Episode 121 – Auditory Hallucination

The dry sound echoed over and over on the roof of the school.

I was worried that voices and sounds might be echoing downstairs, but that was only the beginning. The girl in front of me was modifying her moves and becoming sharper and sharper as I fought off her attacks. It was so sharp that even I thought she was dangerous.

–In that case, shouldn’t it be possible to sink it with a single blow?

Every time I thought that…..

[No !]

Zap ! !

(Shit…..)

Whenever I counter and try to control the girl, my brain lets out a scream that makes my head hurt. As a result, I have created an opening for myself, and the slippery attack has gone on for a long time. It has already been about 30 minutes since I was locked in the room, and nothing has changed.

“Damn……!”

However, the girl also began to show signs of shortness of breath. If you think your movement has improved, it will slow down after a while, and then you will have to make adjustments so that you can make the best movement to deceive it. I don’t know why, but her appearance seems somewhat sad.

(What the hell is this guy [Are you still deceiving yourself?]…!?)

Noise-like auditory hallucinations were beginning to become disgustingly clear here. The voice sounded somewhat familiar from the past, a strange mixture of brightness and sadness.

It made me stiff.

“There !”

“….Damn.”

I found myself in a rigid and open position, with my body slumped backward. The girl, on the other hand, may have thought she had an opportunity, and she leapt at me at once.

I was in a hurry to get out of the predicament I had brought on myself. But how can I reverse this situation? What was the right course of action? My body naturally remembered without me having to think about it in my head. No, for me, I could overturn this situation any way I wanted to.

“What !?”

I put all my strength into my left leg and did a backflip with one foot to shake off the girl’s onslaught. I then touched the ground firmly with my left hand as I landed, adjusting my stance and immediately straightening my posture. It was a kind of acrobatics, but it was improvised, so I hurt myself a little.

The girl, on the other hand, stopped moving when she saw my evasion. Behind her mask, I could see a glimpse of confusion. I’m sure that for the girl, this move was completely unexpected. There was a momentary lull between us.

(What the hell am I supposed to do?)

I thought about this situation again from the beginning. The door to the rooftop is locked, and there is no place to jump off. And in front of me is a masked girl who is mysteriously obsessed with me.

It would be foolish to continue to play along with this incomprehensible game. It’s time to start trying to communicate through conversation…….

[Yeah, let’s do that.]

……I guess I’ll stop here.

I can’t help but feel uncomfortable with this voice that resounded earlier. I hadn’t noticed the voice before because it sounded like a haze, but just listening to it makes me feel disgusted. I feel sick just listening to it. I don’t even want to listen to that voice.

“Why……”

And the girl bent forward to get closer to me again and set her sights on me. The girl in front of me changes her appearance. The appearance seemed to be suffering from some unearned emotion.

“Why….you !”

The girl came towards me in a straight line as if she were leaping. A fist blow aimed at my face. I listened for a moment, but there was no need to listen. I flicked her hand to the side, and then, in an attempt to finish her off, I jumped to my knees and kicked her in the face…….

[Are you going to do it again?]

“…..!”

I twisted around and spun on the ground to get behind the girl. However, due to my headache, I couldn’t make a surprise attack and ended up keeping my distance from her. The situation was back to square one.

The girl turned around again, and I thought she was going to attack me again……

“Why, you…..”

“?”

“Why are you cutting yourself off from the world?”

When she finally opened her mouth properly, I didn’t understand what she was saying. I cut myself off from the world?　How in the world did she come to utter such words? I was bewildered by her out-of-the-ordinary words. But the girl, in the meantime, immediately runs toward me.

“Why don’t you tell me anything important?”

“……”

“Are you going to paint over your memories with only bad things?”

“……”

“Why do you…..betray yourself !”

“!”

She asks me this in the middle of a physical storm. But nothing she says resonates with me. I just put my hand out from the best angle of incidence for her attack like an inorganic machine and just dismiss it. And just like that, reaping her consciousness……

[Stop lying to yourself already. As expected, I can’t watch you do it.]

“What !?”

She is the one who is launching the attack in a fury. Behind her, I saw something like a haze. Seeing an auditory hallucination followed by a hallucination makes me suspect that I’ve been injected with a dubious drug somewhere I don’t know.

But gradually something like an outline emerges and the mist clears. And little by little, the thing reveals itself, walking slowly toward me.

(What the hell.)

I don’t want to understand it. I want to reject it. I was so caught up in these unstable feelings that I unintentionally jumped backwards. I see the girl’s eyes widen under her mask at this unexpected move. And when I calmly looked closely, I saw that the thing behind the girl had disappeared.

But just as I thought that, I felt a headache that was many times more painful than the one I had just experienced……

—–

[Why are you running away from yourself?]

“Eh……”

I wondered if it was another hallucination. I was standing in a black, dark space. But when I looked closer, I saw a boy standing in the middle of it. The boy had the same voice as the one I had heard so many times in my hallucinations, and he looked disgustingly familiar.

The boy approached me and grabbed me tightly with one hand as if clinging to my chest. It was a sudden movement, but for some reason I naturally accepted it. And unlike the previous time, for some reason there was no discomfort in his voice.

[I’m sure you’ve already noticed. Who is that girl and what is she trying to say.]

“……You are.”

Somehow, I know. He looks like the person I once was, but this isn’t some dual personality where another me has appeared or anything like that. My mind, my beliefs, my way of life is different. This is my own guilt that I once created. And it is also sin itself.

“You are….Shiina Kanata, my weakness and regrets.”

[…Yeah, that’s right.]

And then I realized The boy’s cheek was quietly dripping with water drops.

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