The Garden of Sinners Chapter 3: Pain Residue

"I never wanted to kill anyone—" "But that's not how it is for you." The moment I saw her, I realized. No, I should say I looked. I hesitated and denied whether she was an enemy or not. Unaware that what lay between us was the boundary of my own existence, I crossed it anyway. Amidst repeated humiliation, the girl merely cast her inorganic gaze. Let us assume that there are countless channels within the human brain, and that one channel serves as the greatest common divisor for adapting to real life. Most humans likely view and perceive the world through this single channel, which allows them to coexist. However, if there exists an abnormal channel that makes coexistence with others impossible no matter what—if such a channel were to exist—that would already be non-human. Or perhaps it should be called "incompatible existence." It does not mean incompatible with society; rather, its very existence is incompatible. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call such beings "psychics." This is something that happened on a certain night. On a rainy evening returning from a drinking party, Touko Makabe, who could find rare things despite appearing utterly ordinary, picked up a lone girl in the darkness. He himself did not know that regarding "this ability," when he sought an object without realizing his own desire to find it, it would appear before he even began searching. A junior colleague whose whereabouts are unknown. A younger sister and his friend whom he cannot meet. Today, another corpse has been added to the list—one so brutally cut that not even the head remains intact, let alone the limbs. If everyone acts solely for their own convenience, they will ultimately reach only one conclusion—a deathmatch. On a rainy summer night, a confrontation filled with killing intent ensues between the girl whose pupils reflect everything she can distort and destroy, and the girl whose eyes see the lines of death in all things.