Part 3: The New Generation of Madness

Part 3 - The New Generation of Madness

Warning

This update will include the following:

Discussion of murder, discussion of the aftermath of a suicide, depiction of the aftermath of a suicide, depiction of a dead body, body horror, blood, pregnancy (sort of)




The results are in:



No, it doesn't.



Yes, they are.



No, she doesn't.



SFX: Computer Noises





Like what?

What do you mean?




I tried greeting him, but "Shogun" didn't reply.

...wtf, is he ignoring me?

Despite the fact I went out of my way to be friendly. Does he know who I am? Is he acting this rude regardless?

Dude, I'm Neidhardt der Blitzschnelle.

It's illegal to enter one of these chat rooms in the first place if you're just going to lurk.


Whatever. I don't give a shit.

This is what's nice about the Net. There's no need to bother yourself with pointless interpersonal relationships.


Shocking...so that means a gory murder or something must have happened. It has been getting more dangerous around here recently.


No, I really don't want to see it.

But lately there have been a lot of composites and other 'shopped pictures around. They're set up as traps in lots of different places, and if I get tricked by one, I end up looking whether I want to or not.

"We, well, I might have gotten a little desensitized..."


PK is an abbreviation for Player Kill.

It refers to the dicks who take part in a certain kind of delinquent behaviour, killing unrelated people in Net games and stealing their equipment and money points.


...But I do Real Money Trading left and right. Hehehe


New Gen? What's that? We haven't covered this yet, have we?

Although Grim referred to it like it'd be natural for me to know it.


Ah, now that you mention it, I kind of remember something about an accident...

But I just vaguely knew about it, and hadn't bothered to check the details.



"The two incidents that have occurred in Shibuya this past month are collectively being called 'New Gen'...
"Including a fetus, there have been seven victims."

Warning

The following image may be distressing and probably isn't Safe For Work. This, and further images of this nature, will be hidden behind a link.


Aftermath of a group suicide

"The first case involved five friends who took part in a group dive from a high-rise building..."
"In the second case, a fetus was stuffed into a man's body..."
"Whoah, you serious..."

A chill went down my spine.




The New Generation madness: such are the incidents that have been causing a stir on the Net for day after day.

Two instances of this already ocurred.

One featured such a brutal method of killing that there were TV channels that forebore to express the criminal's behaviour in words.

Apparently, there are rumours that the initial diving accident might also have been a homicide.

All of the dead five's parents and friends declare that "There's no way s/he would ever commit suicide. I can't come up with so much as a trace of a motive." Additionally, circumstantial evidence makes it difficult to think that they were attempting suicide.




"Grim, you ass, you're having fun at my expense here..."

He does this kind of thing once in a while.

But if I hesitated, it would hurt my reputation as Baselard's Neidhardt.

Setting aside real life, when it comes to ESO, I'm a god. I'm the strongest. I'm a knight of justice who knows everything and is stronger than everyone. Like I'd let him make a fool of me.

I mustered my courage and clicked the URL.

http://www.gurodaisuki.com/data/img/11841554610003.jpg




Come to think of it, that Shogun guy was still here. I'd completely forgotten about him, not that it mattered either way.

I wasn't that sleepy, so I thought I'd do a bit of hunting in ESO or something. Ah, speaking of which, Burachu broadcasts today!

There's no TV in my room. I get everything done on my PC.

"Another fifteen minutes, huh? Maybe I'll go to the bathroom or something first."

Spotting Seira-tan next to my monitor, I grinned. Today I'll be able to see Seira-tan. It's something I always look forward to...

As I thought that, I was about to close the chat window, when-


"Huh...?"

Shogun posted something.

"Wh, what's with this guy, posting after being silent for so long..."

He wasn't a faithful lurker? Going by the file extension, it looked like a link to an image, but...

A sudden link from someone suspicious, a person I didn't know, and on top of that, one who hadn't posted a single thing before. Without thinking, I gulped down a breath.

What was going on? I'd never felt this kind of horrible premonition before, in all my time on the Net. Of course I didn't want to click it.

I clicked my tongue and looked at the clock. Twelve minutes until my promised time with Seira-tan. It'd be a good idea to cut the conversation right away.


I tried my best to sound like I was joking around, to make it seem like I had plenty of relaxation to spare.

Truthfully, I didn't want to chat with some guy I didn't know. I was nervous and it made me sweat. That's to say nothing of the fact that if this Shogun person wasn't Japanese, there'd be no way to deal with him.


Hey, he started talking to me normally... My mind was put to rest a little.


For some reason, there was a weird gap.







A vision of the New Gen incidents sprung to the front of my mind.

They were gory enough with someone like me envisioning them, so in reality, they must not have been something you could bear to look at straight on.

A man's torn stomach. The fetus that was forcibly stuffed in the hole. When the five who dived from that high-rise hit the ground, they must've gotten so badly messed up that there would be no way to tell what they really originally looked like...

Just imagining it made me feel sick to my stomach. I hastily shook my head to get rid of the gruesome delusions.

This Shogun guy is so suspicious to make me think about all that stuff. I got seriously caught up in it.





Was he just a freak or what?

I've said I'm smart, but I'd never seen the formula he posted out of the blue.


"...Huh, no hits."

Could it be he simply typed in some random, made-up formula to make himself seem more intelligent? I didn't get it.




Shogun starts posting links, from 168492...



...all the way to 168513

Countless URLs went up at an incredible speed.

What's going on with this guy... Is he getting his kicks by intimidating me? Maybe he's a friend of Grim, working together to pull the wool over my eyes?




An unidentifiable terror. Since it was already normal for me to feel like I was being watched, I couldn't get myself to calm down.



When I tried putting it into words, I realized that my voice was shaky.

My familiar, messy room felt like something altogether different.

It's said that after you watch a fear-mongering TV program, or go to a horror movie, or hear a scary story from your friend, the careless air of your own house, which you should be used to, becomes so frightening that you can't go to the bathroom by yourself late at night.

-Right now, I'm having a similar experience.



Shaken up, and leaning in toward my monitor, I-

Without thinking, I put pressure into my right index finger and clicked on one of Shogun's links.

"Aah! Wait..."

Warning

Images below may be disturbing and will be NSFW.

A dead body
A close up of their face



It was possible for me to regard it as a pure mistake, but the motion of clicking had come to me all but naturally.

"Uuh, wha, what's this..."

What filled the monitor's screen was a photograph of an objet d'art.

Something like the spikes of a hedgehog or a needle-stuffed flower arranging tool was stuck to the wall in the shape of a cross. A reddish black puddle had formed underneath the giant flower-arranging tool, with its needles sticking out all over.

And I couldn't make them out, but there were also a number of small, garbage-like lumps strewn around.

Seriously, what was this? The work of some puffed-up, self-proclaimed avant garde artist?

They show up a lot, those people who create gory-looking works and unabashedly say, "It expresses the chaos of this world." I had no intention of coming to understand that kind of moronic art.

Still, it was a mysterious image. It wasn't directly guro. It only reached the point of having a guro-esque sense to it.

Despite that, why-

Did it feel so raw to me? Why did it give off such a strong presence?

Is it possible to hallucinate the sense of blood entering your nose, enough to make you choke? Is it possible to experience an illusory smell so vivid that it brings about nausea?

A stabbing pain struck at my temples. My nausea wouldn't stop.

"Uuh, uu..."

I desperately tried to grab the mouse, but my hand was shaking, and it didn't go so well. I was so frantic that I failed to grasp it, and it slipped off the desk, dragging only its cord behind it.

I reeled in the cord, set it back on the mousepad, and closed the window.

SFX END