On the hundred and fiftieth day, Shuo woke under a crushing weight-not the suffocating pressure of a nightmare, but real weight that left him struggling to breathe.
He snapped his eyes open and looked down. Good grief, a massive white palm lay across his chest, its five fingers bigger than his face. A pale purple eye embedded in its palm stared straight at him without blinking.
"Fuck," Shuo swore, reaching out to push the hand. It wouldn't budge.
As though it understood his displeasure, the hand slowly shifted away and withdrew to one side.
Shuo sat up, rubbing his chest. He was about to lose his temper when he saw that the space outside the shelter was already packed-not with the thirty-eight fragments from before.
It was a countless mass of white: hands, feet, eyes, ears, and noses piled together, along with an enormous torso, headless and limbless, floating in midair. Its belly was densely covered in pale purple eyes, all staring at him inside the shelter.
"What the fuck is all this?"
Sai stood at the entrance, gripping his short blade, his expression unusually serious. Clearly, the sight had startled him too.
Shuo got up and walked to the entrance, his gaze settling on the enormous torso. It was taller than the shelter, and the eyes on its belly blinked one after another, giving off an inexplicable sense of pressure. The torso stared back at him without moving.
"You..."
A muffled voice came from inside the torso, as though drifting up from somewhere deep. "The one who gives out candy?"
Shuo fished a piece of candy from his pocket, slowly unwrapped it, and tossed it into his mouth. Sweetness spread as he nodded, chewing. "Yeah. You're a fragment of Kaguya too?"
"Yes," the torso said, its voice still muffled.