In the neighbor friend's eyes, Ma En saw the resolution of someone burning all their bridges. Only now, in this moment, did he finally know with certainty: the neighbor friend had said "kill Matsuzaemon" with a genuine readiness to die. He truly had no particularly good plan. Just as he'd said, he knew his odds were one percent — the enemy was this powerful, and precisely because of that, he was going into battle with the acceptance of death as the price. He was terrified. And he was driven by an obsession that wouldn't release him.

No one had believed him. Everything only he could see had been crushing him from every direction — body and mind simultaneously.

Only this one month of experience, during much of which he'd been in an amnesiac state, had left the current Ma En feeling genuinely pressured — and even that had been only a single day of real confrontation. Adding the old Ma En's experience, it was uncertain whether it had even totaled a full week. Yet in that short time, he'd already felt the pressure bearing down enormously.

But how long had the neighbor friend been living in this state? Years? There was no way now to know the specific number. Probably even he had long since stopped counting.

Physical suffering. Psychological suffering. And fear, everywhere, without intermission. He couldn't know the full history of this neighbor friend or the story he'd lived with Matsuzaemon. But this story — his alone — must have kept him sleepless even while he survived in this inhuman form. If his mind and thinking had completely ceased to be human, perhaps it would have been easier. But they hadn't.

Ma En believed there weren't many people who could have endured this kind of torment.

To imagine it from the inside was to feel as if one were living in hell.

An ordinary person would have given up long ago and sought an end.

Looking at the neighbor friend now — that face, that body, those eyes, that muttering — it was exactly like something out of a book. A soul crawling forward through hellfire, burning with furious desire and nowhere to go, still moving.

Ma En couldn't help thinking: perhaps it was precisely this — a personal grievance rather than any sense of responsibility toward human society — that had kept enough of his humanity alive to reach this point.

"I understand," Ma En said, with full seriousness. "I won't ask about the plan again. Tell me when you feel you can." Because this creature that was half-man and not quite human — his apparently accidental moves were never truly accidental. And the secrets he seemed to reveal without intending to, in moments of clear thinking, were never truly unintentional.

This neighbor friend, while enduring his abnormal body and the mental strain the Matchmaking God's presence placed on him — in his calmer moments, was a deeply composed person.

"Trust me, my friend." The neighbor friend's smile was both crazed and cruel. "One percent odds — I won't waste them carelessly. There are reasons I haven't told you, and you should understand: if something is a secret, the safest way to keep it is to be the only one who knows. Now — listen. The monster is coming."

Ma En felt the fine tremor through the soles of his feet, and turned his attention once more to the tree above the burial. He looked at the tree. At first, no visible change. But staring long enough — whether real or a trick of sustained concentration — the tree seemed to be altering. Branches extending. Slowly, but with the naked eye capable of confirming it. A few breaths later, the tree appeared to have grown an increment. Placed against the rest of the forest, the difference was difficult to see. Only when focusing, watching the rhythm of the growth from inside the sensation of it, could the difference be caught.

The neighbor friend came back to stand at the pit's edge. Ma En joined him. Both looked down. The body had been buried under soil long since. But the soft earth above it was, faintly but visibly, rising.

Several seconds later, Ma En confirmed he hadn't been wrong. A slow, deliberate movement — as if whatever was buried below had awakened and was shifting, restless.

The rustling sound came more frequently.

Then a hand burst through the soil — arm reaching upward as if grasping for something in the air. The hand was desiccated, tendons exposed, every filament of moisture gone — as if the body had been dried out entirely. Yet Ma En knew: this was that young man's arm. Looking only at this hand now, he could summon no image of the living person it had belonged to. Even as a fresh corpse, the young man had been recognizably himself. Now, nothing of that remained.

Even in the darkest hour before dawn, confronted with a scene no ordinary day would ever offer, Ma En felt no fear. He watched calmly, observing the body's changes, waiting for the final result. He knew the corpse was about to climb out. But in this state, how could something with this appearance ever blend back into human society? Whatever came next must involve still more dramatic change.

True to expectation: the young man's dried husk clawed the soil away, and as if unaware of the two watching, swayed itself upright out of the pit. He looked disoriented — like something from a horror story come to life.

But within ten or fifteen seconds, his body inflated. The desiccated flesh filled out; the sunken skin returned to healthy color; the features came alive; even the hair regained luster.

Fast. Ma En felt as though he'd only breathed a few times before the horror-story revenant had become a young man recovering from serious illness — and then a living, disoriented young person blinking in confusion.

He wondered: was this body's interior now truly identical to a human's? Truly indistinguishable by any instrument? What exactly was filling him?

Before Ma En could form a question, the young man seemed to snap back to awareness, looking around with startled eyes. His gaze met Ma En's — and his face shifted immediately into shock, stumbling backward, falling to the ground. He made sounds — "ah, ah" — as if surprise had stolen his words. Then his eyes swept past Ma En to the neighbor friend — and the horror on his face intensified, as if his heart might break from it, eyes nearly bulging out of his head. His expression held nothing but fear. Which puzzled Ma En. If this young man had truly become a monster, shouldn't he recognize a fellow monster? The neighbor friend's current form was obviously similar to the creatures they'd encountered. Between monsters of different standing perhaps there would be a difference in reaction — but pure, unfiltered terror like this seemed wrong.

Before Ma En could open his mouth to ask, something flashed at the edge of his peripheral vision.

In the space of a single heartbeat, the young man's neck erupted. His head tipped forward and hit the ground. His body remained seated, blood pouring freely from the severed neck. A thick, iron-heavy smell flooded the air immediately.

Like actually killing someone.

Ma En turned to the neighbor friend, stunned. The ugly face held no expression at all. Only an absolute, complete calm that made the scalp prickle. The vines on his body moved as if nothing had occurred. The next moment, he stepped into the pit, kicked the head aside, and with both hands — as easily as tearing a plastic bag — split the torso open. He pulled the organs out and dropped them to the side. Then he beckoned to Ma En: "Didn't you want to know how these things live among people? Come look. Look at the pieces. What's different from a real human?"

Ma En hadn't expected the neighbor friend to do something this sudden and this violent — but without question, the neighbor friend felt no guilt. No internal movement at all, as far as Ma En could tell. There was no doubt the body had undergone transformation — sufficient to demonstrate this was no longer a normal human. But seeing this happen to a form that the eye couldn't distinguish from a person still produced a tremor in Ma En's chest.

The neighbor friend's behavior reminded him of a man who had killed more than a dozen people in a single month before Ma En left his homeland — a serial killer whose methods had been just as brisk, just as clinical, just as utterly indifferent to the appearance of humanity in the victim.

He couldn't judge what the old Ma En would have thought. Perhaps the old Ma En would have buried the reaction deeper. The current version of him barely managed to contain the revulsion.

He didn't like blood. He didn't like things that caused suffering — even in fiction, watching actors perform genuine-seeming pain had always left a knot in him.

Even though what had just been dismembered was only a monster wearing human form — it still made something inside Ma En flinch.

If he'd known the neighbor friend would do this, he would probably have tried to stop it. No — if he thought it through rationally, even a successful stop would probably have eventually led to the same conclusion: he himself, dissecting this monster-corpse. On his own terms.

He laughed inwardly at his own softness, and dropped heavily into the pit. His expression wasn't good. The neighbor friend plainly didn't care. As Ma En examined the opened body, the neighbor friend's vines moved around the scattered viscera with the curiosity of an infant exploring something unfamiliar.

Ma En didn't cover his nose. The blood was foul. He smelled it anyway — and looked, and touched, and listened, using every sense to seek any difference between this body and a normal human body. He found none. A monster's corpse, indistinguishable in every observable way from an ordinary human corpse. As if the young man had never changed. As if he'd simply been killed and then cut open.

The body was still warm. Still elastic. Giving the impression that physiological processes had not yet ceased. In this strange and blood-soaked atmosphere, in this deranged experience, in the darkest hour before dawn, Ma En found himself sensing that the body was still alive — or would, if left alone, revive again, return to exactly that living young man it had briefly been.

"He hasn't died?" Ma En asked.

"No. Leave him here and he'll revive. But — not every monster can do this. Only those who have merged with plants." The neighbor friend answered. "Not every monster undergoes this kind of merging. For them, it's a sacred ritual. But—" He shrugged. "As far as I'm concerned, it's just a fact."

No reverence in the words. None whatsoever. And now that Ma En thought about it, this man only showed something like reverence when directly confronted with the Matchmaking God or something clearly connected to it. Everything else — other monsters, the ritual, the hierarchy — he treated with blunt indifference.

"..." Ma En said nothing. He stood, took a handful of earth and worked it between his hands to scrub away the blood's stickiness.

"Well? Find any difference?" The neighbor friend gave a contemptuous laugh. He was certain Ma En wouldn't find a thing.

He was right. Ma En had nothing to say.

The neighbor friend threw a broken branch at him. "This is from the original tree."

Ma En knew what he meant. He walked to the side, snapped a branch from the current tree, and held the two cross-sections together to compare.

Exactly as the neighbor friend had predicted: the growth rings had changed — but not only the rings. In the darkness, the visual detail was hard to make out, and he relied largely on touch. Yet the difference was actually clearer that way. The texture didn't feel like the variation you'd expect between different parts of a tree — it felt, directly and genuinely, like this tree had undergone some deep internal transformation.

He didn't discard the branch. He wanted to take it back and study it in better light. He also considered taking something from the organs — but thinking practically: he was already in enough trouble, with the police involved in his case. Carrying human body parts back would be adding risk on top of risk. And besides — did he still need evidence? Did he really need to take something dangerous back just to study out a secret he'd already mostly understood?

He checked himself: he wasn't a scientist. He was an ordinary person in a foreign country. Unusual behavior came with a high price.

Just getting back in his current blood-covered state was already a risk in itself.

"This should convince you. Matsuzaemon is a monster of the same category. And what's happened to this corpse is nothing compared to what's happened to him. A difference of degree. A difference of quality." The neighbor friend said.

"Are you the same?" Ma En hesitated, then asked anyway. "Did you die and then get buried under a tree, and become what you are now?"

"No. Different." The neighbor friend said without temper, shaking his head. "My body was already changing before I died. I didn't merge with the trees in this park. Matsuzaemon is the same... though I can't be certain what he's done since then. But I'm confident: even if you burned this entire grove down, assuming you could actually kill these trees, it wouldn't touch Matsuzaemon. Think about how many trees are here. How many monsters outside this grove. Their territory is not only Sanchoumoku Park."

"I won't resort to burning until there's no other option." Ma En gave a resigned smile.

"You look a little disheartened... The old you would never have made that expression. But I prefer you now." The neighbor friend said with conviction. "Do you know? The old you was more like a monster. Even with the same physical ability, what's in the head—" He tapped his own temple. "That's what determines the difference."

"If you say so — I appreciate it. Current or not, I'm not useless." Ma En smiled faintly. "I've always felt you were drawn to the old version of me, and that's why you decided to reach out."

"No. In some respects, the old you was certainly stronger. But that doesn't matter." The neighbor friend made a dismissive face, the ugly features arranging themselves into contempt. "What use is being stronger? Against the Matchmaking God, against those monsters, you'd still be the weaker party. The current you — doesn't that prove the old you was useless? Whatever the argument, the old you died, and that's why the current you exists. Dead things don't come back. That's not something to argue about."

"Is that so?" Ma En's smile surfaced again.

But that smile gave the neighbor friend an odd pause. He found something faintly strange in it — though he held his judgment. Unless the current Ma En died again, he would remain only the current Ma En.

"Like this corpse. Like me. The things that have died don't return. And what does return is no longer the original thing." The neighbor friend, for once, allowed himself a self-mocking smile.

Ma En offered no rebuttal. But he couldn't forget the reflection in the mirror — that image of himself, the deep-red tie, those eyes looking back, the silent figure that seemed to be catching up from somewhere in the past, haunting him like a ghost.

He tightened his grip on the paper ball in his pocket. Perhaps — only perhaps — the last hidden card he had left was itself a kind of prophecy.

Dead things might truly not return — but was he really going to do nothing? Could the current version of him genuinely hold an ordinary person's peace of mind while engaging with all of this?

He knew better than anyone how he'd always known how to change himself. Whatever strange alchemy of memory had woven his current self together — the material that formed him had been accumulating for twenty-four years. That accumulation had long since become a very robust mechanism.

Ordinary people found it hard to imagine this — only because most of them had never managed to hold to something for decade after decade, and most had never set a clear intention and pursued their own transformation through sustained silence. Most people simply flowed with the current, becoming what they would naturally become.

Transforming oneself had never been the difficult part. Only the painful part.

"Whatever the case — fantasizing about becoming more powerful than a deity, solving the problem at the root — that's novel territory, not reality. Our reality is objective and brutal. That darkness from the cosmos is far more powerful than anything we know." The neighbor friend said. "So I prefer the current you. Because the current you understands, more deeply, how weak we are. Only from that understanding can you think correctly about how to defeat the enemy. We have no choice but to overcome the strong as the weak. No other choice — that's the reality we have to face."