A singularity on the negative-fugacity axis of the hard-core lattice gas is investigated in terms of numerical diagonalization of large-scale transfer matrices. For the hard-square lattice gas, the location of the singular point [Formula: see text] and the critical exponent ν are accurately determined by the phenomenological renormalization technique as -0.11933888188(1) and 0.416667(1), respectively. It is also found that the central charge c and the dominant scaling dimension xσ are -4.399996(8) and -0.3999996(7), respectively. Similar analyses for other hard-core lattice-gas models in two dimensions are also performed, and it is confirmed that the universality between these models does hold. These results strongly indicate that the present singularity belongs to the same universality class as the Yang–Lee edge singularity.