Chapter 99 Rescue Squad ②
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
The voice came through the phone booth like a cool, mocking breeze.
”Good evening. Ah—welcome to the land of comfort and hope, the Valley of the Uncanny,” the girl said, testing the line.
The squad fell quiet. They listened as if the air itself had words to betray. Everyone strained toward the handset, waiting for whatever would come next.
It was an odd voice: clear and not especially loud, but carrying a kind of game-like mischief. “Just kidding,” it said. “After all that telling you to go home, you still came. Well—what else could you do?”
I recognized it at once. It sounded like a young woman I knew: friendly, not very old, the small roughness of youth around the edges. Maybe only a few years older than me. The quality of the voice was slightly frayed—whether from the cheap line or fatigue I couldn’t tell—but I could picture her lowering her head in disappointment as she spoke.
”…Hey, quick question,” the voice went on, flat and almost emotionless. “Did you enjoy killing people?”
The question came without heat—no accusation, no tremor—just a sterile, blunt demand. Night had fallen over the town, and the meaning of the question hung like a misplaced echo. For a moment no one answered; nothing in that quiet ruin seemed to offer a reply.
”Was it fun to kill the townspeople of my town?” the voice persisted.
It was Himawari speaking from somewhere beyond the booth. Her tone changed: the warmth she used with me was gone, replaced by a voice cold enough to make the scalp tighten. I had almost forgotten she could speak like that.
”Do you feel no guilt after killing women? Right—makes sense. Low-status townsfolk aren’t even human,” she said.
The call was one-sided. Then someone in our line of sight aimed their rifle at the phone booth as if to answer. The tiny electronic chirr of a photon rifle filled the air, and the shuttle-sized box was shot to pieces, pockmarked and smoking.
”You can’t talk through that now,” the young girl who held the rifle said. It was her—impulsive, angry. The phone inside the booth hung like a shredded throat.
”Don’t do something obvious,” another voice snapped. “We don’t know what it’ll trigger.”
”I just shut up a nasty, mystical gadget. No complaints, right? Or did you want to keep hearing that voice forever?”
The words had barely left her mouth when the same voice replied from higher up: a speaker attached to a utility pole, the sound as crisp as before.
”You become the ones who kill because you want not to be killed. Everyone I killed was the same,” Himawari said.
”That—damn it!” someone swore. The ruined phone booth still belched smoke; but Himawari’s voice didn’t stop.
”You try to make yourselves feel safe. ‘I’m nothing like them; they deserve it.’”
A shard of a speaker, ripped away by gunfire, fell in a tinkling rain. The voice hopped next to a car radio; we smashed that, and it slipped into a store’s mannequin behind a shop window. Each time we damaged the object carrying her words, the voice simply moved into the next thing that could speak.
”Using townspeople as shields on the battlefield, getting bodies that are stronger than others, clicking a finger to kill with no guilt. Feels good, doesn’t it? Makes you feel special,” the voice continued, like an observation from a surgeon’s table.
This wasn’t some limited trick tied to one telephone. Once the phenomenon activated, sound-capable objects became channels. Himawari seemed to be using that very mechanism—riding whatever device could carry her words and letting them spill out from wherever the thing was.
”Trash-san, could she be nearby?” someone whispered. “What if she ambushes us?”
The Valley’s mysteries worked in strange, unpredictable ways. We were experienced at dungeons that defied sense, but this one kept its own rhythm. Still, Trash-san stayed firm.
”As far as I know, this object only conveys words,” he said. “It follows whoever picks up the receiver. It messes with the mind, but it doesn’t have direct physical power.”
He sounded unshaken. Everyone in the rescue squad had faced oddities beyond reason before. Apart from the one who had taken the call, nobody panicked.
”This kind of harassment won’t break us. The problem is the sound itself — if the enemy can keep learning our position by listening, they can strike first,” Trash-san warned.
”You mean they’ll find out where we are?” someone asked.
”Exactly. There is a danger of preemptive attack, as Young Master pointed out.” Trash-san’s eyes flicked briefly to the young woman who had been hit by the voice. She caught his look and pushed back at him.
”You’re not going to leave me behind. You wouldn’t dump me out here. Don’t even think about it.”
The team were veterans. The brief flare of argument collapsed under the captain’s command, and they fell back into a quiet, steady march. They didn’t leave her. They couldn’t.
Objects lay scattered through the town like careless memories—broken cars, abandoned scrap, shop fronts crowded with junk. It was impossible to tell which items were harmless background and which might host a dangerous mystery. Somewhere under the rubble we could be stepping on a trap and not even know it.
It was a lethal fight, all the same. The women arguing over me were fighting as if my custody meant survival itself.
”Sometimes I wonder,” Himawari’s voice said, shifting into a highway radio and then into an emergency loudspeaker overhead, “why do we spend our lives for someone who will never repay us? We don’t get what we hoped for, do we?”
Her words slid after us no matter how far we moved. The voice slipped from the car radio to the building’s emergency system; the town had devices to make sound almost everywhere. Stopping her meant breaking things until there was nothing left to hold a voice.
At the head of the squad, the captain—her voice clear and hard—dismissed it.
”What a load of nonsense,” she said.
Himawari’s complaints were a kind of moral rot, and in that world hatred of men was the sharpest taboo for many women. “Don’t listen to that curse,” the captain added.
The squad acknowledged her order and tightened their formation, keeping their ears and their weapons ready as the ruin kept talking on—and the voice kept following them like a living shadow.
They all understood by now that the voice was a deliberate strategy meant to shake their focus.
For women with any shred of normal ethics, the words stung—mocking, needling, impossible to ignore.
”Why don’t you stay here instead?” Himawari cooed suddenly. “This town is a wonderful place. The men here are so kind, like something out of a dream. One of them is waiting for you inside this tower.”
The voice came from the microphone of a giant neon clown above them as they passed beneath a narrow skyscraper. The sign glowed with foreign brightness: an advertisement showing a cheerful family of strangers gathered around a Thanksgiving dinner, steam rising from the roast chicken between smiling parents and a laughing child.
Next to it, another billboard showed the same family years later—lines cut deep into their faces, the tattooed son shouting at his father.
The third showed an old wife holding hands with a man who wasn’t her husband; empty bottles and a syringe rolled across the table.
The last billboard showed nothing but a blood-soaked living room. No one was left inside.
”Ah, what a pity,” Himawari sighed through the clown’s lips. “You wasted such a chance.”
The mechanical clown exhaled loudly, as if disappointed in them.
She kept talking after that—emotional, meddlesome, relentless.
As we moved, she even began commenting on our path.
”You’re going that way? Oh no—danger ahead! Don’t take the left road. Someone will die if you do. Go back, please, go back!”
We didn’t follow her instructions, but sometimes our route still matched what she described. When a flowerpot crashed onto the street from high above, scattering soil at our feet, she let out a light laugh.
”See? I told you so.”
Then came the laughter of unseen children from above—real, not through any speaker. It was one of the dungeon’s lighter traps. No one was hit, and even if they were, a Psionic Power user would shrug it off. Ordinary explorers might not have been so lucky.
Himawari kept speaking, trying to bait us into danger. Sometimes she told the truth. Sometimes she lied.
When we ignored her completely, another voice bled into hers—a young man’s, bitter and trembling.
”Filthy. Don’t touch me. Women are vile. Don’t come near me, don’t look at me—ah, my body hurts…”
The sound came from an old hand-cranked gramophone somewhere up ahead. A recording. The man’s groans were thick with pain and anger.
Then came his ranting:
”Women are foolish. No reason, no control. They forget every kindness. I can’t stand their faces—ugh, that night, I wish I could erase it. They should’ve stayed unseen, silent, grateful. If not, then hang themselves already!”
The voice spat hatred, and somewhere within the static was the sob of a woman—the one being cursed.
”Goddamn bitch! Damn it all!” the girl from our squad shouted, smashing at the sound’s source.
”Calm down,” someone said sharply. “Don’t listen. It’s just harassment.”
Still she kept cursing, desperate to silence the voice. Another woman, maybe from her same hometown, tried to restrain her.
The man’s voice went on, now just muttering complaints and bitterness about women and the world. It didn’t hit as deep as Himawari’s words, but it was vile enough to sour the air.
”Himawari’s tactics are disgusting,” someone murmured.
Even I felt my mood sink. Simple as it seemed, this kind of psychological warfare could work.
In the Warring States era, whole units existed to break the enemy’s spirit by shouting them down. “Surrounded by songs” — Shimensoka — the art of crushing morale with voices and emotion.
Most of the rescue team weren’t the type to lose focus easily. But even the strongest weren’t made of stone.
Then Himawari’s voice changed again, deepening, soft but sharp.
”Have you never hated a man?” she asked.
”Never felt disgust when his temper wasn’t something you could excuse as a childish whim?”
Her words hung like smoke. We knew she couldn’t hear our answers—there was no feedback channel—but still she pressed on.
”Why do you revere men so arrogant, so proud, so sure they’re gods?”
Every word was poison meant to splinter the hearts of women listening.
”Have you never felt the urge to kill someone you love?” she whispered. “Never wanted to destroy them for hurting you, even once?”
The hatred in her voice was real. It came from the marrow.
In Isumi Town, women had endured decades of quiet cruelty from men—mocked for their looks, despised as eerie, unloved no matter how they tried. To be loathed by the very person you’d given your life to—that was their history.
”Why are only we the ones who suffer?” Himawari said. “Born male, and suddenly you can say anything you like, hurt whoever you want. You hate us that much? Then if you can’t have us—why not just…”
Her voice twisted into something obscene.
”Force us, and then—” The rest broke apart in static.
Then a soft laugh. “And the next morning, he’ll hate himself for it. You know that kind of man, don’t you? Say, have you really never thought like that?”
”Shut up!” the young girl shouted into the empty street. “Shut your filthy mouth!”
It was the sort of confession Himawari would never make to me directly, no matter how I pressed. But she wouldn’t stop. Her words echoed everywhere, wrapping around us like smoke.
To insult kings or emperors was one thing; to attack manhood itself was worse. Men, in this world, recoiled from being seen as sexual objects. They dismissed affection as ulterior motive, rejected devotion with contempt. Himawari’s words were both blasphemy and uncomfortable truth—something that struck at every listener’s nerves.
For women, it was the unspoken heresy—they had all felt it once, faintly, but were forbidden to admit it.
Her tone was that of a heretic doubting the gods of a cruel and godless life.
”Trash-san, you all right?” I asked quietly. “I could never hate women without reason. I’m always grateful for you.”
Women were creatures born unable to truly hate men. Even in the face of abuse, they rarely held murderous intent—that was their virtue, and their curse.
I didn’t want her—or anyone—to dwell on Himawari’s poison. Even if what she said echoed the secret cries women buried deep inside.
”I mean it,” I said. “I’m grateful to the women around me. I couldn’t live without you, Trash-san.”
”Young Master,” she murmured, visibly flustered. “That’s… far too generous. Almost careless of you to say—no, I mean…”
She faltered, unsure how to reply, but it didn’t matter. Sincerity itself was the best weapon against this kind of mind-attack. No matter what Himawari said, she couldn’t defeat a man who spoke his heart.
”Tell the others too,” I said. “Let them know there are men who don’t hate women.”
And Trash-san passed my words quietly along to the rescue squad, as the voice in the ruins kept whispering from every shadow.
Even a thousand praises couldn’t lift a woman’s spirit the way one man’s insult could crush it. In the same way, my affection—genuine and unreserved—seemed able to pull them out of despair. Some doubted whether I truly meant it, but a few women straightened their backs with new resolve.
Still, Trash-san and the others seemed calmer than I expected. They weren’t panicking; in fact, they hardly seemed to care about Himawari at all.
Instead, they focused on keeping me steady, explaining everything with deliberate patience.
”The people of Isumi Town are being forced to respond to the First Squad’s assault,” Trash-san said evenly. “Using words to distract us shows they’re short on actual strength.”
”Really?” I asked.
”The enemy’s the one under pressure. That’s why everyone’s composed. Please, rest assured.”
”Yeah… come to think of it, no one’s attacked us yet.”
Trash-san’s tone stayed analytic. No psionics, no monsters—just empty talk.
”It may soon be time to return you to safety, Young Master,” she began, but before she could finish, the curly-haired woman from earlier climbed a pile of rubble at the roadside.
We all turned to watch her.
”Captain,” she called out, “I believe the enemy is nearby. Request permission to conduct mystery detection.”
”Permission granted,” the captain replied. “Everyone, halt! Form a defensive circle around Chiyo!”
The squad froze in place. The woman—Chiyo—lifted a hand beside her face, eyes closed, listening with intent focus. All footsteps ceased; the ruins fell completely still.
I glanced at Trash-san questioningly.
”Lady Chiyo is the town’s finest scout,” she whispered. “Her gift lets her hear the density of mystery itself—whether on the surface or deep within the dungeon. She’s invaluable for locating mystical objects and, in this case, for spotting traps before we walk into them.”
Despite all of Himawari’s provocations, the rescue team hadn’t tripped a single fatal trap.
Chiyo couldn’t see illusions like I could, but she could sense large concentrations of mystery among the clutter—a living sonar tuned to the supernatural.
Our abilities differed. Mine revealed disguised monsters and illusions, but I couldn’t tell a common trinket from a cursed relic.
Both monsters and psionic users carried mystery within them, and usually, the more they carried, the greater the phenomenon they could cause. Chiyo could hear that weight in the air.
It was my first time seeing a support-type Psionic Power in action.
A talent like hers would make exploration squads incredibly effective—half scout, half charm against monsters.
I didn’t understand the principle behind hearing mystery as sound, but Psionic Power always reflected the user’s inner world. Maybe she’d explain it to me later.
Chiyo coughed lightly atop the rubble. “It’s too quiet here. I’ll probe further. Pardon the noise.”
She took a breath and began to sing.
Her voice filled the ruins like ripples through still water.
”Behold the masthead where once the Z-flag flew high! Now, under command, we advance again. Upon the waves our mothers watched, the chrysanthemum crest gleams bright across a thousand leagues!”
It was some old military song I didn’t recognize.
Maybe the principle was like active sonar—submarines and whales emitting sound, then reading the echoes.
The anthem resounded across the silent towers, bouncing from empty windows and cold concrete. Only Himawari’s whisper interrupted the stillness. Chiyo was both scout and sensor, her gift a blend of voice and vigilance.
”So she can detect anyone hiding nearby with that?” I murmured. “That’s… amazing.”
Trash-san nodded.
”The First Squad from Kujukuri Town—unlike the assault-based Second—excel at coordination. Chiyo’s precision suits them well. She’s highly valued for both skill and temperament. Others in the unit possess similar detection-type gifts.”
So they had built a balance—each with a specialty complementing the rest.
Psionic Powers came in many families, but they generally fell into three broad types.
First was the Manifestation Type: powers that directly caused mystical phenomena. Most users belonged here—myself, Vocal Slut-san, and likely Chiyo as well.
Second was the Creation Type: the ability to bring forth matter or infuse existing objects with mystery. That included Trash-san and Flatty-chan. Not ideal for battle, but their creations could support others, and among Imperial Guards, this type was rare and prestigious.
Lastly, the Aberration Type: transformations of the body’s form or structure. Common, though least desired—Isumi Town’s psionics were mostly of this kind, and Kaede-san too. Their altered forms were inconvenient, yet perfectly adapted to dungeon environments.
Though occasionally a person manifested traits of more than one type, it was rare. Himawari was the only case I knew—a fusion of Manifestation and Aberration.
There existed, however, a far darker kind of user, one that embodied all three. Not through faithless infidelity, but through something even more twisted.
When I first heard of them, it filled me with disgust.
These triple-type beings were universally loathed—not powerful heroes, but walking curses that poisoned every life around them.
There were fates even worse than becoming a useless psionic like Kaede-san.
In the deepest despair, when a man and woman performed the Oath of Fealty Ritual, something unspeakable could awaken.
Their single wish would be the same:
Let everyone die. Let the world end.
When the world’s cruelty outstripped their faith, that hatred itself became their power.
Then, from somewhere inside the ruins, Himawari’s voice rose again, blending with the faint echo of Chiyo’s military song.
”Have you ever seen a man who couldn’t fit into the town—who just… died?”
Her words rippled through the static sky. The clouds hung low, trapping sound between the buildings.
”In Isumi Town,” she said, “there was a man who hated life here. He loathed the town, refused to eat, and wasted away. We could do nothing but watch.”
Now she spoke of death itself.
And this time, what she said was true.
I’d heard the story once before at Shigerou’s estate—a man from Isumi Town who couldn’t adapt to the place and eventually died. It had happened more than ten years ago.
”He fell ill with kibyō,” Himawari said softly, “and his mind broke. But truly… we couldn’t bring ourselves to let him die.”
Her voice stayed even, almost serene. I wondered how the townspeople had watched him fade—surely with pity, perhaps with desperate compassion.
”He’s little more than a corpse now,” she went on. “Kept alive by a mystical object, pretending to be dead, hidden from everyone. We just couldn’t kill him.”
If a town failed to tend properly to one of its men, he would die before his time. For them, that was the worst kind of tragedy. Yet it wasn’t unique; countless towns in history had vanished that same way.
”He doesn’t speak or move,” Himawari said. “He doesn’t smile, doesn’t cry, doesn’t even wish for his own happiness.”
Her words carried no emotion at all—flat, cold, ghostlike.
”Of course,” she added, “a woman’s happiness was never meant to exist.”
It was a bleak tale from Isumi Town’s past. I couldn’t tell why she was telling it now, or what purpose such confession could serve. Maybe to move us, to make us feel the weight of their sorrow—but it crossed into something like sacrilege, the kind of story best left unspoken.
”Report,” someone called suddenly. “We’ve identified the mystery’s source.”
Chiyo’s song cut off. She stepped down lightly from the rubble and addressed the captain.
”It’s a living pulse—one Psionic Power user, and a small mystical object nearby.”
”A demon woman?” the captain asked.
”No. The sound’s different. The real voice of the demon woman is too far to trace. This one’s faint—likely a relay point.”
”Then a watcher, picking up sound for transmission?”
”That seems likely.”
I didn’t know how Himawari was sending her voice to us, but even if there was an object capable of transmitting it, someone had to track our moving position and feed her updates.
The phone booth couldn’t send visuals. Someone must have been watching from afar, reporting every movement to her—otherwise she couldn’t have spoken with such precision.
Without radios or networks, the watcher might have been using another phone booth to reach her.
”The eyes are there,” Chiyo said.
She pointed to a nearby high rise.
Far above, nearly invisible against the starless, cloud-choked sky, a skyscraper’s rooftop loomed. The buildings stretched upward like blackened spears.
”There’s someone up there,” a soldier murmured. I squinted but saw nothing.
”Shoot them down,” the captain ordered.
”Understood.”
Rifles tilted skyward. Red photon rounds streaked upward like fireworks, climbing the glass facade. The shots struck home with surgical precision.
The silhouette on the rooftop jerked violently; a brittle sound followed—the crack of shattering steel and concrete.
They’d hit. The tiny black figure swayed, then toppled toward the edge.
”Poor thing,” Himawari’s voice sighed from the dark. “He’ll never wake again. He must hate women even more now.”
Her tone had changed again—less taunting, more mournful, like confession.
”I’ve taken most of his nerves,” she said faintly. “He won’t last long.”
Then her voice was beside me—so close it scraped the inside of my ear. There was no device nearby, no speaker, no visible source.
The older woman next to me flinched and raised her weapon, but stopped.
The sound was coming from Trash-san’s mouth.
It was Himawari’s voice—but Trash-san was the one speaking it, eyes wide in horror.
”It’s time to atone,” Himawari said through her. “For failing to save your own wife’s heart. Take as many as you can with you. I’m counting on you.”
Trash-san clamped both hands over her mouth.
There was a sharp click—the sound of an old receiver being slammed down.
And just like that, Himawari’s voice vanished from the streets. The phone booth’s curse had finally ended.
Then—plop, plop.
Raindrops began to fall, darkening the distant asphalt.
At that same moment, the body they had shot from the rooftop slipped over the edge. It fell through the air like a broken doll. Even an aberration-type psionic couldn’t survive being riddled with bullets and dropped a hundred meters.
The crash hit like thunder. The ground shuddered beneath us.
”What… what was that?” someone gasped.
In the middle of the road, something huge had landed—a red mass of iron taller than a three-story building.
It shouldn’t have been there. No such structure had been visible atop the building. Maybe the gunfire had shaken loose some hidden frame.
”That’s… a red torii gate?” one woman whispered. “No… not quite. The shape—”
The structure resembled the skeleton of a tower. Two steel beams crossed at right angles about five meters up, forming a gigantic iron crucifix.
And nailed to its center was a woman’s body.
Her limbs were pinned with metal spikes; blood streamed down her arms. Her head hung forward, hair stirring in the dry wind. She wore a reversed kimono, its folds flapping faintly, neck limp and broken. She was dead—already killed by the earlier volley.
The grotesque cross loomed under a flickering streetlight, its red-black gleam sinking into the sea of the ruined town.
Someone raised their rifle again but didn’t fire. Their voice trembled.
”What is that? Just looking at it makes my skin crawl…”
A cold shiver ran down my own spine. That thing was dead, yet not dead. Not a monster, not human, not even truly a corpse.
”Chiyo,” the captain said quietly, “that woman—the watcher. She’s gone, isn’t she?”
”She should be,” Chiyo answered, faltering.
She could hear breath and heartbeats, yet she only stared upward, stunned.
”Captain,” she whispered, “what… what is that thing?”
”Not aberration-type,” the captain said grimly. “Could it be… a suicide squad?”
”Suicide squad? You mean… kamikaze?” someone asked.
The iron crucifix stood rooted in the asphalt, motionless, silent.
Wind stirred its dust and the dead woman’s hair, the hem of her kimono beating faintly in the air like the banner of an executed heretic.
Something was deeply wrong.
It felt like peering into a shrine that should never have been opened—a glimpse of something forbidden.
The corpse did not move.
”Un…pleasant,” someone muttered under their breath.
And no one spoke again.
Notes:
• Himawari – A one-eyed black oni girl/aberration-type psionic; town leader/face; asks for promotion help; apologizes for killings; sets 2‑day deadline.
• Psionic Power – Mental energy concept in Chapter 35’s lecture. Trash-san teaches it to strengthen the protagonist’s mind after dungeon ordeals.
• Chiyo – The squad’s finest scout from Kujukuri Town. Her Manifestation Type psionic power allows her to “hear the density of mystery itself” by singing an old military song, acting as a living sonar. Has curly hair; has a singing voice.
• Kaede – A female psionic explorer known as Necksplitter, is a veteran assassin and messenger of Lord Ichimatsu. Her appearance is both young and old, with gray hair streaked through black and vibrant, unlined skin. She is graceful yet carries the fatigue of a long life in war, resembling an old hunting dog. Her psionic ability is mysterious and potentially dangerous.
• Shigerou – A middle-aged man from the Katsuraura family; talkative, clueless about the war, enjoys a comfortable life.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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