Chapter 33 Should I know about Enoshima? ...
Hajime Hinata felt like he was dreaming.
He felt a sensation beneath him like fine sand that had been heated by the blazing sun; he seemed to be lying on his back on a beach somewhere.
Except for the areas shaded by palm leaves, he could still feel the warmth of the sunlight on many parts of his body, and his ears caught the sound of the tides. A gentle breeze carried the ocean scent of the southern island.
Everything was so pleasant.
The sounds of their playful laughter seemed to drift from not far away. Indeed, sunshine, sand, sea… what a perfect setting for a vacation! It's no wonder they're already having fun so quickly.
But who are my companions?
A question vaguely popped into his mind. Hinata instinctively tried to open his eyes in search of an answer, but for some reason, his eyelids felt unexpectedly heavy, and he couldn't open them no matter what he did. The very next second he tried, he sensed that the surrounding scenery had changed.
Perhaps it was because the warm sunshine had disappeared, or perhaps it was because dreams don't need logic, but Hyuga Hajime accepted the sudden change of location without a second thought.
Although his eyes were still unable to open, his ears did not stop working.
Hinata Hajime could hear that the sound coming from his ears had also changed.
He felt as if he were trapped somewhere. Although there were sounds around him, he couldn't hear them clearly. He tried hard to strain his ears to make out the sounds, but he was bombarded with a bunch of academic terms that left him dizzy and disoriented.
Then he heard footsteps. One step, two steps… and finally stopped beside him. There was more than one person beside him, and they all seemed to be silently looking down at him.
For some reason, Hajime Hinata felt a sudden tension.
He felt as if he was no longer a person, but a commodity to be picked over and sized up, suddenly a prey with nowhere to escape on the chopping block, all he could do was wait for his cruel fate.
It was as if different voices appeared in his two ears. One voice was shouting with tension, fear, and worry, urging him to leave quickly. The other voice was slowly and deliberately saying, "This is your own choice. Isn't this what you've always been looking forward to?"
Hyuga Hajime didn't quite understand what this meant. To be honest, he wasn't even clear on what was going on; he just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Right, this must be a dream, right? So, it should be fine once I wake up?
So, wake up—
Well?
As his consciousness surfaced, Hajime Hinata seemed to see something.
There were two girls standing on the rooftop. Their figures and voices were blurry, but Hinata Hajime felt a strange sense of familiarity and tried hard to see them clearly.
"...Sister...sent it over..."
"...Bored...killing time..."
"…………casual…………"
Their voices drifted on the wind, but they couldn't form a coherent sentence. Hyuga Hajime subconsciously stepped closer, and then, as if keenly sensing his approach, the two of them suddenly turned to look at him simultaneously with remarkable tacit understanding.
Hyuga Hajime's pupils suddenly contracted.
Yes, he should know these two people; they are—
...
Who is it?
Hyuga Hajime suddenly opened his eyes.
The first thing I saw was an unfamiliar ceiling.
Hyuga Hajime lay blankly on the bed, which wasn't too soft but wasn't harder than the floor either. Before he could fully come to his senses and figure out where he was, his vision was suddenly filled with an enlarged face.
"Tch, you woke up just in time... Oh no, I mean, Hinata, you're awake! That's great!"
Wait, why does this sentence sound so contradictory?
Hyuga Hajime blinked his eyes, which he couldn't open in his dream, in a daze. Then his gaze shifted slightly and finally landed on the pen that Ohma Kokichi was holding up.
Hajime Hinata: "..."
Wang Ma Xiaoji: "..."
A bad feeling welled up in Hyuga Hajime's heart: "Ohma, you haven't made a move yet, have you?"
Wang Ma Xiaoji: "Hehehe."
Hajime Hinata felt his fist harden.
*******
It seems we arrived a step too late.
The classroom doors on the top floor, which they had opened with their keys but hadn't had time to lock again, were now all securely locked.
The dense "like" on the blackboard, the bloodstains on the floor, and the strangeness of the last classroom they entered... all disappeared.
No matter how you look at it, the place where Tsukino and Chiya were at this moment was just an ordinary corner of the school building on a night like any other, and no one would notice anything wrong with it.
Tsukino and Chiya had anticipated this to some extent, so they were not surprised when they confirmed that the top floor had been restored to normal, but they felt a little regretful.
After what happened tonight, I wonder if that strange creature will continue to send love letters to Hinata or others... If it doesn't, what methods should we use to lure it out again?
After checking the classroom, Tsukino and Chiya left and locked both the front and back doors of the classroom again.
...Don't rush. Let's investigate Morikawa Yoshiko and Enoshima Junko when we get back.
But speaking of which... the name Junko Enoshima sounds familiar.
Tsukino and Chiya searched their memories for any recollection of the name before deciding to leave and return to the infirmary to find Ohma and the others.
But before they had taken two steps, Tsukino and Chiya stopped.
The corridor lights on this floor suddenly turned on.
Unlike the bright light that normally illuminates the way, the lights now shone with a dim red, as if blood had seeped from the bulbs. This dim red light did little to provide illumination; instead, it made the school buildings in the night appear even more eerie.
Under the soft red light, a girl appeared in front of Tsukino and Chiya.
It wasn't the figure surrounded by strips of cloth that had temporarily left, but rather the white-haired, blue-dressed doll I had met a few times before.
Tsukino and Chiya stared at the figure: "What do you want?"
"We meet again."
The doll-like girl didn't rush to reveal her intentions; she spoke slowly and deliberately, as if talking to herself.
“Aurora. My name is Aurora.”
Aurora Borealis? Or Sleeping Beauty? Neither of them seems to fit the name "Oddity."
However, Tsukino and Chiya wisely refrained from directly expressing their inner thoughts.
Without a doubt, the girl-like doll in front of them was among the most terrifying of all the strange creatures.
Unlike the ghost painter and the figure surrounded by strips of cloth, the doll-like girl before me could converse and communicate normally. Her mind was not completely consumed by obsession and resentment; she was not being controlled by these negative emotions. Perhaps, quite the opposite, she…
It is the "person" that brings forth and controls these obsessions and resentments.
"Chiya, did you have fun?" Aurora asked gently.
Unlike their previous, seemingly colder attitude when they met, the doll who once said, "I will be watching you," now appears to be much gentler.
Tsukino and Chiya guessed that they might have passed some kind of powerful and strange test without realizing it, and thus finally became one of those that it could take notice of.
That would truly be an "extreme honor".
Tsukino and Chiya replied, "This isn't a game, so of course we can't have fun with it."
"Really? But Little Guitar didn't seem to say that before."
Aurora, in the same intimate tone, brought up another person who wasn't present at the moment, and seemed somewhat confused.
"Games, fun, boring... those are things he always says, right? Even about recent events, he said those things. But you never contradicted him once back then, did you?"
“This is different.”
Almost without hesitation, the black-haired boy, also bathed in the cold, dark red light, spoke earnestly.
"Humans can lie."
He looked at the exquisitely crafted doll in front of him, which was so lifelike, and slowly added, "...Of course, some monsters will too."
Lying is too difficult for most supernatural beings like the Ghost Painter. But for someone of Aurora's caliber, it's a piece of cake.
The person in Kujo-kan was once deceived by this powerful strangeness for a long time.
“Humans are different from monsters,” Tsukino and Chiya continued. “Human lies can be broadly categorized into two types based on their underlying intentions: malice and goodwill. Sometimes, people use lies to achieve different goals. However, the vision they ultimately reach or realize through lies is not necessarily bad.”
"Some lies are to avoid hurting others, some lies are to protect oneself, and some lies are to better see the truth in the future... But..."
He paused slightly, his tone becoming somewhat lower than usual: "But the strangeness is different."
The supernatural cannot be understood using human thinking. It likes to force people into the fear of death and fill their hearts with despair.
"There is no good in the bizarre." (*)
Regardless of any hardships they may have endured in life, once they become monsters, their actions are filled with evil and hatred. Unless it is the final moment that allows them to let go of their obsessions and attain enlightenment, before that, monsters will only be "beasts" that are untrustworthy, deeply obsessed, and driven by instinct.
Aurora chuckled softly.
Because it is a doll, its facial expression cannot change, and its lips cannot open. Such a cold doll stands in the dimly lit, red-lit corridor, which appears even more secluded and lonely. No matter how exquisite its appearance is, it only adds to the eeriness of the scene.
Compared to it, Tsukino and Chiya, who were once criticized by acquaintances for having "no expression at all, like a machine," can now be described as "vivid."
"Absolutely correct, congratulations!"
"It seems that simple deception won't work on Qianye."
Realizing this, Aurora made no attempt to conceal her malice in her words.
"But it's okay."
"I'm here to make the game more interesting." At this moment, it answered the question that Tsukino and Chiya had asked at the beginning of their meeting.
"Because I hadn't figured out what method to use or what kind of people were qualified to play the game together."
But now, it has thought it through and found the right solution.
"'Marking' is a method my predecessors used, and I think it's pretty good. The supernatural beings leave marks on people that indicate their time of death... Isn't that interesting?"
Aurora acknowledged that the mark was her work.
"By the way, I left the marks on Qianye and Xiaoji."
Hmm... as expected.
Tsukino and Chiya weren't surprised by this. After all, the story of the guy from Kujou-kan who had never known the origin of the marks on his body, only to discover in the end that the culprit was..., gave Chiya some reason to speculate about his and Ohma Kokichi's situation.
He didn't intend to question the monster about why it treated him and Ouma Kokichi this way, because the monster was a being full of malice towards humans. Rather than questioning it in a way that would only make it happier and not evoke any empathy from the monster, it was more convenient to deal with it directly.
"But in the end, the mark is a method used by my predecessors. I'm not the kind of person who likes to blindly imitate. I only used the mark when I hadn't thought things through yet, but now I've figured out what to do."
"But the marks that were already made... well, we already have them, so let's just leave them. I really like this feeling that everyone is my property."
"Right, let's get down to business."
"I brought a small gift for Qianye this time. — It's what I just mentioned, 'I've figured out what to do'."
If she weren't a doll herself, Aurora would probably smile.
"However, I'm not the kind of person who likes to reveal what the gift is right away. So, you'll have to figure out what the gift is yourself."
"Then, next up is the intermission entertainment time, called the Death Quiz. As the name suggests, it's a game where if you answer a question wrong, you die immediately."
Aurora spoke lightly, but the content was extremely terrifying.
"I'm really looking forward to Chiya's future performance, so you'd better not answer incorrectly."
"Now, first, please listen to the question."
Aurora made no attempt to wait for Tsukino and Chiya's agreement and continued talking to herself.
If the eyes on the doll's face, made of glass beads, can be considered to have gaze, then Aurora's gaze should have fallen on the calm face of the black-haired boy under the red light that suddenly turned on and off.
"—Compared to the predecessor who created the 'Death Mark' game, what is the biggest difference between my game and that one?"
*******
After Aurora, who had blocked their way, left, Tsukino and Chiya naturally saw no need to stay on the top floor any longer.
He mentally reviewed what had just happened, pondering every word Aurora had uttered from her appearance to her departure.
It seems necessary to visit the Kujo Mansion again. — This was the thought that had crossed his mind the first time he saw the doll-like girl clearly in the mansion.
However, after being mentioned by Wang Ma Xiaoji today and seeing Aurora again, this idea became even stronger in his mind.
Wang Ma...
He also bears the mark left by Aurora. Now that Aurora has left him, will she go looking for him instead?
With that in mind, Tsukino and Chiya quickened their pace, heading straight for the infirmary on the first floor without a second thought, and then flung open the door—
"Are you all alright?"
Upon seeing the scene inside the infirmary, Tsukino and Chiya swallowed back the words they hadn't yet uttered.
Tsukino and Qianye: "..."
Hajime Hinata: "..."
Wangma Xiaoji: "Huh~ Aren't you going to play anymore?"
Tsukino and Chiya: "What...are you doing?"
*******
As the only injured person present, Hyuga Hajime, now back in bed, began to reflect on himself.
It's really unacceptable for Wang Ma and Xiao Ji to be playing a two-person chase around the bed in the infirmary... The last time we did something like this was when we were kids playing with friends. Seriously, how did things turn out like this?
It's fortunate that no one else was at school, otherwise, given the situation they caused in the infirmary, they would definitely have been severely reprimanded by the teacher.
Wang Ma is an undergraduate student, so he should be fine. But he himself...
Well, on another note, Ohma is really good at dodging.
There were no mirrors in the school clinic, but Hajime Hinata could easily see his reflection in his phone screen.
Fortunately, he woke up at just the right time, before Wang Ma Xiaoji, who had somehow pulled out a pen, had a chance to start drawing turtles on his face.
Hajime Hinata breathed a sigh of relief. — It's not too late yet. He might run into other classmates at any time when he gets back to the dorm. It would be bad if Ohma used one of those ink-stained pens that's hard to wash off his face.
However, now that everyone is here, it's time to get down to business...
"Did Kozuki find anything upstairs?" Ohma Kokichi asked first, sitting back down in his chair.
"We haven't found anything related to this strange event." Tsukino and Chiya, who had also pulled up a chair to sit down, shook their heads. "The top floor has returned to normal, and everything we saw before has disappeared."
"Oh..." Wangma Xiaoji narrowed his eyes slightly, drawing out the word meaningfully, but didn't press further. "I see~"
If there's no result, then the topic is naturally dropped.
Tsukino and Chiya looked at the only injured person present: "Hinata, how are you feeling now? Do you feel anything unusual?"
"I'm alright? I just feel a little dizzy, like I've slept too long," Hyuga Hajime said truthfully. "But I don't think it's anything serious. Besides that... my back and limbs are a little sore, like I've fallen down."
Wang Ma Xiaoji was filled with righteous indignation: "I never imagined that the side effects of being hit by this would be so severe, causing my favorite Hinata to suffer like this. This is truly a damn weirdo!"
Tsukino and Chiya: "Yeah, Hinata, you've had a tough time." Is it possible that you're in pain because you actually fell?
He coughed lightly and briefly explained the situation to Hyuga Hajime.
Tsukino and Chiya casually recounted, "...Then, the monster seemed afraid that the strips of cloth binding it would be cut, so I tore one of the strips binding you, and it took all the strips back, and you fell to the ground. After that, the monster asked two more questions, and after we answered them, it left."
"Two questions?"
“That’s right. One is the name of the strange creature when it was alive, and the other is the name of the person it liked. The answer to the former is Yoshiko Morikawa, and the answer to the latter is Junko Enoshima.”
"So, Hinata," Tsukino and Chiya looked into Hinata Hajime's eyes, "do you know who Enoshima Junko is?"
Enoshima Shield?
I don't know.
Hinata Hajime wanted to say "I don't know" decisively, but seeing Tsukino staring at him as if expecting his answer, he tried to recall it.
No, it seems I'll have to disappoint him again.
"I'm sorry," Hyuga Hajime said, giving up. "But... I don't know either."
Should I know about Enoshima Junko?
*******
Junko Enoshima is a middle school girl.
Although she's young, she's already a popular model, highly sought after by fashion-conscious girls. If she weren't still a middle school student, she might have enrolled in a university and become a member of "Ultimate Student."
Of course, she's already in her third year of junior high school. So it's not impossible that she might become their junior soon?
However, that's not the focus right now—
"You mean I was the one who said the name Enoshima Junko back then?" Hyuga Hajime asked incredulously. "Really? I have absolutely no recollection of it."
"That's true."
Tsukino and Chiya weren't too puzzled by the situation; he was holding the phone he had just used to search for the name Enoshima Junko.
"It's normal not to remember what happened after being possessed... Hmm, but rather than being possessed, Hyuga, your appearance back then seemed more like you were being controlled?"
"Hey, Hinata, what does it feel like to be controlled?" Ohma Kokichi's face was full of curiosity.
"Feeling? Feeling is feeling nothing... I think I had a dream, but I can't remember it now."
It's probably impossible to get any more clues from Hyuga Hajime, but tonight's haul was pretty good.
"Yoshiko Morikawa, and Junko Enoshima," Tsukino and Chiya said, typing something on their phones. "I'll ask someone I know to investigate those two names. Of course, we'll also check for people with the same name."
"I'll also send my men to investigate. But now that the anomaly has left, the abnormality on the top floor has disappeared, and Kohinata has woken up normally, shouldn't we disband now?"
Indeed, there's no need to stay at school any longer tonight. However, before that...
"When you get back to your dorm tonight, remember to keep an eye on your curtains."
Tsukino and Chiya took something out of their pockets and then opened their palms.
"Although I don't think anything serious will happen... it's better to be cautious."
What was placed in the palm of his hand was the piece of cloth that had fallen to the ground after being cut by Tsukino and Chiya.
The corridor was too dark at the time, and due to the pressure of the situation, Tsukino and Chiya didn't have time to examine it carefully. But when they picked up the scraps of fabric later, he noticed something was wrong.
This fabric... it looks a lot like curtains. But it's not the curtain fabric used in preparatory courses.
Wang Ma Xiaoji reached out and took the piece of cloth from Yueye and Qianye's palms, examining it closely under the light.
"Is Kozuki Kazuya trying to say... that supernatural beings can kill people by following the curtains? Like 'fighting you by following the internet cable'?"
-----------------------
Author's Note: (*) Strange creatures are not benevolent → Actually, there are a few exceptions. There are strange creatures in NG who can help people, but Chiya has never seen one [covering face and peeking]
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