The vines drew back into the neighbor's body, pulling tight, seeming to drill into every pore of him. He made a low, strangled sound, and the air around him seemed to lose its moisture in the same instant — becoming suddenly dry. Ma En felt the strange change as something transmitted through the neighbor's expression and voice: a physical pain that showed itself despite the attempt to contain it. Though compared to the pain buried in this man's heart, the bodily kind was probably only a fraction.

The exchange in mid-flight had given Ma En some understanding of the grief and rage the neighbor carried about the past — and in the emotion that had broken through those words, certain tantalizing secrets had surfaced, still only half-visible.

He was killed by Matsuzaemon?

And yet here stood the neighbor, alive, in front of him. Ma En turned this over and immediately recognized the problem: calling what the neighbor currently was "alive in the human sense" was probably not quite right either. Could it be that precisely because he had died once, he'd become what he was now? Setting aside the emotional dimensions — Miyano Akemi, Hirota Masami, the secrets behind them — could their influence also be among the direct causes of his current form?

Whatever the answer, the neighbor, Matsuzaemon, and Miyano Akemi were certainly at the core of the Room 4 Ghost Story as it stood today — their old entanglement of feeling, and the terrible bizarre things hidden behind it, trailing all the way into the present. And it was highly possible that he and Hirota-san were now following in their footsteps.

Even with this suspicion, there were still many things he couldn't be sure of. He found himself genuinely uncertain: did the Room 4 Ghost Story truly originate in the room where he lived? If the enemy's actual concentration wasn't in Bunkyo District, what reason was there for all the core elements that sustained the ghost story to be confined to Room 4 of the Kojima Apartment?

Even from the perspective of a cult worshipping an anomalous entity, having a single designated core location was both insecure and constrictive. A cult capable of growing to its current size shouldn't be expressing its limitations through "confine everything to Room 4."

He still felt that without understanding what had actually happened between the neighbor, Matsuzaemon, and Miyano Akemi, even killing Matsuzaemon wouldn't truly resolve the underlying threat. Equally, even if he survived afterward, it would be hard to move forward with Hirota-san without that shadow of uncertainty.

What he truly needed to understand, he thought, might not be the special quality of "Room 4" itself — but the people, or the things, that had made Room 4 special.

While he surveyed their surroundings, Ma En rapidly assembled a mental list.

At the very center of this list sat the Matchmaking God — unquestionably. Arranged around it: the neighbor in front of him, the still-unmet Matsuzaemon, and the apparently dead Miyano Akemi. After them came Hirota Masami, who seemed to be a kind of continuation of Miyano Akemi's role, and the Room 4 Ghost Story itself.

The relative importance of each entry was his own judgment. He was fairly sure he had it right. And whatever the neighbor was about to do next would probably go some way toward confirming whether the ordering was correct.

"Stop looking around — at this hour, there's no one nearby." The neighbor said this, and hoisted the body back onto his shoulder. With the vines retracted, his outer appearance had shifted toward something more human — though not in any way that would help him pass in public. The skin looked as though it had been stained by large patches of lichen or mold, the muscles were thick but their grain was warped and tangled, as if the bones and muscle had been distorted; the face was a broad mass of swollen flesh, the features squeezed and pushed into crooked angles. In Ma En's estimation, the grotesque released-vine form had actually been easier on the eye than this.

"How do you know no one's here?" Ma En asked, keeping his voice casual. "The enemy is a cult — they have numbers. Even if I've forgotten a lot of important intelligence, the fact that you're willing to come here proves that Sanchoumoku Park is just as significant a place to you, to Matsuzaemon, to the cult — as it is to me. Let me guess — maybe it's more important than Room 4."

"...Right — you're sharp enough when you apply yourself." The neighbor didn't lower his voice, as if completely certain no one was within earshot. "Room 4 itself isn't actually important at all. Too many people dying there just gave everyone else the illusion that it was special."

"So it's entirely an illusion?" Ma En countered.

"Can't quite say that either. Certain things can only be done in Room 4 — the same way many people go to churches to worship. But there's more than one church where worship can happen." The neighbor thought for a moment and settled on this comparison. "Room 4 is like a prepared church. If it disappeared, those monsters could find a new location and set up a new one. Just a bit of inconvenience — since there's no need to, they won't bother."

"Like going to church to worship?" Ma En covered his mouth with one hand, letting a thin, colorless smile surface. His instinct said altar was a more accurate image than church — Room 4 might not be as indispensable as originally assumed, but its role in this whole bizarre event was certainly not as offhand as the neighbor was making it sound. He kept the correction to himself.

"Let's move — we're going deeper in." The neighbor didn't dwell further on Room 4. Despite all his expressions of fear toward the Matchmaking God and wariness toward "at least a hundred thousand" monsters, Matsuzaemon occupied more of his attention than anything else.

Ma En wasn't sure if this was his imagination, but he had a faint sense that the neighbor was subtly, persistently guiding him toward the conclusion: resolve Matsuzaemon and you resolve everything. A deliberately simplified answer.

"Can't we keep going the way we were — jumping?" Ma En asked, without revealing this thought.

"No. This is one of their gathering places. Anything too dramatic could break our concealment." The neighbor explained as he strode ahead. "If it were just you, they'd notice immediately. But with me alongside you, I can mask the traces of both of us."

"What method do they use to sense and distinguish humans?" Ma En asked. He also wanted to understand why these supposedly sensitive "monsters" could apparently be fooled so thoroughly by the neighbor.

"Hmm... it's complex — I understand it, but can't quite put it into words. It's hard to describe. It's like something physical, like a body instinct. The way a person's body coordinates unconsciously through the subconscious — those monsters work the same way."

"You're the same?" Ma En asked, his tone utterly casual, as if the thought had just occurred to him.

He'd predicted this: the sensitive neighbor paused mid-stride. But he didn't stop walking, and there was no dramatic emotional spike. After that pause, silence stretched between them for a full five minutes. The shadowy outlines of trees fell away behind them steadily. The natural landscape of Sanchoumoku Park was well-maintained, yet right now it was completely still — no sound of branches in wind, no insects, only their own muffled breathing and footsteps, a combination that felt less "undetectable to humans" and more like something else entirely. Though if there truly were no "humans" here, only "monsters," then Ma En had no choice but to trust the neighbor's assessment.

Maybe this was a case of humans noticing what monsters couldn't.

"Don't stray too far from me," the neighbor reminded him after a long pause.

He said it, then quickened his pace. Ma En had to nearly jog to keep up — the neighbor's stride was immense, carrying him forward in great sweeping steps.

Before long, they left the stone-paved forest path and pushed into the trees at the side. From here there was no proper track. Underfoot was earth — rich with moisture and nutrients — and footsteps pressed leaves and weeds flat into the mud. Tall wild grass and shrubs, and a forest far denser than anything visible from the path, blocked out the moonlight above. The scene could no longer be called "dim." Ma En had his eyes wide open and still felt as though he were navigating blind.

A dense and thriving natural forest — yet with none of the movement natural forests produced. The branches didn't sway in the wind. The insects didn't call. Everything that should have been alive and shifting was releasing something dead and unsettling, some nameless oppressive quality. Ma En suddenly felt that this environment was producing in him the same sensation as the forest in the nightmare — not a resemblance of concrete shapes or details, but a resemblance of image, of atmosphere.

He was certain the nightmare's forest was not Sanchoumoku Park's natural grove.

The air grew heavier with moisture. The neighbor's breathing grew louder, as if he were consuming the dampness with each exhale. Ma En could barely make out the shape moving ahead of him, let alone see what the man looked like now. He pushed forward with uneven footing, feeling as though one distracted moment would be enough to lose the figure entirely.

After roughly half an hour — perhaps shorter, perhaps longer, nothing here was reliable for measuring time, not even his own pulse — the shape ahead suddenly stopped.

When Ma En caught up, he found the neighbor crouching at the base of a tree, searching through the earth. The vines had partly extended again, lashing and cutting with the precision of fingers — snapping branches, stripping bark, and digging down into the roots.

Without waiting to be asked, the neighbor explained: "I want to check whether this tree has been used. They work outward from a center, utilizing the trees as they go. By checking, you can map how far their expansion has reached."

They meant the "monsters," obviously. Ma En kept the observation to himself and didn't speak.

"Based on my years of watching them, their numbers in Bunkyo District have been growing — concentrated mostly in this park. But not only this park. Most locations with trees can be utilized by them."

"So they're actually scattered across many places?" Ma En asked.

"Everywhere. They're everywhere — most people just don't know. Without something guiding them, they're inactive. In an inactive state, they're no different from ordinary people." The neighbor murmured this almost to himself, as if narrating a story he'd told no one. "They came to this planet long before humans. Before the third mass extinction. They scattered their way here — seeding any place that met their conditions."

"You're saying they're aliens?" Ma En stared. He hadn't expected the neighbor to frame "the monsters" this way. In his mental image of the bizarre and uncanny, these things, these "monsters," shouldn't have been this close to the material world. This close to... ordinary logic.

No — "close to ordinary logic" was probably the wrong phrase. But they shouldn't be the kind of existence that intersected this neatly with materialist common sense.

"Yes. Aliens. That is the most correct answer. I know what you're thinking, young man." The neighbor chuckled quietly at Ma En. "There are no ghosts here. No gods. No demons. No supernatural. Everything is natural and objective — just as he himself is a natural and objective existence. Everything that appears in this ghost story, however unbelievable, was caused by natural and objective factors. Humans simply don't yet know what those factors are. Perhaps they never will."

"The Matchmaking God too?" Ma En couldn't help asking.

"Certainly — though I don't know exactly what the Matchmaking God's relationship to these monsters is. My personal reading is—" The neighbor turned his head; in the dim light, through those distorted features, Ma En could make out something that could only be called wisdom. "The Matchmaking God and these monsters are most likely not the same type of thing. They're not the same category. The relationship between them is complex. I believe they worship the Matchmaking God."

"But you said before that the Matchmaking God grants power to the cult — that it turns people into monsters. Doesn't that mean the Matchmaking God created them?" Ma En pushed back carefully. "And you've been treating the Matchmaking God as a deity yourself, haven't you?"

"Fool. The Matchmaking God is just a name. We call it a god only because it has some force that exceeds our common sense. It too is an objective existence — just far stranger than those monsters, and far more terrifying." The neighbor continued: "I haven't been able to determine what specific relationships exist between the Matchmaking God and these monsters. As I told you before, much of the intelligence has been hidden.

"But I can say this with confidence: these monsters come from space, and they traveled here under their own power. They worship the Matchmaking God the way ancient humans worshipped sun gods — except that an ancient human's sun was not, in the modern view, considered to possess subjective will. The Matchmaking God is different. It looks like a natural law. But it is absolutely not only a natural law. In that sense, isn't it exactly like those mythological gods who represented natural forces but possessed their own consciousness? The difference is that human gods had human-nature. The Matchmaking God does not."

"Hard to imagine." Ma En exhaled slowly. "Following what you're saying — perhaps the ability these monsters have to traverse the cosmos and reproduce is something the Matchmaking God provides? When they arrived on Earth, they brought the Matchmaking God with them — and perhaps the Matchmaking God is somehow key to their reproduction?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. You can speculate — but don't ask me, because I genuinely don't know." The neighbor turned back to his work. His movements were precise, careful, almost careful in a way that carried an unnameable gentleness — and yet what was being done to the tree was anything but.

He kept speaking as he worked: "These seeds have extraordinary vitality — they can adapt to any hostile environment. They can interbreed with whatever life exists on a given planet, persisting and evolving through the bloodlines. Once they grow to a certain level of development, even black holes can't destroy them. Don't ask me how I know — the information is in the bloodlines. Do you understand that?"

"Seeds — they were plant-like in form from the beginning?" Ma En asked.

"No — seeds is only a description. Their original form is unknown now. Their current forms and abilities are probably the result of adapting to environments over immeasurable spans of time, changing to suit each world they settled in."

"No one knows how many people on Earth today carry their bloodlines. No one knows how many are in the process of being converted. And no one knows when, or under what conditions, those latent bloodlines will be awakened. But they're like plants — living quietly, patiently, persistently, day after day, unless someone awakens them, guides them. And whoever does that awakening will be one of them — someone with a naturally elevated standing among their kind."

Ma En understood, suddenly and completely.

"Matsuzaemon is the one who awakened them?"

"Yes. Matsuzaemon... was chosen." The neighbor let out a sound of suffering — not quite a cry, not quite a moan. "The chosen can be someone whose bloodline is already there, or someone who was later converted. No one knows how they determine it — what their criteria are, how they select."

"If there are chosen ones, someone must do the choosing." Ma En said it quietly.

Miyano Akemi. Hirota Masami. That's their special role.

The pieces arranged themselves. Quietly. Without drama.

The neighbor's suffering sound broke into jagged, half-mad laughter. As if he had been enduring a long torture in a place no one could reach.

"Why? Why did it have to be Miyano Akemi?"

And yes, Ma En thought — why did it have to be Hirota-san?