Ma En pressed one hand to his forehead. Blood ran down the line of his nose, across the corner of his mouth, dripped from his chin — with no sign of stopping. His knuckles had torn open against the ground's rough soil. The little finger hung at an unnatural angle. None of this, apparently, had drawn the neighbor's attention.

The neighbor raised both arms in the clean moonlight and screamed into the swelling, howling night wind:

"Ssaya—! Ssugah—! Kahra—!"

The sound turned Ma En's skin cold. He could no longer see what was happening in front of him — but in that strange aerial vision from before, he had genuinely seen something moving in response to this man's voice, rising and falling — and one thread had entered the body placed off to one side. He felt certain that was the thing that mattered: the connection between the Matchmaking God and the monsters, the mechanism by which one became the other.

Simply worshipping the shrine wasn't the answer. The real secret wasn't in the shrine — it was in the sacred-rope rock. The shrine might be camouflage, or perhaps only a symbol of reverence. Which would explain the neighbor's hesitation about direction when they'd first arrived at the cemetery: the hesitation had been about the shrine versus the sacred-rope rock. It was only after he'd located the rock that his movements had become decisive.

But even now, Ma En still hadn't managed to see clearly what the rock actually was. In the aerial vision, threads had been emerging from behind it — which seemed to support what the neighbor had said: the sacred-rope rock marked the boundary between the god's domain and the waking world.

What was happening right now looked, from the outside, like the neighbor's prayer had drawn the Matchmaking God's attention, and whatever came from within its domain — those threads invisible to ordinary human sight — had already started seeding the transformation. The buried body, the thread that had entered it: the seed had been planted.

He no longer doubted that the body would change. If what he'd seen in that aerial view was real, then something had already begun. He even suspected that threads now existed inside himself.

The thought of the Matchmaking God's substance moving inside his own body immediately produced the sensation of something wriggling — and just as immediately he recalled: during the ceremony, his body had produced a discomfort he'd dismissed at the time as psychosomatic. Now he was forced to reconsider.

That's terrifying.

Ma En breathed in slowly and deeply. The physical pain that had been his anchor became, against this new knowledge, less immediately relevant. Pain could dissolve the crisis of psychological collapse to some degree. But the danger from the Matchmaking God was not only psychological — it was also an objective anomaly, something materially present.

As the neighbor had said: there were no ghosts, no supernatural forces here. Only objective anomalies.

The neighbor's voice — at its most ferocious after that one great scream — gradually softened. The crude, ancient chanting descended, dying down as if in ritual closure, and fell at last into silence.

The forest and the cemetery stopped shuddering. The moonlight, the night wind — their quality returned to what it had been before. As if nothing had happened. As if every uncanny alteration that had just occurred was simply the product of an overworked mind.

Ma En backed up a few steps and returned to the angle from which the sacred-rope rock was visible. He felt a fierce impulse to go to it immediately — to flip the rock over, to look behind it, to determine what it concealed and how. But however intense that desire, his feet refused to move. Not a single step. He didn't know whether this was subconscious fear, or whether something of the threads now in his body was restraining him.

If everything behind that rock — the rock itself, the mound of earth — were to be destroyed, would that strike at the root of the Matchmaking God and the monsters?

He couldn't stop himself from considering it. Everything he'd just witnessed had been enough to link many separate pieces of intelligence into a single coherent picture: the reason no one had been able to counter the Matchmaking God wasn't only that normal methods could never observe it. It was also that the monsters had employed a misdirection — sleight of hand on a massive scale.

The cemetery, the shrine, the Room 4 ghost story — all misdirection. The real secret was the sacred-rope rock.

But that's too simple. Surely, even without being able to see those threads, someone could investigate their way to the same conclusion through other means.

That reversal of reasoning gave him pause. Was this answer too easy? He wasn't certain. The impulse to try it — to test whether destroying the rock would work — was strong. But he was also cautious, and didn't know the consequences of attempting it. The true secret of the Matchmaking God was like an enormous problem that kept revealing new layers: each new discovery brought elation and then the immediate sense that he'd only seen the surface. Something this obvious — surely he wasn't the first to think of it. If the other people involved in this case had thought of it too, had any of them tried the direct, violent approach?

Ma En pressed one hand to his forehead, licked away the blood that had reached his lips, and buried this question and the impulse behind it deep inside himself.

I need to be more careful.

He made his way back to the neighbor's side. The neighbor was on the ground — that vast, powerful body folded against his thighs as if the bones had been pulled out of it, the ugly head hanging close to the earth as though it had ceased to breathe. The vines that had been constantly in motion lay slack across the ground. The liquid from his body had moistened a wide patch of the dry earth around him. The equivalent quantity of sweat, in a human, would have meant fatal dehydration.

But Ma En knew: the neighbor was alive. Only briefly unmoored from himself. It wasn't only Ma En who had been fighting — the neighbor had also fought a battle that drained everything he had. Strictly speaking, the neighbor had already lost, and so had Ma En. But measuring this by whether either of them had died was entirely the wrong metric.

This battle wasn't something to be judged by survival. What Ma En felt, in the midst of the ritual's terrifying malice, was an absence of targeting — more like a storm passing nearby, inflicting enormous damage simply by proximity, without any of it aimed at him specifically.

"Are you all right? Friend." Ma En's voice came out tired, without any accusation in it. He didn't blame the neighbor. Talking about what should or shouldn't have happened at this point would be its own kind of foolishness.

In apparent response, the neighbor produced a faint sound of breath. Gradually it deepened and grew unsteady. That almost-fully-monstrous form pushed itself upright with visible effort — the ceremony had cost him enormously — and he seemed, for a few moments, unable to stand.

"Do you remember what you did?" Ma En continued.

"...Huh... huh... ngh... I, what did I do?" The neighbor muttered to himself, making a low, distressed sound. "I didn't mean to... friend... I really didn't mean to. The Matchmaking God was controlling me. I know — it's always been watching me..."

His speech was slurred, his distorted features pulled into an expression of pain. But no remorse. As if all of this, while it had happened, was no longer capable of shocking him. Ma En felt the neighbor might not have consciously intended to perform the ceremony — but that once it occurred, it also wasn't entirely unexpected to him.

He had no desire to pursue whether the neighbor had known in advance and chosen to take the risk, or hadn't thought of the consequences at all, acting only on some sudden overwhelming urgency. It didn't matter now.

"Does worshipping the Matchmaking God turn people into monsters?" Ma En pressed his palm to his forehead and crouched beside him, asking calmly. "Is that also the method Matsuzaemon's cult uses to control people?"

The neighbor didn't speak. Only the low, distressed sounds continued. Not only psychological pain — his grotesque, ugly body was in genuine physical distress too.

Though he was silent, Ma En had already come to believe his own reasoning. At least when it came to the mechanism of controlling humans and monsters — the thread-like connection that ran through every creature involved — an objective, material thing lodged within the body, reshaping it and influencing its mind, was far more real and far more objective than any of the various supernatural explanations.

With those threads as the medium, everything about the Room 4 Ghost Story — the nightmares, the other incidents — now had a reasonably coherent explanation.

"Do you know the difference between the shrine and the sacred-rope rock? What's actually behind that rock? Where is the Matchmaking God?" Ma En continued, not expecting an answer.

"The Matchmaking God... the Matchmaking God cannot be seen." The neighbor answered with difficulty. "All the monsters perform ceremonies for it. They guide others to do the same... I only know that much... It's absurd. So many people with no real belief go there as if it's a game, performing these rituals without the faintest idea what it means."

Yes. Quite absurd.

Ma En thought this, then said directly: "You can't see it?"

"See what?" The neighbor's energy was gradually returning. His voice regained some of its strength.

"The threads."

"...Threads?" The neighbor looked up, bewildered. "What threads?"

Just as he'd suspected — even the monsters who perform the ritual for the Matchmaking God cannot see the threads themselves.

Ma En gripped the paper ball tighter and pushed it back into his pocket. He couldn't help wondering: had he been able to see the threads because he'd correctly interpreted the Seven Transmutations of the Profound Mystery Records? He knew relatively little about that book's specific nature. But right now he was very certain of one thing: the Seven Transmutations did possess some strange and particular power. Bringing it out of his homeland had been the right decision. With the Matchmaking God as the frame of reference, the book's danger was only more clearly confirmed.

And when it came to surviving the dangers of the Room 4 Ghost Story — in the extreme scenario where all ordinary methods had failed — perhaps the Seven Transmutations was his hidden card.

Of course, if not truly necessary, the current Ma En had absolutely no desire to excavate whatever power that uncanny book contained. The old Ma En had probably been drawn into its strangeness eagerly, no doubt having made various preparations beforehand — but when it came to things that exceeded ordinary understanding, no amount of preparation made walking into them feel like anything less than walking a tightrope.

"You're hurt?" The neighbor seemed to notice Ma En's injuries only now.

"You're sure you don't know what happened?" Ma En turned the question back.

"...My friend — are you blaming me?" The neighbor's distorted features pulled together. "What we're doing has always been dangerous. I assumed you'd prepared yourself."

"Since you put it that way, don't ask about my injuries." Ma En said evenly. "I'm not blaming you. I simply want to know more."

"All right, all right — something went wrong, but as long as we're alive, we're fine." The neighbor seemed unwilling to dwell on it either. He pushed himself up from the ground, moved toward the body, and said: "Come on — let's finish. I promised you something to open your eyes... maybe what you just saw counts as part of that. But I'd rather not know what you saw. And I'd advise you not to dig any deeper into it either. The Matchmaking God is not something either of us should be looking at directly. Now let me show you something more concrete — the birth of a monster."

Ma En said nothing more, and followed in silence.

The two of them walked out of the cemetery and back into the forest, carrying the body between them. As the light faded and the darkness closed in again, Ma En felt none of the uncanny atmosphere that had pressed on him before. Perhaps everything that had just happened was too intense, too overwhelming — leaving his nerves too deadened to register the minor strangeness that had seemed so significant earlier.

The neighbor made no attempt to use his vine-body to carry them both at speed. They walked, carrying the body between them, back to where they'd been before — and this time, the neighbor didn't hesitate. He selected a tree, confirmed it hadn't been used, and dug a pit beneath it. The body went in.

Ma En looked up through the gaps in the canopy, checking the moon's position. This night had reached its darkest hour — the hour before dawn. Before long, light would rise from the horizon.

When that happened, Ma En realized, he'd finally be able to feel the end of this long, long night.

"Almost over," he murmured to himself.

"What?" The neighbor was pulling roots up and winding them over the body, throwing in another layer of earth.

"Just a feeling — that nothing else strange is going to happen tonight," Ma En said.

"Strange? What we're doing right now is strange." The neighbor answered.