Brown ended up appraising the bath additive made by draining 500 mL of my blood out of me.
‘…Unique?’
This was embarrassing.
‘I almost turned around to look at the tub.’
Holding my head still, I asked,
“What do you mean, unique?”
“Literally that! Well, there are different kinds of bath additives, aren’t there? Salt, oil, bubbles…. Mr. Roe Deer’s has quite a lot of differences from that wild ginseng. It has similarities too.”
Well,
that thing was a Ghost Story wild ginseng, and I’m a human….
‘Wouldn’t it naturally be different?’
“It is different. But then why is it that Mr. Roe Deer has things in common with that wild ginseng?”
“…!”
“Hmm… Ah. I see why.”
Brown smacked his lips as if he were tasting wine, then said,
“Mr. Roe Deer. Your bath additive has been blended.”
Blended.
Literally speaking, mixed.
It usually referred to combining various ingredients in things like coffee or cocktails to create a new flavor….
“That’s right. There are ingredients mixed in there from somewhere in the same family as that wild ginseng….”
“…….”
Was he, by any chance, talking about Ghost Story contamination?
I thought of the security captain.
That sight of something like a twisted wolf tearing through a human shape and emerging.
Was that phenomenon—being contaminated and consumed by paranormal abnormalities—happening to me too?
“Contamination? What an excessively extreme and negative expression. Isn’t life, by nature, a process of change? Affecting one…