<...Heathcliff?!!>
...Ah, so now you're dying to raw chicken, Mr. Heathcliff.
Every battle you always go out of your way to act up, die first, and even botched things so badly in the last Mirror Railway that you got summoned by Mr. Vergilius again. Do you have no capacity to learn?
My head's starting to ache with a headache. At this point, wouldn't it be better for my brain health if I just used my eye to stop that man from dying?
"....."
Ha... Mr. Heathcliff, whether he knew how I felt or not, just stood there in silence with a raw chicken head over his own.
But will that even come off? If this isn't something Dante can fix by turning back the clock, then this is a pretty dangerous situation, isn't it?
"I think Mr. Heathcliff looks better right now, honestly. He looks intellectual."
Mm, can't exactly deny that... Wearing something like a mascot head and standing there quietly does look more intellectual than barking like a thug.
"Uh, what do we do, Dante? Hurry up and turn the clock back!"
...I almost thought that sounded ridiculous, but then I remembered that Dante's ability was ridiculous to begin with.
Come to think of it, that could actually happen.
"Th. Th."
"What do you mean, 'th. th.'?!"
"I don't know what the big deal is. What difference is there between a clock head and a chicken head?"
Clock head or chicken head, huh. Are all the people in the City who call themselves artists like this? I can't make sense of them at all.
No, wait. They all are. Not making sense is exactly right.
Mm... so what should we do about that pathetic man? He dies every time, sure, but he's still useful for gathering information, so it'd be troublesome if he disappeared.
Just as I was thinking that, Sinclair, the only boy who seemed genuinely worried about Mr. Heathcliff, spoke to him.
"Mr. Heathcliff! Are you okay?"
"Ki... ki..."
"Hey, if it won't come off, how about we use him as our mascot like this?"
Ah, mm... bad memories...
"Ki... o..."
"Ohohoho! Behold! Mr. Heathcliff is conversing with the other chickens!"
"Really...?"
To my surprise, he was conversing in some unknown language with the other chicken heads.
So there really is a communication system. What an astonishing discovery.
"Kkokeeki! Kkokeekigi-o. Kkogi-gigi!"
"Kkogi... kkigigi-o... kkogi..."
What on earth are they talking about...?
"Hehe, he's become a chatterbox, Mr. Heathcliff."
"Rather than Mr. Heathcliff talking, it seems more like the chicken covering his face is borrowing his body to speak."
If what Ms. Faust says is true, then the moment his head gets eaten, the chicken takes full control of the body. That's a pretty terrifying ability.
"Sniffle... I don't like it... I wanted to do a 'Burning Sunset Fixers' cosplay with Mr. Heathcliff someday... If he's got a raw chicken head on, he'll just get laughed at in that costume..."
You had grand dreams. I wonder if Mr. Heathcliff would go along with it. He's not the sort to hate Fixers, so if it looks fun, maybe he'd do it.
-Murmur murmur
I could hear the sound of people gathering around us.
Oh no, now that the commotion's been somewhat settled, people are crowding in. Given Mr. Heathcliff's condition, that's not a good sign.
"Hey, Dante? Looks like people are starting to come over. Shouldn't we get rid of this Heath?"
Ms. Rodion said, pointing at Mr. Heathcliff.
That's true enough. If we kept walking around with something that looked like one of the obvious culprits in this mess, and someone happened to scan an ID card and discover that the higher-ups were Limbus Company... oh, I don't even want to imagine it.
Mr. Vergilius might really beat all thirteen of us half to death.
<...Let's get inside the pub first!>
Before that happened, we quickly shoved Mr. Heathcliff along and entered Eunbong's Pub.
*
The inside of the shop was even more... filthy than I expected. It looked like it had been closed for quite some time.
Tables and chairs hadn't been cleaned either, apparently, because dust had piled up on them, and the floor was messily strewn with things that should have been neatly arranged on shelves or in various places.
No matter how I looked at it, this wasn't a chicken shop that had simply closed down for ordinary reasons... what happened here?
"Kiii... kii..."
"I can't stand this chicken head anymore. I'll make sure it comes to its senses."
Ms. Otis grabbed Mr. Heathcliff's raw chicken head with one hand and began mercilessly slapping it with the other.
Smack! Smack!!
...Slapping.
"Kki... kki-o..."
"...The impact sounds were comparable to the intensity used when interrogating enemy prisoners."
...Who on earth decided that standard, and how does Mr. Meursault know it?
"There's no sign of it regaining its senses. It can't be helped. I'll pull the chicken head off in one piece."
Uh, mm. If she's not careful, Mr. Heathcliff's head might come off with it too.
Since I can't turn back the clock with the chicken still attached if things go wrong, maybe I should prepare to extract his head from the chicken's mouth.
"Is it really okay to just yank it off like pulling up a radish? What if his face skin gets peeled off?"
"You're being tedious. Even if his face skin gets peeled off, it'll be fine since the Manager is here."
...If you leave out the horrific pain Dante would have to endure, that is a reasonable thing to say.
Hang in there, Dante!
My job is a doctor, but unfortunately I don't have the skill to bring the dead back to life, so this sort of thing is all Dante's responsibility.
Even as a doctor, most of the injuries in battle are major trauma unrelated to ophthalmology, so aside from the occasional examination of Sinners worried about their eye health, there isn't much for me to do.
Most symptoms are also solved with one swing of Dante's clock.
...Come to think of it, what can I actually do? Should I at least use my eye diligently?
"Kiiiii! Kiiiii!!!"
Oh, it's about to come off. While I was lost in thought for a moment, the separation work had progressed quite a bit.
Riiip!
"Kuhk... kuhk... kek..."
Fortunately, it looks like I won't have to do the gruesome job of pulling Mr. Heathcliff's head out of the chicken's mouth.
It came off surprisingly intact.
"Are you back to your senses?"
"Ugh... why is there weird broth in my mouth...?"
"Heath... you kept muttering weird things and having a serious conversation with the chickens. Do you remember?"
"N-now that you mention it... I think some kind of conversation came into my head..."
Oh, really?
"W-what was it again... they said something about losing a recipe..."
Mr. Heathcliff frowned as if trying hard to remember something, then kept talking.
"It was their secret recipe for drawing in customers, but after it went missing... the customers stopped coming altogether..."
Wait, the recipe suddenly went missing? ...I think I can guess something here.
"After that, the owner suddenly went strange... and infected us..."
"Pfft... you just said 'us' while talking about the chickens?"
"...Damn it, the chicken-dori's influence is still lingering... this is confusing."
"Was that really the chickens' influence? Maybe it was actually Mr. Heathcliff's..."
"...Why don't you keep talking?"
"...Never mind."
Push any further and he'll really die. Let's stop here for now. If we keep teasing him, he might really end up reduced to mush and delivered back to the bus.
"Were those chickens actually called chicken-dori...?"
Sinclair, is that really the important part?
Oh, that's actually pretty plausible.
"It seems you've arrived at a fairly close answer."
We even got Ms. Faust's approval. Nice work, Manager.
"Very little has been uncovered about Distortions, but... they're known to occur when one's good and evil... no, when one's mind collapses into pieces."
"For example, Mr. Hong Lu may have had some belief while living in the City that he was certain would never change. Or perhaps there was something called hope supporting his life."
"...Hmm."
"If that collapsed in an instant, if he suffered such a great shock that he let go of 'himself,' then his mind would fall apart."
"...Well, I suppose that could happen."
Mm... for Hong Lu, that's a pretty lukewarm response. Something feels off...
"What, some grand shock in a young master's life would just be getting his allowance taken away, wouldn't it?"
"I never received an allowance to begin with. I could spend money whenever I wanted, so there was no need to receive it."
They just let him spend money whenever he wanted? He really did live in an absurdly wealthy household. It feels like a different dimension.
"What? Then what was it?"
"Hmm... I thought I knew, but I can't remember now."
What was it, really? Cutting off in the middle makes it frustrating. But if he says he can't remember, there's nothing I can do but be annoyed.
"In short, to summarize for you... a Distortion is an event caused by some unknown psychological shock known only to the one who experiences it. You could say it is a state in which the walls of the mind have been firmly built up."
Ms. Faust spoke as if describing something being torn down.
"These walls must be broken down through the method desired by the Distortion."
"If the method desired by the Distortion is what we're talking about here..."
As if he had guessed something, Mr. Gregor said with a faint smile,
"...then it would be 'chicken dishes,' yes."
Chicken dishes. So according to Ms. Faust, we have to open the mind in the way the Distortion wants, which means we need to cook.
And not just any cooking, but food so delicious that a specific chicken shop became wildly popular?
Hah... fine. If we're told to do it, then we'll do it.
And so, with some sighing and some smiling, an unexpected cooking session came to us.