The next morning, I was surprised when I saw Oomi.He always looked like the type to shut himself away from the world, just from his face alone—but this was on another level.
His eyes were bloodshot to a frightening degree, and the skin around them had turned a sickly bluish-purple.What the hell happened?
“Good morning. Did you see the bird?”
I tried to lighten the mood.
“Morning… Yeah, it was kinda creepy.”
His reply came in a voice so lifeless it could have belonged to a corpse.Scary...? What did he mean by that?
Was he... afraid of birds?I vaguely remembered him saying something about having kept birds in the past, but maybe that was just my imagination.
That afternoon, Oomi said he was going to grab some coffee and headed out.When he came back, his face looked even worse than before—I couldn’t help but blurt out, “Seriously, just go home.”
That’s how bad he looked.
“I’m fine,”he said, eyes narrowed in a sticky, resentful glare.Yeah, this guy could be real stubborn sometimes.
“I see…”
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I took the coffee he’d bought for me and sat back down.Still, in my head I was thinking, “Damn, your eyes are scary as hell.”
He stumbled into the chair next to mine, bumping into it on the way.
“Here’s the money for the coffee.Oh, right—sorry to bring this up when you’re feeling like crap, but—”
“Yes? What is it?”
His face still looked like death.I hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to say it.
“We got a spot on the ship.You, me, and Oze. All three of us.”
“Really?”
His terrifying face lit up.—So it was the right call to tell him.
“Yeah. While you were out, I got a message about it.”
Lately, the three of us had been so swamped that it was unclear whether we’d even get any time off for New Year’s.By the time we finally found out we could take a break—albeit late—there were no ways left to travel home, by air or land.
Oomi and Oze, who were from the same hometown and worked in the same department as me, had also missed their chance to get tickets.It’d been a few days since I promised to ask my uncle, who worked at a shipping company, to see if there was anything he could do.
I was sure Oomi had already given up.
“It’s gonna take nearly a full day to get there.And don’t expect to relax—we’ll be using a spare cabin on a work vessel, so—”
“Even so, I’m just happy to be going home.”
Color returned to Oomi’s face. That was enough for me.
Now then—I wondered if Oze was in today. I hadn’t seen him at all.Not that it was unusual.
♢♢♢
“Can I ask you something?”
Oomi had been quiet, but now he looked like he’d made up his mind about something.
“What is it?”
“You said something about being comforted by the bird… were you serious?”
Ah. That.
“Yeah, I was. Why?”
“Are you okay with that… even after seeing it with an eyeball in its mouth?”
“…Ah.”
That was all I could manage—a vague sound, neither a yes nor a no.Maybe I really was losing it.
――When I saw that bird carrying off the eyeball earlier,part of me felt jealous of whoever it belonged to.