"Confird. The passphrase matches perfectly—no problem."
Maki turned to the still-hidden Kaguya beside her and nodded as she spoke.
"All right, then get ready to co up."
Kaguya's voice followed imdiately after.
Takumi gave a light nod, standing beneath the broken hole and waiting for the person above to reach down and pull him up.
"Are you ready to co up?"
Kaguya's voice sounded again, asking once more.
"Ready."
Takumi answered calmly—his reply ca almost reflexively, without ti for further thought.
Then, realizing sothing, Takumi shifted his gaze from above to straight ahead.
"Takumi?"
Maki's puzzled voice ca from above.
But Takumi, who had already grasped what was happening, took a step backward.
In that second exchange just now, Kaguya's voice hadn't co from above—
It had co from directly in front of him.
Without realizing it in ti to raise his guard, Takumi had answered that voice.
[Splash—]
The water covering the kitchen floor began to ripple slowly.
To be honest, for a mont Takumi thought he was done for—that his second life was about to end right here, and he would have to restart from the beginning.
But in the very next instant, what he felt first was not sothing attacking from ahead—but the rope around his waist tightening sharply.
[Whoosh—]
The sound of wind roared in his ears in that instant.
Takumi's eyes widened as he found himself suddenly soaring through the air—
He was yanked straight up from the kitchen, pulled through the hole in the ceiling, and flown back into the second-floor kitchen.
In that brief instant, following the direction of the rope, Takumi saw Kaguya gripping the other end with one hand.
The girl, not even 1.6 ters tall, had braced her stance in a horse-riding position, yanking the rope with a sudden burst of strength that flung Takumi upward, rescuing him in the shortest possible ti.
Such astonishing strength… should he say, as expected of the "Muscle Queen"?
While that thought flashed through his mind, Takumi crashed heavily onto the kitchen stove, then tumbled to the floor, pain shooting through his whole body as he grimaced in agony.
On the other side, the two girls had no ti to check on him. Maki practically threw herself forward, grabbing what looked like a hastily made wooden board and slamming it over the hole in the floor. But the very next mont, a trendous force surged up from below, smashing both the board and Maki herself straight into the ceiling.
Sothing was climbing up from beneath.
Still dizzy from the fall, Takumi hadn't even managed to turn his head to see what was happening around the broken hole.
But he could already sll the damp, musty scent—and hear sothing clawing at the edge of the hole, exhaling and gasping like a drowning person struggling to breathe, trying to climb up from the darkness below.
"Gre—"
Kaguya, on the other side, lifted another wooden board, shouting soone's na as she prepared to hurl herself forward again to block the thing.
Was it about to end?
The floor was already starting to flood, murky water seeping up through the boards.
Corrosion began to spread across the wall, specks of greenish-yellow moss crawling outward.
Sothing grabbed Takumi's arm.
It was so cold it made his whole body stiffen—just the touch alone felt like it could cause frostbite.
"Ah…"
Takumi opened his mouth wide, gasping for air, yet he still couldn't inhale anything.
In that instant, he was forced into suffocation, feeling as though filthy water and mud were flooding from his throat into his lungs.
"Green!"
Kaguya finally shouted the full na aloud.
But this ti, the flow of ti did not rewind.
Maki, falling from midair, crashed heavily onto the wooden floorboards. Her forehead struck hard, and a dark red streak instantly spread from the wound.
Takumi, already deep in suffocation, could no longer think at all—he simply flailed his hands, trying to shove away whatever had touched him, desperate to escape that terrifying presence.
[Rip—]
It felt as if he had torn sothing off by accident.
And from the edge of his vision, a black shadow seed to step into the kitchen.
[Boom!]
A heavy, thunderous impact followed, shaking the entire room as if it were caught in a violent earthquake.
Takumi thought he heard a sharp, wailing scream—
A jumble of countless voices, all muddled together, like the last strangled cries of people sinking into a mire.
The corrosion on the walls rapidly receded at that mont.
The water pooled across the floor suddenly vanished, leaving only faint traces of dampness behind.
"Guh—"
As soon as his body regained control, Takumi scrambled up and imdiately vomited out a mouthful of muddy water.
"Guh… ugh—"
The sa thing happened to Kaguya and Maki. Muddy water had inexplicably filled all three of their throats, and now that the anomaly in the kitchen had subsided, all of them were retching uncontrollably.
Yamamoto Hiroshi rushed into the kitchen at that mont. He was startled at first by sothing in the room, but after clenching his teeth, he forced himself forward, helping the kneeling Takumi up so he could lean against the stove to stay standing. Then he turned to help Kaguya—but before he could, she raised her hand and pointed toward the hole in the kitchen floor.
Hiroshi froze for a mont before realizing what she ant. Hastily, he grabbed one of the wooden boards he had nailed earlier and slamd it over the hole again, sealing it shut. When he turned back, both Kaguya and Maki were already on their feet.
"What on earth was that just now?"
Though she tried to maintain her usual composed image, Kaguya's appearance was utterly disheveled after retching like that—tears and snot running down her face as she wiped them away while staring intently at the thing standing before the resealed hole.
It was the charred corpse.
The mutilated, burnt body from Yamamoto Hiroshi's room had burst into the kitchen at the very mont the three inside were trapped in a deadlock.
No one knew exactly how the two anomalies had clashed—but judging from the current situation, the scorched corpse from Room 206 had clearly overpowered whatever lurked on the first floor, driving back the thing that had followed Takumi up here.
"Phew… Burnt Bro, you're aweso…"
Finally catching his breath after vomiting out all the muddy water, Takumi wiped his mouth and gave a thumbs-up to the charred corpse standing in the kitchen.
"Just now, I was outside the door trying to rig up so kind of alarm using wire and a bell. Then I heard a loud crash from inside the room—Maki hitting the ceiling, I think—so I ca in. The mont I stepped inside, I heard noises coming from the living room, and when I reached the kitchen, I saw you all like this…"
Yamamoto Hiroshi, his face pale, roughly explained what had happened on his end. It seed that the scorched corpse in the living room had only acted after Hiroshi entered the apartnt, driving away whatever had climbed up from below the kitchen. From this, it appeared that the charred corpse had moved because Hiroshi had entered, compelled by so internal rule of its own to protect him from being hard by the thing coming up from below.
In any case, they'd been saved—saved by an anomaly.
"Maki, are you all right? Hurry up and treat that wound."
Having recovered, Takumi walked toward Maki, but the girl only shook her head to show she was fine. She wiped away the blood streaming from her forehead, then sat down on the floor completely drained, not caring about the water all over it.
Then, as if suddenly rembering sothing, she turned toward the wooden boards that had been placed over the hole beside her. After a brief pause, she lifted one slightly and looked down beneath it.
Countless pale faces were staring up at her from below the kitchen, their eyes locked on hers.
Without a word, Maki quietly put the board back in place, then set another board over it for good asure. Only after that did she let out a long breath, wiping away the tears that had nearly escaped her eyes.
"…"
anwhile, Kaguya, who had also regained her strength, stepped out of the kitchen and walked straight toward Green in the living room.
At the crucial mont earlier, Green—who should have struck the clock—had done nothing.
The man was crouched in a corner of the living room, visibly terrified. Though he hadn't been attacked by any anomalous force, he had heard the sounds from the kitchen clearly and knew that sothing terrible was happening inside. Of course, he had also heard Kaguya shouting, knew that he needed to strike the clock, knew that it was his turn to make a sacrifice.
But striking the clock… might bring bad consequences.
That man nad Takumi hadn't said what kind of anomaly would occur after turning it, but Hiroshi had seed reluctant to approach the hanging clock at all—sothing he hadn't shown in the previous tiline. From this, Green began to suspect that the clock, imbued with so strange power, might bring harm to whoever used it. Perhaps those who struck it would be cursed—perhaps even if they found a way to escape, they would still end up dying here.
With such thoughts in mind, in the end, Green chose not to ring the clock.
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