Hearing his words, Asuna cautiously prepared to step out of the ward.
She moved sideways, pressing her back flush against the cold metal of the doorframe.
Her hazel eyes remained fixed on the blood-faced monster looming in the corridor, terrified that a single misstep would trigger a sudden, violent rampage.
But the ‘Caregiver’ simply stood there in heavy silence.
Asuna finally let out a shaky breath, the tension bleeding from her shoulders.
The deduction had been flawless.
The Caregiver harbored no hostility toward the ‘Players’and wasn’t there to bar their escape from the sanatorium.
On the contrary, its presence was a grim ushering, silently urging them to leave.
It was only its grotesque, nightmarish appearance—coupled with the vague, misleading hints in the blood mist like’safe area’and’not allowed to enter’—that tricked people into assuming it was the executioner of this dungeon.
Now that her racing heart had finally begun to settle, Asuna turned her gaze to Asagiri.
She pursed her lips, her expression a complicated mix of relief and confusion.
“Didn’t we agree…
that I would be the one to open the door?”
“Don’t misunderstand,” Asagiri cut in smoothly, not even letting her finish the thought.
“I didn’t step up to play the hero, nor did I want to risk my life for a girl I just met just to look cool.
I certainly don’t harbor any naive, bleeding-heart notions about not bearing to watch you die.
I am neither gentle nor merciful, and I am definitely not some simp whose brain short-circuits at the sight of a pretty face.
I took over simply to prevent you from snapping under extreme fear.
A stress-induced panic attack could have provoked a Caregiver that was otherwise entirely docile.
I trust the results of my own deductions.
That is all.”
Asuna blinked, absorbing his blunt, utterly unromantic declaration.
She nodded slowly, but the confusion in her eyes only deepened.
“Then why didn’t you just open the door from the very beginning?
Why wait until my hand was literally reaching for the handle to stop me?”
“To test you, obviously,” Asagiri replied, his tone as flat and casual as if discussing the weather.
“In that situation, you voluntarily offered to open the door, and you genuinely intended to go through with it.
That proved to me that you aren’t some entitled, shameless burden who expects everyone else to bleed for her.
It showed you have the spine to face death., when you introduced yourself earlier, you didn’t feed me a fake name.
You passed the assessment.”
Asuna’s brow furrowed.
“Assessment…?”
“Let’s talk while we walk.” Asagiri turned to leave, but after half a step, he suddenly paused.
He pivoted on his heel and strolled right up to the towering, blood-soaked attendant.
Tilting his head back to look directly into the monster’s mangled face, Asagiri offered a bright, conversational smile.
“Sorry about that, Old Ho.
I didn’t quite grasp the situation earlier.
I didn’t realize you knew how dangerous this place was and were just trying to shoo us to safety.
I even cursed at you.
My bad, my bad.”
Asuna’s lips parted in sheer disbelief.
She stared at the scene, utterly dumbfounded.
She never in her wildest dreams expected this guy to casually apologize to a literal nightmare creature.
“Hmm…”
What shattered Asuna’s grip on reality even further was the response.
The blood-faced attendant actually dipped his massive head, squeezing a low, rumbling grunt from the depths of his mangled throat.
He was accepting the apology.
Bzzzt.
A faint vibration broke the heavy silence of the corridor.
Asagiri pulled out his smartphone and tapped open the app marked with the eerie eye icon.
A new line of text materialized on the screen.
[???
Sanatorium Attendant Hodell Franklin.
Your favorability towards him has slightly increased.]
“Oh?
There’s a favorability system?
Now that’s a bit interesting.”
Confirming the prompt, Asagiri pocketed his phone and offered a casual wave to the hulking monster—no, to Hodell Franklin.
“Alright, we’re heading out.
Catch you later if there’s a next time, Old Ho.”
Old Ho…
Asuna felt a headache building behind her eyes.
Hearing Asagiri address the towering, blood-drenched abomination with the casual intimacy of an old drinking buddy was surreal enough.
But hearing him casually suggest a ‘next time’ sent a chill down her spine.
If she had any say in the matter, she never wanted to set foot in this hellhole again.
Asagiri, however, operated on an entirely different wavelength.
He was absolutely certain he would be returning to this mental asylum—or rather, this detention center for the criminally insane, whatever its actual name was.
Otherwise, what was the point of the app tracking his favorability with Attendant Hodell Franklin?
As they handled the grim departure route, Asuna kept her senses sharp, observing every detail of their surroundings.
The corridor mirrored a standard hospital ward, lined with numerous patient rooms.
Peeking through the cracked doors, she noticed the layout of every room matched the one they had just escaped: a single, isolated bed.
There were no double or triple occupancy rooms here.
This architectural detail solidified her theory.
This was undoubtedly a psychiatric facility built for patients with severe, uncontrollable violent tendencies.
It was a cage designed to hold the criminally insane—monsters in human skin who had committed atrocities too severe for standard prisons, yet were shielded from execution by their mental diagnoses.
The facility itself was decaying.
Rusted iron railings lined the walkways, the yellowing walls were choked with creeping moss, and dark, unidentifiable stains mapped the cracked linoleum floors.
At the end of the hall sat an elevator with heavy metal sliding doors, the kind usually reserved for vintage television dramas.
Despite the elevator appearing operational, both Asuna and Asagiri bypassed it without a second thought, opting for the stairwell.
Who in their right mind would trust the mechanical integrity of a murder-hospital elevator?
They had just survived a lethal puzzle and were inches away from clearing the instance.
Dying to a snapped cable or a jammed door now would be the ultimate, humiliating joke.
They descended the pitch-black stairwell, the heavy silence broken only by their synchronized footsteps, until they finally reached the first-floor lobby.
Glancing through the grime-caked glass of the main entrance, Asuna saw a heavily overcast sky.
Through the gloom, the vague silhouette of a walled courtyard stretched out before them.
It was only then that she stopped and turned to look at Asagiri, who was still casually dual-wielding a chainsaw and a power drill.
She took a slow breath.
“So, Yoshiaki Hojo…
if I’m not mistaken, you know who I am, don’t you?”
Asagiri didn’t miss a beat.
He was entirely forthright.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I know you, but I do recognize your face and your name.”
“I knew it…” Asuna murmured.
Back in the ward, when Asagiri declared she hadn’t used a fake name, it had been a glaring slip of information.
If he didn’t already know her true identity, how could he possibly verify that ‘Yuuki Asuna’ wasn’t a lie?
Her hazel eyes narrowed, a flicker of wariness returning to her posture.
“Who exactly are you?”
Seeing her defensive stance, Asagiri let out a low, dry chuckle.
“I may know your face and name, but today really is the first time we’ve ever spoken.
As for how I know you, the answer is incredibly simple.” He rested the chainsaw against his shoulder, his lips curling into a faint smirk.
“Because, just like you, I’m a newly enrolled first-year student in the high school department of Private Shuchiin Academy.”