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V7 Story III – Part 02

“So what are we doing at your apartment? This place is a dump.”

“We’re not gonna hang out here,” I replied. “I forgot my card and didn’t have any cash with me. I’ll go get it, so just wait here a bit.”

I left Yusuke and went up the stairs of the apartment building. The rusty staircase of Maison de Nanase creaked with each step. The trio decided to follow me instead of just staying outside.

Click.

I unlocked the door and opened it, allowing the dusty air to stream out. It was cold inside in winter. I stepped forward, trying to remember where I put my card. If I recalled correctly, I put it in the valuables box with my bankbook. I opened the lower drawer of the closet, which was partially occupied by a fire extinguisher.

Then, something jumped out from inside.

A black object crossed my field of vision and cowered in the corner of the room.

My eyes widened as I froze. Something had invaded my apartment and hid itself in the closet. It was probably a cat or something, but I couldn’t turn my head for some reason.

Butterflies stirred wildly in my stomach. I had a feeling that if I turned around, the peace would be shattered into a million pieces.

There was a clamor of footsteps. The trio, having grown tired of waiting, entered the apartment. Hirugao exclaimed with joy as she opened the fridge, and I heard Yukihito’s voice calling for her to stop. But I couldn’t look at them to check. Yusuke ran up to me as I stood there petrified.

“What are you doing? Odagiri-san? Did something happen? Wait, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!”

The possibility that the enigmatic creature was a cat was completely crushed.

What do I do? I didn’t want to turn around.

Yusuke stood there in silence, not uttering a single word. Before long, the fear of encountering something terrifying was overtaken by my anxiety of the unknown. If this were a scene from a horror movie, my next action would lead to my demise. Knowing this, I turned my head slowly.

The first thing I saw was Yusuke. He was pointing to a spot in the room with his eyes wide open. There was something black there, and I couldn’t tell what it was.

It had a shape no known creature possessed, almost entirely made up of straight lines.

After a few seconds, I realized that it was something I had seen before but never wanted to encounter again.

It was the “god” that Yukihito created.

I raised a trembling finger and pointed at the god in the corner. The astonishment and shock prevented me from making any sound. Sweat broke out from every pore of my body. I took several breaths.

And I screamed.

“There’s more of them!!!”

---

The “god” was a strange creature created by Yukihito.

The Minase clan’s supernatural ability caused the characters they drew to materialize. The word tiger would become a living, breathing beast, and an esper as powerful as Shirayuki could bring forth even more complex creatures, such as dragons.

But creating a god was impossible.

Whenever an esper attempted to draw “god”, one of two things would happen: either nothing would change, or a creation would appear based on the esper’s preconceived notion of a god. And when Yukihito drew “god”, an inexplicable event occurred: the character for god itself, 神, became a living, breathing entity. I remembered how exceedingly bizarre it looked wandering around.

The god had previously run off somewhere, and now for some reason, it was in my apartment, and it had grown in number.

Well, it wasn’t actually increasing in number, but rather splitting apart into smaller pieces, with each fragment of the larger god becoming a smaller version of itself. They were still technically growing in number, though.

“Birth, rebirth, and proliferation,” Yusuke muttered.

“Shut your stupid mouth!” I snapped. “Please don’t say anything more. It’s scary, because it’s actually true.”

I subconsciously pulled a cigarette from my pocket and lit it. My mind was in chaos. Unlike Mayuzumi, I wasn’t really afraid of the god, but my brain couldn’t immediately process the unexpected and ridiculous situation.

As I took a drag, I heard a voice from behind.

“Ah…”

Yukihito was standing there, holding Hirugao. They shared similar heights, so Hirugao was dragging her feet on the floor. She was munching on bread she had looted from my refrigerator.

“You’re surprisingly unresponsive!” Yusuke exclaimed, punching the tatami mat. He seemed discombobulated as well.

The small gods squirmed in front of us like a colony of ants, frantically scurrying about while the main body lay still and weakened.

“Wh-What do we do with them?” I asked.

“Don’t look at me,” Yusuke said. “I never imagined they would multiply like this.”

I put out my cigarette and flicked the butt into a portable ashtray. I had no idea how to deal with the god.

Suddenly, Yukihito sprang into action. He headed to the kitchen and grabbed some things near the refrigerator.

A covered dustpan and a plastic broom.

“Use this!” he said.

“That’s it!” Yusuke exclaimed, seizing the dustpan and handing it to me.

I trotted cautiously toward the gods, dustpan and broom at the ready. Sensing our intent, they started running at ridiculous speed, climbing the wall in an attempt to flee through a small gap in the window. I raised the broom and brought it down on the swarm just in time.

I then swept the gods into the dustpan and closed the lid. They ran wild inside. I looked at Yusuke, then shifted my gaze to the closet. Yusuke nodded. He rushed over to the closet, opened the bottom compartment, and took out some adhesive tape.

“Odagiri-san, heads up!”

“Bring it on!”

I tore the tape and wrapped it around the dustpan. With the gods now subdued, all that remained was the dying main body and the rattling dustpan.

Wiping my forehead, I let out a deep sigh. “All that’s left is to burn them.”

“Are you sure that’s the right way to do it?” Yusuke argued.

He made a compelling point. The dustpan itself was nonburnable garbage, though the look in his eyes said that that wasn’t what he was getting at.

Hirugao, meanwhile, lay on her stomach and started poking the dustpan. “Oh, oh…” she breathed, fascinated.

After sealing the gods, we just sat there, staring at the ceiling and catching our breath. We no longer had the energy to go out. The dustpan was still rattling.

Yusuke tapped on it lightly. “What was it doing in your apartment?” he wondered.

“They say cats return home when they’re about to die. Maybe it’s the same idea. Not that it was dying, of course. Hell, it multiplied.”

“If you’re talking home, then shouldn’t it be the park where Yukihito drew it to life?”

“It might’ve been tracking its creator,” I guessed. “Maybe it was trying to go to Kyoto, but the best it could do was come to my apartment, where it sensed traces of Yukihito.”

Yukihito jumped up. Traveling a huge distance in search of your parents must’ve been tough.

Hirugao grabbed the dustpan. Yusuke patted her head and breathed a sigh. “Good thing they can’t escape outside now. I mean, the timing couldn’t be worse. Imagine if the clan head found out.”

Yukihito’s face turned pale in an instant. My breath seized, too.

Shirayuki got pretty scary when angry. I pictured her with a dragon on her back.

If she found out that their ability created such a bizarre creature, there could be dire consequences.

I let out a dry laugh. “Thank goodness…”

“Odagiri-san, are you crying?”

Hell no. I rubbed my eyes. I ignored the droplet on my leather gloves.

Hirugao shook the duster vigorously. I patted her head. I stood up, headed to the closet, and took out my card to put it into my wallet.

“We still need to dispose of the dustpan, but we should be good for now,” I said. “Let’s go out and have some fun, shall we? If there’s any place you want…”

As soon as I opened my wallet, the words vanished in my throat.

A tiny shadow was moving in the corner of my wallet. I cautiously put my hand in and picked it up, trying to keep my gaze away as much as possible. My hunch was spot-on.

A god was wriggling between my fingers. Sweat burst out of my forehead.

Yusuke jumped to the side. “Whoa, you’re sweating like crazy! What’s wrong?”

“Haha… Hahaha…”

A nervous laugh escaped my lips. The god being inside my wallet pointed to one thing. First of all, I didn’t know when the god started hiding here. It could have been on my shoulder or in my pocket.

And for the past few days, I had been to various places.

“O-Odagiri-san?”

Yusuke’s voice sounded tense as he sensed something off. Yukihito looked uneasy. Only Hirugao was in great spirits, swinging the dustpan around. Yusuke and Yukihito were bewildered, but I didn’t have any comforting words to offer them.

Instead, I told them the worst-case scenario.

“We have a major crisis at hand.”

The range of the gods’ habitat had now expanded.