Ma En had heard that the Room 3 neighbor was fat, but he'd never seen the man — every exchange between them had been through a door. Now the door was open, yet a curtain of darkness still hung between them.

His first impression: enormous. In the full month he'd spent in Japan, he'd never encountered anyone this large — tall and wide both, probably two meters in height, but with a silhouette that seemed to grow sideways just as much as upward. He was standing several meters away in the living room, yet Ma En felt as though the man's sheer mass was blocking the ambient light that should have leaked in from outside.

The darkness itself — the shadow draped over everything, the wall between them — felt like something the "giant" was generating.

It was precisely because of the darkness and the enormous presence that this man's eyes stood out so vividly. Ma En met his gaze without speaking, and felt as though the eyes were telling him a great many things — more than he could fully untangle. What was clear: this man's eyes spoke more fluently than his mouth ever could. Faster, plainer, and deeper.

"May I come in?" Ma En asked from the entryway, body on his shoulder and briefcase in hand, as naturally as if returning to his own apartment.

"Shoes— shoes— take off— your shoes..." The neighbor's reply came out garbled, as though his tongue had swollen.

He hadn't moved from his spot, but his size made him seem to be blocking the passage from the entryway into the living room entirely.

Ma En's expression had settled — calmer now than the begging face he'd made outside. He set down the briefcase, crouched to remove his shoes, found no guest slippers laid out, picked the briefcase back up, and stepped directly onto the wooden floor.

Not until he reached the living room could he confirm the neighbor's position — the man was simply standing beside the sofa. Ma En found himself wondering whether that small sofa could actually hold this body.

The neighbor still hadn't turned on a light, apparently content with the dark and secretive atmosphere. Fine by Ma En — he couldn't have asked for better cover. He calculated: if things were going as he expected, the police were probably almost at the building.

"Where should I put this?" Seeing no reaction, Ma En gave the body a slight hoist and asked.

"...Oh. The body..." The neighbor seemed to have been somewhere else. Coming back to himself, he swept everything off the coffee table in one casual motion. "Put it— put it here."

That unruffled casualness — a body delivered to his apartment in the small hours, and not a flicker of alarm — made Ma En more inclined to believe the man had genuinely seen things. The self-described "detective" seemed less implausible now. This neighbor, at minimum, was not the type to be rattled by a corpse. Which meant he also had more he might be persuaded to share.

But first things first — he needed help disposing of the body. He'd worked out his own approach already; what he really wanted to know was what this man, who had finally opened his door, was thinking.

Ma En set down the briefcase, then laid the body on the coffee table with both hands — as gently as if it were made of paper and weighed nothing. The neighbor's face showed no surprise — Ma En had been cataloguing every expression since he entered — and the man walked forward a few steps. His enormous body was somehow light, barely making a sound. He studied the body as if he expected it to yield a confession.

Ma En didn't speak. He'd become aware of another sound in the room — a rustling, scraping sound: across the floor, up the walls, along the ceiling. Something moving from one surface to another, sliding like a snake, or grinding, boring through something. He hadn't noticed it before, but now that he had, he found it was actually quite clear despite its smallness. The darkness prevented him from locating the source.

He swept the room with his eyes — wall to wall, every angle — and found nothing visibly wrong.

"What are you looking for?" the neighbor asked suddenly — and the voice was completely different now: clear, sharp, lucid. It was hard to believe it was the same person speaking.

"Nothing. I heard a sound." Ma En didn't lie about this — his read on the man: someone secretive himself, who probably had no patience for secretive guests.

"A sound? Ah... you heard it? I thought you wouldn't be able to." The neighbor seemed genuinely puzzled for a moment, then his expression shifted — sudden comprehension. "So you actually made it through a crisis. You haven't lost your memory this time?"

That confirmed it — there was more behind the question. The man might actually know about the nightmare.

"You know about it?" Ma En asked directly. "I had the nightmare again this morning. Friend — is my memory loss connected to the nightmare? Can I hear this sound now because I survived it?"

"...You don't actually think you've lost your mind, do you?" The enormous neighbor let out a low, dismissive snort. "Yes. You're right — everything is connected to that nightmare. Because of that nightmare, everyone thinks we're insane. But only we know we're not. Right?" He turned the question back on Ma En, his gaze so bright it felt like heat, as if this were precisely the test by which he'd determine whether the two of them could be friends.

"Right — no one would believe what we've been through. But we know it's real." Ma En leaned into it, using "we" as naturally as breathing. "The truth is in our hands. Ordinary people are ignorant — they can't and won't understand us. Precisely because of that, we should do something—"

"Do something?" The neighbor cut him off, bluntly. "No. No. No. Whatever you do, to ordinary people, you're just another madman having an episode. And you are very far from the truth. Only I—" He pointed at himself. "Only I am closest to the truth!"

Ma En found the posturing interesting and felt no impulse to argue. What would be the point? He was genuinely on the knife's edge, and this neighbor genuinely had his own history. Maybe he simply loved the feeling of being at the center of something. Maybe he hadn't felt that way in a very long time. Ma En had always been generous with friends, and he was not the type who needed to occupy the center himself.

Ma En nodded, unhurriedly — no flattery, no sarcasm, just calm and open acknowledgment. "That's right. You're the one closest to the truth. Which is exactly why I need your help."

"You're asking for my help?" the neighbor said, low-voiced, his eyes brightening further. Ma En noticed: every time he conceded ground in tone or posture, the man lit up.

"I call you friend. Do you think of me as one?" Ma En turned the question around. "If you need me to ask — fine, I'm asking. But what I really want to know is: do you want to be my friend?"

The shadowed features of the neighbor's face seemed to twitch. A long pause before he spoke. "Hm-mm... I don't know. I want us to be friends. But how would I know whether you're friend enough?"

"Then let's start by doing something friends do." Ma En tilted his chin toward the body on the coffee table. "We can begin with this."

"Yes, that's an excellent suggestion." The neighbor's whole manner brightened. He turned his gaze back to the body and muttered, as if to himself: "Now then. What to do with you, you grubby little thief."

"The police are coming soon. As you may have seen — I've been set up."

"I know, I know, I saw it all. This one's a fool — he didn't have to die." The voice was devoid of sympathy; the dominant note was contempt. "Four of them, total. Two men, two women. Three of them were monsters. The blond man and the two women lured this stupid kid in, and then killed him their way. Is that what you'd call a setup? Ha. Those three monsters — they really don't think of themselves as people at all, do they?"

Ma En assembled what he'd heard: three monsters disguised as people had killed one actual person. He had no way to verify whether any of the intruders truly qualified as "monsters" — he couldn't tell from appearance alone, and only indirect inference linked them to such a claim. Only this neighbor would assert it so flatly. But if the three killers were indeed something other than human, the strangeness of the corpse did become more explicable.

Ma En couldn't bring himself to share the contempt. "Honestly, better they didn't use ordinary methods. If they had, my trouble would be far worse."

"True enough. Dispose of the body properly now and the police will have nothing concrete." The neighbor nodded. "Even if this person never surfaces again, they can only treat it as a missing persons case — nothing to pin on you. Not legally. As for Matsuzaemon — even he has legal limits; at most he could hold you as a suspect for forty-eight hours. But since the body is one that those monsters killed, wherever you hide it, Matsuzaemon will be able to find it."

"Friend — do you think Matsuzaemon himself will come tonight?" Ma En asked.

"...Maybe. Maybe not." The neighbor hesitated — this man who clearly knew Matsuzaemon well. "He was a clever person even before he became a monster. He's still a careful, clever monster — just rougher than he used to be... I..." He didn't finish. But Ma En caught it: this neighbor almost certainly had personal history with Matsuzaemon — not merely investigative knowledge, but something closer. And the relationship was probably not as simple as "victim" and "mastermind."

The neighbor seemed reluctant to go further. Ma En didn't press — the timing wasn't right, and the interrupted sentence had already said quite a lot.

"So. What do you think we should do?" Ma En asked again.

"Dispose of it. Completely. Leave nothing behind." He said it with complete confidence — and then hesitated. "Actually, there is a method. Something that would make him appear to still be alive. If he's alive, no one can come after you for it. But..."

"A bit risky?" Ma En prompted.

"It would produce one more monster," the neighbor said. "And that monster would still be under Matsuzaemon's control. It would become your enemy."

"Then why would we do that?" Ma En looked at him, genuinely puzzled.

"Pff—heh—heheheh... because it would make Matsuzaemon anxious... heheheh..." The neighbor's voice was changing again — Ma En had heard this kind of shift before through the wall, many times, but standing this close to him, he still couldn't feel it coming. "Anxiety is good... good for us... heh heh... I like that look on his face when he's furious."

"Why would he be anxious?" Ma En pushed, not letting the voice change throw him.

"Because... because... ghl... he would discover that he is not the only one in this world who can do this sort of thing." The neighbor's voice became labored for a moment, then cleared again. "He knows what that means. It would remind him further... heh heh... haha."

Of what, he didn't say.

And then, without warning, the neighbor turned his head sharply toward Ma En — and the look on his face was entirely different. The cunning and satisfaction had collapsed into something that was only ferocity and fear.

"You entered the nightmare. You survived it. You haven't lost your memory—" He said each word with the weight of a separate accusation. "So. You must have seen it. Didn't you?"

"That thing..." Ma En paused — then understood. "That... thing that can't be described?" Even knowing what the neighbor meant, he found he couldn't put it into words.

"Yes. Impossible to describe. Immense. Vast. So terrifying..." The enormous body had begun to tremble like a frightened rabbit — fear rising from deep in the bones. "You really did see it. That thing... that thing..."

"What is it?" Ma En stepped forward and asked in a voice the neighbor had never heard from him before — low, cold, carrying the weight of a physical force.

The neighbor's ferocity shrank back, leaving almost nothing but fear — fear of the nameless, indescribable thing. And perhaps, a very small amount — barely measurable — a sliver of fear directed at the Ma En standing before him right now.

In his eyes, Ma En's deep-red tie seemed to burn — not the color of death, but a color that brought its own kind of fear, the way humans feared flame, the way they feared blood.

He didn't know why this young man was producing this feeling in him. He hadn't felt this in many years. He knew perfectly well that the other man wasn't ordinary — but even in the very beginning, when Ma En had first arrived at Room 4, the feeling hadn't been this strong. No, wait — thinking back, maybe it had been, just a little.

This young man who had lost his memory — in this moment, he seemed to have become his old self again.

"That is the Matchmaking God," the neighbor said, his mouth dry.