The Odd One Out

Chapter 6

The skin of the face appears to have been freshly peeled from a human head, and the lifelike human features are clearly distinguishable. A man's face, as there is clearly unshaven green stubble on the chin. The skin of the face is pale and pale from having been soaked in the boiling soup for some time, and the roots of the hair on the scalp are vaguely visible as uncooked flesh that has not been stripped clean. Strands of black hair tangled around the chopsticks and dripped wetly down, dripping with the broth of the greens.

The moment she saw the soup on the tip of her chopsticks, Summer could no longer suppress the feeling of revulsion she had forced down before and threw her chopsticks out as if she had been burned by fire. Oriella's face had already paled when she saw Summer picking her hair out of the broth, and it paled even more when she saw the last scrap of skin she had picked out. She screamed so loudly and uncontrollably that her sweet voice broke, shrill and harsh, and became so mournful that it almost broke Summer's eardrums.

Summer's heat was buzzing from the scream and the headache that had disappeared had a tendency to return, causing her to vomit violently again. Summer's stomach felt like it was going to burst out of her throat and her head felt like it was going to split open, but the first order of business was to call the police, as the skin of the man was in all likelihood dead.

The thought that the killer had put the skin in the soup before serving, and that he was probably still in the building, or possibly even in the restaurant, sent chills down Summer's spine. She spat out the last mouthful of acidic water and controlled her eyes from looking at the skin that had been flung on the table, much less getting any closer. She was about to call Oriella, who was sitting in her original position and had stopped screaming, and whose eyes were now looking straight at the cheeky skin, to throw her bag over and she called the police. She saw Oriella get up, drop her dishes in anger, grab the soup-drenched scowl with a twisted face and rush out the door as if to settle a score.

What the hell?

Summer never expected this girl to have so much guts.

The distance between them was too great to stop her, so Summer could only watch as Oriella threw the door shut and left. When Summer rushed out after her, there was no sign of Oriella outside. Even the dining room, which was almost full, was empty, leaving her alone in the empty dining room. She hadn't moved too slowly, and she hadn't heard the panicked clamour of the crowd, but she had just disappeared.

Summer searched inside and out, and when it was supposed to be dinner time, she couldn't find anyone. There was still steaming broth simmering on the back kitchen stove, half-cut fresh vegetables on the cutting board, and plates of uneaten food on the dining table in the hall. As if everyone had suddenly disappeared without a word, so bizarre was the situation.

The call to the police was put on hold, and Summer grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stuffed it into her bag for protection. Then, unable to hold on to her body any longer, found a seat to relieve the headache that had been building up since earlier, and to try to clear her head. It was clear that things were unusual, and she fought the headache to sort out the whole thing from the beginning. From the many people who had waited for her outside the door and then followed her, to the group of people sitting around her as they changed into the booth. To the discovery of the human skin during dinner and Oriella's angry departure.

She hadn't heard anything outside the room during that time, and apart from the obvious anomalies and the skins. Summer felt that there was something else that she couldn't quite put her finger on, like a veil, a vague outline that she could see but couldn't actually feel.

To put it in perspective, the discomfort had been with her since she woke up today. It took nearly an hour of sitting before the headache subsided. After half a day of trying to make sense of it, Summer gave up and pushed it to the back of her mind for the time being. She waited here for so long, but Oriella and the others never came back. Looking at the time, she saw that it was halfway through her lunch break, so Summer thought for a second and decided to go upstairs and see if there was anyone else.