Chapter 113: S#19. Good Morning Creeps (1)
by fnovelpia
S#19.
Slimy mollusks were crawling everywhere.
Unidentified creatures about 15cm long. They looked smooth like slugs or leeches, but with red bodies.
At first glance, they resembled strips of torn flesh. Or maybe dinosaur bloody diarrhea.
The mollusks crawled across the floor in groups. I followed their procession forward.
The march stopped before a red mass.
I thought it was a giant chunk of meat, but on closer inspection, it was a corpse covered in mollusks.
The prone corpse saw me and suddenly sat up.
“Son.”
The corpse spoke in Dad’s voice.
With each clatter of its jawbone, the attached mollusks fell off in clumps.
“The curtain has risen on the massacre. You must become the protagonist…”
The corpse’s skull cap opened. Instead of a brain, red worms poured out.
It was a nauseating scene that made me want to vomit.
Suddenly, an owl mask covered my head, and an axe and chainsaw appeared in my hands.
I woke up in bed, drenched in sweat.
It took me a moment to realize that everything I’d just witnessed was merely a dream.
An unsettling feeling lingered.
It was the vicious nightmare that had been tormenting me lately.
Ellen and Nancy sat on the sofa. I knelt on the floor.
The setup resembled an elegant queen and princess looking down on me…
This family meeting, the first in 10 years, felt anything but familial as tension hung between mother and daughter.
“…Nancy, I can’t allow it.”
Ellen looked at Nancy with her arms crossed.
“You’re too young to marry. You should at least graduate college first.”
“…”
“So give up on Summer. Summer’s going to marry me.”
Nancy clenched her fists, clearly agitated.
“How can you say that…?! Stealing your daughter’s friend – aren’t you ashamed of yourself?!”
Caught between the two women, I felt utterly helpless.
The day we left for the forest to catch the witch.
I kissed Ellen, and I also kissed her daughter Nancy.
Those kisses seemed to have short-circuited both their brains.
On the third day after returning home, mother and daughter suddenly confessed to me out of the blue.
Nancy wanted to hear me say, “Mother, please give me your daughter.”
Ellen wanted to hear me say, “Daughter, please give me your mother.”
I never imagined such a day would come in my life.
Ellen softened her tone.
“Nancy, didn’t you say you wanted a sibling? How many would you like?”
“Kyaah-! No!! What sibling?! I don’t need anything like that?!”
Nancy glared daggers.
“Forget it! I’ll give you grandchildren instead, grandchildren.”
“Nancy… you’ve lost your mind. I’m at an age to have a second child, not grandchildren.”
“Well, I’m not at an age to have a new dad either!”
The tension was intense.
Unable to just watch, I cautiously raised my hand.
“Um… my opinion is…”
Nancy and Ellen both shot me sharp looks.
“Summer, be quiet.”
“Summer, be quiet.”
My input was effectively ignored.
It seemed a foregone conclusion that I would become either Nancy’s or Ellen’s partner.
The Strode women on the sofa argued fiercely for a while.
Nancy jabbed at Ellen’s age, warning that “late pregnancies are dangerous,” while Ellen countered by threatening Nancy would “spend her life unemployed,” criticizing her lack of financial stability.
It was like watching master martial artists exchanging deadly blows.
“Let’s just have Summer choose.”
“Yes, that would be better.”
The pair turned to glare at me, panting.
“Summer, I’m better than some middle-aged lady, right?”
“An established woman with both financial stability and a fit body is better than some inexperienced kid with no money or sense, right?”
“Summer, you’d be shocked if you knew how many guys line up to ask for my number at college.”
“I get scouted as a model just walking down the street. When I visit Hollywood for work, everyone thinks I’m an actress, not a writer.”
Ellen and Nancy tucked their hair behind their ears to show off their necklines, crossing their legs as they eagerly made their appeals.
Their beauty was certainly difficult to rank.
Ellen with her small face, god-tier proportions, and striking figure. Nancy who inherited those superior genes intact.
It seemed almost too good to be true that I could have such a beauty as a partner.
But my answer was already decided.
“I think…… you’re both suffering from heatstroke.”
Yes, this couldn’t be Nancy and Ellen’s normal judgment.
Why would they like a man who looked as menacing as an axe murderer?
I’d become somewhat presentable after shaving and styling my hair. But it was still strange that they liked me.
However, the mother-daughter pair’s reaction was cold.
“If you don’t decide quickly, you’ll be kicked out.”
“You’re not playing games with Mom and me, are you? Choose carefully if you don’t want to see me go crazy.”
They issued terrifying threats.
Both Ellen and Nancy were dead serious. They wanted a committed relationship with marriage in mind.
I never imagined I’d be caught up in a love triangle with my benefactors who took me in and became my friends. It felt more terrifying than a horror movie.
What should I do?
When a woman confesses first, it means she’s desperate enough to put aside her pride.
I couldn’t possibly express how burdensome this felt.
Postponing the answer the Strode women awaited, I left the house with a gloomy mood.
It was time for work.
I headed to Hyper Pharmacy.
“Oh, Summer’s here?”
Zelda Hyper, dressed in a white coat, greeted me warmly.
Her sister Hilda Hyper scurried off to hide as soon as she saw me, as if she’d seen a lion.
Her face was bright red.
I thought we’d gotten much closer recently. For some reason, it felt like we’d gone back to square one.
I said to Zelda:
“Hilda’s avoiding me.”
“She must be shy.”
Zelda chuckled, seemingly amused.
Hilda kept sneaking glances my way. A bandage was wrapped around the tip of her white finger.
“Did Hilda get hurt? Her finger…”
“Yeah, she said she burned it on a pot.”
Zelda fiddled with the tip of her index finger too.
“But you know what’s weird? My finger hurts too. Maybe that saying about twins being connected is true.”
She said she could feel the burn on Hilda’s finger.
Whether it’s a psychological or spiritual phenomenon, it’s pretty well-known that people in close relationships can easily affect each other positively or negatively.
Perhaps in the case of the Strode women, the feeling of liking me had infected each other.
In other words, it was a case of mass delusion.
By that logic, I could explain the commotion from this morning.
As I stood at the counter, deep in serious contemplation, Zelda poked me with her elbow.
“Summer, you know what?”
“What?”
“These days, my heart races just being near you.”
What was she saying?
My brain short-circuited for a moment. Zelda continued with her unexpected statement.
“I think I like you, Summer.”
“…Z-Z-Zelda… What are you saying…?”
“No need to be so uptight, right? It’s not like we’re in the 50s. If you don’t dislike me, let’s start with some casual dating.”
Zelda reached out and gently held the back of my hand.
Given Zelda’s playful personality, I thought this might be another joke, but this time it wasn’t.
The confession I received from Hilda came around lunchtime.
She conveyed her feelings through a long letter.
She said she’d been pining for me but couldn’t honestly express it until now.
She wrote that she was suffering from lovesickness beyond words and had trouble sleeping these days.
The elegant handwriting and text that must have gone through countless revisions in her mind.
The letter was filled with painful love. I just couldn’t believe that the arrow of that love was aimed at me.
My hands trembled as I held the letter.
I glanced at Hilda’s face. She looked like a noblewoman’s daughter.
She was watching my expression, seemingly on the verge of tears again.
“Um… Hilda.”
I signed.
‘Why do you like me?’
‘Do I need a reason to like someone?’
Hilda countered with shaking hands.
‘Someone like you could find a better man’
‘To me, Summer is the best man’
Her response left me speechless.
‘If you don’t dislike me, let’s start with some casual dating’
That’s what Hilda said. The exact same words as her sister.
Maybe twins really are connected.
First the Strode mother-daughter pair’s confession, and now the Hyper sisters’.
I felt dizzy.
I slapped my palm against my cheek, wondering if it was a dream. My cheek just stung. This was reality.
It felt like getting hit by a truck, being hospitalized, then getting hit by another car on the day of discharge.
It would be rude to compare a woman’s courageous confession to a traffic accident… but that’s how shocking it was to me.
I told Hilda I needed time to think.
Nancy, Ellen, Hilda, Zelda.
Four beauties confessing to me in one day.
Talk about breaking plausibility.
“……”
…Wait.
The nightmare I had last night suddenly flashed through my mind.
The corpse speaking in Dad’s voice. Those disgusting red worms…
Wasn’t that some kind of warning?
With Reiko absent, there was no one to interpret my dream, but it was a straightforward dream I could decipher on my own.
“…Ah, I get it. So that’s what it was.”
The sudden confessions from four beauties.
This is an anomaly. It must be the work of a creature again.
In the dream, the corpse’s skull opened, pouring out worms.
The creature appearing this time might be a worm that burrows into people’s heads, causing mental disturbance.
If so, I need to remove them.
I must save them by extracting the worms that might be in the Strode women and Hyper sisters’ heads.
I went to the pharmacy’s storage room.
I secretly packed a bone saw and anesthetic.
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