Ch.396IF Side Story: Seems I’ve Arrived a Bit Early (93)

“…Strange. I don’t feel anything.”

Yuka muttered.

I felt the same way.

The chill I usually felt when near yokai wasn’t there now.

Though I could feel the winter cold.

There were many people around.

“…”

Yuka frowned as she stared up at the apartment building for a while.

“What is it?”

“No, it’s not just strange that we can’t feel anything. The place is bigger than usual, there are more people, and above all, the person who requested us was different… Though they are government people.”

“You’re saying it’s different from usual.”

“That’s right.”

In this world, the government usually falls into two categories.

People who seem powerful, but when a fight breaks out, they get torn apart from all sides.

Or those who are incredibly strong, and because of that, they don’t really care what happens below them. They let things happen because they think they can resolve anything whenever they want.

Either way, they end up being caught off guard and things explode in the same clichéd manner.

“We couldn’t refuse, could we?”

“…”

Yuka gave a bitter smile at my words. That smile was answer enough.

Right.

Either way, the government in this world couldn’t be purely good.

“…Let’s go.”

“Yeah. Though I don’t know what those people want.”

Yuka said, looking at the armed forces surrounding the area.

Just in case, Yuka swung her sword in the air, but unlike when we usually enter a nest, the air didn’t split open.

Yuka shook her head, then took the lead.

Click.

The door didn’t open. She turned around with a dissatisfied expression, but the police didn’t seem to know anything either, just standing outside the police line.

Passersby looked at us with interest.

“…Let’s finish this as quickly as possible and leave.”

“Yeah.”

Yuka muttered, and I nodded to her.

There were no open doors on the ground floor.

We went up one floor. The upper floor was mostly the same.

Still, there were about two rooms that were open.

One room—there were signs that someone lived there. Actually, rather than signs, the lived-in feeling was so strong that I wondered if we should even enter. However, since the police didn’t say anything this time either, we went in feeling a bit guilty.

There was nothing special in the refrigerator or closet. The resident seemed to be male.

“…”

With very uncomfortable expressions, we looked around the room and stomped on the floor. There was nothing unusual.

We quickly left that room and went to the next one.

It was open too, but this one was just an empty room with absolutely nothing in it. There wasn’t even anything worth examining closely. The dust piled high on the floor made it clear that the room had been abandoned for a long time.

The remaining two rooms were locked again.

“…Should we break down the doors?”

“It would be nice if they told us something.”

“No, those people probably don’t know either. No one else can enter the nest like we can, right?”

True, even if they went in, they’d have almost no means to respond. My blood went beyond just being disliked by yokai—when applied to a blade, it could cut yokai decisively like Yuka’s sword, so it was a means to fight. But for other people, it’s almost impossible to harm yokai with guns.

Conversely, yokai can kill humans, which is so unfair.

“Hmm.”

Yuka thought for a moment, then went to the end of the second floor.

“Ah, here.”

There was a very small gap at the end.

It was barely a staircase, but there was a very narrow metal ladder, perhaps for maintaining the inside of the roof.

“…Should we go up?”

“Well, they wanted us to investigate this place, so I think we should go.”

When I muttered, Yuka answered like that.

We nodded to each other.

What are we even doing here?

The sun was already setting. When it gets dark, people might pay less attention to us.

“Can you see?”

When I asked Yuka,

“There’s hardly any light so I can’t see well, but I can still see something. There’s some space too… Do you want to come up and look?”

Yuka poked her head toward me and whispered unnecessarily quietly.

I followed her without a word.

After climbing up and looking inside, it was indeed dark.

“…Do you have a flashlight?”

“No.”

Yuka answered my question.

“Ah, right.”

I took out my phone from my pocket and held it up.

It didn’t have a flash like smartphones that would become popular 20 years from now, but the light from the phone screen was better than nothing.

In a very dark place, even this much light can be quite intense—

“Sniff.”

“…”

—At the end of that ‘quite intense’ light.

Both of us froze simultaneously when we saw what was there.

“Sniff sniff!”

Had it heard our voices? That huge mass of flesh—like a human nose torn off—was pointing its nostrils toward us.

It was grotesque in many ways, wriggling and carefully approaching us.

Yuka and I looked at each other simultaneously.

And then, we moved slowly.

With no ears either, it seemed to sense sound… in a different way. At least it didn’t seem to know we were watching it.

I don’t know what that thing is. Honestly, just looking at it gave me goosebumps in a different way.

Is it a yokai? It doesn’t feel like it… Maybe a different type of yokai?

No, honestly.

To be honest, if I were my usual self, I would have just run away. If I hadn’t been assigned this job, if Yuka wasn’t beside me. I would have run away first, then convinced myself I had seen wrong.

Or maybe I wouldn’t have come in here in the first place.

…I pondered once more how absurd it is to be consumed by the extraordinary.

Slowly rising, walking together with our waists deeply bent.

Creak.

“Sniff?”

The nose stopped at the rather loud sound.

Yuka and I stopped too.

It wasn’t so much that the nose was scary—how should I put it.

Is it okay to move like this?

There’s a legend about old Japanese apartments where someone screamed from the other side when a thumbtack was stuck in the wall. Even if it’s not that extreme—

“Run!”

Yuka shouted.

We both jumped toward the nose at the same time.

“Snort!?”

Surprised, the nose took a deep breath and tried to turn and run, but—

“Ah.”

I made that sound as I felt the floor give way beneath my feet.

We’re in trouble.

The ceiling we were standing on collapsed.

Yuka and I screamed as we fell down.

Thud!

My body hurts. It doesn’t seem like anything is broken, but still.

As I was getting up, I saw the nose illuminated by the sunset light coming through the window.

It was flattened. It seems a wooden board had fallen on top of it.

Does it not have a skeleton?

But before I could think about that, I was already rushing toward the nose.

“Sniff! Sniff sniff!”

The nose made those sounds as it struggled.

“Ow ow ow…”

Yuka, who had unfortunately fallen on top of a refrigerator, grabbed her waist and staggered to her feet.

“Uh… hmm.”

She made an indescribable expression as she looked at the nose, about the size of my head, struggling in my grasp.

“…”

The situation was, should I say, funny?

But before I could think that, the place we were in wasn’t very amusing.

Everything around us was wrapped in plastic. The floor, the windows, the walls. And underneath, there were dark red things painted all over, and various drawings on the floor. With that dark red substance.

And in my hand—

“Kyaaaah!”

I almost dropped what I was holding at that scream.

Chomp.

“Ouch!?”

And then I finally dropped it.

It had bitten my finger.

“Kotone!?”

The ‘thing’ that fell to the floor rolled around once, then bounced and tried to escape somewhere.

I lunged again and caught it.

What had been a giant nose was now covered in something black…

It looked like hair.

No, it was hair.

“Kyaaaah!”

It screamed again and gnashed its teeth. As if trying to bite my hand.

Shing.

I heard a sound from behind. It was Yuka drawing her sword.

“Yuka, wait, just wait!”

I shouted without thinking and hid the ‘head’ from Yuka.

I don’t know why I did that. Maybe, perhaps, because the expression on that ‘face’ looking at me seemed like it desperately wanted to live.

“…”

So if it had wanted to bite me, it probably could have. Even through thick clothes, it might have been able to bite if it really tried.

“Kotone?”

Yuka looked at me incredulously.

“Did you see what that thing looks like before saying that?”

…I saw it.

Of course.

It looked like my face.

“…”

I lowered my gaze to look at it.

The thing I had somehow tightly embraced was looking up at me with wide eyes.

I don’t know if those are real eyes. Maybe it thought changing its expression was an effective survival strategy.

But even so.

Those eyes looking up were so pitiful.

“…”

Ah, damn it.

Yes, even a dog that has bitten someone to death might evoke similar feelings when it looks up like this. But right now—

“…Yuka—”

I was about to raise my head to call Yuka, when,

“Yuka!?”

I ended up screaming.

The refrigerator Yuka had fallen on had its door slightly open.

And its ‘contents’ were flowing out.

Something like meat wrapped in plastic.

But among them, there was something that hadn’t been properly wrapped.

It was stretching out and rising up.

By the time Yuka turned around, it was already trying to pounce on her, but.

Whoosh.

The hair of the thing in my arms moved faster than that.

The long black hair, moving like extended flesh, met with the stretched thing behind Yuka and stuck to it.

That mass of flesh that had been moving on its own soon became one with the face in my arms, and just hung down like normal hair.

“…”

Yuka and I stared at the head with our mouths agape.

“Woo?”

It murmured.

It was such a harmless-sounding noise.

And above all, because that voice sounded so much like mine.

I had no idea how to react again.