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V11 Story I – Part 02

Exiting Azuma’s residence, I shut the door firmly behind me. I lit up a cigarette, took a drag, then stubbed it out, before returning to my car.

My destination: a particular hospital. Beneath the overcast sky, I pulled into the expansive parking lot.

The wards were crowded on weekdays. Weaving past patients and visitors, I made my way to the third floor, searching for the room number I’d researched earlier. I stepped into the large hospital room partitioned by curtains.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

The sound of scratching reverberated through the space. Following the noise, I gently drew aside the curtain.

There, on a reclining bed, lay Morimoto Yuina. She had been hospitalized due to extreme exhaustion and sleep deprivation.

Wearing light-blue pajamas, she was somewhat hunched, a baffled look on her face. A familiar figure was sitting on a chair beside her, his faded blond hair swaying as he munched on sunflower seeds.

“Are you a hamster or something?!”

“Ouch! Why’d you hit me?! And what does that even mean?!”

“Um… excuse me, who are you? Do you know this person?” Yuina asked in a trembling voice.

Her reaction was understandable. We were strangers in reality, and she was utterly scared of the presence of two suspicious individuals.

“My apologies for barging in. We’re not here to cause trouble,” I quickly reassured, then turned to Yusuke. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean ‘what am I doing here’? You’re the one who asked me to come here. Why are you treating me like a mushroom sprouting out of nowhere after the rain?”

“No one called you that. Seriously, what’s going on?”

It was me who asked him to check up on Yuina.

Following Hirugao’s death, Yusuke had been voluntarily attending counseling sessions at the Mayuzumi clan’s hospital. However, since Nago City lacked a dedicated ward for the supernatural, he’d been having his sessions in the general ward with a counselor assigned to him. By sheer coincidence, Yuina was admitted to the same hospital.

I’d requested him to monitor her condition and notify me if necessary, but I hadn’t expected him to stay… or that he would start eating sunflower seeds.

“I was worried about bringing up serious topics,” Yusuke said. “You had just been discharged, and I have no idea what your dreams were about. I had some seeds I bought from the nearby store, so I decided to just wait.”

It made sense. I appreciated his concern.

Yusuke seemed stable. While I was asleep, he talked to Maihime and Kugutsu, sorting out his emotions. He lived each day trying his best to appear as he always did.

However, one notable change stood out: the absence of the bat he used to carry.

What significance did this change hold for him? He would likely never swing a bat down on anyone again. Tears almost spilled from my eyes.

“So, what’s the sitch?” Yusuke asked. “You know, that person from your dream… the serial killer?”

“The outcome was the same as the one in my dream,” I replied. “He chose to turn himself in.”

Following my discharge from the hospital, I took out the car to take care of the cases I saw in my dreams. Consequently, Katsumi Azuma chose to turn himself over to the authorities; he had waited for so long for someone to point out his abnormality. A profound sense of relief washed over me.

He wouldn’t meet his demise at the hands of a supernatural entity but would instead face judgment by human standards. But I did have one regret.

One of the tanks in his house had an illusory hand, painted with orange nail polish. It belonged to Hashida Asako, the client in my dream.

She hadn’t visited the Mayuzumi Psychic Detective Agency with a case. In my dream, she visited in mid-December, and it was currently late January. She must have been killed on the same day as in my dream.

Her remains had been disposed of, and her hands had apparently decomposed during December. Only an illusion remained in the tank.

“I never truly despised Mako’s loud nature. So why did I kill her?”

I recalled Azuma’s bewildered state. Try as I might, I couldn’t change the grim outcome.

My chest hurt, but regret wouldn’t bring the dead back to life. When I reached his house, the deed had already been done.

You can’t resurrect the dead. Right now, I needed to confront the other cases. I squeezed my gloved fist tight, then fixed my gaze upon Morimoto Yuina, concealed beneath the blanket.

“I need to talk to you about something, Yuina-san. Prior to your hospitalization, were you suffering from severe sleep deprivation?”

“Yes, that’s right… um, but how do you know that?”

“You hear digging noises when you fall asleep, don’t you?”

Yuina’s features contorted instantly, and she started quivering. She looked at me like I was some terrifying creature. Her lips moved awkwardly.

“H-How do you know?”

“I apologize, Yuina-san. I know you’re shocked, but please hear me out.”

I was privy to the truth behind the supernatural phenomena plaguing her. And I knew how to solve it. But I had to be cautious in my approach, or it would all go to waste. I took a deep breath.

“I’ve come here to help you.”

---

She was frightened, shed tears, and outright rejected my help.

However, a week later, the situation took an unexpected turn and resolved itself. To my surprise, Yuina paid a visit to the office of her own accord after she was discharged, with no involvement from Mayuzumi. Both Yusuke and I made desperate attempts to persuade her.

Yuina likely had some inkling herself regarding the peculiarity of her circumstances and a past action of hers. She willingly went into the basement, choosing to confront what happened back then.

I shut my eyes firmly, recalling Yuina wiping away the mud from her cheeks. With grimy hands, she rubbed her face and stared hard ahead. As long as there’s a will to face what’s ahead, people can move forward.

The opposite can’t be right. I absorbed that fact deep into my mind.

Letting out a sigh of relief, I ran my fingers over my left hand.

Crack!

Meanwhile, Mayuzumi lounged on the leather couch, eating chocolate.

We were in her office, facing each other. Her feline eyes flickered as she peered up at me. Buried beneath a heap of ribbons and wrapping paper, Mayuzumi’s voice dripped with sweetness as she spoke.

“So, have all the minor matters been resolved?”

“They were hardly minor, Mayu-san. But yes, everything’s finally sorted out.”

“I see. Well, that’s reassuring. I don’t really care about any of it, but allow me to offer you a compliment nonetheless. I admire your wasted efforts.”

Mayuzumi extended her hand gracefully, her palm facing upwards. A charming smile graced her lips.

“You actually held on.”

I placed my left hand atop hers. Mayuzumi seized my leather glove and pulled my arm towards her. A red bandage emerged from beneath the fabric. She unraveled it, and with an unpleasant sound, the cloth peeled away, revealing raw flesh beneath. A dreadful pain shot through my body, and I released the breath I’d been holding. Blood flowing from the wound traced intricate patterns on the floor.

I stared at my mangled palm. The surface began to writhe as the bandage loosened. White flesh sealed the wound. I confirmed the unsettling truth: the left arm stitched by the woman wasn’t human.

Mayuzumi examined my palm, then nodded lightly.

She grasped the knife resting on the table and raised it high.

---

Waking up in the hospital to Mayuzumi’s words, I found myself facing a brutal choice.

My left hand was a grotesque mass of flesh. I had only two options.

To amputate my left arm or not. To lose it or not.

Karakuri Maihime thoroughly explained the option of specially crafted prosthetics. Though these prosthetics boasted nearly identical functionality to a real arm, the accompanying sense of loss and periodic phantom pains were unavoidable. In this instance, the circumstances were particularly unique. The memory of being dismembered alive in a nightmare and the loss of the arm could have some bizarre connection.

Above all, the thought of amputation filled me with overwhelming dread. I wouldn’t even be able to muster the courage to inspect my arm directly post-surgery.

I chose to monitor the situation’s progress. Since then, I’d been painstakingly tending to and securing the flesh of my arm like this.

“Mayu-san, please let me know before you make the incision… Guh!”

“Suck it up. It doesn’t need to be as deep as last time. There, it’ll be over soon.”

Mayuzumi mercilessly carved into my palm, then proceeded to rewrap the bandage around my bloodied skin.

She claimed that the red bandages were essential to ward off the woman’s interference. Given my exposure to the spirit world, my existence could potentially serve as a conduit for her, just like Kotori. These bandages were crucial to prevent her from using me.

However, without a steady supply of fresh blood, the bandages would dissolve. And maintaining them came with excruciating pain.

I snatched my left hand away from Mayuzumi’s grip. She discarded the knife and lay back down, appearing bored. Swallowing back my curses, I sank into the sofa, cradling my arm and breathing heavily.