Chapter 152: White Skull Head
It was a Friday afternoon, and outside, a terrifying storm raged with ceaseless rain. The sky was a gloomy, overcast grey, as if the city had been enveloped by some indescribable horror. The air was filled with a suffocating humidity.
In a hospital room at the end of the second-floor corridor, a black-haired girl, clad in a blue and white striped hospital gown, leaned against the headboard. Her frail body emitted a heartbreakingly weak aura. Her pale little face was lifted, gazing at the raindrops outside the window. On the pure white duvet lay a notebook filled with strange symbols.
The leaves on the windowsill swayed incessantly in the hurricane, like ships tossed in a storm. The branch the girl was watching stubbornly tried to resist the storm-like rain, but its slender body appeared so minuscule against the calamity of heaven and earth.
In the end, it could only be battered into pieces by the large raindrops, finally drooping down with a crisp snapping sound, revealing its greenish-blue inner stem.
“Hoo—”
With a long exhale, Kazumi shifted her gaze from her daze after watching the branch she’d been focusing on complete its duty. She reached out and picked up her mobile phone, starting to scroll through it.
This was a habit of Kazumi’s, or perhaps a unique way of relieving stress?
Many people disliked gloomy, rainy days. But for Kazumi, this oppressive, humid atmosphere, even tinged with a bit of despair, actually made every cell in her body feel relaxed.
Perhaps it was a physical change caused by her strengthened abilities, or perhaps a special preference of her inherently fallen soul. But it wasn’t all bad, was it?
A week had passed since the incident known as the “6.19 Attack,” which had shocked the entire nation. Kazumi had woken up from her near-death injuries four days ago.
This was probably the main theme of this hero world. Unlike those heroic shonen manga where characters never seemed to die, in the real world, destruction was always simpler than protection.
No matter how powerful the hero forces were compared to the villains, no matter how much the world’s technology had evolved to the brink of black technology due to the existence of special abilities.
The only thing that remained unchanged was the still-fragile nature of life.
For those who wielded great power, the lives of ordinary people were likely like toys in their hands; a gentle squeeze could crush them, and they could casually toss the debris aside.
The villainous attack this time had resulted in casualties of varying degrees for nearly twenty teachers and students, with seven deaths. It could basically be considered one of the most significant malicious terrorist attacks in recent years. After all, it had been decades since a terrorist attack of this magnitude had occurred, ever since Hamano Tsukasa had single-handedly deterred the terrorist forces of Japan.
As an ordinary person with no ability to resist, it was Kazumi’s first time truly coming into contact with these madmen who operated in the world’s dark underbelly.
Whether it was a loss of control due to wielding immense power, or the formation of formidable and perverse strength due to a twisted psyche, it was impossible to ascertain now.
But just like her previous life in a free country where gunfights were an almost daily occurrence, the consequence of rampant power would inevitably be the suffering of the common people. Without the power to protect oneself, every day of living could be met with an accident in the next second.
“Power…”
Kazumi pulled her thoughts back slightly, casually closing the boring gossip news on her phone. She picked up the water-based pen in her hand and continued to draw in her notebook.
Because she was in the hospital room, Kazumi’s drawings consisted of symbols only she could understand, primarily serving as a guide for her thoughts.
After all, her dog, his grandfather, and some teachers and leaders at the school could visit her at any time. Kazumi couldn’t possibly summon [Kurokkan] and take out her treasured notebook.
[The effect of the Black Mist is to directly act on my spirit. I’ve thoroughly experimented with this over the past few days. It’s likely trying to guide and strengthen my hatred for my dog.]
[If, as Grandpa Sato said, they want to absorb the intense negative emotions of people in despair, then the other party’s inherent perverse taste alone makes it difficult to fully explain such behavior.]
Reaching out and drawing a stroke beneath the dark little black clump, the girl scratch her chin in puzzlement.
Regarding the effects of the Black Mist, as soon as she woke up with the most intense emotions, Kazumi had tried calling Sato Shinichi to her side, precisely to test the extent of this negative emotion’s influence on her.
And as her body slowly recovered in these past few days, with the constant accumulation of death aura within her body, and the treatment from that seemingly unreliable psychologist with dead fish eyes, Kazumi could clearly feel that the negative emotions towards the young man inside her had diminished considerably. Or perhaps, due to the accumulation of death aura, her emotions had become further depleted again?
[An unexpected gain, I suppose? I’ve somewhat figured out the impact of my abilities on myself.]
Continuing to draw small circles on the heart mark beside her, Kazumi’s expression softened slightly. This injury had also allowed her to understand the direction of the death aura’s modification of her body. Due to the injury and the repair of her body, as well as the expulsion of Orio Mei’s life energy, the death aura was at its most sparse the moment the girl woke up, hence the subconscious reaction towards Sato Shinichi.
Of course, the girl leaned more towards the emotional depletion caused by her “necromancerization” and the automatic repulsion of the Black Mist by the death aura. But these were definitely things that couldn’t be stated publicly, so she could only attribute it all to the credit of the psychologist who was skilled in hypnosis.
[Regarding Kaku’s abilities, there are actually quite a few discrepancies between my experiences and Grandpa Sato’s explanation. If it was a fake dog, it should have dissipated the moment it was injured. How could it have lasted so long? There must be something wrong here.]
[If it’s the [Dark] Organization, then perhaps it’s due to Uncle Fukada, or could the deaths of my parents have another hidden twist?]
Her slender eyebrows furrowed slightly, Kazumi turned her gaze to the letter “B” at the very top of all her notes. This was also a question that the girl hadn’t managed to figure out despite collecting information over the past few days. The current information was too scarce, yet many things were beyond a student like her’s reach. Moreover, she couldn’t reveal some of her intelligence to Grandpa Sato and the others.
But in the depths of her heart, Kazumi always felt that the attack she suffered this time was definitely not just the personal whim of a powerful executive from the [Dark] Organization.
[I’ll have to wait for Uncle Fukada to return to ask him clearly.]
Fiddling with her phone, she recalled Uncle Fukada sending her news about going on a mission to North City. Kazumi shook her head helplessly. This feeling of being at the mercy of others without any power was truly quite unpleasant.
Gently closing the notebook, Kazumi idly browsed her phone, looking for a popular series to pass the time. After all, her analysis had reached a limit due to the lack of information. Any further thinking would probably feel like a battle of wits with the air.
“What are you doing here?”
Just as the girl found a new murder mystery drama she wanted to open, a familiar young male voice reached her ears.
Turning her head slightly in confusion, what appeared before Kazumi’s eyes was quite a comical, white skull head?
