It was night.
It was dark all around, and today even the sound of footsteps walking in the corridor could not be heard.
In a night as calm as the surface of a lake deep in the mountains, Ryougi Shiki recalled her conversation with the woman who claimed to be a speech therapist.
No, to be precise, it’s only the last sentence.
"Why did Zhihui die instead of Shiki?"
The one who could answer this question is no longer here.
Zhi is gone. Why did he disappear? What was he exchanged for, and why did he disappear
Unlike Shiki who dominated his body most of the time, Zhi loved to dream and always fell asleep because of it. However, he loved to dream but even gave up the act of dreaming and died on that rainy night.
The self that I will never see again, the self that I could never see from the beginning. The person named Zhi is the real me...
The consciousness of the style is becoming more and more blurred.
I wanted to reach the conclusion that Zhi had reached, but I was just tracing back my memories.
The door of the ward opened.
The dull, slow footsteps gradually approached.
Is it the nurse? No, it's past midnight.
If it's a visitor, it's -
At that moment, the human hand wrapped around Shi's neck. The cold palm gradually increased its strength as if trying to break Shi's neck vertebrae.
"ah."
The pressure on his neck made Shiki gasp for air.
Unable to breathe, throat is strangled, if things continue like this, the posture of being strangled by the neck will be severed before being unable to breathe.
Shiki stared at the other person with his invisible eyes.
... not... human.
No, the shape was human. However, the human on top of her, holding her neck, was no longer alive.
The dead man, driven by an unknown force, attacked the person on the bed.
The force that was gripping his neck did not stop. Although Shiki grabbed his opponent's hands to resist, the difference in strength was obvious at a glance.
Wait, isn't this exactly what I wanted
Shiki, breathing hard and with his face flushed red, stopped struggling.
It would be fine to be killed like this, even if I live there is no meaning. It is painful to exist even though I don't feel alive, it is better to just disappear.
The power has increased.
In fact, not many seconds had passed. Time seemed to slow down, flowing as slowly as rubber.
The dead man's neck was strangled, without any body temperature, and fingers like wood were stuck in his throat.
There was no mercy for this killing, and there was no will from the beginning.
The skin on his neck was cracked, and the blood that flowed out was the most certain evidence that he was still alive.
Die... Die like Zhi... Throw away life.
Throw away? This word pulls back the consciousness of the style.
Suddenly a doubt arose.
Did he die happily
Yeah, he shouldn't think that way.
Whatever the reason, is there really any consciousness of his in it
Probably not, to seek death.
Because... death is so lonely and worthless.
Death is so dark and disgusting.
Death is obviously more terrifying than anything else.
"I'm sorry."
Instantly, Shiki's body was infused with energy.
Grab the victim's wrists with both hands and kick him in the abdomen with one foot from below.
"I, just the thought of falling into a place like that makes me sick...!"
Kicking desperately at the lump of flesh, the dead man's hands, covered in skin and blood, left his neck.
Shiki climbed out of the bed.
The deceased immediately threw himself forward.
In the unlit ward, the living and the dead wrestled with each other.
The body of the deceased was that of an adult man, two heads taller than Shiki. No matter how hard he tried, Shiki was still at a disadvantage.
With his hands grabbed, Shiki kept backing away and soon hit the wall in the narrow room.
The moment she hit the wall, Shi was prepared. She consciously turned her back towards the window so that she could escape.
This strategy was made at the beginning of the battle.
The problem is - this is on the third floor, about ten meters above the ground.
"Don't hesitate."
Saying this to himself, Shiki released the hands that were twisting the dead man.
The dead man stretched his hand towards her neck. Faster than that, she opened the window with her freed hand. Just like that, the two of them fell outside, entangled together.
The moment of falling.
Shiki grabbed the dead man's collarbone and threw him down. Now the dead man was facing the ground, and Shiki was on top of him. Soon the ground was in sight.
Blindfolded Shiki jumped up without hesitation. Even though she couldn't see, her intuition was still accurate.
The body of the deceased fell into the flower bed in front of the ward building, and Shiki's body leaped horizontally before landing and slid to the atrium quite a distance away.
The girl in a hospital gown landed on all fours in the flying dust. Even though she landed with a skill she had never done before, her limbs were still paralyzed by the pressure of gravity.
The night was still silent, as if nothing had happened.
Shi lay on the cold, hard ground, motionless, just feeling the pain in his throat.
"Ah, I'm still alive."
And... the dead person is not dead yet.
If you don't want to die, then it's clear what you should do - kill before you are killed.
Just thinking about it made the emptiness in my chest disappear. At the same time, all the emotions gradually faded.
"What?"
Mumbling to himself, Shiki finally figured it out.
The answer is so simple. I am such an idiot for worrying about it for so long.
Just then, another familiar voice came from behind Shiki.
"You scared me, are you a cat?"
Shiki didn't look back, struggling to endure the impact of landing.
"It's you, why are you here?"
In response to Shiki's question, the self-proclaimed magician's life advisor answered in a bored tone.
"Because I have to monitor you, I think something is about to happen, so I'm going to try my luck. Hey, there's no time to rest. After all, this is a hospital, so we can still find a useful corpse. Those guys can only exert their power when their spirits enter physical objects, so I plan to use the corpse to kill you and then possess you."
"Whether it's that or this, you're the one who arranged the chess pieces."
Shiki said while still lying prone on the ground. There, the previous confusion was gone like dust.
"Oh, you already know it? Well, this is definitely my mistake. Although I created a barrier to prevent spirits from entering, it borrowed a body to bypass the barrier. Normally, those guys shouldn't be that smart."
Orange smiled happily.
"Then you should find a solution as soon as possible."
"clear."
With a snap, Orange snapped his fingers, and the light from the cigarette carved words in the air.
The words overlap with the dead body like a projector.
In a distant place formed by a straight line, in a distant world, the magic seal, the circuit that called the seal was activated, and suddenly - the body of the dead lying on the ground began to burn.
"It seems that the power of F Rune alone is not enough." Orange said to himself.
The dead body surrounded by flames slowly stood up. For some reason, even though its legs were broken, it was still able to walk, as if it could control its legs with just its muscles, and it staggered towards Shiki.
The flames disappeared after a while.
"Hey... you liar."
"Don't get excited. It's very difficult to completely destroy a human body. For a living person, you can just burn the heart. But it doesn't work for the dead, because they're already dead, so it doesn't matter if they lose their hands or their heads. It's impossible to wipe out a human being with the violence of a pistol, you know? To stop it, you can only prepare firepower on the scale of a crematorium, or find an exorcist... Really, why doesn't that guy come? It's easy for him to destroy this kind of thing."
"In short, you just can't do it."
The speech seemed to have caused Orange great trauma.
"You can't do that. The dead are already dead, so I can't kill them. Unfortunately, the weapons I have can kill people, but they can't make them disappear. It's best to run away."
Orange stepped back, but Shiki didn't move.
It wasn't because he broke his leg by falling from the third floor.
She just smiled sarcastically.
"No matter if it's dead or not, as long as the body can be moved, it means it's still 'alive'; as long as it's alive—"
It stood up from the prone position, the posture of a carnivore, arching its back before attacking its prey.
She touched her throat.
Blood was flowing, the skin was cracked, and the marks of strangulation still remained.
But, still alive.
That feeling makes people dazed.
"—No matter what it is, I'll kill it for you to see!"
Gently, he untied the bandage covering his eyes. In the darkness, the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception were there.
Slender feet stepped on the ground.
The deceased stretched out his wrists to the approaching Shika.
Like a piece of paper, Shiki tore the dead man apart with one hand.
With a slash starting from her right shoulder, her hand came out from her left waist, and her finger bones were broken into several pieces, but in return she suffered several times or even dozens of times more injuries than the deceased.
The dead man fell to the ground as if the thread controlling him had been cut off. Even so, it seemed that only his left wrist was still entangled by the thread, and the dead man on the ground grabbed Shiki's ankle.
The wrist was crushed by Shi without hesitation.
"You are nothing but a collection of death; get out of my sight."
Shi sneered.
Alive. I was just deceiving myself before, but only now do I clearly feel the reality of being alive.
"Mode!"
Orange called out the girl's name and threw something at her.
It was a silver-colored dagger without any decoration.
Shiki pulled out the short knife stuck in the ground and looked down at the dead man who was unable to move like a praying mantis.
Just like that, she stabbed the dead man's throat with the dagger.
The deceased shuddered once and then became motionless.
but-
"Idiot, if you want to kill me, stab me!"
Even faster than Orange's rebuke, something strange happened.
The moment Shiki stabbed the corpse, a cloud of mist flew out from the corpse. The mist desperately tried to escape, and disappeared into Shiki's body.
"..." Kneel on the ground.
They were unable to possess Shiki before because she was conscious, but now they took advantage of the moment when Shiki was oblivious to the euphoria she felt when killing people and invaded her body.
"You're not thorough enough, idiot."
Orange came running over.
However, Shiki's body made a gesture.
That meant don't come near, so Orange stopped.
Shiki held the short sword with both hands and pointed the tip of the sword at his chest. With a strong will, he regained his empty eyes.
His teeth bit his lips firmly.
The tip of the knife touched his chest.
Her will and body oppressed the undead so much that they had nowhere to go.
"There's no getting away from this."
I'm not saying this to anyone else, I'm just saying this to myself.
Shiki stared at the foreign object moving inside him. It was Shiki's body that was pierced. However, it was just killing the foreign object that shouldn't be there. Shiki was sure that it would not hurt himself.
So she put strength into her hands.
"I will kill the cowardly me. I will never hand over Ryougi Shiki... to something like you."
The short knife slid into her chest.