Chapter 9.5

Late at night, Toshio opened his eyes. He was in the nap space of the nurse's station. 

Thinking he heard a faint noise, Toshio held his breath. Just in case, he did furnish a guardian deity and an incense burner at the bedside. Based on Kirishiki's reaction he didn't think things like juzu and incense powder would be very effective but he wasn't so bold as to sleep without any kind of protections set up at all. 

Lying atop the bed, he quieted his breath and observed his surroundings. There was a curtain drawn around the bed area so he couldn't see beyond them. He had to rely on the sounds about him.

Toshio listened closely. He thought he heard something faint, like footsteps, but he wasn't sure. If somebody was up walking around, it was impossible for it to be Kyouko. No matter how you looked at it, she wasn't in a state to be able to walk. If somebody were here, that would have to be somebody who snuck in through the back entrance. Toshio had left the back door unlocked. He also didn't lock the recovery room. 

It sounded like the noise was continuing but it also seemed like it might have been an auditory hallucination. Because of the single lamp lit in the nurse's station, the curtain around the bed cast a yolk-yellow wave of shadows. There was no shadow cast on it. Toshio had to bare the burning temptation to open the curtain and peek out.

Listening even more closely, this time he could very clearly hear a faint noise. It was the sound of a door opening. At the same time the curtain wavered as if there were a faint opening. Someone was here, that was certain. Toshio kept down his excited breath. Even if he listened closely he couldn't hear a sound beyond that but eventually he did hear the sound of the back entrance opening and closing in the hallway.

Toshio let out his breath. Somebody had come and gone. That was certain. He eventually opened the curtain and sat in the silence of the shadow cast over the nursing station. Getting out of the bed, he went towards the recovery room. Peeking through the door window, Kyouko was laid out atop the bed, dozing just as before. 

He quietly opened the door. Soon he noticed the monitor's signals changing. Her pulse was weak. And the intervals were growing further apart. As he stared over her, before long even the slightest reactions of the monitor ceased. As if remembering something, one more weak wave was drawn, and from then on it stopped completely. 

Toshio stared down indifferently. Cardiac arrest. 2:02AM. He hesitated a bit but ultimately didn't provide any resussitation attempts. 

---It's a gamble from here on. 

Kyouko might have risen and she might not have. Since he would be the one to fill out the death certificate, adjusting the written time of death would be a simple matter but he had to do something to put off the signs of death for a time. If he didn't, at the funeral the corpse in the coffin would already be rotting. 

Turning towards the ice maker at the nurse's station, he took all of the ice that was were. He divided it out and sealed it, wrapped them in towels and lined them up around Kyouko's body completely. After changing the placement of the ice packs a few times, he pulled the cover up. He turned the monitor's angle so that it couldn't be seen from the outside.

Rise up for me, Toshio said as he looked down at the corpse of the woman who was his wife. 

"...I'm putting it all on you on whether I can go against them or not."