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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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“Uh, what do you mean, you understand?”
Not just me, but Camilla was also quite bewildered. But Cassandra even nodded her head as if she had figured everything out.
“I’ve seen many cases like Johan’s. If you receive an excessively large mental shock, a distortion of cognition occurs. You can’t hear what anyone says next to you. Because that too is a way for the brain to process the shock. Like me.”
‘Me?’
I stomped my foot in surprise. Even though I was already standing on it. My sprained right ankle throbbed again. Thankfully, it seemed I wasn’t the only one who was surprised. Because Camilla had covered her mouth. The one who was calm was Cassandra.
“Yes. ‘Me.’ Ophelia Osborne. The sole survivor of the Osborne family, one of the founders of Kibele, and the owner of the Syndicate. Just like how the formulas I had solved like puzzles as a child piled up one by one and connected to the Cro-virus.
Of course, it wasn’t something I did alone. But because it was something I had also participated in, I couldn’t accept it with a clear mind. That’s why I’m hiding behind Cassandra. And it’s not someone else’s story for you either, Camilla, is it?”
Camilla, who had been suddenly pointed out, frowned.
“Why me?”
“As far as I know, the name Camilla is also a stage name, not your real name.”
Camilla shook her head roughly.
“Let’s be clear. You’re right. It’s similar to my real name, but it’s not my real name. But that’s a minimal insurance to avoid my family getting into trouble because of me. Though it’s just covering one’s eyes and saying ‘meow’.”
“In any case, isn’t it the same that you’re ‘hiding’ something?”
Suddenly, Cassandra… no, Ophelia? Cassandra? Anyway, she looked different. The person who had acted like a hikikomori and an idiot was suddenly sitting like a strict university professor.
But Camilla shook her head again this time.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to debate about my name. Besides, we were talking about Johan right now.”
“Johan is a competent and very peculiar person. More so than any other person I’ve met. Sometimes he acts too confidently and full of conviction, but he’s definitely outstanding. He probably wasn’t an ordinary person. But he’s unstable.”
‘I wasn’t ordinary. I was a complete bum.’ More than that, now she wasn’t even listening to my words at all.
Camilla was holding her forehead with her hand, and Cassan… Ophelia was looking at me with interest, as if I were a virus in a petri dish.
“Then what are you suggesting? What’s the point of your words? Ca… Ophelia?”
“Nothing will change. You can treat him as usual. But it would be better not to pry into what kind of person he was in the past. Right now, Johan is wearing a very hard mental shell, and if you forcibly tear it off… it might be like peeling off a turtle’s shell.”
“…It’s that bad.”
Camilla covered her mouth in surprise, but Ophelia was calm.
“I have seen many cases of the mind breaking down while treating the infected. This is an expert’s judgment.”
“No, I’m perfectly fine.”
I protested, but Camilla nodded her head with a firm face. It was as if the word ‘resolution’ was written on her forehead. She stood up from her seat and hugged me tightly.
“Everything will be fine now. Don’t worry about anything.”
I should have said that wasn’t it, but being held in Camilla’s arms, I couldn’t think of anything.
I’ll just have to stay still.
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In the end, it was the recovery room again.
Camilla went out to check the situation outside. She would occasionally send short radio messages like, ‘the zombies are dispersing.’ Each time, Cassandra would answer, “Yeah, okay. Johan is fine.”
“Ow ow.”
Cassandra had finally immobilized my right ankle.
“The ligament is a little stretched. Try not to use your ankle until it recovers.”
“Can’t we do something with medicine?”
“I don’t know about a patch, but there’s no medicine to reattach a stretched ligament. Since nothing is broken.”
Cassandra sat down in a chair. She was in a black blouse under a white lab coat, and a white skirt that came down to her knees. And she was staring at me.
She was even smiling slightly.
“Hmm, why are you smiling?”
No matter what, to just grin while looking at a person. Cassandra gently shook her head.
“Hmm. Sorry. Cassandra was rude.”
‘I’ disappeared again. It seemed she couldn’t maintain it for long. Seeing as she had returned to ‘Cassandra.’ It was probably because she couldn’t handle the guilt when she was aware that she was Ophelia.
“I was just in a good mood, so I smiled without Cassandra even knowing.”
I pointed to my ankle. Cassandra smiled brightly.
“It’s not because of that.”
“Then?”
“Because Cassandra was envious of Camilla.”
It was a slightly out-of-the-blue story. Was there any reason for Cassandra to be envious of Camilla?
“Camilla? Why?”
“Because she’s pretty, shoots well, and is agile. Since Cassandra is a little fat.”
Well, her chest was very large and her butt was also a little big, but she didn’t feel fat. Rather, just by her body, she was about average to a little thin.
“I don’t think so.”
“…Most of all, because she seems like a healthy and normal person. Of course, when I say normal, it’s relative to Cassandra.”
“Hey, I wonder if there are any normal people in the world.”
After saying it, I felt embarrassed, so I lay down, looking at the ceiling. Cassandra dragged her chair, screeching, and came closer to my bed.
“Well, that’s true. But it’s rare for a person to be walking around broken and shattered, isn’t it? Everyone covers it up with something, or decorates it nicely. Rather than walking around with oil dripping like Cassandra.”
“I think it’s because you’re kind.”
Cassandra burst out laughing.
“Cassandra?”
“I don’t know if it’s okay to say this, but if it were me, I would have just ignored it, saying, ‘so what, did I do it alone?’ It wasn’t your responsibility alone. And how many people act, knowing all the effects their actions will have in the future?”
Cassandra lightly wrapped her hand around my arm. Her hand was quite cold.
“It would have been nice if Cassandra’s father had said that. He said the exact opposite. ‘You are a person who must lead Elza. Every single one of your actions will bring about an irreversible event.’
And it really turned out that way. But, when I was breaking something, that was right… but when I tried to turn it back, it didn’t go well. Was it because Cassandra didn’t listen to her father’s words well?”
“Well? I think people would call that lucky, or a coincidence, or it just happened to turn out that way… and you, you seem to have too much on your shoulders, you don’t owe the world anything. And the world doesn’t owe you anything. Well, who cares?”
I don’t know what was so funny, but Cassandra laughed until she even shed a few tears.
“Ha. Ha. I don’t know how long it’s been since I laughed like this. Hearing this from you of all people, Johan, it feels strange.”
“What do you mean?”
“Johan is a person who moves zombies at will right now. The most peculiar person Cassandra knows.”
I really had a lot to say about this.
“Those things don’t listen at all. What do you mean, they listen…”
“But really, as Johan said, when you whistled into the megaphone, the zombie with the chain on its body came running, didn’t it?”
I briefly told Cassandra about what had happened with the chain zombie. How much that thing had grated on my nerves, and how it had not moved according to my will.
“Hmm…”
But Cassandra wasn’t just listening idly, but was deep in thought.
“I’ve never thought of a method like Johan’s. No, no one else has approached it that way. Why was that?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Most people, including Cassandra, tried to analyze the zombie. To be precise, they only focused on the virus in the zombie’s body.
But Johan focuses more on the zombie itself. That is… it seems you have a knack for reading and handling a zombie’s emotions. You can see when you can make a zombie angry, right? From the stories you’ve told me so far, it seems like that.”
Well, that was true. I knew a lot about how to provoke. But was that a special ability?
“Johan. Emotion is a very powerful language. There’s even a theory that animals that move in packs have evolved to read the emotions of other individuals well. There’s also the term ‘pack instinct,’ isn’t there?”
“Is that so important?”
“It’s much faster and more intuitive to point to the riverbank with a scared face and trembling hands than to verbally convey the information that a predator has appeared across the river.
Emotional transmission is a matter of life and death for a pack. Some researchers have even said that emotional language has a ripple effect of up to ten thousand people. It’s the same for humans. Emotion is a language. A language that can be understood even if the species is different. Think about the relationship between humans and their pets.”
I had heard many stories that animals other than humans also feel emotions. But could the same logic be applied to zombies?
“But zombies only have instinct. Hmm, they seem to feel a little anger too. And seeing as they run away when a flock of zombie birds flies over, they seem to feel a little fear too. But…”
“Johan, that’s a theory. A theory can be broken at any time. Until now, it was known that communication with zombies was impossible. Cassandra thought so too. And in front of me is a very wonderful counterexample.”
…Should I be happy about this or not. The weight of saying, ‘Here is a man who sways the hearts of fans and anti-fans,’ and ‘Here is a man who strikes a chord in the hearts of zombies,’ is too different.
But it seemed Cassandra wasn’t finished yet.
“Most of all, this is important in that it doesn’t have much to do with the byproducts of the Cro-virus. If we can strengthen your ability here, and further strengthen the power of some kind of ruler…”
“What, are you saying I’m some kind of leader of the zombies?”
Cassandra neither affirmed nor denied. I thought, ‘what a boring joke,’ and asked again with a laugh.
“It’s not, right?”
Cassandra still had nothing.
“Uh… it’s not, right?”
“Cassandra doesn’t know either. I’ll have to do some research to find out. For now… let’s do a blood test again. We have to find out what kind of changes have occurred since you were scratched last time.”
My wound had healed after applying the Kibele medical drug, but the bacteria that had entered my body was a slightly different problem. I rolled up my sleeve without much resistance. Cassandra cleanly drew my blood.
“Will you open your mouth too? So I can scrape off some epithelial cells.”
Just wiping the inside of my mouth with a cotton swab. Well, it wasn’t a difficult test. Cassandra also took care of that.
“Is there more?”
“Yeah. I’m going to get some semen too.”
“Uh, uh uh? What did you say?”
Cassandra put on a disposable latex glove. She even pulled it a couple of times, making a snapping sound.
“Th-that, why?”
“Huh? I have to check the degree of bacterial infection. It’s for research and medical purposes. What are you hiding in front of a doctor?”
‘If you come out so brazenly like that, it makes me look like a difficult customer.’
“Or should I go find you with a beaker when you and Camilla are in the same room?”
“I don’t think that’s a good… no, how do you know…”
‘Had I been so obvious?’
Cassandra’s eyes narrowed.
“Hoo.” She let out a deep sigh and then threw the doctor’s gown with her ungloved hand.
“Uh, uh uh?”
And then, as if she were sticking close to the side of the bed, she leaned her upper body toward me.
It felt like just one of her breasts could cover my face. She grabbed my hand and pulled it toward the hook of her bra.
“We’ve tried fondling… now, want to try sucking?”
Too large and pale to refuse.
“If it’s for research…”
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