Chapter 9: Watching
Guchi ~ya, guchagucha, guchi ~ya.
Baki, pakin, guchi ~ya.
Yuiru groaned with great pleasure as he ate the ghost of the patient who repeatedly committed suicide in the morgue.
“This is a good grudge. It reminds me of rich beef stew.”
“I see.”
Houzuki had gotten used to the sight of Yuiru eating and looked around the morgue while listening to the sound effects that would make an ordinary person vomit.
With this, the ghost of a patient who repeatedly committed suicide had been dealt with.
All that was left to do was to tell one of the nurses that there were no more ghosts on the basement floor. This would mean that Houzuki’s job was done.
While waiting for Yuiru to finish his meal, Houzuki found a scalpel that had fallen on the floor.
It had slipped from the patient’s hand and was still lying on the floor.
Just how many scalpels had been recovered? Houzuki picked up the silver scalpel that had fallen to the linoleum floor,
“――――-“
Then he gasped.
It’s there, there’s still something.
It was stuck to the wall like a shadow, intently watching Yuiru as he devoured the patient’s ghost. Only its eyes were white, and it was creepy as it moved around busily.
“Hiih”
Still clutching the scalpel, Houzuki took two, three steps back.
Stuck to the wall was something that barely maintained its human form. Something like a shadow. It was watching the high school boy with silver hair and red eyes eat the patient’s ghost.
As if it was looking at something interesting — or as if it was looking at the meal with great envy.
Yuiru did not seem to notice the shadow stuck to the wall, as he gleefully took the patient’s emaciated fingertips into his mouth. With a silver knife, he cut off the patient’s shoulder, and took the fingertips, which were flailing around like a lizard’s tail, into his mouth and chewed them to pieces, bones and all.
Gorigori, gorigori.
Gori ~yu, gori ~yu.
The figure was watching Yuiru eat with interest, still stuck to the wall and not moving. Not even an inch.
“Yuiru, haven’t you noticed…?”
“Notice what?”
“Um, on the wall…”
“Oh.”
Yuiru finally looked up from the ghost of the patient he had just eaten, and noticed the presence of figures stuck to the wall.
There were about ten of them, he thought. Everyone was stuck to the wall, following Yuiru’s figure with just their eyes, swaying back and forth with their pitch-black bodies. It was as if they were happy to have been found by Yuiru Enen.
Yuiru silently narrowed his crimson eyes,
“I see, they’re the patients who used this room. There are still more.”
“Isn’t he the only one…?”
“He’s the only one who committed suicide. But he’s not the only patient who died when the morgue was a death room.”
Yuiru wipes his mouth.
“They probably want to be eaten by me. They died with a grudge against the hospital. And so they became ghosts that tormented the hospital, but at the same time, they couldn’t even leave this hospital.”
“Most likely,” Yuiru continues.
“All the nurses who left this hospital probably did so after seeing these guys.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s a ghost’s intuition. It’s a mixture of resentment towards the hospital for abandoning them and a desire for them to be found for being tied to this place.”
Saying this, Yuiru reached out his hand towards the figure stuck to the wall.
He ran his fingers over the hard wall, then pulled the figure away from the wall.
The figure didn’t even try to resist. There was no doubt that it wanted to be released from this hospital.
Beri beri beri beri. (TN: tearing off something stuck on the surface of something else )
Holding the slender fingertips of the figure that had been torn away from the wall in his mouth, Yuiru said, “Itadakimasu.”
Pokin. (TN: snap)
A light sound came from the figure’s fingertips.
The pain must be immeasurable, but the figure still didn’t resist. They too wished to be released from the hospital.
As the figure was being eaten, the other figures swayed back and forth, as if they would be the next to be eaten. They seemed to be saying, “I want to be eaten quickly, I want to be eaten quickly.”
Houzuki glanced at the figures swaying, waiting its turn to be eaten, and
“……Yuiru, will you eat them?”
“Of course I will eat. For them to offer themselves to me, these ghosts sure thought of something admirable. The taste is also quite delicious, like an omelet with ketchup and sauce.”
“It tastes that good…….”
“I don’t recommend eating ghosts.”
Yuiru just continued eating,
“Houzuki.”
He put a figure in his mouth and swallowed it, then the silver-haired, red-eyed high school boy turned to Houzuki.
“I’m of the opinion that I want the living to live as long as possible. I want them to enjoy the long life I never got to experience, and then die.”
His words were filled with his heartfelt wish.
“So Houzuki, don’t end up like me. Now that I’m here, ghosts won’t harm you.”
“It’s fine.”
Houzuki plays idly with a silver scalpel,
“I’m not the type of person to stick my nose into something dangerous like that. –Ah.”
The scalpel she’d been playing with slipped out of Houzuki’s hand.
It slammed into the hard linoleum floor, and the thin, harsh sound of metal echoed through the morgue.
It would be the last time that sound would be heard.
