"Mr. Ultraseven, why did you drag this thing over here?"
Shu stared at the doll-like monster, asking with open curiosity.
No one thought Ultraseven could possibly fumble against a monster of such an ordinary size — but why would he keep alive something so obviously mindless?
Amamiya Rin studied the doll's face and spoke calmly, his even voice carrying a certainty that seemed to cut straight through the fog.
"Any living thing that has ever existed leaves traces behind. And wherever there are traces, there are clues to be found. This monster is no exception."
Especially in a world like this one, which belonged to the realm of spirit and soul — monsters were no exception to that rule either.
Which meant Rin's mental powers finally had a use here.
"What is the truth? Let me see it."
With that, Rin bent slightly at the waist, bringing his gaze level with the clamoring doll's hollow, empty eyes.
For a moment, the fog around them seemed to solidify, the wind died, and the breathing of the three people nearby grew shallow and faint.
Hinako Shimizu and the other two, the silence of the village, the pervasive haze — all of it receded into a distant background.
His undifferentiated awareness shone out like an ancient mirror, and Nature-Light spread silently outward, burning through the fog of outward appearance to reach straight for the essence beneath the surface.
Old.
That was Rin's first impression of the doll-like, stitched-together monster.
Like a Japanese-style room left dust-covered for years. Like a beam hollowed out by insects. Like coarse cloth washed and starched so many times it had faded white.
Then came the clamor.
"A woman must be gentle and obedient, never showing the slightest defiance." "Once married into her husband's house, she must cast off her own name and treat that house as her heaven." "Serving her husband, raising children, keeping the household — that is a woman's whole duty in life." "No raising your voice. No resisting. No having thoughts of your own. Be meek. Be obedient. Endure. Submit."
...
The clamoring litany was steeped in ancient discipline, an invisible frame that ground down every rough edge, snuffed out every desire, and stripped away the self — molding a living, breathing person into a puppet on strings, one who acted only according to others' expectations, without a shred of will of her own.
"Hm?"
Rin's brow creased, a flicker of confusion crossing his eyes.
Something about this monster's true nature felt strangely out of place to him.
It didn't resemble the horrors born of twisted humanity or cursed transformation that filled Junji Ito's work, nor the cosmic beings beyond human comprehension from the Cthulhu. It didn't belong to the world of urban legends or ghost stories, either.
It was too human — as if a sociological problem had been kneaded into physical form. It sat oddly against every curse Rin had encountered before.
If anything, it felt more like... Silent Hill?
In a flash, Rin realized where his earlier sense of déjà vu had come from.
Fog. An Otherworld. Monsters that were the embodiment of inner trauma made flesh. Weren't these exactly the elements of Silent Hill's premise?
But wasn't Silent Hill set in America? Why would it show up in Japan?
And compared to Silent Hill's Fog World and Otherworld structure, the rules here felt subtly off — plausible, yet not quite the same.
If he wasn't mistaken, this should be the equivalent of the Fog World. But the Fog World, the Otherworld, and the real world should all occupy roughly the same geography. It made no sense for the real world to be Tsunekiyoshi Jingu in Tokyo while this Fog-World equivalent was Ebisugaoka.
Just as Rin was turning the thought over, a stifled groan of pain suddenly came from behind him.
"Nngh—"
He spun around on alert, only to see Hinako Shimizu stumbling backward, both hands pressed to her temples. Her already pale face had gone bloodless, cold sweat beading thickly across her forehead, an involuntary moan of pain escaping her lips as her swaying body began to crumple.
"Hinako?!"
Shu Iwai went white with shock and lunged forward almost on instinct.
But Rin was a step faster. He flung the doll aside and closed the distance in a few long strides, catching the girl's collapsing body an instant before she hit the ground.
"Hinako! Hinako! Ultraseven, what's wrong with her? She... she..."
Shu Iwai, a beat too slow, could only stand off to the side, watching Hinako with tense, worried eyes, his pale face still marked with fear. He didn't dare look at Rin — afraid of hearing the worst possible answer from his mouth.
Sakuko's death had grieved him, but he could accept it. But this — but this...! If Hinako died right in front of him, he honestly didn't know what he'd become.
"Hinako! Wake up! Can you hear me?!"
Rinko Nishida's face was etched with alarm too. She reached out to touch Hinako's shoulder, asking urgently.
"Why would this happen out of nowhere? Wasn't she fine just a second ago?"
Her gaze drifted, unbidden, toward Shu Iwai beside her. Watching him lose his composure so completely over Hinako, her hand curled tight at her side without her noticing, and a thread of bitterness — one she wasn't even aware of herself — crept into her urgent tone.
"Wait a moment..."
Rin's brow furrowed into deep creases. Even holding Hinako steady, he couldn't reverse whatever was happening to her.
Hinako's brow was knit tight, her eyes shut, her body gone still — but Rin could sense clearly that she hadn't died. At such close range, he could feel her steady heartbeat and breathing plainly; the girl had simply fallen into a deep coma.
"That thing's curse again?"
Rin tried drawing a thread of light from deep within himself — the pure, inherent brightness that had always been his — and let it flow, by will alone, into Hinako's body.
But her body showed no response, remaining locked in a coma that cut her off entirely from the outside world.
There was nothing more Rin could do. Nature-Light had never carried any special power of its own — it was simply the manifestation of self-nature's inherent brightness after seeing through to one's true mind, and its only real effect was to keep the spirit unshaken by outside influence, immune to emotional collapse. Even as the vessel for the urban-legend entity 'Ultraseven,' unless he actually transformed into Ultraseven's form, he possessed no supernatural power to speak of.
But against a coma whose cause he couldn't even identify, transforming into Ultraseven wouldn't help either — at least, not with any ability Ultraseven currently possessed.
With no other option, Rin laid Hinako flat on the ground, took off his own jacket, folded it neatly, and slid it beneath her head, then began an examination using his medical knowledge.
He first lifted her eyelids, checking her pupils by the faint light filtering through the fog. Her reflex to light was somewhat sluggish, but there was no sign of dilation or abnormal constriction.
Next, he pressed his ear to her chest and clearly heard a heartbeat — regular, though slightly quick. Checking her breath, he found it shallow but steady, with no obstruction or abnormal wheeze. Her carotid pulse was even and rhythmic; pressing lightly on her temporal artery afterward, he felt a faint increase in vascular pulsation.
"Her pupils, breathing, and heartbeat are all normal. No external injuries, and no sign of any curse eating into her. Medically speaking, this looks like a loss of consciousness triggered by a sudden, severe headache. There's no danger to her life — once the pain eases, she should come around on her own."
Rin straightened up and gave Shu Iwai and Rinko Nishida his findings. That was as far as medicine could take him — he couldn't rule out a curse either. The trouble was, when it came to curses, he wasn't entirely ignorant, but he came close enough to it that the difference barely mattered.
"Just a headache? Good. Good, that's a relief."
Shu Iwai's tense shoulders sagged, and he let out a hard breath.
"This is an old problem of Hinako's. She's had headaches ever since she started middle school. As far as I can tell, it comes from the friction with her father — it puts a huge amount of strain on her. She's always asking me for headache medicine. This time, it's probably been too long since she last took any, and between this place and Sakuko's death, the stress must have been too much — enough to knock her out with the pain."
Shu Iwai wore a helpless expression as he explained to Rin and Rinko Nishida.
"Overusing headache medicine isn't good for you."
Rin nodded, accepting Shu Iwai's explanation as the cause for now, since he had no other answer to offer himself.
Shu Iwai nodded at once, his tone earnest. "I know. That's why I haven't kept her on commercial medicine — I switched to gentler herbal remedies instead, things like kudzu root and peony, to ease the strain on her body as much as possible. Honestly, Hinako doesn't come to me just for the pain relief. She just wants someone to talk to about the friction with her father. Sometimes simply listening, simply empathizing, is enough to release the feelings she's been bottling up, and ease the stagnation in her blood and qi... That's just what I owe her, as her partner."
"Herbal medicine?"
Rin arched a brow, a thread of quiet unease rising in him.
Shu Iwai looked barely into his teens, and here he was mixing his own herbal remedies and giving them to a friend — there was no way to guarantee the safety of that.
"Please, don't worry — I'd never let myself hurt Hinako. Before I ever gave her any of it, I took the remedy myself for two straight weeks. My health showed no change at all. If anything, it's easier to fall asleep, and I feel better after waking."
Sensing Rin's doubt, Shu Iwai showed no irritation, only answering earnestly.
"Is that so?"
Rin gave a noncommittal nod. Cut off from the outside world as they were, with no equipment for testing anything, he had no way to analyze the medicine's ingredients — for now, he could only take Shu Iwai at his word.
"That's way too dangerous, Shu!"
Rinko Nishida couldn't help scolding him — mixing your own medicine and testing it on yourself, did he really have to take it that far?
She glanced furtively at the unconscious Hinako, the ache in her eyes deepening a little more.
"As Hinako's partner, this is just what I should do."
Faced with Rinko's complaint, Shu Iwai didn't waver in the slightest, his manner utterly self-assured, his tone carrying an earnestness that brooked no argument.
Rin stood off to the side, calmly observing the delicate tension among the three of them, a thoughtful look crossing his face.
A clumsy, unspoken crush. Hidden concern. A friendship that looked close on the surface but held a quiet distance underneath... A textbook love triangle.
Which meant everything made sense now.
Rin's gaze drifted slowly back to the unconscious Hinako.
If this place really was something like Silent Hill's Fog World, then among this small group, Hinako was probably the one most likely to be the true anchor — the 'owner' — of this Fog World and its Otherworld counterpart.
The pressure from her father, her fear of the marriage, the tangled feelings among her friends — add to that the wedding unfolding in the real world, all of it steered by the fox spirit's power. Multiple factors combined, and this Silent Hill had taken shape!
Hinako was woken by a steady, gentle warmth.
The searing pain that had swept through her mind earlier had quietly faded, leaving only a faint, dull ache.
She pushed herself up off the ground, sitting up slowly, and looked around in a daze.
Ahead of her and to both sides lay a darkness so thick she couldn't see her own hand, like solidified ink that let not a single ray of light through. Only from behind did a warm, faint yellow glow slowly spread toward her.
"What... where is this?"
Hinako murmured to herself, turning instinctively toward the light. But the person she'd hoped to see wasn't there — instead, not far off, she saw a stone stairway rising upward, flanked by two tall standing lanterns whose paper shades glowed with warm, mellow light.
At the top of the steps stood a shrine altar.
It was a heavy altar of zelkova wood. On either side stood two life-sized bronze statues of seated fox spirits, their forepaws raised in reverence. At the very top and center of the altar was set a round bronze mirror.
Offerings sat arranged neatly atop the altar — several stacks of neatly folded ofuda talismans, three small white porcelain dishes filled with sake, a plate of plump white rice, and a sprig of fresh sakaki leaves — all the standard trappings of a shrine ritual.
"An altar? Why am I here?"
Hinako, thoroughly confused, rubbed her forehead as she tried to recall what had just happened.
The village had suddenly changed. Sakuko had died, red spider lilies blooming all over her body, and then countless more had surged forward in a flowering tide. Then... Ultraseven appeared, wiping out every last one of the flowers, and declared that the fox spirit the village worshipped was an evil god that accepted living human sacrifices. Then a doll-like monster had shown up, and without even transforming, Ultraseven struck it down in a single blow and dragged it back. And then...
Pain!
That was all she remembered — pain! A searing agony had swept through her whole mind without warning, churning every thought into a tangled mess, and then everything had gone black.
Was it just too much stress?
Hinako thought of her usual headaches, and an odd look crept over her face.
Stress...? Was that a joke? Ultraseven had been right there beside her — how could stress have possibly given her a headache like that?
Sure, Ultraseven hadn't managed to save Sakuko in time, but as long as he stood beside her, that sense of safety didn't just vanish because he'd failed to save someone else — let alone leave her so stressed her head split open and knocked her out!
Which meant...
Hinako looked toward the altar ahead — the one so plainly built to enshrine the fox spirit — and her eyes turned sharp and fierce.
"That's it! The fox spirit!"
It had nothing to do with a headache. It was the fox spirit's power that had dragged her into this space!
Maybe even that sudden headache had been the fox spirit's doing, too!
____
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