I sank back down onto the bed.
I was still holding the bell in my hand.
The thing that served as a guidepost, letting me think like myself.
Chime.
[Oh, now I think it’s all right to ask once more.]
[Mr. Roe Deer, how does it feel to realize that you’ve regained your ability to think?]
I lifted my head.
‘…My mind is clear.’
It was astonishingly me.
[That is wonderful news!]
‘Right. But….’
That was the strange part too.
[Hm?]
The fact that I wasn’t overwhelmed by it, or moved to tears, now that I had come back to my senses.
I felt a little dazed.
And so I noticed the dissonance too.
For example, something like this.
‘…Why am I not more scared?’
[My, there doesn’t seem to be anything frightening at all in this bedroom. Though of course this pink merchandise doll is frighteningly charming!]
Y-Yeah.
But that’s not what I mean….
‘Given the overall situation, it feels like I should be terrified.’
My body was some grotesque something, my future was a sewer, and even right now I was locked all alone in a sealed Ghost Story isolation room. Normally, wouldn’t I have been swallowing back sobs while screaming internally…?
And yet all I felt was something like, I’m troubled.
Back when I’d briefly become Chief Roe Deer with Nostalgia Kitty, when I’d gotten my body and mind back and then been crushed again, what kind of fear and unbearable despair had I felt then?
It had been a situation that warranted panic.
But now, for someone who had supposedly returned to his senses, I was rather calm.
A little afraid, yes, but it felt like the fear button itself had been deactivated. As if I had taken some kind of tranquilizer.
‘Is it because this bell belongs to an agent?’
Maybe it didn’t return overly negative emotions or intense feelings?