"My assistant… she also showed abnormal behavior regarding these things."
After taking a deep breath, Kaguya's voice began to tremble slightly.
"When she had just investigated this information, she, like me, believed that such things were simply inconceivable, unable to understand why such things would happen, unable to understand why, after such things happened, people showed no reaction."
"But half an hour after handing me this information, when I went to her again to ask about it, she could no longer remember what she had done. No… she remembered, but she had suddenly become indifferent. As if some kind of power, some kind of power we cannot see, directly erased these things that exceed cognition from her awareness, making her unable to pay attention to these matters no matter what. Even if she remembered them again under my reminder, she would appear very dull. Unless she really saw this information once more, but as long as she stopped paying attention to it, within half an hour she would return to that state again."
When she reached this point, Kaguya paused slightly, took a sip of coffee, and her expression became extremely complex.
"After discovering this kind of anomaly, I conducted further testing."
"I trapped one of the attendants in my residence with a Blood Puppet, and at the time it caused panic throughout the entire residence."
"But after I retrieved the Blood Puppet, after roughly three to four hours, everyone forgot about the incident. Order in the residence returned to how it originally was, as if nothing had ever happened. Even the attendant who was attacked only stayed panicked for half an hour longer than the others, and after that completely returned to normal."
At the end, Kaguya let out a long breath, put down her coffee cup, and quietly concluded: "I think only players can remember these things. These things that surpass ordinary cognition, that lie outside normality—only players can know them, only players can remember them."
"It is like two islands separated from one another, with ordinary people on one island and us on another, separated between us. No, this separation is essentially one-sided. After all, we can know everything ordinary people know, but they have no way to understand the world we see."
Judging from the expression on Kaguya's face, this discovery from the investigation had clearly dealt a considerable shock to her, perhaps even greater than the life-or-death crisis she experienced inside the Shirakawa Apartments.
Takumi, however, immediately thought of Maeda Miwa.
That woman had died in a cruel manner in a hotel. As a player, her death had been reported publicly—how could that be?
Was she killed by an ordinary person? Or, was she killed without the use of any extraordinary power?
He took out his phone to check and confirmed that the news could still be found.
This made a faint sense of alertness rise in Takumi's heart.
"Oba-san's investigation is basically all of this, right? Then next it's my turn. I have already found the gathering place of the players. At least for now it seems to be a prearranged gathering point for players. The time is three days from now, and the location is an underground shopping plaza in the abandoned old district."
After calmly taking a sip of coffee and confirming that Kaguya had nothing more to say, Maki slowly began speaking and placed a photo on the table.
It was the screen of a television. The weather-forecast commercial was playing, but the space beside the video—the place where the host should have been—was instead occupied by blood-red writing. It clearly marked a date and a coordinate point, and at the end, in blood, the word "Market" was written.
"Every evening during the weather-forecast program, these blood characters appear, but everyone in my house except me can't see them. In their eyes it's just the host. I think this should be information left specifically for players."
"Some organized players are using the television to send information to other players and set up a trading market. But the actual situation there is completely unknown for now. If we go to investigate, we'll need to be careful. There might be traps."
After saying this, Maki took another sip of coffee, and her expression grew slightly heavier.
"One more thing. I believe the Shijō family—no, it should be the Shinomiya family—has players acting behind the scenes. Oba-san wasn't noticed when she changed her clothes because she was moving alone indoors, but in my case, many people saw me. As a result, last night someone from the Shinomiya family came to our house. The visitor seemed to be just an ordinary person, but I noticed that his shadow wasn't normal, like it belonged to two people."
"Father and Mother rarely host members of the Shinomiya family, yet they welcomed him warmly. And that person seemed very interested in me. He specifically asked me many questions. Some were normal—about grades, school life, things like that. But some were very strange. He asked whether I felt very relaxed, whether I felt the house was crowded, whether I felt my whole body was filled with strength—those kinds of strange questions. I suspect it was some sort of test, so I did my best to act like I didn't know anything. As for the clothes, I just said I slipped in the activity room and got them dirty. But I don't know whether that countermeasure was effective."
Are there players secretly active inside the Shinomiya family?
This piece of information made Kaguya's brows knit tightly.
"If we want to investigate that underground market, I'm afraid I won't be able to go. I'm monitored very strictly, I can't leave home easily, and I absolutely can't go to such a suspicious place. Which means, if an investigation is going to be done, only Maki and Takumi can go."
After a brief moment of thought, Kaguya let out a sigh and looked at the two of them as she slowly spoke.
"I know. I'll go investigate together with Takumi. If we bring those Obsession Items, I think even if we run into danger, we'll still have the ability to fight back. Not to mention, just with this so-called A-rank evaluation boosting our physical abilities, if I ran into those two we met in the Shirakawa Apartments again, I'm absolutely capable of fighting them."
Maki gave a soft snort, and at that moment showed a slightly prideful expression.
Once they finished exchanging information, and after Takumi retrieved those Obsession Items that were not easy to carry, the three of them left the private room.
Takumi noticed that all the private rooms around this one were empty and had "Reserved" signs hanging on them. He figured this should have been Maki's or Kaguya's idea, meant to prevent anyone from eavesdropping.
The supposedly easier real world now didn't seem so easy after all.
Because her family's supervision was extremely strict, Kaguya ended up leaving first and returned to her large villa.
After she left, Maki and Takumi watched her go. Maki lightly stomped her foot, looking at the sky one moment and the ground the next. She seemed a bit uneasy, yet still refused to say anything first.
"Speaking of which, want to walk and talk? This is probably the first time we've been together like this—together without having to worry about a survival crisis. Also, your outfit today is actually pretty nice."
Takumi turned his head and smiled at the girl beside him as he said this. His eyes swept over Maki's casual dress. He thought for a moment, then gave her a thumbs-up in praise.
"That way of complimenting someone is way too old-fashioned. And rather than thinking about that, you should think about what preparations we need to make before going to investigate that abandoned underground plaza three days from now. That place definitely isn't somewhere you can enter casually."
Maki shot Takumi another sideways glance. Her words still carried a bit of sharpness, but the corner of her mouth had already curled up into a faint smile, clearly showing she was already a little happy.
"You're right. Then how about we check out some shops nearby? At the very least we need to pick out some useful things. Let me think… like a flashlight, maybe?"
So Takumi thought for a moment and offered a suggestion.
"If that place really is a gathering spot for players, ordinary tools without any extraordinary power will be totally useless. Still, the fact that you managed to come up with some ideas is worth praising at least a little. So, let's go take a look."
Maki nodded lightly as she muttered this, as if using her own words to convince herself.
Then she started walking, moving a few steps toward one side of the street.
"What are you standing there for? Right now the young lady of the Shijō family is personally accompanying you on a shopping trip, you know. Hurry up, you idiot."
She turned her head and scolded Takumi, who was walking behind her with a tone full of dissatisfaction.
"Hahaha, as you command, milady."
Hearing her somewhat spoiled tone, Takumi couldn't help but let out a soft laugh and quicken his pace, walking alongside Maki.
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