"You'd better time it right, Takumi-kun."
Maki lowered her head and spoke softly to the doll on her shoulder.
Where could the item be?
A precious thing that a child loved dearly—could it be a toy? Considering her current size, and the phenomenon of enlargement in this place, that object should be quite conspicuous. It had to be found quickly, as fast as possible!
With that thought, Shijō Maki rapidly swept her gaze around her surroundings.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Shinomiya Kaguya had already darted out from under the bed. She bent down sharply and picked up a rubber band that had fallen to the floor along with the woman's head, then quickly ran to the boundary point between the bedroom and the living room.
The calendar was hanging in the living room, near the kitchen door.
There was no door separating the bedroom and living room of this house—only a doorframe.
After running out, Kaguya swiftly jammed one end of the rubber band—which, to her current size, was as thick as a rope—into the gap of the bedroom doorframe, then leaned back hard, pulling on it with her entire body, stretching it taut like drawing a longbow.
On the rubber band, a sharp surgical knife—an Obsession Item—was already being held by Kaguya, with its handle pressed firmly against the band.
Calm the heart.
In an instant, she cast aside all surrounding sounds, focusing solely on the rubber band in her hands and the blade about to be launched.
To shoot an arrow and hit the target—this was something exceedingly simple for Kaguya.
For she had once released the arrow of her ideals from her heart—when she was very young, she had naturally fired a perfect arrow. Since then, hitting her target had become something she could accomplish at will, an almost instinctive act.
[Whoosh—]
The blade shot out in an instant, slicing through the thin string that held the calendar on its nail.
The calendar fell with a slap onto the floor, and before the man sitting at the table could turn his head, Kaguya had already rushed to the fallen calendar, reaching out to grab the edge of its page.
[15th]
That was the date shown on the page.
[Rip—]
Without the slightest hesitation, Kaguya tore hard at the edge she was holding, ripping off that page to reveal the [16th] beneath, then immediately grabbed the next page and continued tearing.
According to Sanchez's final message, they had to reach the 17th to enter the critical stage.
So she had to tear off this last page!
[There really are rats in the house…]
The man, now turned around, fixed his gaze upon Kaguya.
The girl at this moment did not look back, did not meet the man's eyes.
Yet even so, the instant she was stared at, she clearly felt the sensation of being watched by something unspeakably terrifying—her movements involuntarily slowed, even her thoughts began to fragment.
'No… I must…'
[There really are rats… rats dig holes… rats will find them… will find them…]
The murmuring voice echoed from above her head.
The man standing over Kaguya raised his foot high, intending to crush her to death on the spot.
Meanwhile, Maki had already stopped before a toy doll.
"So this is the thing…"
Maki stared at the ragged, broken doll before her—missing an arm, one leg snapped, its clothes filthy and tattered—and for a moment, she did not know how to describe it.
It was truly pitifully shabby.
In Shijō Maki's memories, she had never seen a doll be turned into something like this before.
Was this the precious item in that child's eyes?
The doll sitting on Maki's shoulder lightly nodded.
Takumi could see that memory.
He saw the dirty, grimy child looking with envy at the neighboring child wearing clean clothes and at the beautiful doll in that child's hands.
Her parents naturally would never buy her that kind of thing.
However, she still ended up getting a doll in the end, one she picked up from a trash heap. Although tattered and ragged, it was a small doll she could hold in her arms.
This was the only toy she had ever had since she was little.
[Crack—crack—]
Amid the shattering sounds, that woman's head was already forcibly squeezing itself under the bed, opening its blood-filled maw toward Maki. It truly could be called a blood-filled maw, because that mouth directly tore open the head, almost stretching to one hundred and eighty degrees. It was completely beyond any angle a human could achieve, like a scene of a nightmare made real.
And even though the mouth had already opened to such an extent, one could still hear a near-screaming voice coming from this thing's mouth:
[Disobedient—]
In the next moment, Maki's hand touched that dilapidated doll that was about the same size as she was.
Kaguya, in the living room, was viciously biting through her own tongue, suppressing the interactive pull on her consciousness by relying on shock pain as her mouth filled with blood. She lowered her body, suddenly reached out, and tore off one day from the calendar that was nearly the same size as she was, revealing the dark-red marking of the 17th.
The wall clock in the room stopped moving at this moment.
One second, two seconds—was it several minutes, or was it less than a second in a single instant?
Time at this moment seemed infinitely stretched and infinitely compressed.
All of Room 304 rapidly dimmed, and everything began to become disordered, began moving toward collapse.
And the woman and man in that room also seemed to begin undergoing some extremely bizarre change at this moment.
[Click—]
Shinomiya Kaguya and Shijō Maki returned completely unscathed to the room on the second floor in the next instant.
Maeda Miwa, who had adjusted the clock, let out a shriek at the wall clock in Takumi's hand, stumbling back again and again in terror, nearly wetting herself on the spot.
Yamamoto Hiroshi, who had wasted his effort a second time, scratched his head helplessly, sighed, and prepared to repair the two doors of Room 204 for the third time.
Kaguya reached out and touched her own mouth. Only after confirming that the wound she had bitten open had indeed disappeared did she finally let out a slight breath of relief.
Maki lowered her head with a slightly complex expression, looking at the tattered palm-sized doll lying in her hand. From its appearance, it looked like a dirty little girl who was sleeping.
"Both of you came back safely. That's good enough."
Takumi in the living room let out a breath of relief. At some point he had taken off his soaked, steaming coat, and was standing in the living room wearing only a vest. A few burn marks could be seen on his arms; his condition could not be called good, but it was not exactly bad either.
"If what Sanchez said is correct, then next, we have to bring this doll into 309."
Having recovered a bit, Maki exhaled and spoke slowly as she looked at the doll in her palm.
"To be precise, we have to send it into 309 two days from now."
Takumi sat cross-legged on the floor opposite Maki, looking at the shrunken, unbearable-to-look-at corpse in her palm as he spoke calmly.
"After night falls, at the first dawn, then at the second dawn, we have to set out. Before the third dawn, we must deliver this child to 309. If we cannot do that, I think we will not have another chance. In other words, the outcome of this single loop depends on this one opportunity—failure or success, there is no third path."
By the end, when Takumi saw that the corpse in Maki's palm was faintly turning its head to look at him, he quickly averted his gaze.
"In that case, the preparation time is still quite sufficient."
Maki nodded lightly, her tone also extremely serious as she answered Takumi. Kaguya, beside them, checked the Obsession Items she carried, and only after confirming that the Blood Puppet and scalpel had returned to her hands did she let out a breath of relief.
"Time… honestly, I'm not sure whether the preparation time is actually sufficient."
Next came the wall clock that Takumi displayed before the two of them.
It was that second hand which was already approaching the point of absurdity, the minute hand moving at an extremely fast speed, and the hour hand shifting at a pace visible to the naked eye.
"This is…"
Maki and Kaguya immediately realized the problem.
At this moment, the time on the wall clock was accelerating.
Now, the second hand needed only about 10 seconds to complete one rotation, and the hour hand needed only about 4 hours to complete an entire day.
Considering the time already spent, the time remaining until the third day, when everyone had to begin their actions, was in fact less than 6 hours available for preparation.
And in that third day on which they had to succeed, there were only about two hours that counted as "daytime." If they failed to finish everything within the first two hours, it would mean they would have to act during "nighttime," and by then the danger would inevitably multiply.
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