by N. Heller
Suppressing the inexplicable uneasiness she felt, Lin Sanjiu stepped on a green seat. She stretched her arms and stuck her Teru Teru Bozu up on the train ceiling. The Teru Teru Bozu was attached to the ceiling immediately. It gently swayed with the movement of the train. Lin Sanjiu scrutinized it for a few minutes before she sat down on the seat in front of it, contentedly.
Regardless, this time she wasn't going to alight from this train.
When she looked at the train route map, she saw that the stop after Bamboo Grove Mountains Station was Kitty Provincial Hospital. Even though the word 'kitty' made the name of the station a lot cuter, there was no way in hell anyone would alight, since hospitals are the known to be a hotbed for all sorts of ghost stories.
Furthermore, Lin Sanjiu had already decided that when the train doors opened at the next station, rather than waiting fearfully, she was going to check the driver's cabin...
"Huh?"
Lin Sanjiu straightened her back. Through the train windows, she could only see darkness. She didn't know if the train was in a tunnel or it was just nightfall. Although the fluorescent lights in the train weren't that stable, it was still bright in the train. Lin Sanjiu could see her reflection on the train window very clearly.
Naturally, she certainly noticed when there was another reflection beside her own. A large white Teru Teru Bozu was hanging from the train ceiling. It was directly behind Lin Sanjiu. It turned its head around to the face the train window; it flashed a black-marker-drawn smile at Lin Sanjiu through its reflection.
Lin Sanjiu's down jacket was useless against the cold breeze on the back of her neck. Lin Sanjiu leaped out of her seat and turned her body at the same time. She looked behind with a pale face, but the train carriage was as empty as before. There saw nothing behind her, and her Teru Teru Bozu was still hanging from the train ceiling. It was still its normal size.
Unfortunately, the air in the train grew colder and colder.
"Am I too paranoid?" she steadied her heavy breathing but did not dare to let down her guard. She switched off the vibration of her vibroblade before using it to jab the Teru Teru Bozu.
The doll spun twice after she jabbed it with the tip of her knife. There wasn't anything wrong with its black-marker-drawn eyes and smile; it was the same as before. Lin Sanjiu looked at it and the train seat. Once again, she felt a strong "I don't want to sit there" feeling.
"That's weird. Why?"
It wasn't just that particular seat. In fact, whenever she approached any of the seats on the train, she would feel some aversion, as if sitting there was something repulsive to her.
"Forget it. Alright, I won't sit." She comforted herself, "Considering that this is a world of urban legends consumed by dark matter, there would always be something off... Maybe, I should look at the driver's cabin first."
"It's not like I have anything else to do. I can even prepare myself for any weird occurrences when the train stops." Actually, she wanted to leave her Teru Teru Bozu for the meantime so that she could calm herself. The train wasn't that long. After she walked through a dozen or so carriages, she reached the end of the train where the driver's cabin was. It was still locked.
Lin Sanjiu raised her hand and hesitated for a moment before knocking on the door lightly. She didn't know which situation was worse for her: if the door opened with a click, and she saw no one... or if she suddenly saw a train conductor smiling at her.
Luckily, she witnessed neither of these scenarios, the driver's cabin was quiet and there was no sign of any movement. Lin Sanjiu gritted her teeth and activated her [Mosaic Censorship], pressing both her hands on the lock. The lock was instantly blasted to bits, which flew everywhere. The door swung open slowly.
Cautiously, Lin Sanjiu used the tip of her knife and pushed the door to open it further. Following which, she sighed in relief. She wouldn't say she was disappointed that there was no one in the room. There were only rows and rows of indicators with blinking lights. The train seemed to have been programmed for auto-driving. This also explained why the train was still operational in this world even after the apocalypse.
Lin Sanjiu stored her vibroblade and suddenly felt very exhausted. She didn't know if it was because the down jacket wasn't warm enough and she had to just endure the cold. She also didn't wish to remember all the spooky events she had experienced since she arrived in this Kisaragi Station world. In the end, she dragged her feet and returned to the train carriage with her Teru Teru Bozu, sitting down.
Then, her throat suddenly tightened
That wasn't just her imagination. It wasn't just a feeling! Lin Sanjiu's face quickly turned purple. Whatever grabbed her slowly squeezed out the air in her lungs. She heard a constant knocking sound in her mind as if her blood was attacking something. She tried her best to move her pupils to the corner of her eyes. From the reflection in the train window, she could see a white shroud around her neck.
"I need to get, get my vibroblade... "
That thought struggled to the surface of her mind. However, just as she felt her card appearing in her hand, a cold air enveloped her hand, and she could no longer move.
In a contradictory manner, her life slowly and rapidly left her body. After five minutes, Lin Sanjiu's body became flaccid, and she stopped struggling.
And, this was why the girl scribbled for others to get down.
Chapter 193 - After the Horror of Death Settles
Her corpse quickly turned rigid and cold. It slipped down the chair slowly and fell to the ground with a thud beside the train doors. The reflection of her lifeless face in the train window moved in tune with the movements of the train. Lin Sanjiu would never have guessed that she would end up in this situation today.
"Are you stupid?"
Mrs. Manas voice sounded from some uknown location. It was so sharp that it could almost pierce through the roof of the train. The sound of the train rumbling along the tracks had been totally overpowered by her furious yelling. "I took the extra precaution to shut myself away just so you could use your Defence Forcefield for a longer time... Yet, you ended up like this. What are you going to do?! What are you going to do?!"
Lin Sanjiu, with her current tranlucent form, 'squatted' beside her own corpse and watched as it grew stiffer and stiffer. Lin Sanjiu had no idea how she should answer Mrs. Manas. But, another puzzling question which bothered her was how she could 'see' the scene in front of her.
Lin Sanjiu could remember the moment the second before she died. Her whole body felt extremely cold and she couldn't move a single muscle. As her consciousness faded, her will to survive erupted within her. Her higher consciousness rushed out like flood water flowing through sluices and enveloped her... brain. As she had used up quite a lot of her higher consciousness before this happened, there was only sufficient amount to protect a small part of her.
When her corpse lost all support and slipped off the train seat, the only part of her body protected by her higher consciousness, now in a translucent form, remained in the same spot. In other words, Lin Sanjiu had turned into a translucent, floating, brain... spirit.
"It's weird. How can I still see and hear?" Lin Sanjiu asked the irate Mrs. Manas.
A grayish-white translucent brain hanging mid-air shook once—right now there was no way anyone could identify Lin Sanjiu. "And, since I'm dead, why are you still here?"
Mrs. Manas remained quiet for some time, as if she was trying to control her anger. After a few minutes, trying her best to remember her responsibility as an educator, she finally replied with a strained voice, clearly holding back her anger, "Right now, your... spirit, is created by your concentrated, condensed higher consciousness. Did you forget that your high consciousnes can be used for detection? If it didn't provide such detection, I wonder how you would have developed your observational skills in the past?"
"Oh!" the grayish-white brain nodded, showing that she understood. The brain spun in the air, seeming to survey the surroundings. All the things she couldn't see when s
he was alive, now lay b.a.r.e in front of her.
It was the same scene she saw before her death. Every seat was occupied by a person with a dead, ashen face; their c.h.e.s.ts rose once only after a very long time, during which two streams of white gas would escape from their noses. It was quite creepy.
"No wonder Kisaragi Station World is so cold!"
The Teru Teru Bozu was also different from her memory: a girl with a lifeless, gray face was holding on to the Teru Teru Bozu tightly with both her hands. She was dangling from it, while her white flowing dress hung down over her body. From the height that the girl was hanging, the girl's dress was right at Lin Sanjiu's neck when she sat on the train seat.
When she saw the very thing which strangled her to death, Lin Sanjiu couldn't describe her feelings.
Without a body, she was no longer cold and since she could see everything, she was no longer afraid.
However, considering her current form, she didn't even know if she could continue existing in this manner tomorrow, let alone take revenge for herself.
"So... I'm dead?" The grayish-white brain floated down to her own corpse. "Does this mean I can only continue living as a brain-shaped spirit?"
This wasn't an easy question for Mrs. Manas. "Wait," she replied before disappearing for some time. Lin Sanjiu waited anxiously until Mrs. Manas spoke again.
"I already had some suspicions about this." The opening words to her explanation already caught Lin Sanjiu's attention. She continued, "No matter how powerful higher consciousness is, it can't defy true death. Your current state is perhaps a condition related to this world."
The grayish-white brain drifted a bit, "I have the same thoughts. This world is connected to urban legends and the supernatural after all, so spirits do exist here... But, I think I'm a little different from them."
The grayish-white brain floated to the side of the old lady while communicating. If the brain had a finger, Lin Sanjiu would definitely stick her finger on the old lady's nose.
The expression of the gloomy-looking old lady did not change one bit. Her saggy half-opened eyes, hidden under the layers of wrinkles, showed almost no awareness of Lin Sanjiu's presence. The old lady just tilted her head a bit, and did not treat Lin Sanjiu as a target.
"Well, they retained their human forms, but you are just a brain," Mrs. Manas pointed out.
"No, that's not what I meant. Erm, how should I word this? Right now, I still have my own thoughts and can somewhat act according to my own will. This is probably because of my higher consciousness, right? If I didn't have my higher consciousness, what would happen?"
Mrs. Manas wanted to reply, "then, you'd definitely die", but she suddenly thought of Douglas and immediate found herself speechless. She knew how valuable higher consciousness was to a user who could utilize it, but she had never mentioned this specifically to Lin Sanjiu. Besides, this ability was extremely rare, so it wasn't possible that Douglas was also using higher consciousness to continue existing and moving around after he died.
"Therefore, my guess is that... after this world had been invaded by dark matter, everyone was killed by or assimilated with dark matter. Anyway, they all became part of this creepy supernatural world, or a unique type of duoluozhong that only exists here at Kisaragi Station. They are not alive. That's why Douglas could hear the sound of my higher consciousness."
Lin Sanjiu was astonished by her own calmness. It was rather incredible that she could rationally think through all these while being in this awkward, strange state. Her objective of saying that wasn't really about explaining herself to Mrs. Manas, but rather to reorganize her thoughts.
"I constantly felt very cold, and this might be an indication that I was being 'corroded' by dark matter. After I've been more or less 'consumed' by dark matter, these unique duoluozhongs easily killed me." Lin Sanjiu floated down and looked at her pair of widened dead eyes. The brain shivered in midair. "But, they can't even imagine that I could exist in this form... I didn't survive their attack, but also didn't turn into a duoluozhong."
"That's right... Considering your current condition, who knows what will happen to you after 14 months?" Mrs. Manas sighed. The grayish white brain did not give a reply. It simply floated down and stopped above the corpse.
"At the end of 14 months, will you be sent to another world? If you are sent to a world without dark matter, would you die immediate? Hun? HOLY F*CK! Where is your body?!"
Chapter 194 - You Shouldn't Stick Your Card in Your Brain!
When the usually nurturing Mrs. Manas swore out loud, Lin Sanjiu's shock far exceeded the teacher's. Lin Sanjiu found herself momentarily dumbfounded. Unfortunately, due to her current form, which was just a brain in mid-air, no one could see her emotions from the folds in her brain's white matter.
After quite some time, she explained hesitantly, "I-I just thought that it'd be good if I could convert my body into a card... so, I touched it with my 'head' and it really became a card..."
After calming down for two minutes, Mrs. Manas finally understood what had happened.
Usually, after Lin Sanjiu changed something into a card, she would keep the card in her body. After that, it would appear in a 'catalog' in her brain—which was her card inventory. However, without her body, where would the items be kept?
"Where did her/my body go?"
Both Lin Sanjiu and Mrs. Manas became anxious. Following Mrs. Manas' advice, Lin Sanjiu floated close to the ground. With a single thought, her body appeared from nowhere and fell to the ground with a thud. Lin Sanjiu didn't even notice that there was a small cut on her temples because she was too shocked. After both of them discussed for some time, they were still unable to understand how it worked.
Seeing that they could not make sense of it by discussing, Mrs. Manas warned Lin Sanjiu not to be rash and disappeared once again. Lin Sanjiu figured that Mrs. Manas probably planned to check the entire 'brain form' she was now in before returning.
Lin Sanjiu was a little worried about the situation, but being able to store her own body was a good thing. She floated gently to her body and 'touched' it. It instantly became a card again. In any case, keeping her body with her was the safest bet.
Without Mrs. Manas talking to her, Lin Sanjiu flew unsteadily around the train carriages. The flickering fluorescent lights in the train were caused by a man who was scuttling along the ceiling of a train, like a gecko. Whenever he scurried past one of the fluorescent light, it would go out. Once he left, it would light up again. Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but wonder if her previous experience with flickering lights were all caused by such a man—but she had no idea what sort of urban legend this 'fluorescent light man' was from.
Looking at her Teru Teru Bozu, she guessed she couldn't keep it any longer. The woman, who was dangling from the Teru Teru Bozu, had buried her head in it, so her sinister face was showing through the cloth. Lin Sanjiu could only see the two black eyes of the originally cute, smiling face on the doll following her—as a brain. For a second, Lin Sanjiu was afraid that the woman would suddenly reach out to grab her.
The other passengers were sitting silently in their seat and did not even bothered looking at the floating brain in the air. After Lin Sanjiu roamed about the train, she found out that there were 'people' in the driver's cabin as well. Every now and then, she would see some of the passengers shifting a little in their seats. However, considering the current situation, the unique duoluozhongs in Kirasagi Train Station were not interested in attacking her in this state.
With some thoughts in her mind, she drifted back to the carriage where she died. She tried to call Mrs. Manas a few times but she did not receive any reply. Lin Sanjiu floated in mid-air absent-mindedly. As her mind wandered to the problems about her future, she didn't immediately notice when the old woman on the seat in the carriage suddenly moved.
"So, this explains things..." Lin Sanjiu couldn't help sighing after she eyed the old woman for a few seconds. The old woman's limbs were very stiff and she seemed to have d
ifficulties coordinating her movements. The old woman stood up rigidly. Her body was stuck in the position where she was bending over at a 90 degrees angle. She maneuvered in a way that almost seemed as if her back was breaking. The old woman reached for the newspaper that Lin Sanjiu had thrown to the ground and stuffed it back into the crevice between the seat.
That was the same paper that warned new passengers not to get down the train. Lin Sanjiu understood its significance after thinking about it for some time. In the past, someone must have written that message and stayed on the train for some time. The person eventually found out that there was something terribly wrong with the train but was harmed before she could finish writing her contradictory warning. The first piece of advice had been turned off by the spirits on the train and placed in an easily noticeable spot. In order words, the paper with the original piece of advice had been used as a trap.
But Lin Sanjiu couldn't figure out why the ghostly old woman would suddenly remember to return the newspaper to its original position. Could it be—
"Good news!" A loud exuberant broke her chain of thought. It was Mrs. Manas.
"I have already check your current condition thoroughly. I know what is going on now..." she sounded happier than before Lin Sanjiu died, "It isn't your time yet. Plus, this is great for you!"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you are currently in this brain form because you had expended almost all your higher consciousness. It can only protect and surround that portion of you. After you died, though you do not have your body, your higher consciousness is still gradually recovering. You can't see it yourself, but with that little bit of recovered higher consciousness, you created a small pocket at the back of your brain. Your card is currently kept there. That is to say, your card didn't disappear, your consciousness just hid it."
"But my other cards are in my body, right? Like my knife, special items... Without my body, is this anything to be happy about?"