The Hide-and-Seek of Blood
Past — Orca
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck...!"
Orca paced back and forth down the hallway, wiping away the cold sweat dripping down her face.
Hide-and-seek. Treasure hunt. She hadn't heard those words since she was a kid, so she thought she was safe. She never should have followed them. She had only tagged along because she was curious about what he was doing alone with that woman!
Orca closed her eyes, desperately trying to banish the horrific memories. But the harder she tried not to think about it, the more they forced their way to the surface. Her mind was entirely consumed by her childhood. By the gruesome memories of that day.
"Haa, haa..."
They said that sometimes, to turn away from an unbearable truth, people would erase their own experiences from their memories. Orca sincerely wished for such a miracle to happen to her once more. But perhaps God did not grant the wishes of those who harbored devils inside them.
Just as she was agonizing over her past, a hand gently rested on her shoulder.
"...!"
"Are you alright, Orca?"
"You... How are you here...? What about the kids...?"
"I told them I was taking a quick break. Whew, dealing with children is exhausting. They have so much energy. It's already been over an hour, and they're still going strong."
An hour? Had it really been that long? Orca realized her sense of time had already completely shattered.
"Are you okay? You look incredibly pale."
"I'm fucking fine, so piss off!"
Her throbbing headache wouldn't subside. Irritated to no end, she waved her hand to shove the counselor away. There was no way she could talk about this. This was a secret that could never be revealed to anyone. She was already shunned just for being a Devil Possessed; if anyone found out what she had actually done, she couldn't even imagine the consequences. Orca had absolutely no intention of speaking.
"Counselor, stop sticking your nose... where... it doesn't... belong..."
"Uh, well... I was... thinking about the past."
"Sigh, I knew it..."
Her mind felt as if it were shrouded in a thick fog, making it impossible to string a coherent thought together. She had definitely met the counselor's eyes... and then...
...What was she doing again?
"Won't be... erased."
...Right. Was she in the middle of telling the counselor about that horrific incident from her childhood? Orca stared blankly at him and spoke.
"...Where did I leave off?"
"Hmm, well. If you don't remember, it would be best to start from the very beginning."
"Yeah, alright..."
The village I lived in was a very peaceful place. To be honest, it was a total backwater. It was far from any city, and the population wasn't that large. It was a dying village, with the older kids constantly leaving for the cities to make a living.
On top of that, war broke out during that time. From young adults to middle-aged men, anyone with working limbs was used as a meat shield, and anyone who could manipulate mana was conscripted as a soldier. It was a time of endless anxiety for everyone in the village.
Even as a young child, I could feel the gloomy shadow hanging over the village, so you can probably guess what the atmosphere was like back then.
But even in those dark times, the villagers bonded tightly. In fact, precisely because times were tough and our numbers were few, everyone supported one another, enduring the hardships together.
...If not for the incident I caused, they would have kept enduring like that, and once the war ended, they would have returned to their ordinary lives as if nothing had ever happened.
But tragedy, as it always does, begins with the smallest of triggers.
One afternoon, my childhood self was bored out of my mind. It wasn't that there was absolutely nothing to do back then, but... with no breadwinners and everyone having to ration resources, there was no mana or electricity to waste on useless things like games.
My parents had gone off to war and we had lost contact, so I was being raised by our neighbors. Because of that, I felt like a burden just staying at home.
When a kid has nothing to play with and feels awkward staying at home, what do you think they do? Naturally, I called my friends and went out to play. Back then, I was quite popular among the other kids.
I don't really know why. Was it because I was pretty? Ha, who knows. It doesn't matter now anyway.
There were quite a few abandoned houses in the village back then. Since people had left, there were homes that had been left completely unattended. That meant we had no shortage of places to hang out. With so many ownerless houses scattered around, no one would scold us even if we broke something while playing inside.
But that was when I made a completely brain-dead decision. While we were discussing what to play that day, a certain place was brought up. I decided we should go to the house rumored to be haunted.
From the older kids to the grandmas and grandpas, it was a place absolutely no one would dare approach. And yet, we stupidly set our sights on it.
They say ignorance is a sin. I violently agree with that statement. If only I had taken the adults' warnings a bit more seriously, if only I had known even a fraction of the danger lurking in that house, I never would have done what I did.
Tragically, all the village kids agreed with my suggestion. Did they think they wouldn't be scared as long as we were all together? What makes it even more heartbreaking is that the adults never could have imagined we would go to that house.
They probably just thought we wanted to play in the village square that day.
In the end, we all stepped inside that house. The game we chose to play that day was a treasure hunt. Aside from the ghost rumors, there was another rumor that gold and silver treasures were sleeping inside.
Looking back, it was such a fucking stupid rumor. No one had ever gone inside, so how could anyone know there was treasure? Even if it were true, the person who started the rumor would have already taken it. It was probably just a wild distortion of a guess that whatever the ghost was guarding must be something valuable.
...Well, regardless, most of the rumors about that house were true. A ghost and a monster did live there, and they were indeed guarding something.
The only difference from the rumors was... the ghost and the monster were invisible to our eyes.
Thinking about it now, it wasn't a ghost at all. It was a security system designed to prevent anyone from tampering with the entity sealed inside that house.
But an unimaginable amount of time must have passed. It had grown so incredibly old and worn down that it lost most of its functions, reduced to a mere drifting presence. It had become something akin to what people call a ghost.
Even that was enough to terrify the villagers, keeping them far away from the ancient house whose origins had long been forgotten. Yes. If we hadn't gone there, it might have remained forgotten forever.
That ghost was guarding a monster trapped inside a box. And unfortunately, I was the one who found it.
Filled with curiosity, I opened the box... and the monster immediately entered my body.
I screamed so loudly the hallway echoed. It felt as if something that wasn't me had forced its way inside my body. Naturally, the other kids heard my screams and rushed over...
And I made yet another fucking stupid choice. I didn't know what had happened, and in my sheer confusion, I brushed it off as nothing. I told them I thought I saw a ghost, but that it must have just been my imagination.
The kids teased me mercilessly. I would have done the same in their shoes, laughing at how I got scared over a ghost.
That night, I couldn't sleep a wink. Sweat poured off me like rain, yet my body felt as cold as ice. Sitting on my bed, I sobbed all by myself. I felt like someone was approaching me.
And that premonition wasn't wrong. The devil was approaching. Not my body, but my mind.
I couldn't grasp exactly what was happening, but my instincts warned me. If things kept going like this, something terrible was going to happen. So, dragging my heavy body, I headed back to that house.
Tragically, my state only caused worry and concern among the village adults. Is something wrong with Orca? Orca looks really sick. The tight-knit bond of the village ended up bringing about the worst possible outcome.
If only the adults hadn't cared about me. They thought that if Orca was going through a hard time, it would be better for her friends to comfort her rather than the adults.
They were good people. I'll say it again: it would have been so much better if they had been bad people instead.
Naturally, my close friends stepped back into that house with confident strides. They had already been there once, and they had concluded that rumors were just rumors.
They said, Orca, are you sick? Orca, if something's wrong, please tell us. They approached me as I stood there drenched in cold sweat, genuinely worrying about me...
And in that very moment, the friend who was checking my face lost their life.
To my utterly dumbfounded friends, I could only squeeze out a strained voice. Please run away. I... I don't think I'm myself anymore. It feels like there's another me inside. Please. It feels like I'm bigger than my own body, and smaller than my own body.
What kind of nonsense was that? I don't know either. That was just how it felt at the time.
Naturally, with their friend suddenly going mad and violent, the kids tried to flee. But the doors of the house wouldn't open. Looking back, was that perhaps the final barrier? A safety measure to ensure that if the seal weakened and the devil broke free, it at least couldn't escape the house.
Think about it. If the box inside was that old, the house must have been just as ancient. The seal had probably been applied in multiple layers. Though they had all decayed and broken over time.
Completely panicked, the children scattered and hid in various corners of the house. In the very place where they had played treasure hunt the day before, a game of hide-and-seek began.
I wanted to stop, but I couldn't. My body had been temporarily hijacked by the devil.
One by one, the children lost their lives at my hands. Some of them screamed, Please stop, Orca. You're scaring me. Stop joking around.
Until the moment they died, they couldn't accept it. They couldn't believe their friend would do such a thing.
But I couldn't find a way to control or suppress that horrific power inside me. ...Not until every single one of my friends was dead.
Damn it, yes. They should have been terrified of me. Because at that moment, the one controlling me wasn't me—it was the devil.
How much time passed? I just wandered aimlessly through that house. The entire place was drenched in blood, and there was nothing left alive. Except for me.
If that had been the end, it would have been just another tragedy. But the adults began to worry. All the children had vanished at once.
They figured the kids must have gone to play in that rumored house. Trembling with fear, but driven by the sole determination to find their children, they opened the door to enter. That very door, which couldn't be opened from the inside.
And then? ...Ha. Well. Why do you think I'm standing here perfectly fine today?