从这个男人的语气来看,他应该是这个研究所的研究员之一.就连他自己也承认,在应对红眼病时,他们束手无策,甚至绝望地将其称为绝对的诅咒.由此可见,红眼病有多么可怕,治愈它的希望有多么渺茫.
不,归根结底,红眼病真的是一种疾病吗?当这个男人说红眼病是一种诅咒时,也许这不仅仅是一个修辞手法,而是一个事实.毕竟,任何疾病最终都是发生在人体中的异常.然而,该研究所无法找到红眼病患者的患病部分,这显然与疾病的常见概念不一致.纵观整个医学领域,唯一可能满足"找不到患病部位"条件的疾病类型,可能就是精神障碍.
当然,不能说红眼病是一种精神障碍.
听到男人的哀嚎后,雪穗沉默了很长一段时间.然后突然,她举起手枪,手指紧紧扣在扳机上,对准了男人的头部.
我能从她冰冷的表情中感受到杀意.
砰!
枪声响起,子弹开火了.
眨眼间,我释放了无形的念力,将雪穗握着枪的手腕向上抬起了几英寸,使从枪出的子弹偏离了预定的轨迹,击中了男人头顶上方十厘米.
白漆的墙壁上立刻出现了一个小洞,石屑一个接一个地落在男人的头发上.
他目瞪口呆地盯着雪穗,甚至无法发出一声尖叫,仿佛他被吓得哑口无言.
雪穗立刻知道我干涉了,瞪着我.
"他不是病人,"我看着雪穗说.
"但他欺骗了我们!"雪穗咬牙说道.
"不要把自己逼到边缘,"我说."你的心态不对.我不会袖手旁观看着你杀人.
"你对我了解多少?得红眼病的不是你家!雪穗恼怒地喊道.
自从三轮先生成为病人后,由纪夫的心境就开始失衡了.我不知道三轮先生对雪穗有多重要,但考虑到他是她唯一的家人,即使我无法完全同情,我也能理解情况相当严重.
"我妈妈也得了红眼病,"我说,提到了一些实际上与我没有太大关系的事情."昨天早上,我正要出门时,她突然拿着菜刀冲向我."
听到我这么说,雪穗顿时愣住了.
I wasn't lying. I was telling the truth. The mother of the world's Ninghai did become a patient and did attack me. However, I didn't care about this matter. The person who attacked me wasn't my real mother. She was just a stranger to me. I couldn't even recall her name.
But I thought that as long as I said this, Yukio would calm down to some extent.
When I was talking about this matter, I didn't deliberately show a sad expression, nor did I pretend to be forcibly calm. I just calmly recounted that experience in a brief manner. And my calmness seemed to be given a whole new meaning in Yukio's eyes. It was like an ordinary sentence that would become imbued with emotional color in a specific historical context, or like a child's scribbled drawing that would seem to reveal madness after the artist was revealed to have a mental disorder. Perhaps my expression was also understood by her as an attempt to suppress my sadness.
She gradually calmed down and put the pistol down.
I let out a sigh of relief and looked at the stunned man, asking, "Where have the patients in this research institute gone?"
"..." It took the man a while to react. "Uh, what?"
"When we came in, we saw a lot of corpses. Those were all killed by the patients, right? So where are these patients now?"
"This... this..." The man said uncertainly, "They should have left. Although they would just wander around when they didn't see anyone, but after wandering for a long time, it seems they would leave on their own and head to another area."
"Aren't the doors here closed?" I asked.
"You came in through the main entrance, right? There's more than one entrance and exit in the research institute. They should have left through another entrance." The man answered my question honestly.
"I see."
After the doubt was resolved, I didn't have any other questions to ask.
"Let's go," I said to Aoba and Yukio.
Then we left the room.
"Wait... just a moment!" The man's voice came from behind.
Looking back, he propped himself up against the wall and then caught up with us.
"Please let me come with you," the man said with a flattering smile. "I'm all alone here and there's no food left, so..."
"I refuse," I said. "You might have a reason to follow us, but we don't have a need to take you with us."
"I'll definitely contribute. I can help with all the dirty and tiring work," the man tried to recommend himself.
"No need," I coldly refused him.
The man then cast his hopeful eyes on Yukio and Aoba.
Yukio glanced at him expressionlessly, causing him to involuntarily shrink his head. Although Aoba was relatively soft-hearted, she didn't have the intention of making decisions for the team on her own and looked at me.
"That's how it is. Goodbye," I said to the man.
Then, ignoring his pleas, we left the research institute, passed through the main entrance, and got back into the car.
The man followed us from a distance, but once we got into the car, he couldn't keep up no matter what.
I sat in the passenger seat and looked up at the rear-view mirror. I could no longer see his figure.
"What will happen to him next..." Aoba muttered to herself.
Incidentally, just like when we went to the research institute, she and I were still sitting together in the passenger seat. As the proverb goes, familiarity breeds contempt. She wasn't as stiff as she was at the beginning.
"Should we leave Beaver City next?" Aoba said, then suddenly paused. "Um... right, I thought of something good!"
"What is it?" Yukio looked at Aoba, her expression much more relaxed.
When she was talking to Aoba, her attitude was clearly different from that towards others. These two people - or rather, she and the world's Aoba - should have a pretty good relationship.
Aoba thought for a moment about how to phrase it, then said, "There's no red-eye disease outside Beaver City, right?"
"That's right," I helped her confirm this information. "Beaver City has personnel exchanges with the outside. There must be people carrying the pathogenic factors who go to the outside, but there has never been any report of red-eye disease in the outside areas."
Since I didn't know whether it was bacteria, viruses, or parasites that caused the red-eye disease, I used the term "pathogenic agents" to substitute.
"Is it because there are no conditions for those carrying the pathogenic agents to develop the disease outside?" Aoba asked.
"Maybe," I said.
"Then, is it possible..." Aoba looked at Yukio, "As long as we take Mr. Sanlun out of Beaver City, he might return to his original state?"
Screech—
Yukio suddenly stepped on the brake, and Aoba was pushed forward by inertia again. I had to hug Aoba once again.
"As long as... take him out of Beaver City?" Yukio murmured, and her dull eyes gradually lit up.
Transporting Mr. Sanlun to an area outside where there seemed to be no conditions for the red-eye disease to develop, in order to make him return to his original state - although this idea wasn't very reliable, it did have the value of being tried.
Yukio turned her head to look at Aoba, leaned over from the driver's seat to the passenger seat, and grabbed the other's shoulders.
"Yes, that is it, this is it!" She looked extremely excited. "Why didn't I think of it? I should have thought of this long ago! Aoba, thank you!"
"Uh... you're welcome," Aoba was startled by Yukio's sudden outburst of enthusiasm.
Looking at this scene, I didn't have the heart to pour cold water on Yukio. This method might be possible to succeed, but it might also fail, right? But Yukio should be able to think of this to some extent, so there was no need for me to be the one to pour cold water.
After readjusting, the car started moving again.
...
Thirty minutes later, the car was on a highway.
During this time, Yukio took out a map, confirmed the direction of travel, and then put the map aside. Now I took the map and was flipping through it idly.
Aoba in front of me was also looking at it with me. This posture felt like a father and daughter reading a newspaper... No, I accidentally regarded Aoba as a junior schoolmate again. Her face and figure were really easy to misjudge her age. Although she was really cute and I personally liked girls like Aoba very much, it was really quite jarring to encounter this situation in reality.
"About... another forty minutes' journey?" Aoba asked uncertainly.
"Yeah, it's about that time," I nodded.
After a while, the car we were in left a fork in the road, and suddenly a red car ran out from the side. The two cars were traveling side by side.
We immediately noticed it.
"Someone?" Aoba was startled. "Are they survivors? Or are they patients?"
"Can patients drive?" I asked casually.
Then I thought about it. Since patients could use tools, it wouldn't be surprising if they could drive.
The driver of the red car on the side obviously noticed us too, and the window slowly rolled down.
I also rolled down the window on my side.
In the driver's seat on the opposite side was a young office worker in a suit, and in the passenger seat was a young woman.
"You're survivors?" The office worker asked a rather redundant question, as if he already knew the answer.
"Yes," I said to him. "Are you also planning to leave Beaver City?"
"Yes," the office worker had an expression of being unable to bear it anymore. "It's too dangerous to stay in the city anymore. I don't want to stay any longer. I heard that there has never been red-eye disease in the outside areas, so I think, even in this situation, the outside should be safe, right?"
It seemed that there were others who had the same idea as us.
"Are you a couple?" Aoba asked curiously.
"Hahaha." The office worker let out a polite laugh. "We're not a couple. We're husband and wife."
"Eh!" Aoba was surprised.
I don't know what there was to be surprised about. Although they were young, there were plenty of examples of young people getting married, right? But I was three seconds late in realizing that this was Aoba's conversation technique. She deliberately showed surprise when others gave an answer contrary to her own thoughts, in order to liven up the atmosphere. This doesn't mean that Aoba is a person who would use cunning in conversations. Anyone who is good at socializing will use such small conversation techniques, either intentionally or unintentionally. Aoba is a person who is far better at socializing than I am. Maybe she really doesn't understand worldly wisdom, but that still doesn't prevent her from having the ability to make friends.
The young woman in the passenger seat on the opposite side gave Aoba a kind smile.
"And you? You and this little brother should be a couple, right?" The office worker asked casually.
"Not at all!" Aoba quickly denied.
"Not?" The office worker was stunned for a moment. "But you're sitting together. So close. If not a couple... Oh, I see, are you siblings?"
Aoba didn't answer, as if she didn't know how to respond for a moment.
If we admitted here that we had only known each other for a little more than a day and weren't even acquaintances, then she would surely be mistaken for an improper girl, right? This is the reason I thought of for Aoba's current embarrassment. Actually, if I and Aoba were siblings, then based on our ages, it would be sister and brother rather than brother and sister.
"Even if they're siblings, being too close isn't good either," the office worker thought that Aoba had acquiesced.
Hearing him say this, Aoba was even more embarrassed.
"Have you seen any other survivors?" I asked a question.
"Um? Other survivors... " The office worker recalled. "I've met some, but since they were all strangers, we didn't stay together. I have a wife and daughter to protect, so I have to be careful."
Maybe because we looked like students, he didn't have much wariness towards us.
"Daughter?"
I looked at their back seat and finally saw through the semi-transparent window that there was a seven- or eight-year-old little girl sleeping there.
"Right, we also met a strange person," the office worker suddenly said. "It was a person wearing very heavy and large armor. When we were about to be killed by that group of patients, he saved us. For some reason, he always refused to take off his helmet to let us see his face. We invited him to join us, but he said he had to go and save more people, so he left."
"A person wearing armor and saving people everywhere? Sounds like a superhero in a comic," Aoba commented.
"Right? I thought so too. Not only does it sound like a superhero, it looks like one too," the office worker said. "I saw with my own eyes that he first clasped his hands together, then slapped the ground, and suddenly a stone platform rose from the ground, lifting us up and keeping the patients surrounding us away."
"Superpower?" Aoba let out a surprised sound and then looked back at me.
I can't do that kind of thing. Maybe I can do it when I get stronger in the future.
However... To be honest, although I know that he had no reason to lie to us, I still couldn't help but doubt the authenticity of what he said. A superhero who wears armor, does good deeds, and has superpowers? It's too suspicious. It would be abnormal to believe it right away.
"Oh, and also," the office worker remembered something. "Although he didn't show his face, he told us his name."
"Really? What's his name?" I asked.
I was already prepared to hear names like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne from his mouth. Incidentally, neither of these two people have superpowers and don't live in Japan.
The office worker answered my question.
"Alphonse Elric." He said.