A Man Drenched in Blood II |
Please show up in front of me and say something if you had something on your mind.
Feel free to laugh at me. Say “You understood my feelings, right?” or even curse at me.
You were such a pure person and I…
“―Hey, senior.”
A voice abruptly reverberated from behind me.
“Why…”
The voice of familiarity startled me, and I turned around.
With long black hair, a knee-length skirt, and a sailor uniform, she was wearing a pair of red-framed glasses.
An expression of somewhat uneasiness lingered on her childlike face.
“Why… didn’t you trust me back then?”
Hyuga…
“Even though I figured you would believe me…”
She was still looking at me in the same way she did back then.
Hyuga… Were you Hyuga?
“I… was sad.”
From the forehead of Hinata who said so, red blood spilled out. Lines and lines of blood streaked from Hyuga’s forehead as she stood still…
With a gulp of breath, I backed away in abject horror at the sight of my junior, who appeared in front of me without warning.
However…
In merely one blink of an eye, in that single moment…
She disappeared out of my sight.
“Hyuga…!!”
Even though I called out to her, she was nowhere to be found. Regardless of my efforts of searching around, I couldn’t spot her anymore. The empty cemetery was filled with the sound of my voice. A cool breeze swept across the place, drying the perspiration from my forehead.
What was that… earlier?
Was that Hyuga?
Really, Hyuga was…
Did she respond to my call…
[I… was sad.]
No, if it wasn’t Hyuga, then what was it?
I clenched my fists in front of the grave.
That person was still in the same state as back then… and still retained lingering regrets for this world.
[Even though I figured you would believe me…]
After all, that guy… about me…
“Damn…”
What was I supposed to do? What should I do to be forgiven, Hyuga?
Tell me.
Please tell me.
Despite all the calls in my heart, she never emerged in front of me any further.
It was only several seconds, yet the vivid and distinct appearance of Hyuga was more than enough to shock me.
What Hyuga uttered to me and the expression on her visage that I could not shake off seemed to have left a gaping hole in my heart.
“Hakamada? Are you under the weather?”
The manager, who had substituted for Hirai, who was absent from the store for the Comiket, tried to gauge my state of mind from my complexion, but I just made it up as I went along.
This person was equally surprisingly perceptive, which posed a complication. Despite being a barcode guy, damn.
“My appetite has been a little low lately due to the summer fatigue, and my staple food has recently consisted of somen noodles.”
“Is that so? Oh no, a young person has to eat properly.”
Didn’t I say I was suffering from summer fatigue…
“Whew…”
“You must be getting awfully tired, are you okay?”
“No problem. I’ve got the energy, so I’ll work as long as I can without collapsing.”
Though that being said, I didn’t do much, except for standing around in a store with no customers, cleaning, ordering, inspecting, and so on.
Right, right. Since the cat incident, the delinquents had turned up no more. Even the underlings were extremely spooked by that incident. They were probably horrified to know that the shady history of this place was true. I was very happy about this but…
These days, all the noise had faded away and the late-night hours were quieter than they had been in a long time.
“Hopefully, nothing will take place today.”
“Speaking of which, you can see them too, right?”
“Only very faintly.”
“Is that so?”
“Hakamada, have you ever seen that? The women’s toilet.”
“Huh? No, I haven’t…?”
“Sometimes late at night during cleaning, a girl hangs upside down from the top of the door, so be careful.”
“What!?”
“She’s probably in junior high school… she pops out every once in a while.”
“H-Hah.”
“She just wants to frighten people, so neither Hirai nor Takenaka did anything to her.”
“I see…”
“And sometimes…”
The manager pointed to an “ATM” near the entrance of the store.
“That ‘ATM’ there occasionally starts chattering on its own, but you don’t have to worry about it too much, though it might be scary. It rarely speaks when it is not alone.”
“Ugh…”
I took a small step back to gain some distance from the “ATM” that I could see over the counter.
“Apart from that…”
“Ah, that’s enough!”
If I let him go on, he was going to start spouting off a hundred ghost stories about this convenience store, so I covered my ears and pleaded with the manager to stop.
“It’s hot, so I figured it might chill you out.”
“I don’t want that kind of chill!”
Good grief.
Even without listening to that, I watched something terrible every day, you know.
A legless man. Headless children. A woman with only the lower half of her body. None of them could be called customers but were wandering beings who stayed in this place.
Ah. Please, I beg you, don’t let anything strange befall today. Peace was the utmost, for everything. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Since I was all alone with the manager today, to say I was twice as anxiety-ridden as usual would not be an overstatement.
In the midst of praying this, the automatic door opened and the chime rang. It was a customer. By the looks of it, it was a young man in his 20’s.
That guy walked into the store, didn’t even bother to look around, but rather strode forward, stopped in front of the cash register and said, “…Give me a steamed azuki bun…”
This guy… What was wrong with him?
That was my initial impression.
Indeed, Nico Nico Mart operated year-round selling Chinese steamed buns, but on this midsummer, with the weather brutally hot, I had not seen a single person who went out of their way to buy one of these buns since the beginning of this summer. Furthermore, it was not a standard meat bun, pizza bun, curry bun or this summer’s new product, “Tropical Fruit Bun”.
He chose a bun with anko filling, which was an irregularity.
As a staff member, I would typically be internally researching this subject. However, digging deeply into this matter was not the point. The fact that he came all the way to such a place in this hot weather and wanted to buy a hot bun with anko filling was not the only aspect to be poked at.
At around 1:00 a.m.
A customer, presumably a young man of about 20 years of age.
His eyes were as searingly piercing as the delinquent who had his way with me in front of the convenience store the other day. He had long, black hair that reached his shoulders and long bangs that hung inconveniently about his eyes. A red sleeveless hoodie, a black tank top, and loose-fitting damaged pants.
A slender yet muscular physique.
At first glance, he appeared to be the type of young man you would come across anywhere.
And yet…
For what reason? He was carrying something so heavy in one hand that I wanted to ask him where in the world he had obtained it.
On a bright red wooden bat, numerous nails had been driven into it.
That was the so-called spiked bat.
With that alone, my spine tingled as I wondered what kind of clan he belonged to, but this was only the beginning.
The greatest part of the situation, which made both me and the manager freeze, lingered with the customer.
After all, that customer…
His head was dripping blood. In large volumes, so much so that the sound effect was a “whoosh”.
It appeared as though he had been severely struck in the back of the head by someone or that he had engaged in combat with a person who intended to murder him.
He was truly drenched in blood. That was the only word I could use to describe it.
Though this was my impression objectively, I was now standing in front of a bloodied man who had come in as a customer.
Not a meter across the counter, not even a meter away.
Hey, imagine that.
How could this not be terrifying?
Right in front of you.
Frankly speaking, I could pee my pants.