak into my clothes. But the pain spread faster.

“S-Stop,” I mumbled as I felt the dull ache of the child ripping into my gut.

Papa?

“Don’t come out… Uka.”

Desperately, I tried to calm the child in my belly. Fully aware of the risk, I let go of one arm and pressed down hard on my stomach, forcing the fingers back inside.

Please go back to sleep.

Please don’t kill this girl.

I turned to Aya. She put all her strength into the knife. Just before the blade dug deep into the flesh, I kicked her arm. Her fingers released the knife, sending it flying onto the ceiling. Her eyes widened. She moved her empty hand.

“No… No, no, no!”

I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward me. She tried to reach for the knife, but I held her back, wrapping one arm around her slim waist. Aya struggled to free herself.

“You can’t do it?” Aya murmured gently behind her. Her voice was sweet. “Are you going to kill me again?”

But there was not a shred of gentleness in her words.

Aya trembled violently. Hot tears wet my neck.

She threw her head back and screamed. A scream that ruptured her throat, exploding in my ears.

“No… Never!”

Aya watched Aya with a beautiful smile. Chill and disgust crawled down my spine again. The feeling of discomfort reached its peak. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

What the hell is this?

“Aren’t you Aya’s friend? Shouldn’t you be stopping her?!” I roared

Anger burned my gut, and rage turned my vision red.

In the notebook, Aya and her friend lived a happy life. Even if everything was just her imagination, the joy she felt must have been real.

Their happiness lasted. Until death did they part. Until she killed her.

But what is this?

Aya did not respond. Her smile remained. A question sprang in my mind.

Something was terribly wrong.

“Are you even Aya’s best friend?!”

A friend that tells you to kill others is not a friend.

I refused to accept that.

“She is,” answered a cool voice.

Even without looking, I could tell what kind of expression Mayuzumi had on her face.

I was sure she was smiling.

“Odagiri-kun, your words are spot-on, in a way. Gods bring people back to life. But gods do not exist in this world. That’s why creating humans is impossible.”

I could hear paper rubbing against paper.

Mayuzumi twirled her parasol. “You’re just something that looks a lot like Aya’s friend, aren’t you?”

Her parasol turned. Red spun around.

“Why don’t you show us what you really are?”

The room rotated. Space distorted for a moment, like melted candy stirred with a spoon, and then returned to normal. The next moment, Aya’s cheeks melted. Her whole body became flaccid, her clothes were torn, and she lost her human shape. A lump of flesh pooled on the bed like mud.

It squirmed and stuck to the wall.

Aya yelped, all the hair on her body standing on end. The lump of flesh that was Aya crawled along the wall until it found a crack. It pushed its body in, burrowing inside, and disappeared. The door opened, and Higasa, trying to break it down, tumbled in.

“Ow, ow, ow… Wh-What happened?”

Aya’s body became limp. She sank to the floor, stunned.

Her mouth opened. “Noooooooooooooo!”

The windowpane shook violently. Aya tossed her head and screamed, expelling all the air from her lungs. I patted her back to calm her down, but she didn’t stop.

She was just howling at his point.

Her beast-like roar shook the air.

“Where? Where is she?! Where did she go?!”

Aya shook her head and looked around the room. But the missing Aya was nowhere to be seen.

The mass of white flesh had disappeared somewhere.

Her friend was gone.

“Where are you?! Where are you?! Where did you goooooooooo?!”

Blood spilled from her lips; she seemed to have bit her tongue.

I grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “Aya-san! Aya-san!”

Desperately, I called for her name. I could feel a familiar sense of frustration rising.

I couldn’t reach him back then.

I couldn’t let that happen again.

“Please calm down! Please!”

“Nooooo! Where are you?!”

She was coughing up blood.

I held her from behind. I had to tell her.

“Your friend is gone!”

The dead don’t rise from the grave.

She probably killed her mother for her friend.

But she was nowhere to be found.

Her friend was gone.

I held her close as her body loosened up. Her eyes were empty. I shook her, but she did not say anything.

“I want to die,” she suddenly whispered.

There was nothing in her empty mumbling.

Her emotionless whispers were cold. Indifferent. Which made her statement terribly serious.

“I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, I want to die.”

She killed her friend. She killed her mother. And the outcome was her friend, who was supposed to have returned, nowhere to be found.

She had nothing left.

“I want to die.”

That wish was all she had now.

I dreaded it.

“Stop.” My voice was surprisingly shaky. I shook her shoulders again. “Please, anything but that.”

Aya did not shed a single tear. She muttered with dry eyes that she wanted to die. I pressed down hard on my stomach. Tiny fingers stroked my palm. Flesh ripped open and blood spilled onto the floor. But the pain felt distant. Fear overpowered the pain. Her words terrified me. Her offhand murmur rejected everything.

I could extend a hand, but I would never reach her.

“Please, I beg of you. Don’t do it.”

Any word was meaningless to her now. But I repeated them in vain. Every time I heard her wish for death, the wound tore open and blood poured. I forced the child back into my guts.

I didn’t want to see anyone else dying before my eyes.

“Please,” I pleaded. “Don’t.”

I couldn’t think of any other words to say. I just repeated what I said like an idiot. Suddenly, I felt tears running down my cheeks. I wanted to start laughing. Why should I cry? What was the point of crying?

A meaningless act.

But I couldn’t stop. Emotions ran high, and a sense of frustration that even I didn’t understand filled my chest. My tears trickled down Aya‘s neck.

Her gaze shifted. For the first time, her large eyes regarded me.

“Who are you?”

Her voice was still cold. I tried to respond, but I couldn’t get a word out. I didn’t know what to say.

“I… We… were hired by your mother.” I forced the words out of my mouth. “We came here… to help you.”

I was sure that wasn’t Mayuzumi’s intention. But we didn’t come here to make anyone suffer either. I wanted to save as many people as possible from the supernatural. I didn’t want to repeat the mistake I made in the sea.

But a look into her face threw me into the depths of despair.

Aya was broken.

“If you don’t want me to die.” Her voice was terribly cold.

Aya released herself from my grip. Her black eyes, like a lake at night, were perfectly clear. There was no trace of misery in them.

Not even sadness.

Only a faint hint of madness.

“Will you stay with me?”

She killed her friend, killed her mother. And at the end of it all, she was all alone.

“If you don’t want me to die, stay with me,” Aya whispered indifferently.

Her smile said that if I refused, she would bite off her tongue.

She was silent, waiting for my response.

The child inside me thrashed about, causing acute pain. The instinctive fear I once felt returned. Nausea struck, and my throat tightened.

I had seen this look in her eyes before.

“You like me, don’t you, Tsutomu-san?”

Shizuka once asked me that. She was scared of being alone.

Unable to stand the loneliness, she broke down and craved me.

She smiled in her final moments. But the image of her, broken, flashed through my mind.

I pushed her away. Killed her.

Aya reached for me. Her small hand pulled at my sleeve. She was asking if I would help her, and she was waiting for my response. I couldn’t take her hand. It was too much for me to handle.

I couldn’t be her anchor.

Cold sweat trickled down my cheeks. I should have looked away, immediately. Steeling myself, I lifted my head.

And took her hand in mine.

Sharp pain jolted through my wounded palm, but I ignored it and gripped her small hand. I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t abandon this girl, who shared the same eyes as Shizuka. Never again.

I just couldn’t.

If I turned my back here now, I would want to kill myself later.

“You’re showing too much sympathy, Odagiri-kun. Hearing Asato’s name is making you view two completely different things as the same.”

I could hear chocolate snapping. Mayuzumi was probably looking at me with cold eyes. But before I could check, soft, thin arms wrapped around my neck. Slowly, Aya rested her head against me.

It was small, yet too heavy to hold.

But I had to catch her.

“You will regret this,” Mayuzumi declared firmly.

A nostalgic voice, soft and sweet, played in my ears.

“Will you help me?”

I couldn’t rid my head of that voice.

Even when I knew that what awaited me on this path was the abyss.