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V7 Story IV – Part 06

“What do you mean by evil spirits?”

“Aaaaaaaahhhh!”

There was a ghastly wail. The voice of evil spirits. Shaking off the foolish thought that briefly crossed my mind, I sprinted through the hallway back to the reception room, passing by the sculptures cloaked in an aura of death.

As I barged into the room, an expected scene greeted me.

Another puppet was dead. She was sitting deeply in a chair, her eyes closed.

Her face was split vertically, her pale skin torn apart, revealing a gruesome interior. The crack running along her face was more horrific than raw flesh. A human exterior ripped apart, displaying what should have been hidden. Pieces of her eyeball lay scattered on her lap, black and white shards of glass, while the remaining halve had sunken deep into her torn eyelid.

She must have been struck in the head with an axe. Both of her hands had been cut off; there was nothing below the wrist of the arms resting on the armrest.

It was as if her hands had been taken while she was napping.

I recognized her as the puppet who had served us drinks earlier, her hair neatly braided. Suddenly her wrists came to mind. The color of her skin from the wrist down was different—the color of the living.

Hishigami, who had been enraged earlier, collapsed in tears. He was sobbing uncontrollably, kneeling on the floor. There was no sign of the other puppets. Where had they gone, leaving their distraught master behind?

Only Hishigami and I were in the room.

“Hishigami-san,” I called.

“Why… Why… Why would they do this?” he sobbed.

He couldn’t see me. He pounded the floor, choking back tears. I looked at the puppet. Her right eye was slightly open, so I closed it. Her beautiful features hit me with whiplash.

The difference between the unharmed right side and the destroyed left side was exceedingly horrific.

“You call this cruel?” Mayuzumi’s voice echoed in my mind.

It was. This was cruel. The pale girls simply existed without harming others. I doubt they would even incur a grudge in this mansion.

Why kill them, then? Why destroy them?

“Ah!”

A sharp pain shot up my right ankle. Hishigami had grabbed my foot with the strength of a vise. On his face was a look of both hunger and emptiness.

“Do you… pity me?” His voice was terribly feeble.

He clung to me like a child abandoned by his parents. He was completely overwhelmed by utter hopelessness, of having his precious belongings destroyed and no one lending him an ear.

“Please… find them… I can’t take it anymore… Find the culprit for me.”

He pleaded repeatedly. I shared the same sentiment. I placed a hand on his shoulder, and he looked at me with watery eyes. His eyelids, surrounded by deep wrinkles, quivered.

“I can’t find them,” he murmured in a voice filled with agony.

It was as though he had been thrown into an endless maze.

---

Who killed Cock Robin? The nursery rhyme no longer applied.

After the robin, next was the skylark. Who was going to die next?

Shaking off the pointless thoughts, I rushed out of the room. There was no sign of the puppets. I had to find them quickly. Then I changed my mind. I stopped and looked down the hallway.

“There’s an isolated workshop deep in the atelier. The heart of the place, where blood doesn’t flow.”

The sinister fairy tale set my guts astir. I felt the need to confirm Maihime’s words.

I headed towards the deeper part of the atelier, and soon I arrived at the end of the olive-colored carpet. Before me stood a heavy door. Just like at the entrance, a metal door was hidden inside the wooden surface.

Beside it was also a touch panel-type PIN input device. Only the puppets could open this door, making it impossible for me to check what was inside.

The honey-colored wood gleamed under the light. I gave up and returned to the entrance. The heart of the atelier could not be opened to outsiders.

I swallowed back the unease.

“Evil spirits must be dwelling there now.”

I remembered Maihime’s laughter. It burst like a bubble and vanished.

---

I stumbled upon one of the puppets sitting in the built-in kitchen, seemingly exhausted. It was as if she was taking a break from doing chores.

Porcelain cups were lined up like chess pieces on the checker-patterned counter, the same ones that we had used earlier. The bullets remained submerged inside the open pot.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “It’s dangerous here. Let’s head over to Hishigami-san.”

“…No.” The puppet shook her head, her hair—unlike the other puppets, hers was short—swaying.

She didn’t budge. I felt uneasy.

What was this puppet doing here?

“Why not?” I pressed. “You weren’t given an order to stay here, were you? You should stay by your master’s side. He will be sad if you’re destroyed.”

The puppet stared at me. Her mechanical voice belied her human-like appearance, but her pale skin belonged to the dead. The dead moving, speaking in a robotic voice. Nothing seemed right.

“I was ordered to go on as usual,” she said indifferently.

“By whom?”

Kugutsu and Hirugao came to mind. Watching her obey orders was painful, and at the same time, the knot in my gut tightened even more.

Everything was off. There was only one person who could give her orders.

“My master.”

Hishigami wouldn’t give her this order. He genuinely grieved the death of the puppets. The deaths of the girls were like a rusty blade slicing through his heart. The inconsistent puppet fell silent once more.

Despite gathering the guest’s tableware, she didn’t try to wash them. It seemed as if she was waiting for cups that hadn’t yet arrived. I pulled on her arm, but she wouldn’t budge an inch.

I reluctantly left her side. The puppet saw me off with a quiet gaze.

I wandered around the place and found another puppet. When I spoke to her, she just said the same thing. She, too, seemed to be wishing for death.

“I was ordered to be here by my master.”

Who was this master they were referring to? Was Hishigami lying?

I headed back to the front garden utterly confused. I needed to tell the newly-repaired puppet to return to Hishigami’s side. I stepped out into the summer yard, and my eyes widened.

A crimson figure was standing in the bright space, the color of blood too graphic for the idyllic scene.

Mayuzumi turned around slowly, revealing her body hidden under the parasol. Black and red. Like a crow landing on the grass, she seemed to symbolize ill omens. But instead, relief flooded my chest.

“Mayu-san, where did you go?”

“I was here the whole time… or so I’d like to say. I was touring the atelier and met with the puppets. Right after you ran off for no apparent reason.”

Mayuzumi had gone looking for the puppets before me and talked to them. She studied the puppet sitting in the chair gravely. She still hadn’t moved from her seat despite gaining feet.

“And I realized something. It seems my initial assumption was correct.”

The puppet sitting in the chair didn’t move, as if under a command. She seemed drowsy.

“Were you ordered to stay here too?” I asked.

“Yes,” she nodded gently, as expected.

Mayuzumi shrugged. “That’s irrelevant, Odagiri-kun. I knew there was someone giving them orders from the first lie. They only protect people when commanded by their master. What’s important lies elsewhere. Why were their body parts severed? Should I simplify it for you?”

She knelt on the grass and stared at the puppet’s face from the side. Two girls side by side, one in sinister black and the other as pale as the dead.

Mayuzumi leaned closer to the puppet’s small, shell-like ears. “Do you girls feel pain?”

“No.”

I thought it was a meaningless question. At the same time, I was relieved to know that the girls who had been killed didn’t feel any pain.

Mayuzumi’s lips curled up. “I see. I’m taking this, then,” she whispered in an even sweeter voice.

She moved her hand to the puppet’s eye and dug her fingers into the eye socket, pulling out the glass eyeball. Oil spilled like tears. A bundle of metal resembling an optic nerve came out. Through the hollow eye socket, the interior of the puppet’s body came into view. Something was wobbling alongside the fluid within the glass sphere.

“Why would you do such a horrible thing?!” I barked and grabbed Mayuzumi’s wrist.

She regarded me with a smile. “Relax. This is not irreversible. I’ll return it soon. She doesn’t feel pain, and nothing is broken. I’m just borrowing it. Anyway, take a look at this.”

Before I could argue further, she showed me the eyeball. The pupils were black glass, but the eyeball itself was made of transparent glass. It was slightly different from the broken puppet from earlier.

The inside was hollow, and there was something in the liquid. Something round.

I gulped when I realized what it was.

Another eyeball inside an eyeball.