✽✽✽✽✽
Yuichi’s team moved in a hurry, but they didn’t know where they were actually going.
They tried going in the direction Yurika had, but she hadn’t left any footprints, which made it hard to follow her path any further.
“So, what’s the situation? Is the resonance still going on?” Yuichi asked. So many things had happened while they were standing there, it was hard to get an immediate grasp on the situation.
“Let’s see... I think we should find out about Takeuchi first,” said Mutsuko. “She’s been acting strangely lately. She didn’t even come to school on Friday, did she?”
Apparently at some point she’d ended up with something chasing her, and then she’d gotten injured.
“But how do we look for her?” Yuichi asked. He’d only just learned that about Natsuki, and had no other clues.
“Ha! Allow me show you what I can do! You’ll be in my debt now, Yuichi Sakaki!” With that, Yuri suddenly disappeared. Her clothing fell on the ground. Then there was a rustling, and a golden-haired cat emerged from beneath it.
“Huh, you can transform into that, too?” Yuichi wondered what this meant for the law of conservation of mass, but this was no time to worry about that. He had been forced to accept that such things just existed in this world at this point.
“My sense of smell is very sensitive in this form! Not as good as a dog anthromorph’s, but many hundreds of thousands of times more sensitive than a human’s!”
“Little exaggeration, isn’t it?” he asked. “But that aside, what are we going to do? Go after Maruyama?”
“No, we’ll go back in the direction she came from. We’ll find the place where she saw Takeuchi injured, and trace Takeuchi from that site.”
“Sounds good. Let’s go!”
Yuri the cat bounded off. Yuichi and Mutsuko ran after her.
✦ ✦ ✦
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Natsuki and Aki had fled underground. They’d climbed down a manhole, through the sewers, and then even deeper. The two women had walked through the subterranean passageways that had been a fixture of the Seishin City underground for a very long time.
The stone passageways weren’t full of wastewater, so it was better than traveling the sewers. Still, the walls were slimy and crawling with strange-looking bugs, so the place could hardly be called sanitary.
The walls were faintly luminescent in places, so while the area was very dim, there was just enough light to keep moving.
Natsuki remembered what had happened on Kurokami Island during her summer vacation. It wasn’t exactly like the spaceship, but the atmosphere was similar.
The reason they were coming this far was to throw off the lingering pursuers. The lifeless servants Alberta had left on the surface were still wandering around. They were moving in ways such that normal people wouldn’t realize they were there, but as time went on, things would get more suspicious. They couldn’t follow orders forever, so apparently they were reaching their limits.
Desperate as they were, if they found Natsuki, they’d probably do whatever it took to bring her in on the spot. She didn’t want to think about what might happen to the innocent bystanders if that happened.
Things had quieted down once they’d gotten underground, but Natsuki was still dragging her feet. She had been wounded from their encounters with these enemies. She felt especially pathetic because Aki was uninjured.
“Is it true you don’t kill anymore, Natsuki?” Aki asked.
“Yes. That’s why I’m like this...” Natsuki silently chastised herself for how much weaker she had gotten.
“Hmm, but does that really matter?” Aki asked. “I haven’t killed anyone since this spring, either.”
“But you killed someone just now.”
“Oh, killing serial killers doesn’t count. I’m sure Yuichi will forgive me for killing someone like her.”
“You... Miss Takizawa. What’s your connection to Yuichi?” Natsuki demanded.
As far as Natsuki knew, she was the only serial killer Yuichi was involved with. She hadn’t heard anything about him meeting any other serial killers since they had met, and if he had known one before he’d met Natsuki, he wouldn’t have been so shocked by her existence.
“Aki. Call me Aki.”
“Aki, then. So?”
“I tried to kill him, but he took me out instead,” Aki said. “It was such a surprise. I didn’t realize there was someone so strong out there. And I’m positive he was taking it easy on me.”
It sounded like she really had fought Yuichi, then... and Yuichi had won.
Which means he was taking it easy on me, too...
She remembered the time she had fought Yuichi. She had thought that had been a close fight, but maybe he hadn’t had to take her seriously at all.
“After that, suddenly, everything seemed so silly,” Aki said. “Is this what they call love at first sight? My heart was racing like it never had before. I’ve never felt this way...”
It didn’t sound like love, exactly. She had just interpreted her confusion at losing as love.
“The power to turn defeated enemies into allies...” Natsuki muttered.
“What?”
“Many people Sakaki has defeated in the past have ended up becoming his allies in the end. Myself included.”
“I see. Does he have that many?”
There seemed to be an extra nuance behind Aki’s words, and Natsuki wondered if she may have chosen her words poorly. Aki hadn’t done anything especially strange so far, but even among the crazy breed that was serial killers, she was seen as the most dangerous of all. She seemed to have affection for Yuichi, and it was entirely feasible that she might see other women who cared for him as enemies.
“What? Why are you afraid? Do you think I’ll do something to Yuichi’s other allies?” Aki was very observant, and apparently skilled at reading the emotions of others. Perhaps this came from her experience in seeking out happy people and killing them. “Don’t worry. I won’t do anything like that. I think you might have the wrong idea about me.”
“No, of course I don’t...” Natsuki couldn’t possibly be honest. But Aki probably saw right through her anyway.
“I won’t do anything that will make Yuichi hate me,” Aki said, as if it were obvious. “After all, I want him to like me. Doesn’t that go without saying?”
Aki was confusing Natsuki in how dissimilar she was to what she had imagined. The truth was, this entire time, she had been nothing but friendly to Natsuki. There was no sign of the capricious and violent serial killer the rumors had spoken of.
“I thought that when you liked someone, you’d act like a complete yandere,” said Natsuki. “Tying them up and trying to keep them for yourself...”
“I don’t know much about it, but when I’ve heard the word ‘yandere’ in the past, I’ve never understood it,” said Aki. “A yandere is a person who only cares about themselves, right? They don’t care about the other person at all. It’s hard to believe that their behavior stems from genuine affection.”
The two continued walking randomly through the corridors. At the crossroads, they chose the path from which they felt the fewest life signs. It was partly because some unknowable things also nested in these underground paths. They apparently didn’t aggressively seek out intruders, but it was best to avoid running into them if one could help it.
“This path leads somewhere, right?” Natsuki asked.
“Probably. It’s my first time here, too. But it’s better than being on the surface, right?”
“I know it’s late to ask, but why did you save me?” Natsuki asked. If Aki’s own statement about her motives was to be believed, it was so that Yuichi would like her. But she’d had no reason to go out of her way to save Natsuki.
“I received the order from him to capture you,” said Aki. “I don’t have any servants like the others, and when I went to the last place you had been, I found Yuichi there. I thought, ‘This must be fate!’”
Those who received power from him and became his servants often received divine revelations from him, of guiding principles and orders. The transmission was one-way, so there was no need to follow them, but those who believed in him blindly would follow his orders to the letter.
“Because I’d realized that you and Yuichi were friends, I thought, ‘I have to save her.’”
“Couldn’t you have talked to Sakaki about it?” Natsuki asked. “It would have been your chance to cooperate with him.”
“But... I just felt so shy...” Aki looked away, her cheeks turning pink.
Her reaction seemed inappropriate to be coming from an adult woman, but Natsuki chose not to say that out loud. She didn’t want to provoke her unnecessarily. She hadn’t fully grasped what Aki would find acceptable yet.