Amamiya Rin gave a contemptuous snort, though he didn't let it show.
"You want to kill her? Why?"
He sidestepped the topic and got straight to the point.
"Born as a balloon—I'm so sorry."
The voice of The Hanging Balloons carried over on the night wind, and on that face identical to Fujino Terumi's, there surfaced an expression that was almost melancholy.
The corner of Amamiya Rin's mouth twitched. There was so much wrong with that line that, for a moment, he didn't even know where to begin tearing into it.
The Hanging Balloons didn't wait for his response, and simply went on talking to itself.
"But I simply must kill her—just as water flows downhill, as fire burns, as a ripe apple falls. The meaning of my existence is to take away the life of Fujino Terumi. I need no reason."
"Killing without reason..."
Amamiya Rin discovered that he didn't find it strange in the slightest.
The horrors under Junji Ito's pen each had their own obsessions—all of them creatures you could never reason with.
"This malice—where does it come from? Did you just spring out of nowhere?"
Amamiya Rin asked.
The Hanging Balloons had a place of origin.
In "The Hanging Balloons 2", the balloons had once retreated en masse, rising into the high sky until they vanished from sight.
Humanity had no idea where they had gone—until a few days later, when The Hanging Balloons came surging back.
By Amamiya Rin's guess, The Hanging Balloons came either from a parallel world, or from the netherworld, or from an inner world akin to Tenjin Elementary School or Hanyuda Village.
In his view, every one of these was possible.
The netherworld was the most likely—perhaps The Hanging Balloons were the very souls of the living, on account of the substitution mechanism.
Moreover, in Junji Ito's worldview, soul and flesh did not seem to be in sync. It was mentioned in "Black Paradox" that a person's soul exists in the netherworld in the shape of a gemstone, containing within it vast reserves of energy and the memories of past lives.
Was there a possibility that something had gone gravely wrong in the netherworld, so that the soul-gems changed form and appeared in the real world?
"No idea~~"
The Hanging Balloons swayed back and forth, answering cheerfully.
"You don't even know where you came from?"
Amamiya Rin maintained a skeptical attitude toward what The Hanging Balloons said.
Still, even if there was no way to judge whether The Hanging Balloons spoke truth or lies, the more one says the more one slips up. As long as The Hanging Balloons was willing to respond to him, it would always end up revealing some clue.
"No idea~. From the moment I was born, I appeared in the sky—that was the other world connected to the sky of this world, a boundless sky, empty and utterly void. I came out from within it, and arrived in the sky of this world."
The Hanging Balloons said.
"The other world..."
That was as good as saying nothing.
The so-called other world refers to the realm in mythology, religion, or folk belief that transcends the real world—not only Takamagahara, Yomi-no-kuni, Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni, Unabara, and the Land of Night, but also the mysterious spaces beyond the boundary of life and death, equivalent to an inner world or an alternate dimension.
However, if that was the case, then the possibilities of a parallel world and the netherworld could be ruled out.
Which meant, once again, it was the worst possibility.
If it were a parallel world or the netherworld, one could still trace it back to its source and investigate. An alternate dimension with nothing in it likely held no meaning in and of itself—rather, it was a dwelling that The Hanging Balloons carried with it, much like the neural lines of the [Tomie Network].
Just as he was pondering this, the door was flung violently open, and Fujino Terumi came rushing in, her hair disheveled. Her face was as pale as a corpse, still wearing an expression of unsettled terror.
"Rin-kun...! Be careful! Rin-kun!"
The instant she came through the door she called out to Amamiya Rin—except that, after running into the living room, she spotted at a glance the enormous human head outside the balcony, a visage identical to her own, floating in mid-air, no more than a meter away from Amamiya Rin.
Fujino Terumi sucked in a cold breath, thinking Amamiya Rin had already been bewitched by that monster disguised as herself, and hurriedly cried out a warning.
"Don't worry, its target is you—it won't attack anyone else."
Amamiya Rin didn't even turn his head, yet The Hanging Balloons' gaze swept past him in that very first instant, falling upon the still-shaken Fujino Terumi, its fist-sized eyes brimming with thick malice.
"Oh my, Terumi, your luck really is good—you've dodged another calamity. But, do you intend to tie Rin-kun to your side? Or will you simply never leave the house again?"
Fujino Terumi's body shuddered, and she instinctively stepped back, bumping into the wall.
"I advise you to just come out obediently—sacrifice yourself, and don't go troubling other people."
The Hanging Balloons would not let up, its words winding upward like spider silk, trying to ensnare and capture her will.
"No way!"
Fujino Terumi retorted without the slightest hesitation.
She would never throw away her own life over the ravings of a monster.
Still, Fujino Terumi had also realized that Amamiya Rin truly had not been beguiled by the monster, and the monster truly was, just as Amamiya Rin had said, unable to lay a hand on anyone but her.
"Rin-kun, have you confirmed what kind of specter that is?"
Calming down a little, she crept forward cautiously, stopping just inside the balcony door, and asked in a low voice.
"For now I've only confirmed that it commits its killings by hanging its target to death. There exists some kind of fatal link between the head and the target—if its head is damaged, the target will suffer equivalent harm."
Amamiya Rin didn't turn around; he kept his eyes fixed on The Hanging Balloons, not daring to let his focus waver.
"Eh? Isn't that going too far? Why should I be the one harmed after its head gets destroyed?"
At these words, Fujino Terumi's eyes went wide at once, both alarmed and furious.
"Don't expect a specter to reason with humans."
Amamiya Rin said calmly.
Fujino Terumi was left with nothing to say.
"Rin-kun, how much free time do you have? How long can you keep her company? You can't possibly guard her forever—sooner or later there'll come a moment when you let down your guard. Fujino Terumi is as good as dead. Don't waste your time on her. You have your own life to live."
Unable to bewitch Fujino Terumi, The Hanging Balloons began once more to work on Amamiya Rin.
"By what method do you lock onto your target? The world is so vast—how do you find Terumi?"
Paying no mind to The Hanging Balloons' enticements, Amamiya Rin asked bluntly.
"There is a special connection between me and Fujino Terumi—I can sense her direction."
The Hanging Balloons hid nothing; in its view, letting Amamiya Rin and Fujino Terumi know just how low the chances of escape were would strip them of the will to resist.
"Be more specific. Is it only the direction? Do you observe through vision whether the target is Fujino Terumi?"
Amamiya Rin pressed further.
"Let me put it this way~~ When Fujino Terumi returns to the apartment, and I want to find her, by sensing carefully I can tell she's inside the apartment. Though I can't pin it down to a specific room, that's enough. Vision... yes, although I'm a balloon, I still rely on eyes to observe things—just as earlier I failed to notice you hidden in the dark, taking aim at me with a gun."
The Hanging Balloons concealed nothing... probably.
It spoke very specifically—but was it really so? Amamiya Rin didn't dare believe it entirely, but even if there were discrepancies, they would lie in the precision of its sensing.
____
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