Chapter 7: Let’s go home
Let’s go home
Let’s go home
Let’s go home
The woman walking on the beach called out towards the sea repeatedly.
The woman had a child. Although the child had passed away before being born, she couldn’t stop believing that the child would return to her.
Let’s go home
Let’s go home
Let’s go home
The woman walking on the beach was insane. She was convinced that if she kept calling out, the child who had died inside her would come back.
Even though the child would never return, like a mother urging her child who had gone far away to come back, she called out over and over and over and over.
“Hey, did you hear about Mrs. ××?”
“I heard she had a miscarriage.”
“That’s why she’s like that…”
“Poor thing.”
People around her were saying things, but the woman didn’t care. She kept calling out to the sea over and over until her child returned.
Pashan. (TN:Splash.)
At that moment, the sound of water splashing reached the woman’s ears. She had been acting as if she couldn’t hear the voices of others, but now she suddenly looked up. The words “let’s go home,” which she had been calling out like a madwoman, stopped, and she gazed at the sea.
Then, she smiled.
“They’ve come back.”
The next day, the woman’s drowned body was found washed up on the shore. Her face, turned purple, had a peaceful expression, and in her arms was a bloated, unidentifiable drowned body.
Following the discovery of the woman’s drowned body, there were numerous incidents in the area where people were dragged into the sea and found later as drowned bodies.
☆
“――Aaaaaaahhhhhh!?”
“――Gyaaaaaaahhhhhh!?”
The screams of the young people from the resort hotel room, where the plywood had been removed, echoed through the night sky.
They must have seen it too—the creature like a spider with a wet woman’s face embedded in it. The horrifying sight of countless human arms protruding from the spider’s body, skillfully gripping the ground and crawling around.
Finally, the spider-like monster clung to the wall of the resort hotel, and a silver-haired, red-eyed male student attacked it.
“Who said you could run away?”
Yuiru mercilessly kicked the screaming spider-like monster, embedding a silver knife deeply into the woman’s forehead, and sent it rolling to the ground.
Black mist billowed from its forehead.
The spider-like monster, writhing in pain from the silver knife, glared fiercely at Yuiru, who was gripping the knife in a reverse hold.
“You’ll never return!! You’ll never return!!”
“Ah, that’s right. My place to return to is not here.”
Yuiru looks at the screaming spider monster with a composed attitude.
“So you drag unsuspecting guests into the sea one after another, and when swimming is banned, you pull in those who stick their heads out from the hotel windows, growing larger in the process,” Yuiru said, narrowing his red eyes.
“Impressive, you have a grand procession behind you. With so many humans absorbed, what exactly are you trying to achieve?”
To the frightened young people in the hotel room, she must have looked like a hideous spider monster.
However, that perception was incorrect. At least, Houzuki could see its true form.
She was a woman entangled by countless humans. Her belly was greatly swollen, soaking the loose dress often worn by pregnant women.
The pregnant woman, with her black hair hanging down limply, glared at Yuiru with bloodshot eyes.
“They told me he’ll come back.”
She pleaded with a hoarse voice.
“They said that he’ll come back to me if I do this, that my child will come back!!”
“He won’t come back.”
The silver-haired, red-eyed male student replied, dismissing her plea.
“Even if you do this, the child in your belly won’t return. At most, you’ll bring about whatever the one who lied to you wanted.”
“That’s not true!”
“Yes, it is.”
Yuiru strode towards the wet pregnant woman.
The humans entwined around her focused on his every move.
Their entire bodies were tinged blue, their hands and feet grotesquely swollen, making it impossible to distinguish who they once were. These horrifying figures stared at the silver-haired, red-eyed high school boy. If it were Houzuki, she would have been frozen with fear, but Yuiru showed no sign of concern.
He raised the silver knife he held in a reverse grip and thrust its tip into the pregnant woman’s belly.
“Stop—”
Before the woman could protect her stomach, Yuiru’s knife had already sliced it open.
Zoro~o. (TN:Slosh.)
What spilled out were eggs. What kind of eggs they were, no one could tell.
The sheer quantity of eggs spilling from her swollen belly was so repulsive that Houzuki covered her mouth and doubled over.
Something sour rose in her throat. She barely managed to swallow the bile and looked at the pregnant woman.
“――――――――”
The pregnant woman was also frozen in shock. There was no child inside her belly—only some kind of eggs. Had she dragged so many people into the sea to nurture these eggs?
“What is this? What is this? What is this?”
“I don’t know. If you don’t know, then neither do I.”
Yuiru presses the tip of the knife against the pregnant woman’s neck,
“You’re pitiful. You were lied to about your child coming back, and dragged many people into the sea to bring them back, but in the end, you were just deceived.”
Yuiru glances at the egg on the ground and says,
“Look closely, is that your child?”
“Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!”
The pregnant woman, in a state of delirium, screamed and thrashed her hair. Watching her descent into madness, Yuiru laughed with genuine amusement.
Toying with the silver knife in his hand, he spoke with eager anticipation,
“Let me grant you some mercy. You can cry and scream in my stomach.”
――I ta da ki masu.
