Amamiya Rin came back to his senses and shook his head.
"It has nothing to do with this Kazuko you're talking about. Don't be so quick to suspect your own friends."
Fujino Terumi stared at him for a couple of seconds, as if trying to find some trace of a lie on his face.
But in the end, she merely pressed her lips together, half-believing and half-doubting what Amamiya Rin had said.
"Then what were you smiling about just now? And what was that about the worst possibility… You already know what it is that's been clinging to me?"
Amamiya Rin didn't answer right away.
He pulled the instrument case over to his side and opened it, and a heap of crude firearms and ammunition was laid out before Fujino Terumi's eyes.
"A gun?"
Fujino Terumi was startled, her body instinctively leaning back.
"No need to be nervous—it's a hand-made weapon."
Amamiya Rin checked the condition of the firearm and said unhurriedly.
"Isn't the fact that it's hand-made exactly the reason to be nervous?"
Fujino Terumi couldn't help but retort.
If Amamiya Rin had been able to use his connections to obtain a proper, legitimate firearm, she wouldn't have had to worry, but of all things, what he'd taken out was this kind of cobbled-together gun that looked dangerous at a glance.
"It won't blow up."
Amamiya Rin saw through Fujino Terumi's concern and said calmly.
He, too, had once worried about whether this piece of junk might explode—until the last dream of thirty years, when he drew inspiration from the Vampire's method of transformation and truly came to understand what it meant for mind to triumph over matter.
Amamiya Rin arrived at a conclusion.
As long as he firmly believed that this electromagnetic rifle would not explode, then this electromagnetic rifle carried no risk of exploding.
"Also, regarding your question and my conjecture—I need to confirm it, otherwise I can't give you a definite answer."
"How will you confirm it?"
Fujino Terumi did her best to ignore that contraption that could only be called scrap metal, fixing her gaze on Amamiya Rin's face.
"It's very simple."
Amamiya Rin looked up and met Fujino Terumi's eyes.
"You go out for a bit."
"Out? Now? Outside…"
Fujino Terumi froze for a moment, her face turning slightly pale.
"Unless I see the ghost story's true form with my own eyes, I can't determine what its origins are, and so I can't search for a countermeasure."
Amamiya Rin cut Fujino Terumi off and said in earnest.
"So, if that thing really is what I think it is, it should appear when you're out there all alone. I'll be following from the shadows, making sure you're safe."
He paused, then added.
"You have to understand—if we keep dragging this out, sooner or later it'll find its chance. I can't protect you by your side forever."
Heaven helps those who help themselves… well, if it were anyone else, he wouldn't force them when they wouldn't cooperate, but…
This time it involved a world-ending-class paranormal phenomenon—The Hanging Balloons!
Fujino Terumi's death wasn't necessarily the only trigger condition for The Hanging Balloons to appear on a massive scale.
But he couldn't gamble.
Fujino Terumi bit her lower lip, her fingers unconsciously twisting together. She gazed at Amamiya Rin, then turned her head to look at the night reflected through the curtains, and when she turned back to look at Amamiya Rin, her breathing was a little heavy.
"Alright! I trust you, Rin-kun."
After a long while, she took a deep breath and nodded firmly.
After changing out of her loungewear, Fujino Terumi walked out of her home all alone, slowly circling around to that empty lot behind the apartment building.
The night air carried a chill, the streets were empty, and the streetlamps were sparse, their light dim.
With every step Fujino Terumi took, she felt a coldness down her back, always sensing that something was watching her from the shadows.
She glanced around suspiciously, yet found nothing—and that was precisely the thing that unsettled her most.
Fujino Terumi's footsteps were light, her ears pricked, her heart pounding away in her chest.
Even knowing that Amamiya Rin was watching her from the third-floor balcony, it couldn't completely dispel the unease in her heart—especially when she thought of that thing with a voice exactly like her own, the monster that had made Amamiya Rin show that strange expression, which might be hiding in some patch of shadow right now.
On the third-floor balcony, Amamiya Rin leaned behind the glass door, observing the night sky outside through the gaps in the curtains from several different angles.
There was no trace of The Hanging Balloons in the observable area. Amamiya Rin slid the door open, and half-crouching, pressed against the wall, he quietly slipped out dragging the instrument case.
Hiding his body in the shadow of the balcony's corner, Amamiya Rin propped the modified electromagnetic rifle on the railing, his breathing long and slow, having already entered deep Dhyana. His consciousness sank into the [Tomie Network], sending out a silent summons.
Accompanied by a chorus of complaints, the Tomies' breathing involuntarily fell into unison with Amamiya Rin's rhythm, and a faint stream of energy fed back along the formless nerve lines.
The world changed in his eyes.
The sound of the wind, Fujino Terumi's footsteps, the faint distant flow of traffic… every minute sound was stripped apart, amplified, and pinpointed with clarity.
Fujino Terumi's figure down below, the green belts on either side of the road, the branches and grasses swaying in the wind, the starlight hanging in the curtain of night… like ripples on the surface of water, all of it was presented in his eyes without the slightest deviation.
Time passed minute by minute, second by second.
Fujino Terumi paced back and forth several times across the empty lot and the small path behind the apartment building. She deliberately avoided the large trees that could obscure the line of sight—though after circling around the trees from a greater distance she had found nothing, this was only to provide Amamiya Rin with a good field of view.
Half an hour later, Fujino Terumi gradually let her guard down.
Her initial tension was replaced by a feeling of doubt.
Could that thing have already left?
Fujino Terumi stopped in her tracks and checked her phone.
9:10 p.m.—nearly twenty minutes had already passed.
At this hour, it was time to head back.
Without the slightest hesitation, Fujino Terumi turned and started walking toward the apartment building.
About to leave behind the danger-laden environment outside and return to the safety of home, her steps grew brisk as well.
At that same moment, in the shadows of the third-floor balcony, Amamiya Rin's eyes narrowed—a colossal object had appeared in his line of sight.
He held his half-kneeling posture, the muzzle of the modified gun adjusting its angle ever so slightly to track some object slowly descending high in the sky.
The synchronization between the Dhyana state and the Tomie Network had sharpened his senses to an inhuman degree; he could catch the trajectory of that high-altitude object as it moved under the moonlight.
As that colossal thing drew nearer and nearer, lower and lower, he saw its full form clearly!
An enormous human head—the contours of its features, the arc of its eyebrows, the shape of its eyes, the line of its nose bridge—exactly like Fujino Terumi's!
Beneath that human head, connected to it, was a steel cable thicker than a finger, gleaming with a cold metallic light, and at the end of that steel cable was a noose.
It really was that thing! Damn it!
Even though he had been mentally prepared, Amamiya Rin's heart still plunged abruptly.
The worst possibility had become reality. The beginning of the end of the world had arrived—it was the eerie horror that killed everyone equally, regardless of man or woman, old or young, high or low, noble or base: The Hanging Balloons!
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan ;)🔥👻
🔥 New history: A Martial Arts Master Will Never Be Humiliated
Help smash these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter (for everyone)