[Alice～]
They continued calling out.
[Alice～]
Even though they had long since died.
Even though all that remained of them were shattered scraps and fragments.
[Alice～]
They still remained here, over and over again continuing to call for that person's appearance.
The postures of these people had been permanently fixed in place. As their lives faded away, all of their thoughts and all of their minds vanished alongside them, leaving behind only these remnants of flesh—and the final desire and obsession that still lingered within their bodies in that last moment.
The remnants that existed here knew nothing except for Alice.
They—
No, they could no longer even be called human.
They could not even be called Aberrations, because they no longer possessed the obsession needed to sustain independent activity.
They were merely carefully manufactured... tools.
Other than Alice's name, other than Alice's existence, nothing remained within them. Like recorders made from human bodies, they were dead things that existed solely to amplify the very concept of Alice itself.
Perhaps the existence of these shells was the final destination of those patients deliberately cultivated within Hiromoto Psychiatric Hospital.
Takumi silently came to that conclusion in his heart.
In order to resurrect the dead Alice, all the people Fujii Hiroshi had tortured and killed were probably gathered in this very place.
Heh. That thing called Alice had been born from countless students who died horrific deaths. While alive, she murdered huge numbers of innocent people, and even after death, her followers were still continuing to create slaughter for her sake.
"What a nauseating stench."
After smelling the overwhelming scent of blood around the stage—so thick it was practically enough to make someone vomit—Takumi gave that calm assessment.
{This stage... is the very stage where the idol Alice performed publicly for the first time. The arrangement is almost exactly identical to the photographs left behind in the director's office.}
Maki, observing the surroundings through "Gotō No. 1," spoke to the others through the mental link.
"For the sake of so-called ritualism, I guess. They deliberately chose the most special stage possible."
With a cigarette hanging from her mouth, Mai carefully observed the surroundings while slowly moving around the stage.
She too realized that the figures seated in the audience did not seem to be Aberrations, yet they could not really be considered living humans either. Their state was difficult to describe—it resembled Obsession Items to some extent, though compared to actual Obsession Items, they seemed somewhat more stable, because these things no longer possessed sufficiently clear obsessions.
Step—
Meanwhile, "Gotō No. 1," under Hitori's control, was the first to attempt leaving the stage, only to discover that an invisible barrier blocked her path.
At this moment, the stage seemed impossible to leave.
Was it because the revelation and performance of the "play" was about to begin?
"..."
Only Miko silently took an instinctive step backward in mute silence.
In her vision, all the people seated in the audience were wearing expressions of complete satisfaction, as though they had already immersed themselves in another world entirely.
She could see the bloody wounds covering their bodies. She could see all the cruelty they had suffered before death.
She could see the red-purple umbilical cords writhing across their bodies. She could see those cords extending upward into the sky, stretching endlessly into boundless darkness, vanishing toward some unknown destination.
"They..."
She could also hear them endlessly calling out for Alice.
Calls overflowing with genuine emotion.
Calls that no longer contained any emotion at all, nothing more than mechanical repetition.
Calling out.
Simply continuing to call out.
Calls that had already been repeated for who knew how many years.
Futilely calling toward an empty stage.
From life to death, the calls had never stopped, never ended, continuing on without cease.
[Alice~]
[Aaaalice~]
[My Alice, come back to my side~]
Within those voices, the only thing the girl could feel was bone-deep horror. Nothing else.
"No way to destroy it... tch, this might seriously have been a terrible move."
Not far away, after both trying to smash the stage apart by force and attempting to break out of it had ended in failure, Mai could only shake her head helplessly and speak in resignation.
"Looks like our appearance may have triggered signs of this stage activating ahead of schedule."
Takumi, meanwhile, raised his head and looked toward the lights flickering above the stage. At first, those lights had been dim. But with the arrival of the intruders, they were gradually growing brighter within the darkness, as though something here was beginning to awaken.
A bizarre aura was gathering together.
The footsteps of the security guards could no longer be heard.
It seemed that once the group entered this eerie dark stage, the original hospital had already ceased to exist. The entire world had been reduced to this one solitary area.
Clack—clack—
Multicolored lights flashed, completely illuminating the stage.
The audience below the stage began to cheer.
They applauded. They loudly whistled. They shouted, danced, waved their arms, or stared at the stage with shining eyes.
And upon that stage, a figure gradually emerged.
Takumi watched helplessly as Alice appeared, dressed in an elegant gown filled with intricate designs, holding a microphone and beginning to sing. His first instinct was to pull out a machete and slash at her.
Of course, he did not actually do that, because it would have had no meaning whatsoever.
There was no aberration aura.
Even though the gathered power of the aberrations moments earlier had nearly been enough to numb the beating of one's heart, once all that power truly converged, what appeared on the stage was merely an Alice phantom devoid of even the slightest aberration presence. No killing rules. No twisted personality. It could even be said that it was nothing at all—just a phantom of Alice singing and dancing on stage.
Nothing more than an empty phantom.
"So that's how it is."
And so Takumi understood.
The Alice that existed from the fans' perspective had always been incomplete—an extremely one-sided Alice incapable of forming a complete personality. Those fanatic fans could not see Alice's cruel and vicious side. They only praised her beauty and goodness. They only remembered the parts of her that fascinated them.
Which was why no matter how many people died, no matter how many Alice fans were created, the result would always remain the same.
Takumi extended his hand directly through the phantom of Alice.
A hollow, one-sided impression filtered through obsessive fandom, completely devoid of any real substance—naturally, the only thing it could create in the end was an equally hollow phantom with no true essence whatsoever.
That mad obsession of Fujii Hiroshi had never produced any results from the very beginning, because failure had been inevitable from the start. From the very beginning, he had never known the entirety of Alice. He could never recreate her true self, nor was he willing to acknowledge what Alice truly was. So failure was the only outcome he could ever reach.
Which meant he would inevitably try to change strategies.
Which meant... could this be the reason why Hirano Sōsuke had appeared at the hospital?
Takumi still did not know the correct answer. He did not know what the final act of this stage had been.
But standing beside him, Miko had already seen it.
She saw a completely different performance from the one the others were witnessing.
Flames were burning.
Flesh and blood were being roasted within roaring fire, grease spilling out and boiling with crackling pops.
[That's right! That's right! Exactly like this!]
Someone was shouting in ecstatic celebration.
[Execute those unforgivable sinners and give them the punishment they deserve!]
[And then our Alice shall be reborn here!]
[She'll return to our embrace once more, and we'll have her again! And this time, no one will ever be able to take her away from us again!]
The director was shouting through tear-filled eyes.
The cries of the people around him were growing increasingly fanatical.
Miko slowly turned her head away from the twisted faces of those mad fans and looked behind herself.
She saw the figure burning within the flames.
The stretcher bed had already been burned black.
And that body had absolutely no possibility of breaking free from the iron restraints locking it to the stretcher.
Within the fire, she saw those eyes meet hers.
She saw the numbness within that gaze, and the despair gradually breeding inside that numbness.
The thunderous cheers of the audience beneath the stage were about to completely drown out the crackling sounds of the flames.
Just like they always had.
And in the end, this was all it would amount to.
Then the girl heard someone's cold voice ring out.
It seemed to be the words left behind at that person's final moment—a voice already stripped of all emotion and feeling, leaving behind nothing but frigid, merciless ice.
That person said:
[Then come with me.]
[All of you together—come down to hell with me.]
After that, the flames that should have been extinguishing instead surged violently upward, spreading in all directions.
The smiles on those people's faces remained just as crazed as before.
Even as the flames engulfed the entire stage, even as the fire began spreading outward, they showed no intention of leaving.
[Be reborn through the flames, be reborn through the flames!]
Fujii Hiroshi prayed earnestly.
[Those guilty people who harmed you have already received the punishment they deserved. It's time to come back now. Time to return to this world you loved so much. Alice, come back. Hurry and return to my side!]
Everyone was praying with complete sincerity.
And the burning flames, as though truly responding to those people, actually began to reveal a figure swaying within the fire, slowly walking out step by step.
The crowd rose to their feet in ecstatic delight, staring toward the figure within the flames.
Miko also instinctively looked toward that figure, toward the silhouette gradually becoming clearer as it walked through the sea of fire.
Was that... Alice?
In the next second, Miko saw a tall man wearing a tattered police uniform.
She saw him step out of the flames with a gun in hand, those eyes that no longer possessed even the slightest trace of humanity sweeping indifferently across the fans present. He disengaged the handgun's safety, then directly aimed at one of the Alice fans closest to the front and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Bang!
Amid the deafening gunshot, Miko's body was violently tackled to the ground by Takumi. A bullet grazed across Takumi's back as it passed through, nearly slicing him in half at the waist in an instant as a massive spray of blood burst outward.
Only now did the girl's consciousness finally clear slightly.
Only then did she realize there had never been some insane stage, nor any twisted audience.
Upon this stage, which should have contained no one at all, there was now a fifth person besides the temporary squad. Another figure had appeared... one holding a handgun aimed at everyone, finger already resting on the trigger.
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