At the scene of the parasite dog incident in the garage, I had carefully made sure there were no security cameras before acting.
There weren't any, which is why I chose that moment and place to cut the dog's tendons.
Last night with Souichiro parasite, however, I didn't have the time or luxury to worry about such things. If I had taken even a few seconds longer to act, Yuriko and Saya would have been torn to pieces by that monster. I had no choice, so I had to act quickly without thinking about the consequences.
So it's entirely possible that there are some security cameras that caught me in action.
'Stay calm. Act natural.'
I tell myself as I force my expression to relax.
I put on the face of a curious and innocent child before asking.
"What did you find, Mrs. Takagi?"
Yuriko looks at me and sighs heavily before answering.
"Saya asked me to check all the security camera footage from last night. She wanted to see exactly what happened to her father."
Her expression shows deep emotion and regret.
"Honestly, I didn't want to show her the video. Saya and you all are still just kids and shouldn't be seeing this kind of thing. But I know my daughter. Saya will surely get angry at me and throw a tantrum if I don't show it to her. So while I was reviewing the recordings, I found this."
'Ah, so it was Saya's idea again...'
Yuriko walks over to us and places the laptop on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Then she sits down next to Rei.
I notice that she carefully adjusts her position so as not to hurt her injured thigh. Speaking of her thigh, I almost salivated when I smelled her blood.
Calm down, you fucking zombie!
I mentally slap myself to calm my hunger.
"!!!"
Saya immediately gets up from where she was sitting and comes over, sitting on the other side of me so she can see the screen better.
Now I'm sandwiched between Rei and Saya. Rei is still clinging to my right arm, and Saya is leaning over my left shoulder to see the screen.
Yuriko opens the laptop and moves the cursor with the touchpad. The screen displays a security video playback program with multiple camera angles available.
She clicks on one and the video begins to play.
The point of view is from above, probably a camera mounted in a corner of the ceiling. It shows a spacious room that I recognize as the dining room of the Takagi mansion.
There is a long wooden table with chairs around it. On the table are several plates of food and glasses of drinks.
Yuriko fast-forwards the video. The people on the screen move in fast motion.
Finally, she stops at a specific point. Saya, Yuriko, and Souichiro are now clearly visible sitting around the table. It appears to have been a normal family dinner.
Yuriko presses play and the video continues at normal speed.
On the screen, the Takagi family eats in silence. Souichiro raises his glass to his lips.
Suddenly, his body becomes completely rigid.
His hand freezes in the air and his eyes open wide. His back arches unnaturally.
Then he drops the glass.
—Crash!
The glass breaks on the floor and the liquid inside spills out.
Crash sound startles Saya and Yuriko on the screen, who immediately jump up from their chairs and rush toward Souichiro when they see him begin to fall from his chair to the floor.
I glance sideways at Saya sitting next to me.
Her eyes are glassy and her hands are shaking on her lap. She's about to cry.
Sighing, I raise my hand and place it on her head. I move my hand slowly, my fingers stroking her silky pink hair as I hope the gesture is comforting.
It must be incredibly painful to witness your father's death again.
Saya suddenly cries out in a trembling voice.
"Okaa-san! Why are you showing me this? I already lived through it once! I don't need to see it again! Show us what you have to show us!"
Tears are about to spill from her eyes, but she holds them back with pride and stubbornness.
Yuriko turns to her daughter with a guilty expression.
"Sorry, Saya. I got lost in thought while watching the video and it played automatically. But this isn't exactly what I want to show you."
She then rewinds the video using the controls on the screen. She rewinds it to the moment just before Souichiro stiffens. Just as he is raising the glass to his lips.
Yuriko sets the video to extremely slow playback speed.
"Look here."
She points her finger to a corner of the screen.
In super slow motion, we see the moment when a small object lunges from behind Souichiro.
It is bright green, and if the room were dark, it would surely be phosphorescent. And only in slow motion can it be seen clearly because it moves too fast for the normal human eye.
Saya narrows her eyes as she leans closer to the screen.
"It looks... it looks like a worm with a sharp, pointed head."
Then Rei clings even tighter to my arm as she watches in fear.
On the screen, we see that bright green worm fall directly onto the back of Souichiro's neck.
Its sharp head pierces the skin of his neck. There is no blood initially, and the worm sinks into the flesh.
Then we see a lump moving as it crawls between the flesh and muscles of the neck toward his head.
Ah, I've had that experience. It's disgusting.
That lump climbs and climbs. It travels up the neck, reaches the base of the skull, and disappears into the head.
It was at that exact moment that Souichiro dropped his glass and froze.
Saya and Yuriko close their eyes tightly, squeezing their eyelids shut. Both of them had already witnessed this with their own eyes in person. Reliving it on video must be torturous.
Seeing that Rei also seems increasingly frightened and traumatized by what she is seeing, I decide to intervene.
"Ms. Takagi, you can pause the video now. I think we've all seen enough."
I don't want Rei and Saya to be any more traumatized than they already are.
Yuriko nods gratefully and closes the video player immediately. Then she shuts down the laptop completely.
Silence fills the room.
Saya trembles a little beside me.
I continue to gently stroke her hair, trying to calm her without saying anything, since in this case, I just need to be with her in silence.
After a long while, Saya snorts and abruptly pushes my hand away from her head.
"Hmph! I'm not a little girl who needs comforting."
I smile.
"Nope, you are a little girl."
She immediately gets angry. Her cheeks swell and turn red, a cute fang peeking out between her lips as she frowns at me. She looks like she really wants to bite me.
"I'm not! I'm ten years old! I'm already grown up!"
"At that age, you're still a child, Saya."
"Idiot!"
Yuriko watches our exchange with a sad smile. She's probably relieved to see her daughter acting like a normal child instead of being mired in depression.
Then Yuriko regains her serious expression and says.
"Well, after watching that video, I think we can definitely rule out the possibility that Souichiro was a ghoul. Ghouls aren't like that according to all the available information."
Saya, upon hearing that, nods immediately. After showing a thoughtful expression for a few seconds, with her hand on her chin, she begins to speak.
"Based on what we saw, I can construct a hypothesis about how that thing works. The glowing worm enters a living being, apparently without causing significant pain so as not to be noticed. Then it crawls upward specifically toward the head. Probably the main goal of that worm is to reach the brain. And once it gets there, it begins to devour all the brain matter, all the cranial bone structure, and all the facial tissue. The worm consumes the head from the inside and takes its place, completely replacing the original head with its own body. This is exactly like what a..."
"A parasite."
Rei says those words.
×××
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