126 - Chapter 109: A Story of Psycho Break
The world was burning.
The gymnasium, which was full of people until just now, was engulfed in flames, and the fire spread one after another to the blankets and cardboard cast out on the floor. In the very center of the burning gymnasium, the boy stood alone.
This is a hallucination. He understood that in his head.
In reality, this gymnasium has already burned down, and there is no one other than himself in the school that served as a shelter. Despite that, the fact that he is in the burning gymnasium like this means he is merely seeing the scene of burning the plague patients along with the gymnasium as a phantom due to the influence of reading the diary.
However, even though he knows the scene before him is a phantom, there is no sign of waking up at all. Inside the gymnasium, along with a nasty smell of something burning, the figures of people who hadn't been visible until then, rolling on the floor while turned into human torches, were being revealed.
"Help, open this!"
The figures of people shouting so and pounding on the exit doors. However, those thick gymnasium doors are never opened. Because it has been decided that the influenza patients isolated in the gymnasium will be burned to death as a whole.
The flames spread to the people who rushed to the exit seeking help. Immediately, along with the nasty smell of burning meat and hair, a scream that didn't seem to belong to this world shook the air. A woman engulfed in flames rolled on the floor, struggling to put out the fire. However, clothes made of synthetic fibers do not extinguish easily.
Becoming human torches, there were also people who extended both hands trying to seek help from comrades. However, the comrades who should have been living together until now do not try to help, fearing that the fire will spread to themselves as well. "Don't come!" they were kicked away, and a burning man who rolled on the floor letting out a groan curled his body like a fetus and stopped moving.
He wanted to wake up from such a terrifying dream as soon as possible. He pinched his cheek, but it hurt. Even though he was seeing a phantom, did he even feel pain? Immediately after he thought that, a voice echoed from behind the boy: "You're still trying to run away, aren't you?"
When he turned around, a woman with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed appearance far from Japanese was standing there. Raising his voice, "Naomi-san!" the boy tried to rush to her. Even if all the scenes before him were phantoms, she was the only existence the boy could rely on. Even if it was a phantom, the thought that he wanted her to help him was in the boy's head.
For himself who was seeing hallucinations, the Naomi before him was the only means to wake up from the dream. Probably his deep consciousness took such a form and made Naomi appear in this nightmare-like scene.
"Please help me, please get me out of here quickly!"
"Help? You say strange things."
It was a terrifying voice the boy had never heard. To the boy who stopped his feet, forgetting himself, this time Naomi took a step.
"The one who wanted help was me. Even though I thought you would help me."
Naomi continued in a voice filled with anger, yet containing sadness somewhere. Each time Naomi took a step toward the boy, her appearance gradually collapsed.
"You're always like that. When there's something troubling, you immediately run to an easy path, and you seek help from someone. Despite that, you don't try to help anyone."
The beautiful face, along with countless bruises, had various parts caved in like a potato, and limbs twisted in impossible directions. Along with a sound like something exploding, her stomach split and putrid gas erupted. That skin, which was originally fair, was now stark white.
If one fell into a river where many things were submerged and drowned after striking their whole body, a corpse with such an appearance would be made. Before Naomi, who had now turned into a speaking corpse, the boy was speechless. He wanted to wake up from the dream quickly. But there was no sign of it.
"Even if I were a phantom, did you think you would be helped? By the very person you killed?"
"No, I tried to help. That was unavoidable..."
"Unavoidable, huh. This scene is also being unfolded as a result of that 'unavoidable' judgment."
So saying, Naomi pointed around with a bent finger. The police officer's diary that judged to burn the influenza patients—didn't it also say "unavoidable" in that?
"This is a dream. I'm seeing such a nightmare because my physical strength has dropped..."
"Look, you immediately try to run away like that when there's a reality you don't want to see in front of you. Despite telling other people to look at reality all the time."
Appearing from behind Naomi was Mana, the elementary schooler who acted together with the boy along with her. However, her appearance also, like Naomi, gradually transformed into something tragic. Blood erupted from holes opened all over her body, making a pool of blood on the floor. On the left hand thrust toward the boy, there was no index finger or middle finger.
"When something slightly good happens, you get carried away and think only that it will go well next time too. Because of you like that, I died. If you hadn't been careless, if you hadn't gotten carried away, I wouldn't have died."
"Shut up, be quiet! Don't blame everything on me!"
It was a word he would absolutely not say if the person were in front of him, but the boy was hurling abuse at Mana. He wanted to wake up as soon as possible and escape from this hellish phantom.
"I've been doing my best in various ways too! I tried to help you guys too! But there are things humans can't do!"
"You weren't trying to help us; you were just intoxicated with yourself for trying to help someone."
So saying, appearing from within the flickering of the burning flames was another familiar face. Among the members who acted with the boy, she survived until near the end, but in the end, she turned into an infected and was shot by the boy himself.
"Yui..."
"Naomi-san and me—it was obvious which one could be saved for sure. But you didn't give up on saving Naomi-san until the very end. But that wasn't because you wanted to save her; you just wanted an excuse that you worked hard until the end, right?"
"Just as Yui says, if you had abandoned me quickly, she wouldn't have been bitten by the infected after being isolated. It's the same now as in the past that you can't get something unless you sacrifice something. But you didn't want to be criticized by Yui for abandoning me, so in the end, you couldn't make a decision until everything was too late."
At that time, the boy was certainly trying to help Naomi. But in a corner of his heart, he understood from the beginning that it was impossible to save both. And that he had to abandon Naomi.
Even so, the reason he was sticking it out until the end wasn't because he wanted to save Naomi from the bottom of his heart. He wanted a reason to comfort himself that he worked hard, that it couldn't be helped. If he continued trying to save Naomi without giving up until the end, Yui wouldn't criticize him even if he eventually had to abandon her. Such a thought was in his head.
And in the end, Naomi fell into the river because the boy let go of her hand, and Yui was bitten by the infected while the boy was unable to move trying to help Naomi. The boy killed both of them.
"No, no... I... unavoidably..."
"Unavoidable is a convenient word, isn't it? Because then it becomes an excuse and you can comfort your own heart. In the end, your mouth was fine, but you were moving while thinking only of yourself from beginning to end."
"On top of that, even now you refuse to acknowledge that fact and repeat 'unavoidable' and choose an easy path. I thought something might have changed slightly because we died, but rather, it's getting worse."
He felt like he was going crazy. It was as if his heart's darkness, the wicked parts, were being shown to him, and he wanted to escape from this world as soon as possible. However, the boy did not notice that the thought itself was turning away from reality, just as the phantoms before him said.
"I tried to help! Mana-chan, Naomi-san, and Yui! Father, mother, friends, everyone!"
"Then I'll ask, who did you eventually manage to save? You haven't saved anyone, have you?"
"Rather, you've done nothing but kill people, haven't you?"
He was about to shout that wasn't so. However, he couldn't say anything back.
Who on earth was I able to save? And he realizes. The answer is no.
There is a memory of killing someone, but there is no recollection of being able to save someone's life. Yui and Mana were like things the boy saved, but both ended up dying because of the boy.
"The junior high school you evacuated to—the people who were there all died because of you. You were trying to help someone, but who were you able to save?"
Along with those words, countless human figures appeared from within the burning flames. Those whose stomachs were split and internal organs dragged out. Those whose facial meat was eaten away, leaving only eyeballs in the exposed skull. Those who exposed hose-like organs from their torn necks and made eerie sounds with their breathing.
He recognized every one of them. They were the figures of the people who were in the junior high school the boy evacuated to on that first day when the infection began in Japan. And every one of them had turned into a transformed state and was approaching the boy.
"It hurts," "Help," "I don't want to die," "Stop," "No," "Why me," "I," "Why," "Mama."
Countless groans and deathbed screams pierced the boy's ears. One of them said in a voice filled with anger and hatred. The boy recognized the face of that person. It was a boy named Yoshioka, who was a classmate from junior high school and was acting together with him that night.
"It's because of you that it turned out like this. Because you exerted a trivial sense of justice and opened the gate without thinking well, it turned out like this."
The phantom of Yoshioka condemned the boy. The reason the junior high school that served as a shelter was destroyed, that was——.
"If you hadn't opened the gate then, everyone might have survived without dying. Even I wouldn't have been bitten by the infected. If you hadn't thought about saving someone while playing hero, it wouldn't have turned out like this. It's all your fault. Even so, do you still intend to say it was unavoidable?"
At that time, the boy let the man attacked by the infected into the junior high school by opening the gate. Since the infection route wasn't known in detail at that time, he didn't know he would subsequently develop symptoms and turn into an infected. Therefore, it couldn't be helped. He tried to argue back, but words wouldn't come out of his open mouth. The words "playing hero" uttered by Yoshioka pierced his chest.
At that time, the boy certainly thought he would save the man attacked by the infected. However, it cannot be denied that it wasn't an action that came from pure goodwill, but there was a feeling that it would be cooler to do so. Like a hero in a movie, he wanted to do something cool. Therefore, the boy opened the gate. And as a result, the man who was infected inside the junior high school developed symptoms and attacked people, further spreading the infection.
"Why did we die, and you, who killed everyone, are alive? Even though there's no meaning in living, why are you alive?"
The phantom of Yoshioka said so and disappeared into the flames again.
"You say unavoidable, unavoidable, but you know, what you've been doing is just mass murder? Nothing more, nothing less. Of course, there might be times when you have to take someone's life depending on the case. But you overdid it. You took too many lives that didn't need to be taken."
Naomi said so, and this time the phantoms of children appeared. They were the figures of the group that attacked the boy while he was wandering alone after Naomi and the others died. They, who were starving, attacked the boy and were all killed. First, the boy killed every single one of the group that attacked him, and subsequently killed the comrades who were waiting for their return. "It can't be helped because I can't be careless." Making that excuse.
"Was there a need to kill everyone? Only a part ran into an atrocity, and the rest were just elementary schoolers who couldn't even fight properly and didn't have the will to fight. Since they wouldn't even have been able to catch up if you had gone somewhere or something, you should have done so. Even so, do you still intend to say 'unavoidable' at this stage?"
"In the end, you're just a cowardly human who is afraid of getting hurt and doesn't try to involve yourself with anyone from the beginning. You just made it look cool by making excuses with realized words like others can't be trusted or something."
Yui and Naomi stated one after another, and this time about thirty men and women of all ages showed themselves. All were full of holes and bleeding from all over their bodies. They were the group the boy shot when he went to save Yuko and the others.
"Most of these people had lost their will to fight in the end, and the people who could fight were all killed by you."
"There's a possibility of being retaliated against later? Regardless of what these people said, you intended to kill them from the start, didn't you? Because you're a coward who can't trust anyone, once even malice is directed at you, you can only regard that person as an enemy. But since you can't honestly admit that self, you have no choice but to continue making excuses and deceiving yourself. A pathetic human, aren't you?"
He couldn't say anything back anymore. His own dirty parts, which he had been turning away from until now, were being thrust at him like this.
Kneeling, the boy bowed his head. Realizing that he was an excessively selfish and small human, his self-esteem was already shattered into pieces. Many people's lives were taken because of him. He was terrified by the magnitude of that fact and was trembling.
"Then, what should I have done... What should I do?"
To that single sentence that spilled from his mouth, the phantoms of Naomi and the others, who poured cold eyes on him, answered.
"Why don't you die?"
"Die."
"Wouldn't it be fine if you died?"
In the boy's field of vision while looking down, a blood-stained hand that suddenly extended from the side was reflected. That hand grabbed the boy's ankle and pulled. At the end of that hand was the figure of a female infected crawling on the floor, her whole body eaten.
Much of the facial skin was also eaten away, but that face was certainly that of the boy's mother. Although he searched desperately, in the end, the infected mother whom the boy himself laid hands on. That mother let out a groan and vigorously bit into the boy's leg.