When I opened my eyes, I realized that what was unfolding there was not Aincrad. Because Aincrad is a fantasy world without roads or buildings. But now, what is unfolding in front of me is a landscape like a commercial street, with small buildings on both sides. I knew at a glance that this wasn't Aincrad, but why was I here? How did you end up here in the first place?
"Maybe the game has been cleared and I have returned to reality." No matter how you look at it, this is a real world, but I don't know what it is. I miss it very much. What's more, there is no one at all and it is very quiet. There is no city without people, which is strange no matter how you look at it.
"What's here? Why do I feel nostalgic?"
As I stared at this city where no one or any car was passing by, I heard a voice not far away. When I was tempted by the sound and turned my gaze to this place, I confirmed that two figures were walking towards me.
"One is an adult female and the other is a girl about 11 years old." I confirmed that they were getting along while walking, so they were probably a pair of parents and children.
"But it's weird." I felt like I knew both of them, and the girl was weirder. She was wearing a pink jacket and a white skirt, but her hair and eyes were the same color as mine. And, somehow, I feel like your face looks like mine.
The woman on the other hand didn't look like me, but I recognized her clearly. However, I had no idea who they really were because I felt like I'd seen them before.
"I don't quite understand, but I'm curious." When I found that the two of them were getting closer, I suddenly felt a chill in my chest and couldn't stop it. I don't want them to see me, I don't want them to find me.
"Oh, by the way, I have to go to the bank for a while, Shino, can you wait for me?"
"It was the voice of a woman who could have been her mother."
Shino? My name is Shino, but I don't know if that girl's name is Shino too. In other words, what is that girl? She has the same face shape, hair, eye color, and even the same name as me, Shino.
"It doesn't matter. I brought the book with me and I can wait for my mother to finish it."
"That's a girl's voice." I wonder if just bringing a book means that you are a child who likes to read? I also like reading, but is that really the case with that kid?
"The sound of two footsteps became louder." My heart beat violently, and the distorted heartbeat sound spread throughout my body. The volume of the voice seemed to put my heart in my throat.
I didn’t want to be seen – even though I thought so, I couldn’t take my eyes off the cracks in the alley where I could see parents and children passing by. Even as I tried to brush it off, my breathing was still rough as my heart pounded. This is how you get noticed. What happens when you find out...
As I stared down the street with incomprehensible uneasiness, I finally caught sight of the silhouettes of parents and children. A woman that I couldn't help but think I'd seen somewhere before, a little girl with the same name and appearance as me. Seeing her looking happy for some reason, my chest, which was already hot due to the roar of my heart, suddenly felt as cold as ice cubes being put into it.
Unfamiliar parents and children passed by without noticing me hiding in the back alley. I thought he would notice that my breathing was getting heavier, but that didn't seem to be the case.
I hurriedly returned to the street from the back alley and turned my eyes to the direction where my parents and children had walked. After walking a few steps along the street, I saw them entering a building next door. I hurriedly chased them and looked up at the store sign.
"Shinoh Shinnou Bank" is written in white letters on a green background. It seemed that the bank the woman was referring to was this bank. Judging from the size of the building, it doesn't look like a very big bank.
Then, when I looked from the sign to the automatic door, I was startled. On the other side of the automatic glass door, there were the parents and their children.
The mother was talking to the staff at the window. They may be publishing some kind of document. The daughter, on the other hand, appears to be sitting on a nearby chair waiting for her mother to complete the procedure. I couldn't confirm the faces of the other customers, but it seemed like these two were the only customers at the bank.
""
"You go in and you're going to be discovered." People start to wonder who you are and you become helpless. —Contrary to my heart, my body began to move toward the bank. Stop, stop, even if you scream in your heart, your body won't obey. And when I came to the automatic door, the glass door opened silently, and my body entered the bank against my thoughts.
"Normally, when someone enters the bank, the staff will say 'Welcome.'" However, the people at the bank did not say a word to me, just immersed in work on their desks and mobile phones. Not only that, they didn't even seem to notice I came in. What exactly is going on?
"Why didn't anyone notice?"
"I turned my attention to that woman." The woman was talking to the staff while concentrating on filling in the necessary items on the paper with a ballpoint pen. He still didn't seem to notice me.
On the other hand, when I looked over at the girl, she was reading a book with her legs dangling. I was curious about what book I was reading, so I turned my attention to the cover, but the title seemed to be scratched out, so I couldn't confirm. Still, I could tell that the book was three words long, had a deer on the cover, and was quite thick. This is probably a novel.
Like women, I feel like they don’t know I exist. Are you addicted to reading?
"First of all, there is something strange about this bank." Usually, if someone comes to the bank and does nothing, the staff will get suspicious and shout. However, although I did nothing, individual staff members were immersed in their work and did not say a word. It was like they didn't know I was there or couldn't see me. No, maybe these people really can't see me or they wouldn't be ignoring me like this.
"excuse me"
When I accidentally called the staff, the automatic door, which had not made any sound at that time, creaked open.
I don't know if someone walked in. When I looked back, I saw a thin middle-aged man wearing a black hat, black leather jacket, gray trousers, and holding a Boston bag in his hand. However, I immediately noticed that this man looked strange.
In the center of the yellowed whites of the eyes, there is a large black pupil, rotating violently, as if there is a hole. It's like zombies in a shooter or related movie. This was not something a normal person would do - I could clearly see what was going on inside him.
(what is that?)
If she looks around, the girl can also look away from the book and look at the zombie-like man. I think it would be weird if people walked like zombies.
Thinking of this, he turned his attention to the man again, and then quickly walked towards the window where the woman was. Perhaps noticing the footsteps at this moment, the woman turned around and met the man's eyes. The man suddenly grabbed her and threw her out. The woman fell to the ground and screamed: "Ouch!" Then, the girl and I raised our voices together.
"W-What are you doing?"
As soon as the woman turned her face to the man, the man put a Boston bag containing the paper written by the woman on the counter and took out some black things from it. ——In this country, pistols should only be owned by the police and self-defense forces.
"But it can't be a real pistol." No normal person should pick up a pistol.
"This is probably one of those airsoft or model guns you'd find in a toy store." But why would you bring something like this here and point it at someone...? I might be able to threaten you, but if they find out it's a model gun, I'll be caught...
Just as I was thinking about it, the man who had been silent suddenly raised his voice.
"Put the money in this bag and don't hit the alarm button!?"
It was a husky sound without much rhythm. The man continued to shout.
"Money, put the money in, oh, it's all done! Hurry!"
It was then that I realized that this man was a bank robber. How could a bank robber think he could scare people with a model gun and point it at him - that pistol was real!
Then, a male clerk like me realized that the pistol was real and took out a wad of bills from under the table and handed it to the man.
The moment the man snatched the stack of bills from the clerk's hand, I suddenly heard a loud "pop" and I covered my ears and eyes. My ears tingled and I developed intense tinnitus that stopped quickly.
When I realized the sound had stopped, I took my hands away from my ears and looked up to see that the male clerk who had been handing the man money had collapsed. At that time, a male employee's hand seemed to be entangled in a nearby document, and a large number of documents were flying in the air. The man looked excited, his right hand holding the gun trembled, and he screamed.
"Bobo, don't push the button, Darrow!"
It's as if the rhyme doesn't flow, and if you convert it to letters, it sounds like hiragana, katakana, and kanji mixed together in a random fashion. I knew immediately this man was crazy.
"I can feel a strange smell coming from my nose." Does this smell like fireworks? No, it smells like gunpowder. It smells like this because he shot it.
The man then pointed his gun at the female staff member next to the male staff member and shouted loudly.
"Hey, come here and get the money."
The woman raised her hand slightly and shook her head slightly, but did nothing. No, I was too scared to do anything. Yes, with a pistol pointed like this, anyone would be frightened to the point of being unable to move.
The staff here may have received training for bank robberies, but if they encountered a bank robber armed with a handgun, they would not be able to show the results of that training at all. On the contrary, there are probably very few people who can act according to the training. But there is no such person here. The female bureaucrat is also the kind of person who is too scared to move.
"Hurry up! Come on, Sydney, there's another one, Jen, let's shoot!?"
The man turned his body half a circle and pointed the gun at the customer's location. The woman at the end of the gun is the child's mother.
"What's wrong with the woman?"
She looked confused, but then turned to the girl and shouted with all her strength.
"Shino, run away!!!"
My perspective suddenly changed when I heard a woman's voice in my head. I saw the woman and a madman with a gun standing in front of me. I felt smaller, but was that from the girl's perspective? Did I own the girl? No, I don't care about that kind of thing.
That woman was someone important, and that madman wanted to shoot her with that gun. I will never allow this to happen.
——I must protect him. A voice sounded in my head and heart, and it moved my body.
I threw away the book in my hand, ran towards the man at full speed, and bit the hand holding the gun hard. Although it shouldn't be sharp, my teeth dug into the man's hand, and he let out a cry of surprise, spinning me around.
Not long after, my mouth fell out of the man's hand, and I felt a dull pain and shock, as if something had hit my body. It looked like it hit a nearby service counter, but I didn't care anymore.
Along with my body, he also gave up his ace in the hole, his gun. Now the gun was rolling right in front of me. If he loses this, he will be no different from those around him.
I frantically picked up his trump card. The heavy weight that echoed in my arms, the sweat and heat from the madman's hands, made me feel like I was holding a living thing. But at the same time, I realized something.
"He used this gun to shoot an officer and prevent him from moving. "If I had done the same thing to him, it should have stopped him from targeting that woman. Then, the man let out a crazy roar and rushed towards me.
As the madman's body was covered and weighed down, his vision was dim, his face was foul-smelling, his ears were ringing, and his arms were clutching him painfully. I really felt like I was being mobbed and I didn't know what to do, but I knew my finger was strategically placed on the trigger of the gun and I immediately pulled the trigger.
A violent roar sounded in my ears, turning into tinnitus, and a strong impact hit my hands, arms, and shoulders. The air heats up and blows onto your face.
"There's no way an 11-year-old kid like me would handle a gun like this. When you shoot like that, the recoil hits you in the shoulder." However, thanks to the madman's hand moving from mine to the gun, almost all the recoil was absorbed by the madman's hand, and I was fine.
Immediately afterwards, the man made a strange sound "Ouch" and staggered back from me. I saw a red and black circle spreading rapidly on the abdomen of the man's black sweater, and the man held it down with all his strength. A stream of poisonous blood flowed from his fingers. A thick blood vessel in my stomach was hit.
"It's not moving?" For a moment, the man let go of his stomach and attacked me again. I saw that the man's hands were dyed poisonous red. The moment I felt something fly out of the wound and hit my hand, there was a tremor in my heart, and my trembling fingers pulled the trigger again.
There was another explosion, and the gun jumped up with all its strength under the recoil. My elbows and shoulders felt severe pain, and then it immediately pulled my body and hit the wall of the counter. A dull shock and pain shot through my body and I couldn't breathe.
When I came to my senses, I glanced ahead and saw the figure of the madman who fell to the ground this time. And if you look carefully, there is a small hole in the wall behind the madman, and there is a hole of a similar shape on the madman's shoulder, and blood is pouring out. The bullet apparently hit the madman and then hit the wall.
"Did you do it this time?" Just as I was thinking this, the man made a furious voice and wanted to stand up.
I couldn't believe I still had the motivation - I found my face suddenly turning pale and my heart starting to beat hard again.
"If you don't stop this guy here, that woman and I will be killed by this madman." I really want to stop this guy! !
After I said this sentence in my heart, the man stretched out his bloody hand to me. My heart was suddenly filled with fear and panic - I exploded.
"I hate it!!"
When fear exploded, I pulled the trigger. A third crack echoed through the bank, and my body was slammed against the service desk again. A strong impact penetrated my back, and at the same time my breathing was a little suffocated, and I exhaled.
"Bofu, Goho"
"Even though I was coughing violently, I couldn't hear the madman's voice, and I didn't think of anything."
When I looked at the madman who suddenly became silent, there was a hole in the madman's forehead and he could not move. Just like that it stopped moving.
Long live.
"Finally finished."
"I was finally able to stop this madman."
"I was able to protect people who were important to me."
A strong sense of relief filled my heart, and the fear and panic disappeared.
I did it, I defeated the bad guy - I thought, turning my eyes to the woman, to her face.
The woman looked shocked, as if she didn't understand what was happening and couldn't believe the reality in front of her.
"You, why do you put on such an expression?" I didn't do anything wrong, why do you put on such an expression? What's wrong with my body?
I lowered my head to confirm.
My hands were stained red and black with blood, and I held the grip of the pistol tightly.
Then, a man with a hole in his head lay in front of me.
"A"
I realized what I had done, and just as I was about to scream, the woman stood up, hugged me tightly, and burst into tears.
The moment I heard this voice, my perspective changed again. No, it would be more accurate to say he is back.
As proof, I can see the girl in front of me, her hands covered in blood, holding a gun, being held by a woman, sitting blankly.
different. not a girl
"That girl is no stranger."
"That girl is me." That's who I was when I was 11 years old.
"The person hugging me is my mother."
When I looked at my hands, they were covered in dark red blood and full of poisonous gas.
"Yes, this is my hand." This is my hand.
"I remember everything."
I,
I,
"I killed people with a gun."
