The exit from the Nest version of Saint Louis Hospital, according to the redhead, was in the guardhouse outside the main building.
To get there, they had to go up to the first floor, cross the lobby, and exit through the main doors. Along the way, they would have to dodge not only the residents but also the redhead's companions. Without a guide, it would be a tricky problem indeed.
Mai Mingle was grateful.
"Young man, what's your name?"
She smoothed the white sheet back out—a habit she'd maintained for seventy or eighty years, insisting on making things neat even when getting off a morgue slab. She sighed. "It's a pity we don't know each other back in Blackmoor City. Otherwise, I would've had to knit you a sweater. Look at you, you're not dressed warmly enough. It's November, and you're still wearing a short-sleeved shirt."
The redhead glanced at her, as if *she* were the strangest thing in the Nest.
"...You're not my great-aunt," he mumbled after a long moment. "My name is Jonah. But I'd advise you to keep pretending you don't know me after you get back. Don't let my Family Faction find you."
She actually had endless questions she desperately wanted to ask Jonah in a safe environment, but he was right. None of those questions were as important as the Illusion.
She could find out the answers to her questions about the Nest sooner or later, bit by bit.
"Let's go," Jonah said. "Even though we've reset, it's safer not to go back the way we came."
As they were leaving, Mai Mingle turned off the light. In the instant before the room went dark, the form under the white sheet in the corner of the morgue flickered through the edge of her vision one last time before being swallowed by the darkness.
The morgue door was heavy; if no one held it open, it would swing shut on its own. It slammed behind them with a loud BANG.
Mai Mingle followed behind Jonah, turning into the other end of the corridor. For some reason, she felt a vague, disquieting unease.
She kept thinking about the silent silhouette under the white sheet in the morgue. It was just like a real corpse: it hadn't reacted when Jonah turned on the light, it hadn't reacted while they talked, and it certainly hadn't reacted when they left.
"Do people also use the morgue to store actual dead bodies?" Mai Mingle asked. "The thought that we might have been lying next to a real corpse just now... it gives me the creeps..."
"Hm?" Jonah replied offhandedly. "Just now? A corpse?"
Swallowing the words that almost escaped her, Mai Mingle lifted her gaze to his back.
Jonah's red hair was cropped short. Below the neat hairline at the nape of his neck, a faint, misty patch of unshaven, pale orange fuzz lingered.
Her thoughts were adrift for a moment, and she could barely put a finger on what she was really thinking. "Yeah," she said vaguely. "Just now."
Jonah was quiet for a second or two.
Amidst the rhythmic sound of their footsteps, he said, "I don't know. Maybe some people do that. It is a morgue, after all."
Mai Mingle hummed to show she'd heard him.
She turned to look back. Behind them was a straight corridor leading to the stairs they had just come down.
'If I turn and run from here, I won't be able to change direction. It's hard to shake a pursuer in a straight line... No, no, but what if I don't need to run?'
'Maybe I'm overthinking this?'
'Right. Don't rush. Let's sort this out first,' Mai Mingle told herself.
1. The morgue is a "reset" location. A person goes in, lies down, and pretends to be dead. If they lie there long enough, the hospital's residents will forget them.
2. Before they went in, someone—or at least, a human-shaped figure—was already lying in the morgue.
3. After they came out, Jonah had clearly forgotten that someone else was lying in the morgue.
Goosebumps prickled across Mai Mingle's thighs, a chill seeping from every pore.
Based on these three points, there was only one possible conclusion: Jonah was one of the residents.
But that conclusion was absurd. He was clearly a living, breathing person of flesh and blood; he'd even saved her. 'I must have missed something. I need to think this through again.'
Jonah set a brisk pace. After walking with large strides for a little while, Mai Mingle found they had climbed a staircase at the other end of the hospital and emerged on the first floor, not far from the emergency room.
The hospital corridors and waiting rooms were brightly lit. The nurses' station was empty.
Aside from being completely deserted, the place was identical to the real world. There was even a paper cup on the counter of the triage station, but the person who would have drunk from it was gone. It was as if the apocalypse had arrived suddenly, and this was a place humanity had abandoned.
The corridor they were in had several clinic rooms. Some doors were shut tight; others were ajar, revealing slivers of impenetrable blackness.
The only sounds along the way were their footsteps and their breathing. Jonah had chosen a good route. They hadn't encountered a single resident and had avoided all the dangers.
"There are usually things in the emergency room," Jonah said, crouching behind a wall. He peeked his head out to take a look, then turned to Mai Mingle. "We have to be absolutely silent when we go past."
Mai Mingle nodded, but a thought suddenly entered her mind.
'...But you don't have to be quiet when you're pretending to be a corpse?'
She truly didn't understand the Nest, nor did she understand the "safe exits." But just thinking about it logically, she felt that when a person was faking being a corpse, they shouldn't be chatting and laughing like she and Jonah had been.
'A corpse, after all... shouldn't it be like that person lying in the corner... unmoving and silent, no matter what happens?'
'What if that person in the corner was the one who was actually a Hunter in the middle of a "reset"...'
'Then... did my own reset even work?'
Mai Mingle looked down at her fingertips.
When she thought about it, she realized she did have one way to verify whether Jonah was a resident or a living human.
Although she had wiped most of the filth and blood onto the lanky patient, a thin line of it remained deep under her nail, not all of it gone.
Mai Mingle used another fingernail to dig out a small blackish-red smear, pinching it between her fingertips. The moment Jonah stood up and whispered, "Go," she shot her hand out, grabbed his arm, and said, "Wait."
Luckily, he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. The blackish-red blood from her finger smeared easily onto Jonah's skin.
The violent thrashing and struggling she'd seen from the lanky patient didn't happen.
"What is it?" Jonah, still half-crouched, pulled back behind the wall. "Did you spot something?"
Other than his face being a little pale—but in a life-or-death situation like this, who could have a rosy complexion? Mai Mingle suspected she looked even worse—he seemed completely fine. He wasn't in pain or discomfort, and he didn't even seem to notice the blood from the round-headed creature on his arm.
'Looks like he isn't a resident after all,' Mai Mingle thought, secretly breathing a sigh of relief.
There was probably another explanation for what happened in the morgue, even if she couldn't think of it right now. 'I'm not God, after all,' she thought. 'How could I be expected to have a foolproof explanation for everything?'
'From now on, I'll just have to be extra careful.'
"Well? Say something."
"Uh... I was just thinking," Mai Mingle stammered, feeling his stare and needing to come up with a reason. "It's probably dangerous outside, right? We should find some makeshift weapons before we go any further."
Jonah frowned in thought. "We don't have much time. Who knows how long this hallway will stay safe? As long as we're fast enough to rush to the exit before danger closes in, we won't need weapons."
She had only been looking for an excuse, but his words made her feel that finding a weapon was now absolutely necessary. It never hurts to be prepared, no matter what you're doing in life. It was normal for a young kid like Jonah to be brimming with confidence, but she couldn't afford to be so reckless herself.
"How about this: when we pass the nurses' station, I'll duck inside and take a quick look around. It won't waste any time."
To leave the building, they had to pass the triage station. If she entered through one side and exited through the other, it would only take a few seconds to scan the area.
Jonah seemed reluctant but didn't argue.
"Then I'll go with you," he said, gesturing with a tilt of his chin. "If there's nothing strange inside the nurses' station, it's safer than being out in the hallway. We'll have some cover."
The decision made, the two of them immediately hunched over, treading lightly as they emerged from behind the wall.
Scanning left and right, they hurried toward the nurses' station like two frantic beetles, their feet skittering across the floor before they disappeared behind the station's high counter.
The triage station was rectangular, with its two entrances directly opposite each other. Mai Mingle kept worrying that she would look up and see a face appear in the opposite doorway, so she neurotically glanced over every few seconds just to be sure.
On the side facing the main lobby, there were three workstations set up with computers, office chairs, telephones, and miscellaneous items like forms and folders. If not for everything she had just been through, she would find it impossible to believe this wasn't the real Saint Louis Hospital.
'How are there telephones and computers in a Nest? Who brought all this stuff in?'
The letters on one keyboard were worn white, as if someone actually typed on it frequently. A small, dusty potted cactus—she couldn't tell if it was real or fake—sat on the corner of a desk.
For a moment, she almost forgot her objective. She felt a strange sense of wonder, like a TV viewer seeing a filming location for the first time. Even the most mundane items, like a duty roster or a ballpoint pen, seemed novel and worthy of a closer look. Unfortunately, she saw nothing that could be used as a weapon.
Mai Mingle reached for a telephone, wanting to check for a dial tone, but Jonah immediately stopped her.
"Don't touch anything meant for communication," he warned in a harsh whisper. "There's no telling what you might summon."
He was probably still traumatized from when she'd pressed the call bell four times. His expression screamed, 'Don't you ever learn?'
Mai Mingle withdrew her hand and considered for a few seconds.
"There's nothing here," Jonah said. He was squatting behind the counter, making him invisible from outside the station. He pointed to the other exit, still whispering, "Let's go. We can't afford to waste time."
"Okay."
As Jonah, still crouched, reached the exit, he suddenly stopped and glanced back at Mai Mingle. "Why are you just standing there? Hurry up."
Mai Mingle pulled out an office chair. The RATTLE of its four casters scraped through the quiet air as it came to a stop in front of her.
She leaned forward slightly, her hands pressed on the back of the chair, and looked at the face across from her.
Jonah looked no older than thirty; his journey into adulthood had only just begun. His eyes were a little red, his lips were dry, and a faint sheen of sweat clung to him. He was so very human.
She didn't know the truth of the situation, but she couldn't help but feel a pang of sadness. It was instinctual; she felt sorry for this young man, and she felt sorry for the mother who had raised him.
"You go on ahead," Mai Mingle said, her voice hoarse. "I'm not going with you."
Jonah frowned, staring at her as if she were talking nonsense.
But after two seconds, his frown eased.
"...What have you figured out?" He was no longer worried about being seen. He straightened up by the exit and flashed Mai Mingle a wide, toothy grin. "Why don't you tell me all about it?"
"Not counting the lanky patient who was already in the room,"
Mai Mingle said softly, "after I pressed the bell four times, a nurse came in, then there were the hands from under the bed, and then the subterranean resident controlling the round-headed creature. That makes three 'figures disguised as nurses' in total. The fourth one to enter the room... was you."