What was wrong with her? I genuinely wanted to know, insofar as the answer to that question was directly linked to my own survival. She was, what, cool, or hip, or the kind of girl who seemed like she might even have wings sprouting out of her back.
“Ahhh. Let’s see…” she shook her head. “Well, whatever. I’ll worry about it after I’ve stabbed you a few times.”
“You’re making a mistake, Tamamo.”
Paying no mind to her elder’s kindly words of caution, Tamamo crossed the two knives in front of her petite chest.
“Snikt… Heheh.”
She grinned faintly, and her cheeks reddened. She seemed to be feeling bashful. But the combination of that awkward grin with the glint of her blades was the stuff of nightmares.
Wielding a knife in each hand─that in and of itself wasn’t threatening. It meant that her arm movements and attack patterns were quite limited, and it also impeded her defense. In kendo, too, you wouldn’t even attempt dual wielding unless you were a serious master. But on the flipside, if you were such a master─you could manage two weapons with ease.
In other words, everything was riding on one question─was she a novice or an expert? And at Hang ’Em High, there were no novices among the student body.
“Hold on a sec, kiddo─”
“You can forget about begging for your life, I don’t want to hear it─umm, too much of a hassle.” Tamamo tottered slowly closer. “And please don’t call me ‘kiddo’ when we’ve only just met, it’s demeaning… I’m going to slash you to ribbons.”
Slash me─to ribbons.
Like the Director?
Like the Director was slashed to ribbons─by “Zigzag”?
“Hang on─I’ve got a question. Is this Shiogi’s plan, did she send you?”
“Naaah… Shiogi-senpai did seem to be cooking something up…but I’m no good with that kind of thing, so I just came after you on my own.”
Heh, dimples appeared on Tamamo’s face. It was all well and good that she had such a cute smile, but I would’ve preferred she stick to her group’s plan of action. Do they not teach cooperation at this academy? You’ve got to learn how to get along with other people, Tamamo, that’s what school is all about.
“Ready or not, here comes Tamamo-o-o… SWAY…y…y!”
And she came flying at me, her movements a total one-eighty from her previous laxity, her interlacing knives directed at my throat.
Yikes, the girl genuinely, seriously meant business.
Of course I couldn’t possibly take her on, so I spun around and fled as fast as my legs would carry me.
“Hey…you can’t run away,” Tamamo mumbled, then gave chase, her knives still reverse-gripped in both hands. She was such a small girl that I’d figured I could lose her─but that was overly optimistic. I’m not slow, but Tamamo was too fast. It felt like being chased by Kuchisake-onna or Hijiko-san or some other urban legend. Dammit, had I only managed to escape with Hime-chan under my arm because our pursuers were too slow? In other words, had I gotten to a new level in the game? Tamamo, steadily closing the gap, suddenly hurled the Griffon at my head.
“Wh-Whoa!”
I narrowly managed to avoid it by flinging myself to the floor. This was no joke. Any way you slice it, that knife is not made for throwing, but she tossed it like it was a shuriken. Just how good was this chick?
Well, the very fact that she was wielding oversized knives with her skinny arms was abnormal to begin with. Did this school defy the laws of physics, too?
Then Tamamo plopped onto my back where I lay face down hugging the floor of the hallway, and held her remaining knife, the Eliminator, to my throat. All she had to do was draw it to the side, and that would be it for my carotid artery.
“What do you say in this situation again…checkmate? Nope, that won’t cut it. You don’t really seem like a king. How about…the brash knight is prey for the pawn?”
So I’m just a knight?
Another half-assed choice.
“Okay, now I’m going to ask you some questions…so please answer as truthfully as you can. Me, I don’t actually care, but the more truthful you are, the longer you live. That’s the deal,” said Tamamo in an incredibly listless voice. It felt like she was just going through the motions, as though not only conversation but life itself seemed to wear her out.
“Let’s see… Swayyy. Where are…Overkill Red and Yukariki-senpai? The thing is, we’d really like to find them.”
“I’ve got a question first.”
“Whaaat. That’s not how this works. I’m the one asking the questions.” Tamamo puffed out her cheeks. “But okay. Just this once. Too much hassle to say no.”
She didn’t seem to be much of a conversationalist. Apparently she’d rather make things easy on herself and concede anytime a dispute seemed likely. Such pliancy wasn’t exactly something I admired in a young woman, but in this case it was most welcome.
“Are you ‘Zigzag’?”
“Whaa? What’re you talking about, no way.” Tamamo shook her head as if that was totally unthinkable. “This is just a stab in the dark, but I’m guessing you don’t really know what’s going on? Did you get pulled into this by the Red Dread without knowing anything about the situation here? You don’t even know about ‘Zigzag’… You didn’t do any research beforehand, or even─”
Apparently tiring partway through her sentence, Tamamo just stopped speaking.
Then, with a mumbled swayyy, she finished: “─ask someone?”
“Unfortunately, it’s my policy not to get too deep into things that seem like they might be bad news.”
“Okay. Then, let me ask you this… What’s your objective here?”
I’d been dead certain she was going to ask me about Hime-chan and Aikawa again, but instead I got this question out of left field.
“My objective… That’s─”
“It’s not to rescue Yukariki-senpai, is it? Nor is it to help out Overkill Red… Here’s the thing. Me, Hagihara-senpai, we all have a reason to be here doing what we’re doing.”
“…”
“But you, do you have a comparable reason? Do you have a reason that can stand up to all of ours for being here, doing what we’re doing? If so, please, enlighten me.”
“Tamamo.”
“Just rejecting it, saying it’s abnormal or unrealistic or something, that’s cowardly. You really shouldn’t be so quick to judge,” she said in an emotionless voice. “Or, are you so attached to your own value system and your own sense of what’s normal?”
Well, if you ask me.
The academy is weird─but what gives me the right to judge it? Aren’t I just as weird?
“Oh, whatever, this is too much hassle.” Tamamo adjusted her grip on the knife so that she was holding it the right way around. “Time to die etcetera.”
The blade began to abrade my skin─
“─!”
Death.
I was horribly calm. Horribly calm, and pretty disappointed. Despondent. Was I going to die here, just like that? I’d always figured someone would kill me in some gonzo grand guignol. To go out like this, like some bit player who gets squashed under a crumbling building─no.
Maybe this was the only appropriate end for me. For an insignificant worm like me. I had assumed my tedious little life would flash before my eyes, but that dream too faded like the mourning dew─
Tomo Kunagisa. Only Tomo Kunagisa remained in my thoughts.
Ah, how I wanted to see her again…
How I wanted her to know I was sorry.
“─”
At that moment, footsteps echoed down the hall.
The sound of footsteps trotting towards us.
“Master… Masterrr!”
Tamamo jerked around in surprise and looked in the direction this cry had come from.
“Yukariki, senp─”
And loosened her grip on the blade.
Without waiting to visually confirm that it was Hime-chan, I used the strength of my back and arm to flip Tamamo off me, then buried my left elbow in her solar plexus as I spun towards her. I didn’t have the breathing room to adjust for the fact that she was a girl, or that she was younger than me.
Tamamo crashed into the wall of the hallway─and lost consciousness. No, even when she’d been awake she’d seemed unconscious, so maybe that’s the wrong way to put it, but anyway, she stopped moving.
When I touched my neck─it was bleeding.
To be precise, a single layer of my epidermis had been cut.
“Masterrr!” This from behind. “I’m finally found youuu!”
“Hime-chan…” I turned around and finally laid eyes on her. “Why’re you here?”
“Sorry,” she said as she gasped for breath. “Hime-chan’s late because I just couldn’t open that door on my own. In the end I came through the ventilation shaft. There was an exhaust fan in the ceiling, that you could take off from insides the room. Teeheehee, it would probably be impossible for you, Master, but Hime-chan’s small, so I managed to get out that ways.”