Anime Crossover: Tokyo Reincarnation Game — Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Psychiatric Ward

“Instead of standing there spacing out, why don’t you search the room? See if the previous occupant left behind any clues that might help us clear the level.”

Hearing Asagiri’s deadpan voice, Yuuki Asuna watched him inspect the wall near the window. She still kept her guard up, maintaining a safe distance. “Mr. Hojo… how are you so certain this is a psychiatric ward?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Asagiri took two steps back and pointed at the window. Asuna followed his gaze. The opening was tiny, barely thirty centimeters across, and reinforced with steel bars as thick as a grown man’s thumb.

“The app called this place a sanatorium,” Asagiri continued, his tone entirely conversational. “But look at that window. This isn’t a recovery room; it’s a cell. And then there’s this.”

He walked over to the rusted hospital bed, resting a gloved hand on the heavy iron railings flanking the mattress. He ran his thumb over the metal, brushing away a layer of grime.

“These aren’t standard safety rails to keep a sleeping patient from rolling onto the floor. They are fixed in place. Look at the heavy friction marks near the head and foot of the bed. The metal is practically polished. Someone was strapped down here, struggling violently enough to grind away the iron.”

He gestured toward the stained mattress. “There are traces of dried blood along the edges of the sheets. It matches the wear patterns on the rails. Whoever was lying here fought so hard they tore the skin clean off their wrists and ankles.”

Asagiri crossed his arms, looking down at the grim scene. “Based on that, this is either a holding cell for highly aggressive psychiatric patients who require permanent restraints, or we’ve stumbled into a serial killer’s basement. Given the system prompt, I’m leaning toward the former. A sadist wouldn’t bother providing a hospital bed for their victims to lie comfortably on.”

Listening to his calm, clinical breakdown, Asuna felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.

She wasn’t particularly shocked by his deductive reasoning. Anyone with a bit of common sense could observe the same details and reach a similar conclusion. What truly unsettled her was his absolute lack of hesitation.

How was this man adapting so fast?

If a normal person were suddenly kidnapped and dropped into a filthy, bloodstained room, their first reaction would be panic. They would freeze, hyperventilate, or frantically check their phone for a signal to call the police. Yet this man simply glanced at his screen, accepted the reality of the situation, and instantly shifted into detective mode.

Was his mental state even normal?

“Um…” Asuna squinted at his torso, noticing an unnatural bulkiness beneath his jacket. “Is there something stuffed under your clothes?”

Asagiri waved a hand dismissively, as if discussing the weather. “It’s nothing special. I just shoved some thick magazines and books under my shirt, then used duct tape to secure a few more around my arms and legs. We’re entering a survival instance. Basic blunt-force protection is a necessity.”

Asuna stared at him, utterly speechless.

From the moment that bizarre app appeared on their phones to the actual transfer into this nightmare, they were only given ten minutes of prep time. Assuming this ‘Yoshiaki Hojo’ received the same prompt she did, that meant in the span of six hundred seconds, he had improvised a full suit of paper armor, grabbed a power drill, slung a chainsaw over his shoulder, and willingly entered the game.

He hadn’t hesitated for a single second. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that the app was just a malicious virus or a sick prank.

Her doubts were entirely reasonable for a normal high school girl, but Asagiri’s baseline was fundamentally different. Utsunomiya Asagiri was sixteen years old. By the calendar of the real world, today was supposed to be his first day of high school. But he was also a transmigrator. Having already crossed dimensions once, being abruptly drafted into a Main God Space death game barely registered on his radar. To him, it was just another Tuesday.

“Instead of psychoanalyzing me, you should focus on the objective,” Asagiri said, cutting through her thoughts. “Combine the information we have and figure out an escape route.”

Asuna forced herself to take a deep breath, pushing down her rising anxiety. She needed to think logically.

First, she was absolutely certain that the man standing across from her was not actually named Yoshiaki Hojo. If he were willing to hand out his real name to a stranger, he wouldn’t be wearing a mask and sunglasses indoors. When she had refused to give her own name earlier, he had praised her vigilance. The entire exchange had been a test.

Regardless of his true identity or his questionable sanity, making an enemy of him right now would be suicide. He was over six feet tall, armored, and armed with heavy power tools. She had a fruit knife. Cooperation was her only viable play.

Focusing on the task at hand, Asuna recalled the blood-red text that had flashed across her screen.

“Escape within sixty minutes,” she muttered to herself. “One hour. That’s the mission objective, but the system never stated the penalty for failure. Does that mean there isn’t one? Or does it mean that failing to escape this place in time is an automatic death sentence, making a stated penalty redundant?”

She looked at the barred window, then down at the heavy chainsaw resting by Asagiri’s boots. She shook her head.

“No, it won’t work. Even if that saw can cut through solid steel bars, the window frame itself is too narrow. We couldn’t squeeze through. Our only way out is through the main door… But what exactly did the prompt mean by ‘caregivers’?”

As she spoke, her peripheral vision drifted toward the heavy metal door leading out into the hallway.

In an instant, the blood in her veins turned to ice. Her vocal cords seized, paralyzing her mid-sentence.

Set into the center of the heavy door was a small, reinforced glass observation window.

Pressed flush against the other side of that glass was a mangled, blood-smeared face. Its lips were peeled back in a grotesque sneer, and a pair of manic, bloodshot eyes were locked dead onto her.