☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢
CHILLS creep along my spine causing me to shudder on my way there. I have a creeping suspicion that something is inside the emergency staircase tucked away in a corner of the inner ring.
“Wh-Who’s there?”
There’s no response. But a sickening premonition causes my pulse to catapult. I slowly approach the door and fearfully open it. What I see on the other side is—
“…It can’t be…” A hoarse voice spills from my lips. The girl I’ve been searching for all this time is right there before me.
A frilly, cute dress. A small body lying on the floor.
I must’ve missed her last time because she was behind the staircase. But on the ground is undeniably Yuuri. She’s collapsed faceup and isn’t even twitching. She merely looks at me with empty eyes that have lost the light of life.
✦ ✦ ✦
“…Yuuri?” I rasp.
She doesn’t answer. A single streak of dark-red blood adorns her pale face.
I rush over to her side. All the fear I’d been feeling disappears in an instant. “Yuuri! Yuuri!” I hold her in my arms as I cry out her name. But her head dangles feebly.
I hold my hand over her mouth and don’t feel her breathing. I touch her cheeks, but her body has grown cold. I strip off my Vital Checker and slip it around her wrist. All five indicators are as red as the blood staining her face.
She has…undeniably passed away.
“Th-This can’t be… Why?!”
Yuuri doesn’t answer my question. I hug her body, which has lost all warmth. Memories with her replay in my mind. A voice echoed in my head the first time I met her—a voice that told me to save her. I had decided since then that I would protect her.
She was wary of me at first, preventing us from reaching a mutual understanding. Yet she gradually opened up to me as I acted in accordance with my desire to keep her safe.
That’s why I was able to shield her without a moment’s hesitation when the factory’s ceiling collapsed. I wanted to escape from this facility and bring her to safety outside.
In the end, she vanished from where I could protect her. And now that we’ve reunited—Yuuri is no longer the lively girl who ran away.
And I thought we had finally…finally come to understand each other a little better!
I’m filled with regret for what can never be undone. The sound of my ticking watch echoes through the still room. And thus, before Yuuri could tell me the source of my fear for her, tell me what she’d meant before, or say anything again—she’d fallen to the hands of eternal silence.
✦ ✦ ✦
☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢
▼ 1:50 pm
Area 6, Inner Ring
Emergency Staircase
…I’VE been zoned out for God knows how long. I’m only pulled back to reality by an abrupt voice echoing through my head.
<Hey! Get a hold of yourself already! You can’t stay spaced out all day!>
“Nggh!”
Being scolded by that familiar auditory hallucination snaps me out of whatever trance I was in. I only now realize I’ve been ambling around the inner ring’s corridors like a brainless zombie. I turn around and see the door to the stairwell behind me.
That’s right… I have to tell everyone about this…
I stitch together my bleeding heart and break into a run.
Moribe, Miss Ena, and Ukita are already inside the factory when I get there.
“Oh, Captain!”
“Are you all right, Captain Kasasagi? I heard you weren’t feeling well.”
The others run over to meet me at the door. Ukita’s looking at his watch as he says, “You look much worse than you did before. Took you a long time to recover. I assume something happened?”
I shudder. I don’t want to answer that question, but I squeeze out my reply in a bitter voice: “Everyone, listen to me very calmly…! Yuuri…died.”
They’re petrified by the news.
“N-Nonsense! You expect me to believe she’s dead?!” Ukita yells.
“Wh-Where?! Where did you find her?!” Moribe prods.
I lower my eyes to the ground. “I found her body on the floor of the inner ring’s stairwell… Follow me. It’s this way.” I head for the inner ring with everyone in tow. I come to a standstill in front of the stairwell door. The other three at my side noisily swallow. “Are you ready? I’m opening it…”
Icy-cold sweat trails down my back as I open the fire door. My eyes fly wide-open to take in all that spreads before me. “The hell?!”
There’s nothing there aside from the collapsed staircase.
Moribe examines the area and dubiously inquires, “C-Captain? Where’s the body?”
“U-Uh…this can’t be happening…!” Rattled, I search the entire stairwell. But no matter how much I search, there’s no body. I stand there dumbly rooted to the ground.
Miss Ena gingerly inquires, “D-Don’t tell me you’re…seeing hallucinations now, Captain Kasasagi?”
“I’m not! There really was a corpse here! Blood was gushing from her forehead, and she was definitely dead—”
“She was bleeding? Even though there’s no blood anywhere?”
I swallow the rest of my words. I’ve only just confirmed for myself that there’s no corpse or bloodstains.
Alas, Ukita shrugs as if he’s fed up with me. “Perhaps the absence of the body you allegedly found can be explained as an issue with your perception?”
“What?”
“You hit your head hard enough to induce amnesia. Your brain has clearly been damaged in some way or another, no?”
“…!” I feel shivers snake down my spine. Ukita’s theory makes total sense, after all.
Does that mean the auditory hallucinations I’ve been having for hours, and the constant headaches and bouts of nausea, are all the result of brain damage? If that alone isn’t bad enough, I’ve being exposed to radiation damage on top of that!
Has my brain been damaged…past the point of no return?! I can’t think of another plausible explanation for it. But I plaster a smile onto my face to hide my internal chaos.
“L-Let’s think this out… It’s better for me to have been wrong in this case. It means Yuuri is still alive,” I say as much for my own benefit as theirs.
“…Captain, let’s return to the infirmary for a bit,” Moribe suggests out of consideration for me. “It’s been quite a while since we set out.”
“Yeah, it has been. Tachibana might be waiting for us too…”
With that decided, we head for the infirmary.