Chapter 36. That F***ing Cat Bastard (1)
After the swarm of rats had attacked, the people in the shelter returned to their assigned jobs. Tequila, who was in charge of butchering, was cutting apart the dead rats and removing the fluff from them, while Rum, the blacksmith, was repairing the tools they had used.
Scratch, scratch.
“Ugh, why am I so itchy?”
Tequila, who kept scratching his hand, stopped working and put down the Chinese cleaver. He did not know when it had happened, but there were rat bite marks on his hand.
Scratch! Scratch! Scratch!
The itching gradually spread from his hand to his arm, then from his arm to his chest. Before long, it climbed all the way up Tequila’s neck, then strangely disappeared when it reached his head.
“…Ah, did it stop? Damn, that was annoying.”
Despite saying he was fine, Tequila did not return to work. With blank eyes, as though something had possessed him, he grabbed the Chinese cleaver and walked toward Michael and Gin, who were chatting near the bar.
“Hehehehe! Brandy! Another glass of brandy over here! Hahaha!”
Unlike everyone else who was working, a drinking party was taking place at one of the tables. There was only one type of alcohol, yet Absinthe leisurely downed glass after glass while spouting useless jokes.
“Stop drinking, Absinthe. We’re out of alcohol anyway.”
Brandy shook the bottle to emphasize that it was empty.
Tears immediately welled up in Absinthe’s eyes as she stared at the empty bottle.
“Eeeh? Hic, that’s bad…. If there’s no alcohol, I’ll get cold.”
Absinthe hugged herself and pretended to shiver.
As I thought…. Pretending to be drunk, expressing her emotions…. In certain situations, it feels like she’s acting out her own behavior.
Michael shook his head while staring at the slightly unhinged Absinthe.
“For now, that bastard is the biggest problem.”
An incompetent green-haired drunk.
That was Michael’s evaluation of Absinthe.
“Absinthe is always like that after something big happens.”
“A habit from before she lost her memories?”
Gin froze at the sudden direct hit.
“…You knew?”
“More or less? I don’t know much about myself, but none of you ever asked me about the outside world. Why would that be? Probably because you don’t remember anything from outside, so you aren’t curious about it.”
Even Gin was the same.
Gin took a breath. Since there was no real reason to hide it anymore, he began telling Michael about the shelter.
“Like you said, none of us remember our lives before this. Some people do the work their bodies remember, while others simply do whatever their hands naturally know how to do. We slowly gathered one by one, and that’s how this shelter was created.”
Perhaps because everyone understood the pain of losing their memories, the people in the shelter never questioned newcomers about their past.
There was no reason to poke at an old wound.
“The others don’t know that you still have your memories. If they find out, they’ll probably become confused, so please don’t tell them first.”
Perhaps Michael liked seeing Gin worry about his companions, because he gave a faint smile and nodded.
“I’ll read the room. So, is that why all of you named yourselves after alcohol?”
“Once you’ve already lost your memories, it wouldn’t be strange to lose them again someday. We chose names that would be easy to remember, just in case.”
Gulp! Gulp!
After saying that, Gin picked up a glass someone had left on the table and drank what remained.
It was not much, but it was enough to give him a brief moment of relief.
“Ahh, this is the only little pleasure we can enjoy in this shelter.”
Then, as if he did not want to continue that subject any further, Gin changed the topic.
“By the way, Michael, what was that earlier? You scared the hell out of me!”
It seemed he had seen Michael chasing the demon during the rat swarm attack.
“What was there to be scared about? I was just killing a rat bastard.”
Michael answered casually.
At that moment, Absinthe came running over from afar.
“Giiiiin! Let’s go to the spring!”
Absinthe, who had been making a huge fuss about being cold earlier, now had an empty bottle in hand as she clung to Gin’s shoulder.
Gin nearly fell from the sudden impact and barely managed to steady himself by grabbing the chair.
“Why are we going to the spring?!”
“Eeeh, Brandy said we’re out of alcohol. Hic! And we can’t be the only ones sitting around doing nothing anyway…. Hic!!”
When Gin heard that the alcohol was gone, he frowned and looked at the ceiling.
“Going now makes me a little nervous….”
They had to go above ground in order to reach the spring.
The problem was that after the unexpected rat swarm attack, there was no telling what kind of disaster might happen on the surface as well.
Even though they could not permanently die, experiencing the feeling of death was hardly pleasant.
Absinthe seemed completely unconcerned about Gin’s worries.
She simply smiled brightly.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. We caught lots of rats, right? We can take a ton of fluff with us! That damn beast goes crazy for fluff!”
Michael remembered the cat biting at the fluff Gin had thrown earlier.
The occasional rat swarms.
The fluff obtained from the rats.
And the cat that went insane over that fluff.
As Michael considered that strange triangle, he began to understand the structure of this world.
“But why is there alcohol at a spring?”
The springs Michael knew were places where people drank water that was supposedly good for the body, not alcohol.
As if he had asked something ridiculous, Absinthe waved the empty bottle around.
“Because to us, this is medicinal water.”
Squeeze.
Suddenly, Absinthe grabbed Michael’s arm and pulled it against her chest.
Then she smiled brightly while spouting nonsense.
“You should come too! If we need to, we can throw you at it.”
A question mark practically appeared above Michael’s head.
What kind of bullshit was this useless green-haired woman talking about?
For some reason, not a single woman Michael met seemed normal.
“Hehe! Then let’s go!”
Absinthe completely ignored Michael’s opinion and tried to drag him away.
Whoosh! Bang!
Sensing killing intent stabbing at his entire body, Michael quickly shoved Absinthe aside and threw himself away.
Clang!
The sound of a blade striking the floor rang out.
A long, thin cut appeared across the ground.
The owner of the blade clicked his tongue in disappointment after missing his target.
“You cat-like bastard! You dodged well.”
“Tequila!”
Gin jumped in shock at Tequila’s sudden attack.
However, there was something strangely different about the rough and cheerful Tequila he knew.
Tequila tightly gripped his Chinese cleaver, giving off an eerie and murderous aura.
“Has this hairy bastard lost his damn mind?! That’s twice you’ve pointed a blade at me…!”
Whoosh!
Before Michael could finish, Tequila’s cleaver slashed diagonally from the upper left to the lower right.
Michael bent backward, and the blade passed just above his stomach.
“T, Tequila? What’s wrong with you? You’re scary….”
Absinthe, who had fallen over, slowly approached Tequila while reaching out toward him.
Gin blocked her path.
“Wait, Absinthe. Something’s wrong.”
Tequila’s unfocused eyes and the hand tightly gripping the cleaver made him look like someone completely consumed by the desire to kill.
Even without Gin calling for them, Brandy, Rum, and Vodka were already watching.
They could all feel it.
Something was controlling Tequila.
