“Why didn’t you follow his orders?” Natsuki asked. “If you’re his servant, I thought you would have gladly done so.”
“I don’t care about him. He offered me power, so I took it. He doesn’t mind if I live whatever way I want, so I do.”
“That’s strange,” Natsuki said. “Why did he come after me, then?”
If they were free to do what they wanted, he could have just left Natsuki alone. Yet he had sent pursuers after her and tried to capture her alive.
“I don’t know.” Aki shrugged. “It might be connected to the fact that you’ve become almost human again. I’m envious of you in that regard...”
Her malice swelled for a moment, then dispersed. As long as her violent emotions remained, there was probably no way Aki could ever return to normal.
At the moment, Natsuki had nearly entirely lost her urges to kill. In that regard, there was a clear difference between her and Aki.
“I think that as long as I don’t kill anyone, Yuichi might accept me.” Aki sounded truly innocent and optimistic. “After all, you’ve managed to be normal friends with him since you reformed.”
They continued walking onward.
They continued down the identical-seeming underground hallways, and just when Natsuki was starting to get nervous, they came out into an open space.
It was a dome-shaped hall, likely about 50 meters in diameter. At the center was what looked like a stone altar, and braziers burned brightly around it.
“Hey.” There was a man standing on the altar.
Natsuki and Aki immediately tried to turn back, but found that it was impossible. The path backwards was now blocked by a grate.
“You can’t run away after coming this far,” the man said.
It was the man she had met on her way to school. The man Natsuki wanted to avoid more than anyone.
“How...” she began.
“How did I find you? The underground is my territory. You picked the wrong place to escape to.”
Natsuki looked at Aki. She wondered if she’d tricked her here. But Aki was surprised to see him, too. She must not have known he would be here.
“If you’re asking how I came here... there are ruins like this all over the world, and I occasionally use them,” the man said. “This altar was used to venerate me, after all, so I know all the ways in and out.”
“What are you doing?! Why are you following me?” Natsuki demanded.
“I try to remain hands-off with my followers. I think you should be free to do whatever you want. So I don’t usually keep tabs on who’s doing what, and where. But that’s only as long as you don’t forget your duty. I can’t have you out there not killing people. There aren’t as many people in your line of work as there used to be, you know.”
He was the god of murderers — the god of death, war, and plague. All he had given to humanity was disaster. All he wanted was death. And so, he was venerated by serial killers.
“If you want a servant, find someone else!” Natsuki said hotly.
“Once something is decided, it’s foolish to try to change it so simply. Though if you died, that would likely force my hand...” The man jumped down from the altar. “But it is mysterious. Why are you so determined to reject me?”
The young man began walking towards Natsuki. His godly aura could now be felt clearly, perhaps because he had no need to suppress it anymore.
Just feeling it had caused Natsuki’s body to lock up.
She felt nauseous.
She was assaulted by an urge to want to confess everything.
“It appears that Jack the Ripper, who I placed inside you, has grown very weak,” the man said. “Probably because of the rumors of his identity coming to light... Jack the Ripper’s strength comes from being unknown, and even if the rumors are false, having that identity being on the news is a problem in itself.”
Just his approach, step after step, was utterly terrifying to her. At some point, her body had begun to tremble. She couldn’t stop herself. It was as if her body was not her own.
“So I’ll prepare you a new one, and then you’ll be fine. You’ll be dying to kill people again.”
Intentionally, perhaps, the man’s advance was slow. Natsuki could do nothing but scream. She couldn’t do anything else at this point.
“It saddens me to see you so frightened of me... or are you remembering something?”
She was remembering.
But all she could remember was fear. Her body was remembering how helpless it had always been against him.
The man continued his approach. He was still far away, but Natsuki’s fear had reached its limit.
That was when Aki sprang forward.
Natsuki could only watch and cower, but Aki, it seemed, could still move.
But what good would it do?
He batted Aki back easily. He had only brushed her with his hand as she charged, yet that alone was enough to break Aki’s body so badly that she couldn’t even move. The arm she had used to guard was broken. Her ribs were crushed, and she’d hit the floor quite a distance away.
Natsuki’s own will was breaking. Part of her wanted to run; part of her wanted to fight back; part of her wanted to kill herself. As a result, she couldn’t move. All she could do was stand where she was.
It was probably already over. Natsuki had effectively died once already when she’d become a serial killer. Her memories from before then were hazy. She couldn’t remember much from that time. Which meant that her current memories and personality were equally transient; they would be destroyed and remade anew. She would be reborn as a more powerful, more merciless serial killer.
She couldn’t accept that.
She might not be the best person as she was, but she was still doing her best. She had begun to think that maybe she could live a normal life. But she was losing her will to resist.
It had ended the moment she had met it here. The fact that she’d managed to escape the first time had been sheer dumb luck.
At the end of the day, an ordinary life was asking too much. Her current self would be gone, and she would be reborn again as a serial killer. It was inevitable now. There was no way to escape.
Her legs wobbled. She found herself unable to stand. She was losing all of her senses. She couldn’t even tell where she was anymore. She could feel tears streaming pitifully from her eyes, but soon, even that feeling went numb.
Her vision narrowed; sounds disappeared.
Everything seemed to have gone far away.
“Takeuchi!”
But a voice that Natsuki should not have been able to hear had reached her.
“Move out of the way!”
The voice snapped Natsuki to consciousness. Following the instructions, she moved to the side.
An ear-splitting sound rang out. The grate bent, then went flying off its hinges with a bang. It flew past Natsuki, scattering rubble at her feet.
Natsuki turned around.
Yuichi Sakaki was standing there.