Ch.6767. Hospital.

# Chapter 67

“Ughhhh…”

When I woke up, my body felt completely stiff.

I threw off the blanket and stretched my arms upward, causing cracking sounds from various parts of my body. The muscle pain was just a bonus.

“Oh my goodness.”

It’s not like sleeping on a hard floor is anything new, but today it feels particularly bad. I guess it’s because I slept somewhere colder than usual. I was shivering even in my sleep.

“Phew… Good morning, everyone. Though it’s too cold to call it entirely good.”

Still, I should be grateful I woke up safely. After moving my body lightly, I turned on the drone to exchange brief greetings with the friends I’d been separated from while sleeping.

[Finally made it outside, congratulations!]

[A city on top of a city on top of a city… I have no idea how it’s all supported.]

“I know, I’m really curious about that too.”

I read the many messages that had arrived while I was sleeping, exchanged some trivial conversation, folded the blanket I’d been using, and neatly fixed my hair that had become quite unruly.

“…I hadn’t noticed because I’ve been too busy to care, but my hair has grown quite a bit.”

I thought my hair had been getting in my eyes more frequently lately, and indeed it had grown quite long. Not surprising since I haven’t touched it for months.

“Hmm…”

My hair, which used to barely reach my shoulders, now extends to the middle of my back.

What should I do with it? Cut it? Leave it as is?

The old me would have cut it short because it gets in the way when moving around, but I seem to have adapted to it, as it’s not as uncomfortable as I thought.

“If I cut it now, I’d probably miss it, and it would be colder, so I’ll just leave it.”

Hair is a kind of fur, isn’t it? It’s already gotten colder, and cutting my hair short would make me feel even colder. I tucked my hair neatly inside my scarf and outer clothing.

Since it’s come to this, I hope it grows as long as willow leaves to keep me warm.

“Hey, you two. Wake up.”

“Ah, yes. Good… morning.”

“Mmmm—”

After finishing my grooming, I shook the two robots who were still lying dazed on the floor.

But the robots’ responses were quite strange. It seemed they had shut down their programs and restarted while I was asleep.

“Looks like you’ve been sleeping too?”

“That’s… correct.”

Robots don’t develop physical problems simply because they don’t sleep like humans.

But when too much data accumulates or when they operate for long periods without powering down, their circuits and components can become overloaded.

Now that there’s no way to repair broken parts—or even materials to do so—the robots periodically shut down and restart their programs to maintain themselves, and it seems today was one of those times.

Unlike the power-saving mode that resembles a short nap with closed eyes, restarting the program takes a considerable amount of time until it fully boots up, and during that time, they appear dull like they do now.

The two robots with their sleepy expressions looked very much like humans who had just woken up, caught between dreams and reality.

“I’ll take a quick look around by myself then. Get yourselves together while I’m gone.”

If we were in a hurry to find food or a location, I would have forced them onto Alexander regardless, but there was no need to rush right now.

I left the room, thinking I’d look around the hospital a bit until the two robots regained their senses.

[Hospitals look similar wherever you go. After seeing nothing but unfamiliar buildings except for cathedrals for so long, it feels strange to see a familiar building.]

“Wow, what a remarkable coincidence. I was thinking exactly the same thing.”

Generally, negative things like death and disease are associated with “black,” while positive things like life and cleanliness are associated with “white.”

Though it’s a simple metaphor, humans are creatures sensitive to perception—to the point where the “placebo effect” actually exists.

That’s why hospitals built after the Industrial Revolution were mostly white.

Perhaps because of this, despite the passage of so much time, the hospital didn’t feel that unfamiliar. It was large, but hospitals of this size existed in my time too.

“The difference is… the hospitals I used to visit weren’t dark like this.”

But familiarity didn’t necessarily bring nostalgia or comfort.

That’s partly because I had negative feelings about hospitals from my frequent visits.

But it was also because walking through the darkened hospital gave me an inexplicable sense of eeriness and chills.

[An empty hospital with no lights… It’s like a scene from a horror movie!]

“I know, right? Maybe it’s because it’s a place so closely connected to life and death… Even though I know nobody’s here, I still feel tense.”

It was quite strange.

I’ve become so accustomed to death that I wouldn’t bat an eye if half a corpse fell from the sky, yet why do I get goosebumps just from hearing the wind blow?

“Even though I know they don’t exist, doesn’t it feel like a demon—or a zombie might jump out from the corridor on the other side? Or maybe a ghost!”

Demons. Ghosts. Zombies.

These fictional beings commonly associated with abandoned hospitals automatically popped into my mind.

Among them, ghosts supposedly lost their fear factor hundreds of years ago when the saying spread that entities without physical form couldn’t be fixed in a horizontal coordinate system and thus disappeared with Earth’s rotation speed…

But my mind had already imagined these three terrifying and well-known entities approaching me from the opposite end of the corridor.

My steps slowed, and cold sweat ran down my back. My hand gripped doorknobs with excessive force.

I hadn’t been this tense even in a supermarket with over a thousand corpses piled up. This must be why hospitals have been the setting for so many ghost stories and horror tales since ancient times. They’re just scary.

Whether people created such stories because they felt fear,

Or whether such stories created the prejudice that darkened hospitals are frightening, I couldn’t tell.

“Setting aside my useless imagination and looking at reality… this hospital is impressively clean.”

Not only was there no blood, but nothing was even messy. The robots sitting at the counter or in examination rooms looked so intact that it wouldn’t be strange if they suddenly asked, “What brings you here today?”

“How could a building this pristine still exist?”

I tilted my head at the sight that looked as if the building had been constructed but never used.

It was too clean to have been an actually used building, but if it was built and never used as I suspected, I couldn’t understand why. It was puzzling in many ways.

“…Unfortunately, it’s not just the exterior that’s clean.”

I walked around quite a bit, opening drawers and display cases. But there was absolutely nothing to be found. Not because there were only useless items, but because everything was literally empty.

“Let’s go back.”

The hospital was so large that there were still many places I could go, both horizontally and vertically.

But it seemed unlikely that I’d find anything significant by exploring further.

Whooooosh—

Above all… that wind sound coming from far away was so scary that I couldn’t move another step!

“Seeing you return empty-handed, I guess there was nothing there.”

“Yeah. It doesn’t seem like it was an operational hospital.”

“Of course not. Usually when people need treatment or checkups, they call medical robots to their homes.”

“…Then why was this hospital built in the first place?”

“I wonder about that too.”

When I returned to where we had slept last night, the two robots had regained their senses and were waiting for me.

Before departing, I took a can of meat from Alexander to satisfy my hunger and placed it over the alcohol lamp.

“Maybe some filthy rich person built it out of boredom… nom.”

The taste of meat that had somehow become familiar. When I first ate it, I was so happy and delighted, but now I couldn’t feel anything.

The sensation of filling my stomach and the warmth of the heated meat spreading inside still felt good.

But that was the sensation of eating and the feeling of heat, not the happiness that meat used to bring.

Rather, my palate had become somewhat refined, making canned food and solid foods—which already tasted bad—seem even more terrible. Once again, happiness had created deprivation.

“Sometimes I envy you guys…”

“Pardon? Us?”

“Yeah.”

How nice it would be if I could sustain myself on just sunlight or electricity.

I wanted to experience, just once, what it would be like to live as a being that could survive on just one or two types of food without major complaints.

“Oh… by the way, what about you? Do you also live eating similar types of food every day like me? This doesn’t seem like a world where diverse foods would be available, so I’m curious.”

I knew it wasn’t a question that would get a proper answer, but I asked out of curiosity while cleaning up.

“Is it secured properly?”

“Yes. I can’t move anything except the camera.”

“Not too cold?”

“At least I won’t freeze!”

“Good.”

I loaded the robot onto Alexander, wrapping it tightly in the thick blanket I had used for sleeping.

The robot’s round head wrapped in the blanket made it look like a snowman, which made me laugh involuntarily.

After checking that the ropes securing the robot wouldn’t come loose, I sat in the driver’s seat where Puppy was already waiting.

The temperature seemed much lower than usual, perhaps because some air was seeping in, so I couldn’t take off my coat.

“Come here.”

I placed Puppy, who had become indispensable to me, on my lap and firmly pressed the ignition button to head in the direction of the faint light that had been detected last night.

Vroom vroom vroom…

…vr…vroom…

“…Huh?”

But.

Even though I pressed the button, the engine wouldn’t start properly.

Cold sweat ran down my face.