"GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"WHOOHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I AM THE WIND!"
"WA-, DAZAI, STOP, PLEASE, AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGGHHHH!"
"WOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!"
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
000
"Well then, we've arrived in one piece!"
"I won't ever..... let you drive again....."
The doors opened and Dazai dashingly stepped out of the taxi while I almost tumbled out.
The taxi driver ended up fainted in the passenger's seat. He's probably out cold for the night.
"Hm, you got motion sickness? How unsightly."
At Dazai's words, I lightly remembered my urge to kill.
This can't even be called motion sickness anymore. I stand up, my legs shaking. My sense of balance gone. Just like a newborn deer that just learned to stand up, both arms and legs shaking.
Even the strictest martial arts training is not as exhausting as this.
"Now then, let's get to work immediately! Because you've promised them earlier, let's do this quickly!"
Since that lecture a while ago, I find it hard to say, "Let me rest!"
"The place mentioned in the request is just right over there, correct? ...By the way, Kunikida-kun, are you alright with ghosts and demons and the sort?"
"Ghost.....? As if I could work with the Armed Detective Agency if I am afraid of such things. More than the supernatural, it's obvious that blades and firearms pose a greater menace."
"That's a good thing to hear. At any rate, the place we're investigating this time is of that kind."
My eyes moved to where Dazai was pointing at.
Standing still in the recesses of the mountains, a crumbling black building can be seen.
Coloured by the darkness, with signs of death and decay thick in the air, it is an abandoned hospital.
000
Why?
Why are we holding an investigation like this in the middle of the night?
While a person lives, there comes a time when they fall ill. A perfect mentality and body without sickness does not exist. With that as proof, everyone dies in the hospital we are born in. A hospital is just like this world and the next, a boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
Giving way for this abandoned hospital to crumble to dust makes it all the more eerie. The moonlight creeps in from the broken window, casting a ghastly blue shadow on the wreckage, the sluggish pool of water on the floor is a lifeless purple. The spider lilies growing on the front lawn is a venomous red.
"Dark... I can't see a thing."
"Isn't that just a good feeling?"
Walking next to my shuffling feet in the hallways of the abandoned hospital, Dazai overtook me with light steps.
The walls are decomposing, the wires are dangling off the crumbling ceiling. The window sills are disconnected, furnishings and equipment are mostly stolen, and the hospital rooms are reduced to housing worms and insects.
