The caterpillar-like cursed spirit lay on the ground, its six human hands gripping and releasing the paving stones with faint scratching sounds as its nails scraped the stone.
Those sounds echoed through the narrow alley, mingling with the smell of slowly congealing blood to weave a suffocating net.
Shinya's consciousness slowly awoke inside that hideous shell.
He felt the countless human hands protruding from either side of his abdomen. He could feel the tip of every finger, the sensation of nails scraping against stone.
He felt the huge, round lump of flesh that formed his head, with its six holes-his original face protruded from the very center of those holes, like a fruit embedded in flesh that had not yet completely rotted.
He was neither human nor ghost.
A man who had already died had been forcibly stuffed into an ugly, malformed, nauseating shell cobbled together from resentment and flesh.
In that instant, his consciousness became utterly clear.
He saw the enormous caterpillar lying on the ground, covered in human hands, with six holes in its head-that was what he had become.
His gaze shifted from himself to the woman.
Then his voice poured out from the depths of those six holes.
"This is-"
"The price you meant?!"
His body-the cursed spirit's body-shuddered violently as he spoke. The human hands jutting from either side of his abdomen all spread open at once, their fingers flailing through the air like seaweed in the wind, their nails slicing the air with shrill sounds.
Kenjaku watched the violently trembling, hideous cursed spirit covered in human hands, watching the face protruding from the front of its fleshy head, filled with anger and defiance.
She spread her hands.
The smile still hung on her lips, just as before.
"There's nothing bad about this for you,