Chapter 41: The Secret of the Wishes
As Kagehara Tetsuya ate, a sense of unease crept over him. Despite wearing ample clothing—he’d even added a layer when he first felt a chill—the cold seemed to seep deeper into his bones with each passing moment, crawling along his spine and spreading throughout his body. Even the steaming miso soup offered little respite.
The air in the room grew colder, or perhaps his own temperature was rising. He touched his forehead and found it burning hot.
“A fever? Is this just a coincidence? The timing seems too convenient.”
Kagehara clenched his fists, noting a distinct weakness in his hands. Closing his eyes, he felt the heat radiating from his eyelids. More alarming was the profound exhaustion that gripped him, as if he’d just completed some strenuous physical exertion, despite only having eaten a meal.
“If this isn’t coincidence, then it must be connected to Lord Mask-Taker.”
Just upstairs, while preparing the meal, he’d felt perfectly fine. Yet, in the mere half-hour since coming downstairs to cook and eat, he’d suddenly developed a fever. The swiftness of its onset was unsettling.
His temperature continued to climb. The extra layer he’d put on while cooking, which had felt just right then, now seemed insufficient against the encroaching chill.
“A normal cold wouldn’t come on this suddenly or aggressively.”
“But there’s no time to dwell on it. I need to find something to bring down this fever before it reaches forty degrees.” He absolutely couldn’t go to a hospital now, nor could he seek help from anyone.
As he ascended the stairs, Kagehara felt an ache beginning to settle in his muscles and bones. His breathing grew heavier, and his strength seemed to drain away with each step.
“Luckily, I returned early. If I were still monitoring the Hasebe residence, this would be disastrous.”
Back in his bedroom, he longed to collapse onto the bed, to forget about Lord Mask-Taker, the intelligence gathering, and all the other tangled matters.
He’d been sick before, but never had a cold manifested so strangely, so violently. He even suspected he might faint at any moment.
“No, I have to hold on.”
Kagehara bit his tongue hard. The sharp sting of pain momentarily overrode his exhaustion, allowing reason to prevail. He took some medicine, activated the pre-set recording functions on his phone and laptop, locked the bedroom door, and finally fell onto the bed.
Pulling the covers over himself, his breath rattled like a broken bellows. Sleep, or rather, a state of near-unconsciousness, washed over him, blurring his strained consciousness. It was less a slumber and more a collapse.
…
When he awoke, the room was bathed in daylight.
“Hah…” Kagehara lay still for a moment, letting out a long breath.
The fever had broken, and the muscle and bone aches had subsided, leaving only a lingering fatigue, a stark reminder that the previous night’s ordeal had been no dream.
After a few minutes of gathering his thoughts, he sat up.
“I woke up exceptionally late. Perhaps the high fever depleted my energy.”
“My hands are still a bit weak, but there’s no congestion or runny nose. This confirms it wasn’t a normal cold. Last night’s fever was due to Lord Mask-Taker.”
Raising an arm, he noted, as expected, that his skin was noticeably paler and smoother.
Last night, he and Yomikawa Tsuko had exchanged skin.
But this raised further questions.
Of Hanako’s seven wishes, he’d now experienced three.
When the first wish was fulfilled, he’d felt nothing unusual, and there were no visible traces.
When the second wish came to pass, he’d heard a sound, smelled an odor, and then fallen unconscious.
If there was a common thread between the first two wishes, it was that his body showed no abnormalities before midnight. The scent-induced unconsciousness was a reaction to an external stimulus, not an internal change.
This time, however, was entirely different.
He’d gone downstairs to prepare the meal at around ten o’clock, and that’s when the fever had begun, escalating rapidly. He estimated his temperature had likely surpassed forty degrees Celsius, possibly even reaching forty-one or forty-two.
While Kagehara wasn’t a dedicated athlete, he was reasonably fit. Yet, even after a full night’s rest, he hadn’t fully recovered. If this had happened to someone less robust, or to someone in the past without access to modern medicine, the intense fever could have been fatal.
“Wait…”
A thought struck him, and Kagehara frowned. He felt as though he’d grasped something important. Carefully reviewing the legend of Lord Mask-Taker, a connecting thread began to emerge, illuminating his understanding.
“So that’s it. I never noticed this before.”
“Is this one of the secrets of Hanako’s wishes? If my reasoning is correct, it explains a great deal.”
“But if that’s the case, the remaining wishes are…frightening.”
According to the legend, Hanako made seven wishes over forty-eight days.
The specific days were the day of the exchange, the first day, followed by the third, fifth, ninth, fourteenth, twenty-first, and finally, the forty-eighth day.
The first three wishes were granted in quick succession, almost without any gap.
But from the third wish onward, the intervals between them lengthened dramatically. Between the third and fourth wishes, there was a gap of four days, and the intervals continued to increase.
Could this be because the first two wishes had no side effects, while the third, the exchange of skin, marked the beginning of noticeable consequences, which intensified with each subsequent wish?
Kagehara, as a relatively healthy modern man, had already suffered considerably from the third wish. What, then, of Hanako, who lived centuries ago?
Perhaps each wish was a brush with death.
To recover, she spaced them out further and further.
By the time the sixth wish was granted, she waited over twenty days before making the final one.
He had previously speculated that Hanako’s seventh wish was deliberately concealed by the priest.
But if his current theory was correct, it was possible Hanako’s final wish had failed, or that its side effects were so extreme that the recipient had refused it.
“But who, or what, did Hanako make these wishes to?”
“This entity that granted Hanako’s wishes…that must be the true Lord Mask-Taker.”
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