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{3rd Pov}
Akari quietly and sneakily left his hospital room, making sure not to draw any unnecessary attention to himself.
Since his actual condition was completely fine and there were no serious medical concerns noted in his case, the staff hadn’t placed him under strict supervision.
At most, a nurse would come in occasionally for routine checkups, which made it relatively easy for him to find an opening.
He had been waiting for exactly that moment.
Taking advantage of the nurse’s absence, he slipped out of the room without making any noise, carefully closing the door behind him so it wouldn’t alert anyone nearby.
As he moved through the hospital hallway, he remained calm and composed.
To avoid suspicion, he didn’t try to act overly cautious or nervous.
Instead, he walked with a steady pace and natural confidence, like someone who belonged there and knew exactly what they were doing.
After all, people tended to ignore you if you didn’t look like you were trying to hide something.
Blending in like that was far more effective than sneaking around awkwardly.
As he continued down the corridor, his eyes scanned the surroundings subtly. When he passed by one of those Shinigami-like entities, he couldn’t help but focus on it for a brief moment.
‘…I wonder how different it would taste compared to a normal ghost,’ he thought, the idea surfacing in his mind almost casually despite how disturbing it sounded.
‘Better not do that. This is a hospital, and if I’m not mistaken, those things probably have some kind of spawn point on the roof. If I try anything reckless, they’ll just gang up on me,’ he thought, quickly suppressing the idea before it could turn into action.
With that in mind, he decided to change his approach.
Instead of provoking those Shinigami-like entities, he chose to look for something safer—weak ghosts that he could deal with more easily without attracting too much attention.
Focusing again, he activated that strange X-ray-like vision of his. It wasn’t true sight, but it allowed him to perceive the presence and movement of spiritual entities through walls and obstacles. Using that ability, he followed a faint trail of energy, carefully tracing its direction through the hospital corridors.
After a short while, he arrived in front of the door to a hospital room.
He paused briefly, narrowing his eyes as he sensed the interior.
There was no sign of any human presence inside.
Given that the city he was currently in wasn’t particularly large or densely populated, it wasn’t unusual for some hospital rooms to remain unused. Some might be left vacant, while others stayed locked for storage or simply because there weren’t enough patients to occupy them.
This room appeared to be one of those cases.
The door was locked, but that wasn’t much of a problem for him anymore.
Channeling a small amount of his spiritual energy, he focused on the mechanism inside the lock. With a subtle application of force—something between telekinesis and direct manipulation—he was able to disengage it without making any noticeable sound.
A soft click followed.
Then, slowly and carefully, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
“Thud… Thud… Thud…”
The sound echoed faintly inside the room, heavy and rhythmic, almost unnatural in the way it repeated. It didn’t take Akari long to realize what he was hearing.
A ghost was standing there, holding a heart in its hand.
And it was chewing it.
Yes, the ghost had a hollow opening in its chest, a visible hole where its own heart should have been, and right now it was biting into a freshly beating one as if it were normal food. The wet, dull sounds of flesh being torn apart matched the slow, heavy rhythm he had heard earlier.
The moment Akari stepped into the room, the ghost stopped.
Silence fell instantly.
What stood before him was something far more disturbing than anything he had encountered so far.
Its upper body was grotesque—a burned, charred skull where a face should have been, blackened and cracked as if it had been through intense fire. Its lower body, however, looked almost like that of a normal adult male, creating a jarring contrast.
Yet that wasn’t the strangest part.
It had long hair, flowing down like that of a woman, adding to the unsettling and mismatched appearance.
And right in the center of its chest was that hollow gap—shaped almost like a heart emoji, which made the entire thing feel even more absurd and disturbing at the same time.
In its hand, it held the beating heart.
Akari couldn’t immediately tell whether it was the ghost’s own heart somehow removed… or something it had taken from a victim.
The heart continued to pulse weakly, each beat sending small amounts of blood dripping down its surface.
The ghost’s empty eye sockets slowly locked onto him.
For a brief moment, neither of them moved.
Blood trickled down from the heart in its grip, dripping onto the floor in slow, uneven drops.
Akari felt a chill run through him.
His body reacted instinctively, a shiver passing through him despite the fact that he was, technically, also a ghost now. It was ironic, but that didn’t change the reality of the situation.
No matter what he had become, the scene in front of him was still deeply unsettling.
However, the small amount of fear he had felt quickly faded the moment a familiar, sweet scent reached him.
It was that same unsettling fragrance of death he had sensed before, and it was clearly emanating from the ghost in front of him.
Instead of repulsing him, it strangely dulled his fear, making his mind sharper and more focused.
The ghost tilted its head in an unnatural, jerky motion, its hollow gaze fixed entirely on him.
“Heart! Heart! Heart!” it screamed in a distorted, grating voice that echoed inside the room.
With a sudden, violent movement, it snapped its own neck to the side.
At the same time, the heart it had been holding slipped from its hand and dropped onto the ground with a wet sound.
Even without touching it, Akari could tell that it wasn’t a real, human heart—it carried the same spiritual presence as the ghost itself. I
t was a ghost’s heart.
The creature’s body twisted unnaturally as it shifted its posture, dropping onto all fours.
The movement itself was disturbing to watch.
Its waist had rotated almost one-eighty degrees, completely misaligned with the rest of its body, making its entire form look broken and wrong in a way that didn’t follow any normal physical rules.
Then it let out another sharp, piercing scream.
Without any hesitation, it began crawling toward Akari at an alarming speed, its limbs moving in an erratic, jerky pattern that made it even harder to predict.
Akari reacted immediately.
He turned and rushed toward the door, trying to open it and get out of the room before the ghost could reach him.
But the moment he grabbed the handle, his expression changed.
It wouldn’t open.
The door was locked.
He quickly tried to force it using his spiritual energy, focusing on the lock mechanism just like he had done earlier. But this time, no matter how much effort he put in, it didn’t respond at all.
It was completely sealed, as if something was preventing him from opening it from the inside.
‘Fuck! It’s a powerful place-bound ghost!’ Akari thought, immediately realizing the mistake he had made as the situation turned against him.
He cursed himself internally for being careless, but there was no time to dwell on it.
Reacting quickly, he gathered his spiritual energy and shaped it around his hand, forming a sharp, claw-like construct.
The energy condensed tightly, taking on a solid form that extended from his fingers, giving him something he could actually use to fight back.
Without hesitating any further, he rushed straight toward the ghost instead of retreating. Running away clearly wasn’t an option anymore.
As he closed the distance, he swung his claw with all the strength he could muster.
The motion was fast and forceful, and for a brief moment, the air around the attack seemed to sizzle from the intensity of the energy.
The claw connected directly with the ghost’s face.
The impact snapped its head violently to the side, the force clearly enough to disrupt its form for a split second.
But it wasn’t enough.
Before he could follow up, the ghost reacted.
Its long, unnatural hair suddenly extended and wrapped tightly around Akari’s legs.
The movement was instant and precise, leaving him no time to react. The force behind it yanked him off balance immediately.
In the next moment, more strands of that hair shot out, coiling around his body. He was completely restrained before he could even try to break free.
Then he was dragged.
His body scraped harshly across the floor as the ghost pulled him in with overwhelming strength.
The friction burned against his skin, but he barely had time to register it before—
He slammed into the wall.
Hard.
“Fuck…” Akari muttered under his breath, his voice strained as the impact rattled his entire body. Blood immediately began to flow down from his forehead, warm and steady.
His skull had likely fractured somewhere from the collision.
What made it worse was that he could actually feel the pain.
Despite being something closer to a ghost, his human senses were still functioning enough to register it clearly.
His vision started to blur slightly, his eyes becoming hazy as the damage began to take its toll.
The ghost, noticing the clear opening, didn’t hesitate even for a moment. It immediately moved its hand toward Akari, taking advantage of his weakened state without any pause or restraint.
Akari, despite his blurred vision and the dizziness clouding his mind, forced his body to react. He swung his claw again, trying to defend himself or at least push the ghost back. However, his movements had already lost their precision and strength.
It was futile.
The ghost’s hand passed straight through his chest.
The moment it did, an overwhelming surge of pain exploded through his body.
Blood immediately spilled out from his mouth as his body trembled uncontrollably.
The ghost let out a twisted giggle, its voice distorted and filled with manic excitement.
“Heart! Mine! Mine! All hearts are mine!” it shrieked, its tone erratic and possessive.
In the next instant, without any delay, it crushed Akari’s heart from within.
That single action ended any resistance he had left.
With a harsh, wet tearing sound, the ghost pulled its hand back out, dragging along Akari’s damaged heart. The motion left behind a gruesome hole in his small chest, the wound wide and clearly visible.
The ghost looked down at the heart resting in its palm.
It was small, slightly deformed from the force, and still faintly pulsing.
The creature giggled again, almost childlike in its reaction, before opening its mouth unnaturally wide and swallowing the heart in one quick motion, as if consuming it whole without even chewing.
After that, it turned its attention back to Akari’s body.
It giggled once more.
Akari’s eyes had already lost their light, now completely dull and lifeless. There was no movement left in him, no sign of resistance or awareness.
Warm blood continued to pour out from the open cavity in his chest, slowly spreading across his small, motionless body.
Normally, the story should have ended right there, with Akari becoming just another victim claimed by the ghost, his existence reduced to nothing more than another consumed heart.
But it didn’t end.
Without any warning, the lights across the entire hospital began to flicker wildly, turning on and off in rapid succession. The sudden instability spread through the building, and for a brief moment, the entire hospital seemed to tremble, as if something unseen had shifted within it.
Then, just as suddenly as it started, everything returned to normal.
The lights stabilized, the trembling stopped and an unnatural silence followed.
“I want to taste yours as well.”
The ghost froze.
The voice was unfamiliar, calm, and carried a strange weight behind it. It didn’t come from anywhere the ghost expected.
Slowly, its attention shifted.
Where Akari’s lifeless body had been lying just moments ago, something else now stood in its place.
It was an abomination.
A humanoid figure resembling a goat stood upright on two hind legs, its posture unnatural yet stable. From its forehead extended four crimson-red horns, curling outward on both sides in a symmetrical but menacing pattern.
Its hands were no longer human.
In place of them were sharp, clawed appendages, elongated and clearly built for tearing rather than grasping. Behind it, a tail extended outward, long and thin like a whip, swaying slightly as if it had a mind of its own.
The entire figure was unclothed, its body fully exposed except for a single piece of cloth—a scarf tied loosely around its waist, hanging in place without any clear purpose.
Its head was the most disturbing part.
A skull formed its face, empty yet expressive in a way that didn’t make sense. Its teeth were fused directly into the skull, forming a complete, rigid jaw that gave it a permanent, terrifying grin.
It was Akari.
Or rather, it was what Akari had become in his true ghost form.
“Kekeke… how delicious you smell. I can’t stop myself… I really can’t,” Akari said, his voice unstable and uneven, as if something inside him had completely snapped. It didn’t even sound like he was trying to hold himself back anymore.
And honestly, it didn’t look like he could.
His pitch-black eyes, with their deep red pupils, were locked onto a single target—the Heartless Ghost standing in front of him. There was no hesitation, no distraction, no trace of the earlier uncertainty. Just pure focus, driven by something closer to instinct than thought.
The ghost let out a sharp, distorted screech.
It was impossible to tell exactly what it was feeling. There was anger in the sound, but also confusion, shock, and something that resembled fear. All of those emotions seemed to overlap, creating a chaotic reaction that made it even more unstable.
But Akari didn’t give it any time to process anything.
Without warning, he moved.
His hooves slammed against the floor with force, cracking the surface beneath him as he launched forward. In the next instant, he had already closed the distance, appearing right next to the ghost.
‘Heartless Ghost,’ he labeled it in his mind, the name coming naturally as he focused entirely on the fight.
His claw swung forward with sharp, controlled precision, aiming straight toward the ghost’s neck. The ghost reacted quickly, twisting its body at an unnatural angle to avoid the attack, narrowly escaping what would have been a direct hit.
But that was never Akari’s real target.
His focus shifted mid-motion.
The second claw came from a different angle, faster and more direct. It cut cleanly through the ghost’s left arm, severing it completely in a single motion.
The limb tore away instantly.
Without wasting even a second, Akari grabbed the detached arm mid-air. Right in front of the ghost, without any hesitation or restraint, he brought it to his mouth.
Then he started consuming it.
It wasn’t exactly biting or chewing in a normal sense. The moment the ghost’s limb made contact with his mouth, it began to melt, dissolving rapidly like cotton candy. Instead of chewing, it was more like he was absorbing it, pulling it in as it broke apart into something less solid.
Within a few seconds, the entire arm was gone, completely consumed.
As soon as it was absorbed, Akari felt it.
A surge of spiritual energy rushed through his ghostly body, spreading rapidly from within. The sensation was immediate and intense, reinforcing him and making his form feel more stable and powerful than before.
“~Why don’t you give me your other hand as well?” Akari said, his voice dragging slightly as he snapped his jaw shut with an audible click, the sound echoing faintly in the enclosed space.
The ghost’s reaction was immediate and erratic. It began thrashing violently, its movements losing any remaining structure as its long hair started floating wildly, as if charged with its own energy. Without any delay, those strands shot forward, launching a direct attack toward Akari from multiple angles at once.
“Futile… stupid… idiot,” Akari muttered mockingly, his tone filled with clear disdain as he raised his claws to intercept.
His movements were sharp and precise.
The incoming hair was sliced apart almost effortlessly as his claws tore through it, severing the strands before they could properly wrap around him. He didn’t stop there. Instead of letting the severed pieces fall uselessly, he grabbed onto them and immediately brought them toward his mouth.
Just like before, the moment the ghostly material made contact, it began to dissolve.
He consumed it without hesitation.
More spiritual energy surged into him, flowing down his throat and spreading throughout his form, reinforcing him further with every second that passed.
The ghost let out a louder, more desperate screech.
The intensity of the sound was enough to cause visible damage. The windows of the closed room shattered instantly, glass bursting outward as cracks spread across the remaining surfaces.
In the very next moment, the ghost lunged forward.
Its body twisted unnaturally as it moved, bending in ways that no normal structure should allow, making its attack unpredictable and disturbing to follow.
Akari didn’t retreat.
He responded immediately by charging forward as well.
His hooves struck the ground with immense force, causing the concrete beneath him to sink and crack under the pressure. His entire body surged ahead in a blur of motion.
In an instant, he closed the distance.
His claws shot forward and connected directly with the ghost’s neck, gripping and crushing it with overwhelming force.
Then, without any hesitation or pause, he tore the ghost’s neck completely off and immediately brought it to his mouth. He began chewing it without restraint, the motion rough and direct. A strangely sweet flavor filled his mouth, reinforcing that same unsettling craving as the Heartless Ghost let out a distorted screech of pain.
The severed part didn’t behave like normal flesh.
As he consumed it, it started melting inside his mouth, dissolving rapidly until nothing remained of it. The rest of the ghost’s body was left behind for a brief moment, twitching slightly as if it still retained some form of resistance.
In that instant, Akari felt it again.
A much larger surge of spiritual energy rushed through his entire body, far stronger than before. It coursed through him relentlessly, reinforcing every part of his ghostly form, making him feel heavier, sharper, and more stable at the same time.
He didn’t stop there.
Lifting one of his hooves, he drove it forward and pressed it against the ghost’s remaining body, forcing it down. The hoof went straight through the hollow space in its chest, pinning it in place and preventing any chance of escape.
“Fufu… you destroyed my body… so it’s only fair that I get to have you as a treat, right?” Akari chuckled, his tone low and slightly unhinged as he looked down at it.
The ghost struggled weakly, its movements frantic but ineffective.
It didn’t matter.
Akari leaned in and began consuming the rest of it without holding back. There was no precision anymore—just raw, direct devouring. The room quickly filled with harsh, disturbing sounds—bone-like structures crunching, flesh tearing apart, and the constant wet noise of something being broken down and absorbed.
Within moments, the ghost’s form completely collapsed.
What had once been a threatening entity was now nothing more than energy being absorbed into Akari, reduced entirely to sustenance that further strengthened him.
Finally finished, Akari paused for a moment and observed his own ghost form more carefully.
Now that the fight was over, he could actually focus on himself instead of reacting on instinct. His current appearance resembled something like a humanoid reindeer, though the details were still unsettling and unnatural when looked at closely.
‘How did I even end up with a ghost form like this?’ he thought, genuinely confused as he tried to make sense of it. From what he understood, a ghost’s form and overall strength were supposed to depend heavily on the way it died, along with the emotions tied to that death.
But in his case, things didn’t line up cleanly.
The concept itself felt abstract, almost inconsistent, making it difficult for him to fully understand or categorize his own state. There were too many unknown variables, and he lacked enough information to properly analyze it.
Shifting his attention, he turned toward the body lying on the ground.
His body.
Or more specifically, the body of Akari that he had been inhabiting.
After all, he himself was originally a ghost from a completely different time and space. That alone complicated everything about his existence here.
He stared at the lifeless figure for a few seconds, then let out a quiet sigh.
‘So… does this mean my identity as Akari ends here? And the ability to possess this body is gone too?’ he wondered, the thought crossing his mind as he considered the worst-case scenario.
Even so, he wasn’t ready to just accept it without trying.
With that in mind, he decided to attempt it one last time.
He moved closer to Akari’s corpse and, without hesitating too much, attempted to enter it again. For a brief moment, there was uncertainty—but thankfully, the process worked. He was able to slip back into the body, and soon after, his consciousness reconnected with it.
The next moment, he tried to get up.
But the instant he attempted to move, the difficulty became obvious.
His chest literally had a massive hole in it. The damage was severe, and he could clearly feel how wrong everything was. His sense of balance was off, as if the weight distribution of his body had been completely disrupted. His limbs felt weak, unresponsive, and far heavier than they should have been.
Even breathing felt unnatural.
Still, he didn’t give up.
Closing his eyes, he focused entirely on the wound. He began pouring his spiritual energy into it, not even knowing exactly what he was doing—just forcing it in with the intent that it should fix something, anything at all.
He didn’t have a clear method.
Just instinct and desperation.
And to his surprise—
It worked!
A visible reaction occurred within his chest. Slowly, something began to form where there had been nothing before. A heart started taking shape, reconstructing itself inside the empty cavity. It connected with the arteries and veins as if guided by some unseen blueprint, aligning itself properly within his body.
Then—
It beat.
The newly formed heart thumped once, then again, and soon settled into a steady rhythm, pumping blood throughout his system.
Akari felt it immediately.
Strength began returning to his body, spreading from his chest outward. The numbness faded, replaced by a growing sense of control. At the same time, the wound itself began to close at a visible rate. Flesh regenerated, bones reformed and aligned back into place, and the open cavity gradually sealed itself shut.
Within moments, the massive hole in his chest was completely gone.
There wasn’t even a scar left behind, as if the injury had never existed in the first place.
‘Amazing… to think I actually have this kind of healing ability. Does this apply to anyone I possess, or is it just limited to this body?’ he thought, a sense of genuine wonder passing through his mind as he tried to understand the extent of what he had just done.
But that brief moment of amazement didn’t last long.
A very obvious problem immediately presented itself.
His body might have been completely healed, but his clothes were a different story.
There was a clear hole in his patient gown, right around the area where his chest had been pierced, and dried blood stains were still visible across the fabric. While he was able to use his spiritual energy to clean off the blood, removing the stains and restoring the cloth to a more normal appearance, the damage itself remained.
The hole didn’t disappear.
And getting an identical replacement without raising suspicion wouldn’t be easy at all.
‘Fuck… how am I supposed to explain this?’ he thought, already realizing how suspicious it would look if anyone paid proper attention.
His abilities clearly didn’t extend to repairing inanimate objects like clothes, at least not yet.
That limitation was annoying.
In the end, he didn’t have many options. He decided not to linger any longer in that room. After making sure everything looked as normal as it could, he stepped out, carefully closed the door behind him, and used his spiritual energy again to lock it just like before.
Then he made his way back toward his assigned patient ward, maintaining the same calm and natural demeanor he had used earlier.
As expected, the moment he returned, the nurse noticed him.
Her expression shifted immediately.
“Akari-chan, where did you go?” she asked, clearly suspicious.
He didn’t have a prepared answer, so he had to improvise on the spot. He explained that he had snuck out of his room out of boredom and somehow ended up tearing his clothes in the process.
It wasn’t a great excuse, but it was the best he could come up with in that moment.
The nurse sighed, clearly not pleased.
She gave him a light reprimand for leaving his room without permission and causing unnecessary trouble.
After that, she called for another nurse to assist, to deal with his clothes and make sure he stayed where he was supposed to be.
“Funnily enough, this actually reminds me of that heart-eating ghost in our hospital,” the new nurse said casually as she made Akari change his clothes to a new set.
“Heart-eating ghost?” the other nurse repeated, looking confused. Her reaction mirrored Akari’s own thoughts, considering he had literally just encountered something like that not long ago.
“Yes,” the first nurse replied, leaning in slightly as if she was about to share something interesting. “It’s said that in the now closed-off old cardiothoracic operating room, a patient once died during heart surgery.”
She lowered her voice a little, clearly trying to build a certain atmosphere rather than just stating facts.
“And after that, things started getting strange. Several other patients died in that same room as well, even though their heart conditions were supposed to be minor and completely manageable.”
The second nurse’s expression changed, becoming more attentive.
“In the end, even the heart surgeon assigned to that room died under unclear circumstances,” the first nurse continued, her tone shifting into something more deliberate, almost as if she wanted to unsettle the listener.
“After that, people started saying it was the work of a curse… something they called the heart-eating ghost.”
She paused briefly before finishing.
“So the hospital decided to shut that operating room down completely. It’s been closed off ever since, and barely anyone is willing to go near it anymore.”
“So scary…” the other nurse muttered, shuddering slightly as she reacted to the story.
Akari, meanwhile, let out a small chuckle, which immediately drew the attention of both nurses toward him.
“Akari-chan, you aren’t scared?” the first nurse asked, clearly surprised by his reaction, especially after telling such a story.
“There is no need to be scared,” Akari replied calmly.
“Because I already ate the ghost!” he added, making an exaggerated chewing motion with his mouth as if he were trying to demonstrate exactly what he meant.
“… ”
For a moment, both nurses were completely speechless.
They simply stared at him, unsure how to react.
Usually, children his age would either get scared after hearing something like that or boldly claim that they would defeat the ghost like some kind of hero.
But saying he had eaten it—and doing so so casually, without even a hint of hesitation—was something neither of them had expected.
It was just too absurd.
In the end, they brushed it off.
Both nurses laughed lightly, dismissing his words as nothing more than childish imagination. They didn’t take him seriously at all, instead finding his response amusing rather than concerning.
“Such a mischievous kid,” one of them said, smiling.
“Yeah, and kind of cute in his own way,” the other added, clearly entertained by his behavior.
Neither of them realized how close his words were to the truth.
For them, it was just harmless nonsense.
For Akari, it wasn’t.
A while later, his Okaa-san also came to visit him, entering the room with concern written on her face as she checked on him.
To be continued...