Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 11 Chapter 3 (section)

== 3.07 The Others ==

“This really looks like paradise—”

Mikko described the room like that and he timidly stepped ahead.

“…?”

Kii-kun suddenly noticed his shoulder being grabbed.

However, even when he turned around there was no one there.

“T-there’s no way it’s an actual ghost…”

His body shaking, he wanted to keep going after Mikko—

But someone called his name.

“—”

It wasn’t that he heard a voice.

However, it called him.

He was convinced of this somewhere in his heart.

“—”

Wordlessly, Kii-kun turned his back to Mikko and walked.

His fear was starting to vanish. Although he had no goal, he walked through the corridor full of animals as if pulled there.

Doing that, he arrived at a huge hole in the dead end of the corridor.

It looked as if it was gouged with a high-power burner, but he couldn’t see the part cut off—the remains of what was likely a door.

Passing through the hole, he found a gloomy room occupied by butterflies.

In the center of the wide room was a dirty operating table. Near the walls were many machines he’d never seen before, but some were destroyed, and butterflies were escaping through the hole in the wall.

Further into the room was a table laden with rotten food, covered by tattered dresses and coats. He realized at a glance that all of it used to be originally expensive.

And even further into the room—was a jail cell made of iron bars.

“—”

Kii-kun approached the bars and looked down a black figure crouching inside.

He barely realized this was a woman. However, her long hair was dry and parched and her body was no more than skin and bones. At a glance, he might have mistaken it with a corpse.

The woman in the jail turned to Kii-kun.

Pierced by her goggling eyes, he came back to his sense.

“—Y-you…! From back then…!”

There was no mistake.

This was the dark woman that made Kii-kun’s two friends collapse.

As he noticed this, he started.

“W-where am I? —Mikko! Kasshi!”

When had he come to this place?

Also, just like Kasshi, Mikko also vanished.

The dark woman screamed.

“Eeek!”

As he was startled and leapt back, the dark woman reached with her hand from between the bars.

She was apparently trying to get the rotten food. However, she was unable to reach it and cut through air again and again.

“Hey, you… what did you do to them! What have you done to me!”

He tried his best to act brave and shouted.

However, the dark woman didn’t lend him her ears. Once she realized she couldn’t reach the food, she reached toward air and managed catching a butterfly.

“Eh, h-hey, no way—”

Kii-kun’s bad feeling was right on the mark.

The woman spun around and crouched. Then she carried the captured butterfly to her mouth—

“Ugh…!”

And ate it.

He couldn’t see it because her back was turned to him, but just imagining it made him want to hurl.

How starved was she—

He couldn’t think of this woman who was so starved she lost all rational thought as human.

“Am I… dreaming?”

He knew it was useless asking the dark woman anything.

She was already crazy and couldn’t answer any of Kii-kun’s questions.

She couldn’t explain what was happening to his body.

“This has to be a bad dream… even this arm—”

Kii-kun’s left arm crumbled down.

Just like the illusion he saw while running in the city.

Just like the nightmare he saw in the expensive hotel.

There wasn’t even blood; it just crumbled like earth from the elbow down.

Kii-kun’s bloodshot eyes looked around the gloomy room.

“—The Undying.”

He searched around the ruined room with his remaining arm.

“Undying… Undying… is it somewhere here? Mikko said something like that.”

At this rate, his entire body would vanish and he’d die.

In order to awaken from this bad dream, he needed a proof he’d definitely never die.

“Undying! Where’s the Undying!”

A weakling like him went on this scary journey for a goal.

That was the power of Undying.

Since something was happening to him, if he didn’t manage to get it, he’d die—

That fear led Kii-kun to this scrapped ship.

“Where is it! How can I be saved…!”

Wailing, he looked for clues anywhere and everywhere.

However, all he could find were papers with incomprehensible numbers and records. He couldn’t find even a single way to save himself.

One of his legs folded.

As he lowered his gaze, he saw that his right leg crumbled down.

“—Save me.”

He mumbled.

He couldn’t find the Undying anywhere. Staying here was meaningless.

“Save me, pleeease! Mikkooo! Kasshi! …Rui!”

Screaming pathetically, he headed toward the entrance to the room, almost crawling.

“Waaah! No! I don’t wanna die—”

Since he was missing an arm and a leg, he couldn’t proceed well.

Even so he desperately headed to the hole connecting the room and the corridor, but someone in front of him blocked the way.

“…Eeek!”

Flinching, Kii-kun rolled around the center of the room.

Appearing from the other side of the hole was a person clad in white clothes.

He knew immediately this wasn’t Mikko or Kasshi. The man’s hospital robe was torn here and there, and he hanged his head as if to throw his scraggly hair.

A ghost.

So it looked to Kii-kun’s eyes. It really was suitable for this ghost ship.

And the next moment, that impression—turned to conviction.

“—”

He couldn’t even scream from fear.

A creepy object was floating next to that person.

It was an Eye.

It had a round shell that looked as hard as rock, it had eyelids, and was enveloping something that looked like a human eyeball. Around the size of a basketball, it floated in air while ignoring gravity.

At first he thought this was a Mushi.

Those monsters that only had part of their bodies.

However, the Eye floating in front of him did not attack the person in hospital robe. Not only that but it was even glaring straight at Kii-kun as if to do it instead of the man clad in white.

“Ah…ah—”

Kii-kun’s tear-stained face was enveloped in a pale blue glow.

The hot wind and roar that rushed at him a moment later were like a disaster incarnate.

A large, round hole opened up in the wall right next to Kii-kun. A hot gale blew through there, stabbing through the electronic equipment and the butterflies.

“…!”

The roar and vibration shook the entire ship.

Kii-kun couldn’t move a single muscle.

If his eyes were working alright, it looked as though the Eye emitted something like a pallid heat ray and shot through the nearby wall—

The jailed woman screamed again. She reached with her hands toward the butterflies that were now escaping through the new hole in the ceiling. Apparently the fact that her food was escaping was much more important than what happened right in front of her.

Kii-kun had a hunch.

''This guy’s the one who broke the ship—

The destruction strewn everywhere inside the ship was this Eye’s work.

And he was the first “result” of the research that Mikko mentioned—

The sole case of the host still living after birthing a Mushi—

“S-save me—”

While his body was crumbling down, he was facing a cruel Mushi.

In this situation that had nothing but despair, Kii-kun wished for only one thing.

''I don’t wanna die—

He tried crawling away, but the man remained blocking the corridor. Naturally, as he slithered to the other side, he just reached the bars.

A moment later, the thin arms extending from behind held him.

“—!”

The dark woman raised a scream. Hugging him from behind through the bars with both arms, she raised a shriek of pain.

He was about to get eaten.

So he thought.

“UWAAAAAAAAAAH!”

As he fell into full panic and turned around—

He saw the dark woman was crying.

While he shuddered, he could hear groans.

It was the white man. The man who stood at the entrance as if to block it raised his face.

The man was crying, too.

And Kii-kun as well—

“—!”

The man shouted.

He couldn’t understand the words. However, he could understand the anger and the sadness, as well as the loneliness and the suffering—he shouted as if he condensed too much of those feelings that a single person couldn’t bear.

A card was pasted on the man’s white shirt.

It had a single word there.

“Alpha” was written on it.

“—!”

The woman shouted too.

This shout contained a maddening grudge, hatred, as well as hunger. Her thin, pointy fingertips stabbed through Kii-kun’s clothes, digging into his flesh.

“UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Kii-kun also shouted.

This shout had, inside the fear and sadness, his despair of wanting to live.

“AAaaAAH!”

He finally understood.

They were all the same—

They all had something they strongly wished for.

Kii-kun’s wish to live, to avoid death, was probably very natural.

However, he couldn’t get it no matter what he did—

They were split into those who ate and those who were eaten.

Everyone had the same “essence”.

Strongly wishing for something.

However, without making it come true—

“AAAaaaAAAH!”

While shedding tears, the trio’s shouts reached their peak.

A lightning flash pierced the ship.

“—aaa!”

It wasn’t the Eye’s attack.

It was far more overwhelming, an impact that held uncontrollable power. The ship was assaulted by such shaking that it made him wonder whether the entire thing sank down and then floated again as if rebounded.

Inside the white space that felt as if time stopped, Kii-kun could see.

A fragment of the operating table that blew off due to the impact tore the stomach of the man in hospital clothes.

Butterflies dancing in his sight were blown off and wrapped in a purple glow.

The thin arms restraining him were absorbing that purple glow.

And—

Something inside him burst, became light and was absorbed by the woman behind.

It wasn’t just that.

An azure light was mixed in with that.

This azure light that was raining ceaselessly from somewhere went to those three—

No, it engulfed the entire ship.

As if it was some sort of catalyst, it combined all people on the ship into “one”— 

“Uh—”

A whirl of information assaulted Kii-kun.

The memories of all people in the ship were instantly pushed into his mind.

What happened to cause this?

Who were they and why were they in this place?

Everything flowed into Kii-kun—

“AAaaaaAAAAAaaAAAH!”

And burst.

With lights of many colors mixing, an instant passed, and within that broken up time—

Along with an impact and shouts.

The world—changed.