Japanese Terrorist: What? I'll fight Hellstar!

Amamiya Rin scoffed, but didn't show it.

"You want to kill her? Why?"

He steered the conversation away from that topic and got straight to the point.

"I'm sorry I was born to be a ball player."

The sound of the human head balloon drifted through the night breeze, and a melancholy expression appeared on the face that looked exactly like Fujino Terumi's.

Amamiya Rin's lips twitched. There were too many flaws in what he said, and he didn't know where to begin.

Before he could respond, the balloon with the human head continued talking to itself.

"But I have to kill her. Just like water flows downhill, fire will burn, and ripe apples will fall. My purpose in being is to take away Fujino Terumi's life. No reason is needed."

"Random killings..."

Amamiya Rin found that he wasn't surprised at all.

The freaks in Junji Ito's works each have their own eccentricities, and they are all unreasonable characters.

"Where does this malice come from? Did you just appear out of nowhere?"

Amamiya Rin asked.

The human head balloon has a habitat.

In "Balloon 2", the balloons with heads retreated on a large scale, rising into the sky and eventually disappearing.

Humans did not know where they went until a few days later, when the human-headed balloons returned.

According to Amamiya Rin's guess, the human head balloon either comes from a parallel world, the underworld, or an alternate world similar to Heavenly God Elementary School and Yuusuke Snake Village.

In his view, every possibility is possible.

The underworld is the most likely possibility; perhaps the human head balloon represents the soul of the living, due to the substitution mechanism.

Moreover, in Junji Ito's worldview, the soul and the body seem to be out of sync. In "Black Deception," it is mentioned that the human soul exists in the underworld in the shape of a gemstone, containing enormous energy and memories of past lives.

Is it possible that a major problem has occurred in the underworld, causing the Soul Stone to change its form and appear in the real world?

"I don't know~~"

The human-shaped balloon swayed and answered cheerfully.

"Don't they even know where they came from?"

Amamiya Rin remained skeptical of the head-balloon theory.

However, even if it's impossible to determine whether the balloon is telling the truth or not, the more he says, the more mistakes he makes. As long as the balloon responds to him, clues will eventually be revealed.

"I don't know. I was born in the sky, in a world connected to the sky of this world. It was a boundless sky, empty and devoid of anything. When I came out of it, I arrived in the sky of this world."

"The human head balloon said."

"The Other World..."

It's the same as saying nothing at all.

The so-called "other world" refers to a realm beyond the real world in mythology, religion, or folk beliefs. It includes not only Takamagahara, Yomi no Kōjun, Ashihara no Nakatsukuni, Umihara, and the Land of Night, but also mysterious spaces beyond the boundary between life and death, equivalent to the inner world or alternate dimension.

However, this would rule out the possibility of parallel worlds and the underworld.

This means that it is the worst-case scenario.

If it's a parallel world or the underworld, then we can trace its origins and investigate. But an alternate dimension with nothing in it probably doesn't have any inherent meaning; it's just a dwelling that the human-headed balloons bring with them, just like the neural pathways of [Tomie Network].

Just as she was pondering this, the door was suddenly pushed open, and Fujino Terumi, with disheveled hair, rushed in. Her face was as pale as a corpse, and she still had a look of terrified uncertainty on her face.

"Lin-kun...! Watch out, Lin-kun!"

As soon as she entered the door, she called out to Amamiya Rin. However, after running into the living room, she immediately saw a huge human head outside the balcony, with the exact same face as herself, floating in mid-air, no more than a meter away from Amamiya Rin.

Fujino Terumi gasped, thinking that Amamiya Rin had been deceived by the monster disguised as her, and quickly shouted a warning.

"Don't worry, it's targeting you, it won't attack anyone else."

Without turning his head, Amamiya Rin's gaze immediately bypassed Amamiya Rin and landed on the still-shaken Fujino Terumi, his fist-sized eyes revealing intense malice.

"Hey, Huimei, you're really lucky, you've escaped another disaster. But, do you want to keep Lin-kun by your side? Or are you going to never leave the house again?"

Fujino Terumi shuddered and instinctively took a step back, bumping into the wall.

"I advise you to just come out obediently, sacrifice yourself, and don't cause trouble for others."

The human-shaped balloon persisted relentlessly, its words spiraling upwards like spider silk, attempting to capture her will.

"No way!"

Fujino Terumi retorted without hesitation.

She would never give up her life because of the monster's nonsense.

However, Fujino Terumi also realized that Amamiya Rin had indeed not been bewitched by the monster, and the monster was indeed as Amamiya Rin had said, not targeting anyone other than her.

"Lin-kun, are you sure what kind of monster that is?"

She calmed herself down slightly, carefully moved forward, stopped inside the balcony door, and asked in a low voice.

"Currently, it is only confirmed that it commits the crime by hanging its target. There is some kind of fatal connection between the head and the target; if the head is damaged, the target will also suffer the same damage."

Yu Gonglin didn't turn around; he kept his eyes fixed on the balloon with the human head on it, not daring to be distracted.

"Huh? This is too much! Why should I be a victim too after its head is destroyed?"

Upon hearing this, Fujino Terumi's eyes widened in shock and anger.

Don't expect monsters to reason with humans.

Amamiya Rin said calmly.

Fujino Terumi was speechless.

"Lin-kun, how much free time do you have? How long can you stay with her? You can't protect her forever. Sooner or later you'll slack off. Fujino Terumi is doomed. Don't waste your time on her. You have your own life."

Unable to sway Fujino Terumi, the human head balloon then began to persuade Amamiya Rin.

"How did you pinpoint your target? The world is so big, how are you going to find Huimei?"

Ignoring the enticement of the human head balloon, Amamiya Rin asked directly.

"I have a special connection with Terumi Fujino; I can sense her direction."

The human head balloon made no secret of her intentions. In her view, only by letting Amamiya Rin and Fujino Terumi know how low the chance of escape was, could she make them lose their will to resist.

"To be more specific? Is it just about direction? Are you visually assessing whether the target is Fujino Terumi?"

Amamiya Rin continued to press for answers.

"To give you an example... When Fujino Terumi returned to the apartment, if I wanted to find her, I would carefully sense her presence and know she was inside the apartment, even if I couldn't pinpoint a specific room. That would be enough. Vision... Yes, even though I'm a balloon, I still need my eyes to observe things, just like how I didn't realize you were hiding a gun in the shadows and aiming it at me."

The human head balloon made no attempt to hide anything... probably.

She was very specific. Was that true? Amamiya Rin didn't dare to believe her completely, but even if there were some discrepancies, it would only be in terms of the accuracy of her perception.