Shelter (2)
Hmm.
If you were to describe the beast that had just forced its way through the door, you could have said it was a carbon copy of the monster that had been projected on the screen earlier—identical right down to the last detail. The only real difference was that this one was far smaller.
"U-Unnieee…"
"Shh. Stay still. If we provoke it, it might come after us."
Not that it needed much provocation, judging by the look of the thing.
True to its decidedly un-cute appearance, the creature was a monster through and through. If it had at least been something like a wild animal, maybe ordinary people would have stood a chance. But against something this far outside the realm of the ordinary? An average person didn't stand a prayer of winning.
Ratatatatatat—!!!
"Hey! Run! Now! I'll hold the monster off—just get out of here!"
Ah. That guy from before.
He was charging forward, emptying his gun into the beast, but his eyes weren't on the monster at all—they were locked on us. He must have been worried sick.
Should I run?
Monster or not, I somehow didn't get the sense it would actually harm me. It wasn't a certainty—just a vague feeling that things would turn out that way.
"What are you standing around for?! Run!"
"We should go. If we stay here any longer, things are going to get dangerous."
"Y-Yeah… Hwah?!"
The child's legs had given out completely. She was still leaning against me, so I simply scooped her up and started moving as fast as my own legs would carry me.
He'd seemed like a decent guy. I hoped he made it out okay.
Part of me wanted to help him, but if I used my power inside the Shelter, this place really might end up becoming my grave.
The moment word gets out that a monster appeared in the Shelter, a magical girl is bound to show up…
There were already monsters that looked roughly human. If a magical girl laid eyes on me—someone who shared the same nature as those creatures—it wouldn't take long for her to figure out what I was. I didn't know what kind of magical girl this Peridot was, but if she happened to be the type sensitive to Despair Energy, she'd clock me the second we were face-to-face.
"Do you happen to know where the deepest part of the Shelter is?"
"Y-Yeah! They said the fifth floor is the safest!"
"The fifth floor, huh…"
Something must have gone wrong when the monster broke in—the elevators had stopped working. That meant the only way up to the fifth floor was the stairs.
…Or I could just punch a hole through the ceiling.
Climbing the stairs wouldn't have been hard, exactly. It was just a pain. Still, we were going up there to get away from the monster. Punching convenient holes for it to climb through afterward seemed like a worse idea.
I told myself I was putting in an awful lot of effort for a kid I'd only just met, and hurried along.
Attention, all citizens inside the Shelter. A monster has breached the interior of the Shelter. I repeat: a monster has breached the interior of the Shelte— bzzzt—bzzzzzt—bzzzzzzzzzt—
"Great."
The moment the announcement crackled through the speakers, the Shelter erupted into chaos. People bolted in every direction, and I felt my brow furrow just a little.
Shoving, yanking, trampling, falling, screaming—all in the name of escaping the monster. I couldn't exactly blame them, but the problem was that a child was watching this ugly spectacle unfold.
"U-Unnie…"
"Don't look. Cover your eyes."
I shielded her face from the crowds casually crushing anyone who had fallen. The scenes of people being torn apart by monsters in anime were brutal enough, but this was every bit as horrific in its own way. There was something deeply ugly about the sight of human beings being trampled to death.
"The Shelter was supposed to be safe! How is this even possible?! Explain this to me! Explain it!"
"P-Please calm down! This place is safe! The fifth-floor facilities can withstand even a Gamma Class monster!"
"And if it gets through again?! Are you saying everyone in here is just supposed to die?! Huh?!"
When we reached the fifth floor, the situation wasn't all that different from the floors below. The one real difference was the undercurrent of relief—people felt they'd made it to the safest place in the Shelter. That relief was everywhere.
But beneath it, the despair was just as easy to see. At least, it was easy for me.
"Unnie… I'm scared…"
"It's okay. Everyone's just anxious, that's all."
People were raising their voices, arguing with one another. Some were even demanding to be let outside—better to run for it in the open than sit here and become monster food, they claimed.
"If you open that door and a monster gets in, are you going to take responsibility?! Are you?!"
"And what happens when the monster just punches through the door itself?! Look—it already broke through the Shelter entrance! What guarantee do we have that this one won't break too?! What guarantee?!"
Watching human beings pushed to the absolute brink was not a pleasant experience. There was a child right here—why did they have to fight like this? I didn't have the courage to say it out loud, but I said it plenty of times inside my head.
"Shhh. It's okay. We'll be safe here."
"…Is Mom going to be okay?"
"If you're worried, shall we go look for her?"
Everyone from the lower floors had come up here, so there was a decent chance the girl's mother was somewhere on this floor. She might still have been downstairs, of course—but this was the most likely place to find her.
She's probably here. Hopefully.
"Mom! Mom, are you here?! Mom!!"
Maybe it was the child's desperate voice calling for her mother, but the commotion around us gradually began to die down. Kids really were a cheat code in situations like this.
…It would have been nice if someone had actually helped us look for her mother, though.
"Aya!"
"Mom!!"
Fortunately, the girl's mother really was on the fifth floor. I wondered for a moment why she hadn't come up with her daughter in the first place, but good news was good news. I allowed myself a small swell of pride.
It looked almost like a reunion of a long-lost family. The tight embrace between mother and child was moving enough to make even a person whose tears had long since dried feel a little something.
"Thank you, young lady. Thank you so much."
"It's nothing. I just did what anyone would."
I felt a flicker of satisfaction—but the hope blooming right in front of me was not exactly a gourmet meal. Saying something like that while standing in front of a mother who had just gotten her child back was a little ridiculous, even for me.
Maybe it's true that the mind follows the body.
I might have looked human on the outside, but a monster was still a monster. Feeling nauseated by human hope and salivating over human despair was probably just inevitable.
If only I could have filled my stomach with actual food instead. How much nicer would that have been?
And ordinary human despair barely even registers as a snack.
If they were going to make me like this, couldn't they at least have given me better fuel efficiency? Then again, anyone who thought that carefully wouldn't have installed a light switch right in the bedroom of someone whose weakness was light. Genius and idiocy really were a hair's breadth apart—and the Doctor seemed to fall squarely into that category.
BANG—!! BANG—! BANG—!!
"W-What was that? I-Is it breaking through?!"
But that hope didn't take long to curdle into despair. Whether it had finished off everyone who hadn't made it up from the lower floors, the monster had already climbed all the way to the fifth floor—and it had begun hammering on the door of the level we were on.
"E-Everyone, please remain calm! The fifth-floor sector is secure even against Gamma Class monsters!"
"W-We can trust that, right? More importantly—what the hell are the magical girls doing?! A monster broke into the Shelter and they still haven't shown up?!"
The guide telling everyone to stay calm was radiating the thickest Despair Energy of anyone here. What a comedy. Then again, no one had expected the Shelter itself to be breached—and it had already punched a straight line through four floors. Being nervous made sense.
Thud…! Thud….! Thud…..!
"Ah—looks like it can't actually break through the door. See? The banging is getting slower and slower."
"Y-Yeah. Guess it really can't force its way in this far."
"Still… what about the people downstairs?"
"How should I know? We can only pray they're all right."
It hadn't taken the monster long to reach the fifth-floor door, so hope was still hanging on. No matter how quick a small monster was, it couldn't have massacred every last person that fast…
…or so the humans—ahem, the people—here seem to think.
I wanted to believe in a hopeful outcome too. Unfortunately, the situation right now was anything but hopeful.
If someone could have read my mind, they might have demanded to know how I could possibly be so sure while just sitting here. But this body of mine was made of rather different stuff from an ordinary person's. It had a particular talent for sensing human despair.
The despair I could feel from the people on the lower floors… I can't feel any of it now.
If they had escaped the monster and survived, there would at least have been a faint flicker of hope mixed in. But from downstairs, I felt neither hope nor despair of any kind.
That could only mean one thing.
Everyone who hadn't made it up to the fifth floor had already been taken by the monster.
Truly a pity.