“―Yeah, looks alright, everything seems to be safe.”

The analogy of surfacing from the dark, cold depths of the ocean was fitting for this situation. Feeling a faint light on my eyelids and a solid weight around my lower body, I awoke.

For real, this time.

Lifting my eyelashes, I remained stationary for a brief period of time, doubting repeatedly, but the swaying curtains, the breeze, the sound of the cicadas, and most all, the sun’s rays, which I hadn’t experienced in a long time, convinced me 80% that this was real, yet I was still on edge.

Because…

A man in a suspicious suit, who was probably there before I opened my eyes, was sitting brazenly around my lower body, talking on his cell phone and gesturing with one hand.

Was I still in the midst of a crazy dream or was this…

More importantly, was I… alive?

“Like I said, you don’t have to come over here anymore, Akane―It’s resolved. You’ve been making phone calls again under the doctor’s watchful eye, haven’t you? Whatever happens, I don’t care! Haha… yeah… ah, no, you can’t, I’ll get angry if you keep acting recklessly like that again.”

A man. Or rather, a youth. Chestnut-colored curly hair, un-Japanese-looking features, and blue eyes. Despite it being summer, he was attired in a black suit with a red necktie around his neck. He talked in a laid-back tone and was chattering happily with a smartphone in his hand. This guy was…

He was with Yakumo before… Yakumo’s friend―

“You are…”

“Ah, you’re awake… Then, it is time for me to go to Akane’s hospital room and hang up the phone.”

After ending the call with a quick tap, the man turned to me, seated while giving me a gentle smile, much like Hyuga’s.

“Good morning… well, I am not supposed to say that huh.”

“Where am I… and why are you… did you not go back to Osaka with Yakumo?”

“Well, here is Nantouka General Hospital. And I’m on a business trip right now.”

“What…?”

When I was stupefied, he brought his small cell phone up to my face and snapped a shot.

“Excuse me. Unless I do something like this, Akane is going to leave the hospital again with an IV in his arm. He said something like, ‘I’m worried about sonny!’ That’s why I have to confirm your survival.”

With a giggle, he tucked it into his breast pocket.

“Mister, your life is saved, isn’t it? Thanks to you, my schedule has changed dramatically and I have one less job to do… Well, I owe you a debt of gratitude, and my boss will be pissed off… but as far as it goes, the outcome is favorable, right?”

While blabbing something incomprehensible, the man sat up from the bed, stretched, rolled up the curtains, and headed out.

“So long, take care! Goodbye! Have a nice day!”

At this point, the sound of the hospital room door opening preceded the departure of his footsteps, and I wasn’t thinking rationally.

The young man in the black suit disappeared.

“―!? …Ugh…!”

My body, which had not fully aroused, was awakened there.

A hellacious pain assailed me like an electric shock, and I cried out briefly from sheer anguish.

Ouch… oh, crap… ouch―!?

Even if I tried to twist my body, it hurt so much that I couldn’t do that. The rest of my body, including my bones, flesh, and skin, was in excruciating pain simply from breathing. Physiological tears welled up in my eyes.

It hurt but the pain was…

This was reality. Then, I was now… ali―

“More… importantly.”It hurtttttttttt―!!!

Upon closer inspection, I found an oxygen mask over my mouth, a large amount of IV tubes in my left arm, connected to a huge machine of some unknown kind, with my neck tightly fixed, while my right leg was suspended by a cord hanging from the ceiling. My vision, which I thought was missing something, was only half open, and my right eye was crushed by a cloth that reeked of medicine. My right arm and left leg, which I thought were safe and sound, were wrapped in bandages, but my hopes were dashed by the exaggeration.

Just as I thought that was the end of it, my head, which had been complaining of a pain that felt like it was going to crack, felt surprisingly light. No way, I thought. It turned out that my head had been perfectly transformed into a buzz cut.

Even without gazing in the mirror, it was evident to me that I was a severely injured patient.

I mean, seriously, this hurt, no joke. To the point that I was about to die.

No, it truly hurt. I might die.

“Big bro… big bro―!?”

Without me noticing, my sister entered the hospital room as I was writhing in anguish.

Instantly at the sight of me, she made a face as if she were looking at a monster and screeched. She hit the nurse call button repeatedly until it became ludicrous. From that point on, it was all a madhouse.

My mother and my father—whom I hadn’t seen in a while—entered the hospital room accompanied by a nurse and a doctor, whose complexions had shifted. Despite the strain of moving my lips and breathing, the doctor removed my mask and threw a few questions at me before proceeding to do a whole bunch of other things to me.

The doctor, who appeared to be in excellent condition overall, informed me that I had been sleeping for a week and was allegedly on the borderline between life and death.

I knew it. That night, as I recalled, I had crashed on a curve, and plunged with my motorcycle into the cliff.

Had I been found even a few minutes later, I would have undoubtedly succumbed to death there. Shortly after the accident, fortunately, the manager drove by and, seeing the tire marks on the concrete, which appeared to be those of a brand new motorcycle, along with a wrecked guardrail that had been smashed through the steel plate and was clearly out of the ordinary, determined that it was an accident. An ambulance was immediately dispatched and police were summoned to the scene to search for the victim.

The manager eventually realized for the first time that I was the victim of the accident after discovering my cell phone on the road. Turning pale and panicking, he called my family, the night shift, several day and evening shift workers, and everyone else to search for me. By the time the people who were called in arrived later, the police and rescue team had already arrived. Understandably, the police stopped them, believing that an amateur would encounter major issues should they attempt to access the mountain at this time of night, so everyone waited with bated breath at the scene of the accident as the hours ticked by. Not long after that, I was discovered in such an appalling condition that I could have been mistaken for a corpse.

Blood was all over me, even my clothes were stained with fresh blood, bones were fractured everywhere, and my external injuries were nothing short of horrendous. I was literally dying.

Seeing me after I was found, my sister fainted, suggesting that I must have been in a rather compromising situation. The reason I didn’t die on the spot was that I was caught in a tree, which slightly suppressed the impact. Had I been unlucky, I would have been pierced by the branch and passed away immediately from the shock of organ damage, which would have been horrifying to hear.

I was transported by ambulance and promptly rushed to the operating room, though. In the hospital at midnight, my mother was sobbing profusely and my father was still in a state of shock, still in disbelief.

Hours of surgery, during which I went into cardiopulmonary arrest multiple times, was resuscitated each time, given massive transfusions of blood, and had every part of my body gouged, cut, and stitched together. Everything was over just as the sun was rising.

Even though the surgery was said to be grueling, I persevered through it all; yet, I could not be regarded to have survived if I did not ultimately regain consciousness. Unless I regained consciousness, the doctors could not do anything about it. On top of not being able to do so, the current state of my condition was still poor, and they had even declared that I would likely spend the remainder of my life in a vegetative state, or worse, that I might die in a few hours or days without waking up.

Nevertheless, when I abruptly awoke, I was in a position where a person ordinarily would not even be capable of raising their voice properly, yet I was capable of cheerfully complaining that my body hurt.

It was a marvel that I was still alive, as the doctor claimed.

My right eye, however, had been crushed in the crash and I would never be able to see the light again. Even so, there were no lasting repercussions from the unconsciousness, and so far my reactions have been normal, so it was certainly not the worst-case scenario. I was told that with proper treatment, I could return to a normal life.

While repeating, “Well, it’s truly like a lie,” the doctor took my hand and shook it.

They would do a thorough examination next time to determine if there were any other abnormalities… In any event, I found it difficult to follow the doctor’s complicated explanation while being clutched in pain by my sister, who was sobbing next to me. My physical strength had reached its limit, and I no longer felt like I was alive. Exhaustion, pain, and a sense of relief brought me back to sleep again in no time. By the time I became conscious again, it was around the time the outside of the window was tinted orange.“Yo, you finally woke up, Sleeping Princess… or is it Sleeping Prince?”

It was Hirai’s voice, though a bit threatening…

“You don’t have the features of a prince, huh?”magic

“Ayame…”

With a laidback expression on her face, the person who entered through the curtains was again communicating to me through the body of her daughter.

In all of my interactions with her, I had never gone without being teased, so I anticipated that she would tease me once again. However, this time, she talked to me in a soft manner and seemed to be sympathetic to my wretched condition.

“You’ve had a rough time of it, my condolences.”

“No, I’m not necessarily dead.”

“Your folks have gone home to get your clothes and stuff.”“…I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“I’m not inconvenienced by it. If I did, I’d be worried. Make sure you tell your parents later.”

“Yes.”

“You lost your right eye… but you’re lucky to be alive. You came back well.”

I nodded with tears in my eyes as she said this gently.

“Thank you…”

Perhaps Ayame knew what I was going through. With a mild smile, she opened the canned coffee tab.

“If you want to offer your thanks… Tell it to that one and… him.”

Taking a sip of coffee, Ayame pulled back the curtain behind her.

There it was…

Against the white wall of the hospital room, sitting in a chair, Takenaka was asleep with his arms folded.

An entirely fresh white gauze and a huge adhesive bandage were placed on Takenaka’s well-groomed face while he was sleeping. Compared to Takenaka, my wounds were probably more critical, but it did not mean his injuries were not something to be overlooked. I couldn’t help but widen my eyes.

“Let him sleep, he must not have slept much in the last few days. You don’t know anything about this, but he was the one who went through the greatest trouble to try to save you this time.”

“Takenaka did that…”

“You saw that one, didn’t you?”

I moved my head when I realize she was talking about Hyuga.

“She was able to reach you, all because of his efforts… He helped her extend the time she could be with you just a little bit… and now you must know the real reason why that girl died. Otherwise, it would be too undeserved. Even if she said she would still be okay with it. We’re both women after all…”

Setting the coffee on the side table, Ayame said she would share with me the battle that had been going on without my knowledge and the truth of it all.

That pitiful figure of Hyuga that haunted me was nothing more than an illusion created by my guilty conscience. In a nutshell, I had been plagued by an apparition who was the physical manifestation of my own guilty conscience over the previous few weeks.

How did I come to see such things? It was deeply connected to the sea of trees and my faltering spirit.

“You’ve been entranced by the ‘neclues’ of that sea of trees.”

“That’s…”

“You asked me the other day whether there is something deeper and more sinister out there. Oh, of course I knew; there was no way someone as powerful as me could have failed to detect it inside. At the time, I sensed that your mental state was fluctuating, so I played dumb and feigned ignorance, lest I cause you undue anxiety. Well, that backfired this time, though… Geez, I should have given you some guidance if it was going to come to this.”

A plethora of grudges, envy, grief, and resentment was prevalent across the vast spiritual magnetic field. The “nucleus” of the sea of trees was, so to speak, a monster of thoughts created from the concoction of such negative power.

That was the “nucleus” of the sea of trees.

Always sucking up the filthy emotions of the people who congregated in the sea of trees, it grew up, and in rare cases, it possessed a mentally weak or unstable person and sought to draw them in.

“There are sites known for suicides and automobile accidents, and the reason there is an unceasing stream of suicides is that those who are strongly embedded in such locations are responsible for them. Furthermore, unlike people, it could not rest in peace, and it is born from the strongest emotions of human beings, which makes it all the worse.”

Subsequently, neither the possessed person nor the people around them were conscious of what was taking place until something transpired since it progressively corroded people’s minds from the inside out. It could be described as a fungus that corroded people’s minds, contaminating their spirits, causing them to hallucinate, driving them mad, and even leading them to death. Although insubstantial, in combination with negative emotions, it was said to be able to transform itself into what humans dreaded the most and visualize it. Feelings of guilt and the belief in my heart that Hyuga would come to kill me someday resulted in me seeing such an apparition.

It wasn’t Hyuga who materialized in front of me that night; rather, it was my regret, remorse, and fear that had manifested as a figure. Takenaka sensed that I was possessed by that thing and was about to be dragged into it. The devil’s curve, which would be quite perilous if I kept going in the same direction, would be approaching me. He told me over and over again over the phone.

Nonetheless, I was still in a panic when the phone eventually went dead in the middle of the call. At that instant, Takenaka, picturing the devastation in his mind, ran out of his parents’ house and called Hirai. Soon after, he heard from the manager that I had been involved in a falling accident, and with his heart pounding, he headed for the hospital.

By the time Takenaka, who had driven his car, arrived at the hospital, I was in the operating room repeatedly undergoing cardiopulmonary arrest. The situation was so tense that even the doctor feared I might not be able to survive any longer. People waiting in the corridor had slumped their shoulders, and an air of resignation pervaded.

Among them, only one person, Takenaka, did not relent. In front of the operation room, where those who could only wait for the worst to come were hunched on a couch corner, he asked my sister to lend him my mobile phone, which would soon be turned into a memento belonging to the deceased.

After making sure with my sister, Takenaka contacted Kinoshita, my closest friend from high school, and informed him that I had been in an accident, that my life was in jeopardy and that he required his assistance to save me and asked him for the location of our old school.

“Takenaka knew that you had been beckoned by the other side and that you were already being dragged very deep… and that if you stayed there, you would surely die, so he came up with a plan, the only way to save you.”

“No way…”

“Right, Takenaka took a gamble. He bet that she would bring you back from the brink of death.”

“But… Hyuga is…”

“That’s right. She didn’t rest in peace, she was still here in this world. On the roof of the old school building. She became a specter bound to that place, though.”