C11 Solitude Alone

... From, Jack Rie's diary.

[I saw a person bending his body like a sea lion trying to hit a ball with its nose, and the person lying face down on the ground only had his upper body raised up violently.]

I could see his lower body hanging on the ground softly. A black, unknown liquid was' climbing up 'from his strangely bent C-shape body.

"Yes, it's climbing. It's hard to imagine that it's a' natural phenomenon 'caused by this ship sailing. At the same time, the hairs on my body stand up."

I can feel an aura that makes me tremble even more than before. That aura that makes me feel helpless and afraid as if I'm a newborn baby even makes me want to vomit.

I don't know if there's anything inside that is playing with the body of the person inside.

[I can only see that the man is in great pain at the moment. His body is twitching.]

[I don't really know what is going on in there, but it is obviously something bad.]

So I hurried to the deck hall to find the crew and asked them to use the spare keys to open the cabin to save people.

However, there's no crew member attending the banquet that's being held in the deck hall.

As it is the first time that I have boarded such a large luxurious cruise ship, I don't know where I can find someone who has a key, so I can only ask my colleagues for help.

I told them what I saw just now, but none of them cared.

I just said that I must have seen it wrong. No one believed what I said.

No matter if it's the person whose body is bent into the shape of a C, or that unknown black, disgusting, and unknown mucus, they actually don't care at all.

Because, a company employee like me is staying in one of the lowest grade D compartments.

The man I'd seen writhing on the floor didn't even have a suit like the employees of the firm, so he must be one of the passengers on the free ride. 】

[Only the lowest level of driver employees like me and those poor passengers who have no money but are used to make up the numbers and give out benefits will be assigned to the D-class cabin.]

No one cares if those poor passengers who don't know each other are really in trouble, compared to 'meddling in other people's business'.

It's better to enjoy this grand feast that ordinary people can't enjoy for the rest of their lives.

Fortunately, my superior trusts my words. He's willing to give up the luxurious wine and delicious food to head to the crew room with me.

However, there is no one in the crew room, and the spare keys of the cabin are neatly hung on the wall.

We didn't have time to find the crew, so we took the keys and rushed to the cabin.

But when we stood outside the cabin, the cabin door was open. There was no one in the open cabin door.

Yes, the one that I saw with my own eyes was lying on the floor.

The man on the floor, his body bent into a C, disappeared, but in the corner behind the cabin door I found a mass of the same black slime I'd first seen. ]

[This time, I didn't hesitate to hold back the extreme disgust in my heart and grabbed the strange black mucus.]

This is the only evidence that I can prove the truth to my superior.

But when I turned and opened my mouth to call for my boss, the disgusting slime jumped into my mouth without warning and passed through my throat with a speed I didn't have time to react.

[I swear, that was definitely the most disgusting thing I had ever eaten.]

Not even a dog's droppings could have made me feel so sick, but the indescribable nausea vanished from my twitching stomach, and I acted as if nothing had happened. ]

[I didn't tell my superior about this matter. If it wasn't my biological experience, who would believe that a pile of 'mud' would enter your mouth?]

Maybe even kill someone?

So, did that man accidentally eat the black mucus?

The more I think about that man I don't know, the more I care about him.

Because that man's upper body was raised up, so I couldn't see his face clearly. Naturally, I don't know that man either, and I don't even know his name.

Therefore, my superior comforted me that it might be that person's companion or family member who found out and took him away to take care of.

Or that person calmed down and left the cabin by himself.

[I don't blame my superior for saying that. After all, he didn't see what I saw with his own eyes.]

That scene was as if something that he found hard to resist was grabbing his head. It's hard to imagine that a person in that state still had the strength to open his own cabin door.

Moreover, this disgusting, sticky, yellow, and unknown liquid that's similar to vomit is definitely not something extraordinary.

Even now, I can't help but tremble in fear when I peeked into the room. That indescribable feeling is still fresh in my mind.

If you want to describe it in words, it would be as if you felt the threat of your natural enemy.

That's a feeling that I've never experienced before since I was born. It's definitely the first time. Speaking of which, what could possibly become a human's natural enemy? And on a cruise ship at that?

I swear I've never been so frightened, not even when I was a young man and the owner put a double-barreled shotgun to the back of my head for burglary.

I'm afraid that others will never understand what it feels like, even my superior.

I know it will only bring trouble to my superior if I keep going on. So I feel relieved on the surface and let my superior return to the banquet with peace of mind while I return the key.

When I returned to the crew room where the spare key was taken away, I still did not see a single member of the crew, which made me even more suspicious.

I suspect that something strange is happening on this ship, so I decided to hide all the cabin keys here.

It wasn't until now that I realized that the palm holding the keys was covered in dust.

It's not just the spare keys in my hands. The keys hanging on the walls of the crew room are also covered in dust.

It seems that no one has used these spare keys for a long time, and no one has been taking care of them.

I guess that even if I took them away, no one would find out, so I secretly tucked them all into my pocket.

'I went back to the banquet and ate a little as if nothing had happened and went back to my cabin, while the others were completely unaware that something might have happened.'

If there is anything scary in this world, I'm afraid that it's that you suddenly disappeared without a trace.

And what's even scarier is that you witnessed the disappearance of a person who has been suffering from pain, and no one else noticed it at all. And the next pitiful person who disappeared might be you.

After swallowing that black mucus and the man's fear that I don't know if he's dead or alive, he refused to leave.

[I don't dare to take off my clothes and lie down on the bed to sleep. The fact that the person in unimaginable pain disappeared into thin air reminds me of a similar experience when I was a teenager.]

It's the same with me when I was hiding in the closet as an old burglar, but at least by then I wouldn't have been killed if I'd been caught red-handed and surrendered without putting up a fight. ]

That black slime in my body at that time definitely wouldn't just put me in jail for a few years, right?

'I've subconsciously decided that it's definitely not a human being. At least it's not something that an ordinary person knows about.'

I wonder, where is that man now? Is he still alive or not?

If that man is already dead, then I guess I will die as well.

Just like that, after I spent the first night in unease and nightmares.

[I was woken up by the broadcast in the cabin that reminded me to eat. I was so anxious that I couldn't fall asleep, so I couldn't go to the bathroom to wash my body.]

I opened the cabin door and went to the cabin of the unknown man immediately, but I couldn't find any traces of someone spending the night in it.

[This place is still the same as when I came in with my superior, and the door of the cabin is still open.]

[Ask the passengers next door to the cabin. They don't seem to know the man.]

[That man seems to be a single tramp. He boarded the ship alone without any friends or acquaintances.]

In this way, that man could be said to have disappeared from both physical and spiritual sense. He no longer exists. He was directly wiped off the ship.

Everyone is still going to enjoy the decadent banquet on the deck like the first day of the banquet. The crew who prepares the banquet is still nowhere to be found.

They have all been bewitched by the feasts that can only be seen on television and the wine that can only be seen a few times outside the wine cabinets. Everyone has been corrupted.

No one has noticed the disappearance of the man or the strangeness of the ship. The uneasiness and fear in my heart made me not dare to eat and drink as much as the others.

[I only drank some water, took some fruits, and then went back to the cabin and closed the door.]

I know that it might be safer for me to stay with everyone.

But if I continue to stay in the banquet hall, I feel that I'll be swallowed by the depraved arrogance of the banquet just like them. In the end, I won't be able to see anything and I won't know what's going on.

I'm also afraid of the black mucus that has entered my body. I don't know what to do.

That thing happened the second day after we boarded the ship. What happened after that allowed me to heave a sigh of relief.

[The screen broadcast that day at noon that only reminds us to eat suddenly announced to us...]

- Here it just so happened to be the content of the next page.