A man who was walking towards us from the opposite end of the corridor looked up from his tablet to see us. He had a shaved head and wore glasses and a white coat. “Migiwa. Did something happen?”

“I am showing some visitors around. Is everyone unchanged?”

The man in the white coat raised an eyebrow in surprise. “They’ve settled down. Don’t agitate them. Erm, visitors, please, don’t stare at their faces too much. Avoid talking loudly about their symptoms, too. Even if they don’t seem to be conscious, they may still be able to see and hear you, after all.”

Having said that, the man in the white coat walked away down the corridor.

“Is that all right?” Migiwa asked. I don’t know that I understood the situation, but I could at least tell that there were patients here with serious symptoms.

The corridor was lined with wide sliding doors at intervals. Each sliding door had a window facing into the corridor beside it, which allowed us to see inside the rooms. This felt less like a hospital, and more like a zoo or prison.

I peered through the first window. There was a simple room inside which only had a bed, desk, and chair. I couldn’t see anyone. For some reason, there was a mountain of waste paper, like someone had been using a shredder, piled in the corner.

“There’s no one in there, huh?” Toriko said in a low voice, but Migiwa shook his head.

“You will find them over there.” Migiwa was pointing to the mountain of shredded paper.

/What is he saying?/ I thought suspiciously as I squinted. /No, all I see is a pile of trash—/

The very next moment, I jumped back away from the glass in surprise.

That wasn’t scrap paper. It was a huddled human being.

They had largely maintained human form, but the surface of their body—their skin, hair, face, and fingers—had turned into fine, dangling strips, and those strips were swaying gently. They looked like a human being that had been put through a shredder, but lacked the colors of flesh and blood.

“...What is /that?/” Toriko asked, then, noticing, in a tense whisper she asked, “Are they alive?”

“They are indeed alive, though I pity them for it. Their body has become exceptionally light, so the air conditioner always blows them into that corner of the room. I do not know whether they are conscious, but I pray not.”

His polite but disinterested explanation gave me the chills. Though he said they were alive, Migiwa spoke of this person almost as if they were already dead.

“How did they end up like that...?” I asked, unable to look away.

“It seems that they came into contact with some sort of anomaly in the UBL. There was nothing out of the ordinary when they first returned, but some days later, these symptoms suddenly developed...”

He used different terminology, but was Migiwa saying this person had stepped into a glitch in the other world?

“Is that enough? Let us move on to the next one.”

Remembering we had been told not to stare too much, I tore my eyes away from the person.

The next window was dark, illuminated with ultraviolet light. In the middle of a room with no furniture, there was a human figure standing straight. Their unmoving feet were buried up to their ankles in the bare dirt. From what I could see in the meager visible light, from the shoulders up, this person looked like a great sunflower. Their dish-like head, rimmed by wilted petals, or perhaps clumps of hair, was completely covered in mysterious bumps.

The next window was bright again, and the patient lay in their bed. There was a bookshelf up against the wall, and the top of the desk was kept orderly. The patient who was laying there was covered in translucent growths that sprouted from their entire body. They grew in no uniform shape, twisting upwards, then radiating outwards across the surface of the ceiling. I had a feeling they slightly resembled the horn-like things that grew out of me that time I almost got taken out by the Kunekune.


The next room was covered ceiling to floor in symbols and drawings that had been scrawled by hand. There was an emaciated man writing something in a frenzy. I was relieved to have finally found a patient we might be able to understand. I’d seen this kind of thing in movies before...

But that relief was blown away when I looked at the man’s hands. Thin, white, bug-like things crawled out from between his nails, writhing around on the ground before becoming written characters on their own.

“The DS Lab was originally founded to explore the unknown world named UBL. However, not long after we began our research, there was one victim after another. Organized expeditions were more or less ended, and our main objective shifted to protecting the victims and seeking ways to treat them,” Migiwa’s detached voice came down from above me.

“Then these people were originally...”

“Yes. These are people who entered the other world, and had something happen to them when they came into contact with an item that originated there. They include VIPs from companies involved in the founding of the DS Lab, as well as people connected to members of the Diet, their families, and even the members themselves. The reason the DS Lab continues to exist, even after losing its original purpose, is because of continued financial support from those sorts of people.”

/That was a bit too much information... Though, I guess that worker’s accident insurance stuff was just a cover story so they could buy a medical facility, huh./

I turned to Kozakura, wanting to get her opinion. I had a feeling she’d been awfully quiet for a while now, and it turned out Kozakura was at the rear of the group, looking away from the windows. “Is this what you wanted to show us, Kozakura-san?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kozakura said, scowling as she glared at a featureless wall. “Do you have some idea as to why I said I don’t want to go to the other world now?”

“Yeah... But you didn’t stop us from going, did you?” I said, and Kozakura’s eyes grew harsh.

“I’ve stopped expecting I can stop you. No matter how much I tell you not to, if you’re gonna go, you’re gonna go. It’s stupid. You’re idiots, both of you.” Kozakura’s voice was harsh. “This is enough. If you don’t feel a sense of danger after seeing all this, then it’s out of my hands,” she spat, then turned around.

“Have you two seen enough?” Migiwa asked, and there were no objections. Toriko and I nodded, then followed Kozakura, who had her shoulders raised in anger, back the way we came.

When I turned back one last time, perhaps because of the nearly blinding lights, the white hall of sick rooms seemed to extend farther than the eye could see, as if it went on forever.