The potion took effect quickly.
Almost as soon as he pressed the propeller with his forefinger and the cold liquid rushed into his vein, Ichijō Mirai let out an involuntary grunt and his pupils dilated slightly.
A very strange sensation spread quickly with the initial coldness, and in the third second, he blacked out and lost consciousness.
System alert: [Your attempt to inject the potion has failed.]
[Your resistance to '***' is increased by one.]
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
He decisively read the file.
The cold liquid rushed into the vein through the sharp needle, mixing with the warm blood and spreading all over his body, and a subtle sensation instantly rose up.
An illusion of heat burned through the eye of the needle and quickly swept over the area where the cool liquid had flowed.
Quickly, Ichijō Mirai recognized what that subtle sensation was: it was a feeling of flesh and blood crumbling.
'Flesh and blood collapsing' was a strange description, but Ichijō Mirai did feel it, he felt every inch of his body collapse under the liquid, only able to maintain the calmest of ten seconds before collapsing little by little.
His veins seemed to swell and bulge, his skin showed traces of veins, and his ears heard a slight murmur from within.
Within half a minute, he blacked out.
System alert: [Your attempt to inject the potion failed.]
[Resistance +1.]
For the third time, Ichijō Mirai lasted a minute.
He heard the murmur clearly: it was the sound of blood, veins, and flesh being overburdened.
It was like the sound of someone stepping on the snow that had fallen all night in winter and covered the ground thickly, an irresistible 'click' between fragility and thickness.
But in the 'clicking sound of stepping on snow', there was also the sound of 'snow falling', which was very slight.
For the fourth time, Ichijō Mirai held on for three minutes.
When his eyes went black, he was already lying on his back on the sofa, clenching his teeth and gasping deeply in a great sense of powerlessness.
It wasn't pain, the painkillers were kicking in, he didn't feel any pain now, it was powerlessness.
It was a feeling similar to that of being in the growth period, about the legs are growing, so the knee socket is deeply weak, and the itchy feeling in the bone is somewhat similar.
It doesn't hurt, but it's torture because I don't know how to relieve it.
Fifth time.
The bad analogy came true, Ichijō Mirai still didn't feel any pain, but felt an itch from deep within his body.
The itch was so deep that it seemed to come from every meridian, every bit of bone marrow.
He needed to frown tightly, sink his nails into his palms to quench his thirst for a few moments of itchiness, and gasp for air in order to stabilize himself.
Sixth.
The 'sound of falling snow' was not an illusion.
In the midst of the choking sensation that paralyzed his nasal passages, Ichijō Mirai vaguely heard a voice, and it seemed to be a female voice that was softly whispering something.
...Was it 'mother'?
For the seventh time.
She was still talking, like the wind whispering.
The wind blew in bits and pieces, "...the moon...the heart..."
She whispered, "I won't lose my way..."
Something familiar.
For the eighth time.
She was saying, "One day..."
Ichijō Mirai opens his eyes, takes a few labored breaths, and murmurs brokenly, "Oh, no?" before his eyes go black.
Ninth.
Ichijō Mirai's eyes were closed, and vague fragments of memory were rapidly passing through his mind: he was lying on a young officer's shoulder, and could only see his shoulder and part of his back.
The other gently patted his back, slowly swaying, as if in a soothing manner, his voice was very low, very light, so light that it would almost disappear with a breeze, "This song is so gentle, Mirai likes it so much, is it because the lyrics have 'future' in them?"
"Well, sure enough, even though it looks like she hates the name '*** Mirai', it's just that she looks like she hates it, but in fact, she really likes it."
"Mirai, Mirai, Mirai,"
She recited it in a chain, and the more she recited it, the lighter her voice became, like soft and sweet cotton candy, "Our Mirai will grow up to be a police officer admired by all, the most handsome police officer of all, the 'light' in the eyes of countless people."
"Mirai."
Tenth.
Before the injection, Ichijō Mirai paused.
He closed his eyes deeply, relieving himself of the fatigue that had built up during the hour-long ordeal, before whispering, "So it's not talking."
It was singing...
That's why it sounds familiar. It's singing.
Singing a song that Ichijō Mirai knew very well, a song that I used to hear every day, a song that was so soft, yet so annoying.
The prison wake-up song.
"I don't even like it," He said, "I'm sick of it."
He's going to puke, so the moment he hears it, he realizes he's in prison, and even when he's out of control, he grits his teeth and controls his behavior so he doesn't do anything irreversible.
The main thing is to increase the sentence.
To add to the 100-year sentence, or even the death penalty.
"...Never mind."
He pressed the thrusters without expression.
After breaking the murmur, the murmur disappeared and didn't torment him anymore, and some of the strange sensations that had been somewhat tormenting, Ichijō Mirai was able to endure them as quietly as possible, with his eyes closed and in silence.
Just as the song was meant to do: to awaken the senses.
This time, he held out for fifteen minutes before the wetness of blood seeping out of his skin slowly made him black out.
...
For the thirteenth time.
The bar at the top of the screen was lit up in a crystalline bit of red.
In his haste, Belmode saw the scene in the study.
Ichijō Mirai was injecting medicine.
His face was expressionless, his eyes lowered as he gazed absently at the coffee table, while his index finger pressed down on the propeller and injected a tube of medicine into his vein.
Almost immediately, an unpleasant red color crept over his face, and as if he were suffocating, he began to breathe a little heavier, often taking a deep breath only once every ten seconds or so.
On the exposed face, neck and wrists, twisted traces appeared, from faint to clear, the traces of blood vessels.
They were like vines that had grown wild, dominating and ruthlessly encroaching on the normal skin, and even in places like the ears, where the blood vessels were thin, there was a line that protruded, adding to Ichijō Mirai's inhumanity.
He almost looked like a monster, exuding a strange wildness that was dangerous and frightening, yet impossible to look away from.
Suddenly, Ichijō Mirai looked up.
And Belmode saw his eyes.
Those were a pair of blood-red eyes, and they were churning.
...Yes, churning.
A subtle flutter, not obvious, something that would never happen in a human being, and that's why Belmode caught it at once, like a child catching the stiffness of a Barbie doll in the dead of night.
In that moment, she was unnerved, her face hardened, and she almost immediately reached out to contact Karasuma Renya.
But soon...
No, not soon.
It was when her fingers moved that Ichijō Mirai spoke, "Do not contact Karasuma Renya."
He changed his tone to, "Boss."
...What?
"I said, don't contact the Boss," Ichijō Mirai said, "It's the potion's effect, it's weakening."
The vine-like marks on his body were fading, and his eyes were normal, steady, motionless.
Those eyes are just staring at Belmode.
In the next instant of Belmode's attention, the eyes moved, the pupils contracted and dilated.
After this slight movement, which did not relax him at all, but rather made him more alert, Ichijō Mirai frowned, his eyes slowly looking to the right and then to the left.
He said, "It's moving."
It was as if he had given a very reasonable response.
Belmode felt that this was not convincing at all...
"It's very convincing." Ichijō Mirai retorted.
...It's really not convincing at all. Deliberately controlling the changes in the eyes can actually make people feel the uncanny valley effect.
"What are you talking about," Ichijō Mirai frowned, "the eyes, they are controlled by humans themselves."
He ordered, "Blink."
Eyes were indeed controlled by humans, the blinking and the direction of movement was controlled by the humans themselves, it was just that most of the time the humans didn't need to be too distracted to go 'uh, this is the time I'm going to blink' but rather it was as natural as eating, drinking, and breathing, unthinking, and not at all controllable.
But that's not the point, the point is...
Ichijō Mirai is listening.
Belmode stops, "Wait."
"I mean," she stammered, "...I didn't just say anything, did I?"
"You did."
Ichijō Mirai replied, "Your body language told me."
"Now, you're thinking, 'What?' Your body language tells me," he repeats calmly, 'that they're practically listing a line of light blue text on your side: 'What's this cow-cat saying?' ."
"Sorry, scared you."
As he spoke, he looked at Belmode quietly for three seconds and nodded: "Although I don't really like the metaphor of 'cat', I still like the word 'lunatic'. Thank you. Your way of complimenting is the same as mine, with unique and indirect words."
The pupils of Ichijō Mirai's eyes narrowed for a moment, turned vertical, and then rounded again for a brief moment.
Belmode caught it and almost exploded.
He apologized profusely, "Sorry, I scared you."
It's funny.