Retreat…was not an option. Since there were likely already “lines” strung haphazardly all through this hallway, like a true spider’s web. Most of them were invisible to the naked eye (she must have intentionally woven in a few you could see with the ones you couldn’t), but I felt pretty confident that they were there. After confirming that we were in this building over the walkie-talkie, Hime-chan headed us off at the pass. She set this trap and lay in wait for us.
This was a zigzagging “cat’s cradle” writ large. Easier said than done, keeping track of the position and tension of every single line, fine-tuning the force of the mediating pulleys, maintaining an awareness of the things that come into contact with the lines, as well as the things that don’t, and furthermore controlling it all with the tip of a finger. Outside was one thing, but inside, where there were as many nooks and crannies as one might need to act as pulleys for the “lines”─Zigzag was indeed a peerless, and endlessly adaptable, combat technique. No wonder the four girls who tackled her hadn’t even glanced my way. And if I was wondering why Tamamo had lost her concentration and given me my opening, simply at the sound of Hime-chan’s voice─well, here was my answer. With a higher-level berserker making her entrance, Tamamo couldn’t keep her head. And now it made perfect sense that Shiogi had set her ambush in the courtyard. Good visibility was Hime-chan’s Achilles’ heel.
“Hunh, it’s all coming together…”
The moment Shiogi and I set foot on this floor, we were caught in the spider’s web.
“And you killed the Director too, didn’t you.”
“Yes,” she assented as though it was nothing. And then continued as though it was nothing: “The whole Zigzag thing aside, Master, now that you’ve figured thats out, I have to kill you.”
“Because I figured it out? Did you really think that no one would ever discover the truth?”
“I did. I hoped so. I wished its could be that way. I even prayed for it.”
“…”
“I mean, Ms. Jun is soft on her friends. So she would never suspect Hime-chan.”
Jun Aikawa’s sole blind spot.
Not “betrayal,” but “deception.”
That woman─trusts her friends implicitly.
“But that’s just a blind spot, not a weak spot,” Hime-chan said, sounding sad. “Listen…can you understands at all? Do you have any inkling of what kind of life Ms. Jun has led? A world where everyone is deceiving everyone else, where you kill the person standing next to you before deciding what kind of a person they are─that’s the kind of world she’s lived in, seeing only the filthy side of humanity, and yet she still trusts other people without a second thought. Never suspecting Hime-chan, even for a moment.”
Hime-chan seemed to be getting a little choked up, but definitely wasn’t crying. She was staring intently at me like a vigilant guard dog.
“For people like Hime-chan, that’s basically an insult. No matter how special Jun Aikawa is, she tries harder than anyone to be on equal terms with other people. That right there is the essence of being strong, I guess. Hime-chan could never be like that. I even doubted you right up till the end, Master. When you said, ‘leave it to me,’ I suspected you might be planning to sell us out.”
So when she came after me, it wasn’t out of concern. Not only that, when she came after me the first time, the time I left the Director’s office, that was just for the sake of risk avoidance. It was all lies, all false.
When she cried for me.
When she restrained me.
When she came after me.
When she saved me.
Even when she smiled for me.
She was just putting on an act, playing the role of the kind of girl I like.
“Buuut,” Hime-chan declared, “other people are unbelievable, aren’t they!”
She laughed, willy-nilly imitating her own pure smile with a forced cheerfulness. Yet it was nothing more than a twisted distortion of her mouth into a warped curve.
“They betray you at the drop of a hat, deceive you, and explain it all away. They dismiss other people without a second thought. They hit other people anytime they feel like it, despite the fact that they know it’ll hurt, precisely because they know it’ll hurt. Basically, everyone─everyone is a fake.”
“Is it lonely, being so alone?”
“Yes, it is,” she answered immediately. “It’s lonely─still, I’ll live my life alone. Betraying, deceiving, and explaining it all away. I’ll lives my life alone.”
“That so… Guess it is, at that.”
“If we keeps on talking I’m going to start feeling sympathetic, so it’s time to bring this to an end.”
And Hime-chan whipped her finger up. In that instant, an unpleasant chill assaulted my body. A-ha, so this was the feeling of having those “lines” coiled all around your body. It all made sense now. In other words, that sensation I felt the very first time I met her back in “Year 2, Class A” was─nothing else. Did I have one foot in the grave from that very first hello? So then I wasn’t hallucinating when I sensed that locker shake, and it also explained why my feet got all tangled up. There must’ve been invisible threads winding through that classroom.
I was dead meat.
That time, because of her wariness at our first encounter.
And now, because I’d learned too much.
“I’ll tell Ms. Jun that Master left ahead of us─or something. Okay, bye-bye. Time to say farewell, Master.”
“If you’re worried about sympathy, it’s too late for me, you know.”
The finger that was about to snap down for the final time─stopped.
“Did you…says something?”
“I guess this is the first time I’m saying it out loud. You’re…terribly similar. To a girl I destroyed when I was a kid. That girl was openhearted, always smiling, and never suspicious or angry, a real good egg, she’d forgive you for anything, and above all, she was kind enough to love me.”
“Then we’re not similar at all, are we?” Hime-chan muttered, lowering her gaze. With lowered gaze, she muttered, “Hime-chan isn’t a good girl. That’s all superficial. I’m suspicious of everyone, and I’m always annoyed, plus I’ve never once fallen in love. It’s all an act. An act, a pack of lies. I was just playing up to you. That kind of person…doesn’t really exist, do they?”