Chapter 11

  I Am Still Alive

  …I’m alive.

  That was the first thing I understood.

  I opened my eyes.

  Tried to move my body.

  —It wouldn’t move.

  My arms didn’t respond.

  My legs didn’t respond.

  I couldn’t even feel my fingers.

  What happened?

  Why am I here?

  “Can you hear me?!”

  Someone was shouting in a strained, urgent voice.

  I tried to answer.

  I couldn’t.

  My consciousness sank back into darkness.

  When I woke again, something was wrong.

  I was… floating.

  I wasn’t lying down.

  I wasn’t sitting.

  I was suspended in midair.

  “W–What the hell is this?!”

  I tried to move.

  —And I did.

  More clearly than before.

  I drifted forward, like swimming through water, pushing through the air itself.

  I stopped right in front of someone who looked like a nurse.

  …She didn’t notice me.

  Her eyes passed straight through me.

  She walked right by.

  “…Am I a ghost?”

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  A tight ache squeezed my chest.

  But at the same time, a strange curiosity crept in.

  I looked around.

  White walls.

  Curtains.

  The steady beeping of machines.

  —A hospital.

  Then I turned toward one of the beds.

  A man was lying there.

  Big. Broad-shouldered. Clearly a foreigner.

  “…Who is that guy?”

  I stared at him.

  That wasn’t me.

  Some random middle-aged man I had never seen before.

  After a while, I got bored.

  So I decided to explore.

  I drifted toward a wall.

  —Passed straight through it.

  Through people.

  Through walls.

  Through objects.

  Everything.

  I went outside and looked up at the building.

  Harumiya University Hospital.

  So this is where I am.

  …But why?

  Trying to remember, I floated along.

  (Walking, technically. Even though I don’t have legs.)

  And then—

  I found myself.

  Me.

  Standing there with a lonely expression.

  Curious, I followed him.

  He went into my house.

  “Welcome home.”

  My mom greeted the not-me.

  He answered naturally.

  “I’m home.”

  —I’ve been taken over.

  By someone I don’t know.

  My body.

  My life.

  That’s what I thought.

  But there was nothing I could do.

  So for now…

  I decided to watch.