4. True Form?
I walked down the stairs. Then, for now, I went inside the building on the fourth floor.
A dental clinic. A pediatric clinic. An eye clinic. All of them were medical offices. They must have taken the whole floor on purpose. In that case, there was probably a pharmacy on the first floor.
Anyway, first I quietly looked over the pediatric clinic. But there were no patients. At the desk there were only two women who looked like staff.
Then I made eye contact with one of the staff. And that female staff member flinched at the sight of me and shrank back.
And at the same moment, the nail I had been holding shot through the glass door with a crack! and sank deep into the female staff member's throat with a thunk!
And the nail that had pierced through the woman's throat went on to pierce the throat of the female staff member beside her, then came to hover in midair.
[You have acquired 1 Coin. To use Coins, please say 'Use Coins.']
[You have acquired 1 Coin. To use Coins, please say 'Use Coins.']
Two messages appeared back to back. And only then did it truly sink in.
Manager Kim, at least, I had a grudge against. But those female staff were people I had never even met.
But I killed those women. Without blinking an eye. Without feeling a thing.
I don't know how I did something like that without hesitating.
I did it without any hesitation, without any reluctance.
"What the hell!?"
A man came out of an examination room. Looking at him, he seemed to be the pediatrician here.
And the nail pierced the doctor's throat as well, and another message appeared saying I had acquired a Coin.
Three people dead in an instant. And me, not feeling the slightest guilt over it.
It was a strange feeling.
I had clearly killed innocent people—three of them, no less.
Why was I so calm? When you kill someone, shouldn't your body shake and shouldn't you panic or something?
"Is anyone okay in there! There's no one inside! Help! Someone's collapsed!"
And absurdly enough, I shouted that. After doing so, I got chills at my own shouting.
How had I thought of that? Was thinking that really my own will?
Another doctor came out of a different examination room. And that doctor's throat was pierced by the nail too.
And then the clinic went quiet. No more signs of anyone.
But I checked the interior. I opened the doors one by one, looking for anyone else.
Once I had activated the nail, I could use it for five minutes. After that, I couldn't use the skill for the next five minutes.
So I had made up my mind to completely clear this place out within five minutes.
A thoroughly rational way of thinking.
Even I find this side of myself fascinating. Just how can I be like this?
Is this my real personality? If so, how the hell have I been living all this time?
And when I opened the door to the injection room, I found a woman there, trembling violently.
A woman wearing staff clothes. Probably a nurse. But she looked young, and she was quite pretty.
Maybe because of that, a bizarre thought suddenly came to me.
And what I did next was something even I found astonishing.
It felt like it wasn't me doing it—like I was watching someone act inside a VR game or something?
I stroked the woman's cheek with the back of my hand and took hold of her earlobe.
The woman trembled and shrank into herself. Her expression looked like a bug had touched her face.
"Get up."
The woman stood up, her lips quivering. And I put my arm around her shoulders and walked out of the injection room.
"See that over there?"
Two women dead at the desk. And two doctors collapsed on the floor.
The woman shook so pitifully at the sight of the four bodies that she looked like she might collapse at any moment.
"You don't want to die, right?"
"P-please spare me.... Please...."
"But I'm curious about something. Didn't you see the message? The message saying you get Coins if you kill people? So why are you still like this?"
"H-how could I.... kill.... people."
"When the message appeared, didn't you suddenly want to kill someone?"
"No. I didn't. Please.... Spare me."
The woman kept repeating her plea for her life. As if she thought I would kill her any second if she didn't keep saying it.
Actually, she was right. The problem was that five minutes had passed.
Of course, even without the nail, I could probably kill her some other way. Like I did with Manager Kim—I could grab something and bring it down on her head.
But I didn't. I was feeling somehow... exhilarated.
Right now, this situation was too enjoyable. It felt like I had become something.
Four dead people. And one terrified woman.
I took the woman back to the injection room. And then, smiling, I spoke to her politely.
"Do you want to live?"
"Y-yes. I won't say anything. I didn't see anything. S-so please spare me. Please. Okay?"
"Okay. Then... take it off."
The woman's eyes widened slightly. Then, still trembling, her lips quivering, she began to take off her clothes.
A nurse's uniform with not a shred of sex appeal. It looked like it had been designed that way on purpose.
That's just my own headcanon, but it probably was. Well, or maybe not.
Maybe because of that, the body revealed once she took the uniform off was extremely attractive. Especially the matching bra and panties.
A woman stripping against her will because she didn't want to die. The will to survive even if it meant offering up her body, clinging to a sliver of hope.
"You should take off the rest too, shouldn't you?"
Shaking all over, the woman took off even her underwear. And just like that, she was naked.
It was a thrilling moment. My cock felt like it was going to burst.
I laid the woman down on the injection room bed, and I took off my pants too.
The woman was biting her lip with her head turned away. It was horrifying, but she seemed to think that if she just endured this moment, she could save her life.
The woman couldn't even manage a defiant look, afraid that if she displeased me even a little, she might die.
I rubbed my cock back and forth against her pussy, then pushed it straight in.
There was no moaning or lewd reaction. Her response was just like a fly or mosquito had landed on her body.
And that reaction drove me even crazier. Made it even more thrilling.
I grabbed her breasts. And I thrust my hips into the woman, who offered no resistance at all.
Her expression twisted more and more. She couldn't make a sound, just wishing for this time to pass as quickly as possible.
I came inside her body like that. But the woman couldn't even manage a resentful look.
She just seemed relieved it was over. She closed her eyes, as if thinking she could live now.
"Hey. Even after this, you don't want to kill people? Even after having this done to you?"
But the woman didn't answer. She seemed to think even this was a leading question.
Was that wise of her? Did she think she could endure this much humiliation to save her life?
I don't know. It doesn't matter to me anyway. And I had no intention of letting her live in the first place.
Five minutes had already passed. So the nail floated up again.
"Uh.... U-uhhh!?"
The woman's eyes flew open and she waved her hands frantically, stammering. But that became her last words.
The nail that pierced through the woman's throat was floating beside me again.
A nail that had pierced five people's throats. There couldn't be a more gruesome object than this. At this point, wouldn't it qualify as a cursed nail?
I put my pants back on and left the injection room. The smell of blood filling the clinic does something strange to a person.
No, maybe I was always strange. No need to blame it on the smell of blood.
I went outside like that. Then I checked the eye clinic and dental clinic next door.
There were three people in the dental clinic and four in the eye clinic. I really couldn't understand why they were all still here like this even after that message appeared.
Of course, since they were all dead now, there was no need to understand going forward.
I came back to the emergency stairwell. And I sat down there and looked at my status window.
12 Coins. The price of killing twelve people.
I still felt no guilt over killing people.
What I was thinking about was something else entirely. At this rate, when the hell would I earn Coins?
The skill I had right now was a very good skill. Compared to the other skill I had drawn, there was nothing like it.
Mimicking voices? What the hell use is that. No matter how I think about it, it's ridiculous.
Anyway, now that I had Coins, this time I tried something different.
The 10-Coin one. What kind of ability would this one have?
I pressed it. Then text appeared in the blank space right below.
If I am sitting on the floor, I can move shadows freely. If there is blood on my hands.
But this time, the second slot had nothing written in it.
In other words, the 'when' part was blank. Meaning there was no time condition at all.
If there's blood on my hands and I'm sitting on the floor, I can move shadows freely?
It felt ambiguous. I couldn't tell if it was good or bad. What the hell do you do with shadows? Move them freely?
Below that floated the message [Replace your existing skill with the new skill?]
It was a message that made me think hard.
I knew the ability of my current skill well enough. It was a pretty good skill. Among skills you could get for 1 Coin, there probably wasn't one this good. Probably.
Should I throw away a skill like that and take this Shadow Skill? How good could this really be? What if it fell short of expectations?
I agonized over it for a long while.
And I realized that even in this state, my current skill kept working.
In other words, if I didn't make a new draw in this state, I could leave it on standby like this for a while.
So my course of action was decided. First, I needed to earn more Coins.
That way, even if that skill turned out to be garbage, I could draw another one.
I couldn't end up stuck with a trash skill and no Coins.
Because that would be no different from suicide.