“Why are you always in the middle of things, you permanently suicidal bastard…?!”
“Oh, Hizumi, it’s you.”
“This is no time to ‘Oh, Hizumi’ me…! I came here with a bad feeling, and sure enough, you’re trying to do something stupid…!”
“I have a chance.”
With a bloodcurdling look on her face, Hizumi pressed hard against my shoulders.
“Get out of here right now…! Go with blond curls and get on a lifeboat…! You can’t be here…! Go…! Go before you’re noticed…!”
I tapped the plank.
“Tsukiori, Rei, and Lapis are down below. There’s no time to get them and run, and even if there were, I wouldn’t do that. Those girls have to work together in harmony as the story goes—without an irregularity (me)—then somehow overcome this and move on. Otherwise, they’re sure to get stuck somewhere.”
“Abandon them.”
“I refuse to do that.”
“You’re wrong again,” Hizumi said, narrowing her eyes as she pointed at A. “From now on, you won’t be able to make any more stupid wisecracks. You’ve never been on the verge of death, and you think it’s like a joke, believing you can continue to be righteous in the face of death.”
Hizumi stared at me hard.
“The lives of others aren’t for protecting. They’re for watching over when they end.”
A stretched like she was bored and mumbled, “The break’s over, and enough of being cooped up. We can spread out more bait.”
Rip!
A dry sound echoed, and she shed not only her clothes but also her skin.
Skin peeled along her spinal cord, her flesh was scraped away, and her hands and feet crawled out of her body. Viscera splurted from her every pore, her fingernails and toenails sank in pools of blood, her hair fell out, and the smell of ripe peaches began wafting in the air.
Shiver, shiver, shiver. My hair stood on end, and my body stepped back in the face of the extraordinary show of magic power.
“Phew.”
Her hair was black with golden tints.
Jade-colored eyes were stuck in her skull.
She was eerily symmetrical.
Her arms and legs stretched out as if they had suddenly emerged from the void, and the fluttering brown trench coat was more reminiscent of her epidermis than clothing.
Between her index and middle fingers, she held a cigarette, its purple smoke curling in the air.
And those eyes.
They shone brilliantly in the moonlit night.
They were what was called the evil eye, with a brand in the shape of a bottomless abyss in them.
The mark that fluttered in her eyes was the same as what was engraved on Hizumi’s skin.
“You’re an evil spirit…”
Horrified, I mumbled A’s identity.
“You’re…Alsu…hariya…”
There was a huge thumping in my head, as if my brain and my heart had become attached, warning me of danger.
This was a worst-case scenario… It wasn’t impossible… The reason why too many clan members were around…and why one of them tried to let me escape… Only a high-ranking cult member or the evil spirit behind it all could use these members any way she liked… In the original story, Hizumi suffered from an incurable disease, and she pledged allegiance to Alsuhariya after she cured her on a whim… That was why Luri Hizumi didn’t appear until the end of the story when Alsuhariya returns to life…
Alsuhariya doesn’t appear in this scene in the game, but her appearance in place of a mob distorted the script.
It all made sense when I thought about it that way.
“Hizumi… You knew, didn’t you…?”
She nodded.
“Why has Alsuhariya come back…? The only trigger for her resurrection should be interest… Tsukiori hasn’t become strong enough yet to attract her attention… Who else is there…?”
She stared at me.
“Me?!” I shouted, pointing at myself. “Why me?!”
“When I heard there was a person aboard this ship who rewrote the destiny of death and misfortune, I thought it was Sakura Tsukiori… But no matter how we look at it, it has to be you, Hiiro Sanjo.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea why it would be me.”
“I heard that 128 good people who were supposed to die haven’t, and 279 good people who were supposed to be hit by bad luck have been saved. If this goes on, the evil spirit and the demonic religion would no longer exist by the time the demonic god was resurrected. I also heard that it’s hard to tell if you’re a friend or foe since you use sneaky tricks to destroy, distort, and create love.”
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about… But that probably isn’t me… Thank God…”
I very gingerly glanced at how the evil spirit was doing.
Her inhuman magical power was always ready to strike. I couldn’t see myself confronting her head-on and winning.
Hizumi tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a dimension gate—a gate that separated this world from the Otherworld. It was small, barely big enough for a small boat to pass through.
“That’s the starting point from where the clan members launched their attack. It’s tough to detect things in a world you don’t live in, so they came to attack through that gate when the ship sailed alongside it.”
That was the same as the original game, though the timing was different.
“Use a lifeboat and get over there when Alsuhariya becomes distracted. Your magical power isn’t much, so I think you can do that without her detecting you. Tsukiori, Rei, and Lapis will also probably be running out of magical power when they’ve finished fighting, so she shouldn’t notice you if you can meet up with them.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll slip out when the time is right. Never mind me and think only about yourself. You can get moving right away when Tsukiori and the gang come up here—”
We heard the sound of an engine.