That day, three bizarre guests arrived at Rouki the Small Digger’s doorstep. According to them, they wanted to get a boat right away. One among them, a leprechaun in a dark brown coat, for some reason had a detailed map of Aureatia’s waterways and specified which route to take—and in what order. He laid out a roundabout route that used old channels even Rouki didn’t know about, but it would get them to their far-off destination while avoiding the eyes of many minia at once and, depending on the time of day, not require them to pass through any checkpoints. The clients didn’t give their names. Rouki didn’t ask them, either. Rouki the Small Digger was a smuggler in Sagasa Old Town. It was a dangerous trade, but it was how he fed his two younger sisters. “Y’know, I was sure that almost no one outside the district knew my name.” With his usual cheery disposition, he guided his clients to the harbor. “Who gave you my name, if you don’t mind me asking?” “Assuming someone did give me your name, you know I wouldn’t tell you who,” the leprechaun walking out ahead of them frankly replied. “Ah-ha, well, you’ve got me there. Either way, you seem rather accustomed to these services, which I appreciate…” The clients were one man and two women. All three of them looked to be about as old as Rouki, around sixteen or seventeen. That said, the man was a leprechaun, so more likely than not he was far older. The leprechaun in the coat never let down his guard and had a calm demeanor. When they commissioned him, this man was the one who did most of the bargaining. His gait and posture had the unique air of those accustomed to fighting. Although the leprechaun didn’t appear boorish at all, Rouki knew that, in a world of violence, the guys who were as composed as this man were merciless and intolerant of failure. Though he had his back to Rouki, it felt like the man was keeping watch on him the whole time, which terrified him. One of the people he brought with him was a frighteningly beautiful young girl. Her silky black hair came to the top of her shoulders, and her fair skin looked almost deathly pale. Up until now, whenever the topic of Aureatia’s most beautiful woman came up in conversation, Rouki had only been able to vaguely name some famous actress or another, but now he could readily declare that this young girl, whose name he didn’t even know, was a cut above the rest. The final client had a far plainer impression than the other two. Her brownish hair was braided, and while she didn’t stand out compared to the black-haired beauty, a closer look revealed that she had fairly attractive features as well. The thing that concerned Rouki, though, was that when she seemed to be thinking over something, a vaguely spiteful color came to her eyes, wholly unbecoming of her features. “Still, Mister, I sure am jealous of you, gotta say!” Rouki loudly chatted as he rowed the boat. While he was a smuggler, he didn’t avoid the eyes of others while operating in urban areas. Bringing up these topics of idle chatter himself helped him come off as just a private tour boat, even when questioned otherwise, and it constituted one of the trade tricks he had developed for himself. “Why, I’d say any noble would be envious to go sightseeing with such a striking pair of beauties! Oh, or are they family members of yours, perhaps?” “……There’s three,” the coat-wearing leprechaun replied like Kouki had annoyed him somehow. He was pressing down on the area by his chest pocket. Perhaps he was one of those clients who didn’t really engage in conversation. Running into them wasn’t uncommon in the underground trade, but the leprechaun hadn’t seemed to have any eccentric fantasies or hang-ups when they were talking about his requests, so Rouki was a bit surprised. “Ah-ha, of course, forgive me! There are three of you, yes, sirree!” Of course, Rouki had nothing to gain from pointing out this weird feeling in the first place. Whether their conversation flowed smoothly or not, it just had to appear to anyone looking on that they were chitchatting idly between themselves. “One of the Order’s chapels used to sit over on that islet there.” The island in the waterway Kouki pointed to looked like nothing more than an overgrown grove of unkempt trees. If one strained their eyes, they could probably make out the crumbling remains of the chapel within, but no one was likely to notice its existence unless it was pointed out to them. “Ages ago, I used to go back and forth from the place all the time. Now they’ve pulled up the whole bridge and everything.” “Master Rouki…were you a follower of the Order?” “Huh?” His heart reflexively skipped a beat when he heard the beautiful young girl say his name. Damn, even her voice is cute… The voice seemed to give transience form, mixed with the faintest seductive gasps. Her eye-catching face was hidden below a wide-brimmed hat, but it took all Rouki had to stop his mind from focusing on her ample breasts pushing up from her white blouse. This appraisal was totally unrelated to the job at hand. He told himself that to refocus. “Well, my folks used to work a bit with the Order ’fore they died. They had me go to that chapel there more times than I can count…” The boat had been left to him by his parents, but his family hadn’t always been involved in this line of work. Rouki’s family previously transported goods out to Order facilities in remote areas and lived a humble life off the work. However, in the age of chaos brought by the True Demon King, the Order faced intense persecution. Rouki didn’t know why. Rumors of unknown veracity—a priest somewhere being involved in human trafficking, a chapel somewhere with followers revering the True Demon King as the Wordmaker—piled up on top of each other until, at some point, a great number of people began to fear the Order itself. Rouki’s parents had been forced to make a decision, too. The number of merchants wishing to trade with the Order continued decreasing, and the Order facilities had been continually abandoned and consolidated as they reduced the scale of their activities. Rouki was still young and didn’t understand at the time what sort of conversation was going on between his parents. Ultimately, Rouki’s family decided to forsake the Order. However, their lives didn’t improve for the better at all. Finally, the boat once used for aboveboard trade with the Order began to be used more and more to transport illicit cargo. His parents ultimately botched something, and his father was found floating in the canal. His mother’s body never surfaced. Rouki and his two little sisters were the only ones left. “…Though, seeing as we were involved with the Order and all, I’ve got all sorts of memories with them. Musta been when I was six. I got this real nasty fever, and both my parents went rushing to see the Order… And together with them, everyone pleaded and got me seen by a noble doctor. Woulda been dead without that, I’d say.” “…What a wonderful memory.” “Oh no, not at all, it’s pathetic. Getting sick and almost kicking it? How embarrassing.” Rouki cheerfully laughed it off. Meanwhile, the plain-looking girl was murmuring to herself as if confirming something. “Nowadays, if I remember right…there’s a medical support system in place for homes below a certain income. Lady Flinsuda introduced the system, so that would make it…four years ago?” “If only that had cropped up seven years sooner, I’m ’fraid. You really know your stuff now, don’t you, miss? Me, I don’t remember anything about this law or that organization, let alone how many years ago they all sprang up.” “Oh, no, I just happened to remember, that’s all…” “Ah-ha-ha-ha, sounds like we’ve got some very different definitions of ‘that’s all,’ miss.” There were occasionally those in the underground trade who were strangely well-versed in the loopholes of the law, but it was rare to see anyone who pursued a proper education. Especially a young girl of seventeen like her. Maybe this girl used to attend a really good Order facility somewhere—or maybe an academy near the center of Aureatia. Up until the age of the Demon King, the true intellectual class had all gathered at the Order. He had heard from a past client that they were on par with the current Aureatia bureaucrats, or in some cases even wiser. However, as the Order’s power waned, Aureatia established academies to serve as educational institutions in the Order’s stead, and the Order’s intellectual class disappeared somewhere. Perhaps they were still doing everything in their power to ensure the Order’s survival. Or maybe, much like Rouki and Rouki’s parents, they had abandoned their faith for their own survival and pursued a completely different life for themselves. “I’m skeptical that Aureatia will be left with money to spare on relief for the poor,” the coat-wearing man spat in a low murmur. “Aureatia is a nation with a weak foundation, born from scraping together the last minian wealth and personnel under a wartime regime to barely form the outline of a kingdom. They threw their wealth around on publicity stunts to court public opinion like the Sixways Exhibition and social welfare programs, but they have weak prospects of maintaining it all… If they don’t bring in resources or people from outside, it’ll all run dry eventually.” “You don’t say! Resources and people, huh? How exactly is Aureatia ’posed to come by that?” “War.” The beautiful women behind the man cowered in fright at the reply for some reason. “An age of war might be on the horizon. An age where the frontier, impoverished from the True Demon King’s terror, will be devoured by Aureatia’s attempts to prolong itself… The Sixways Exhibition’s been shaken up far too much for everything to end peacefully for everyone. Rosclay the Absolute’s gone.” “Oh, oh! That’s right! It blew me off my feet, too! Really is something wrong with the world out there, I tell you… Did you hear the news? Two students near the center of Aureatia followed Rosclay in death.” “………What…?” This time, the plain girl was the one to have an obvious reaction. Her eyes opened wide, and she froze like a small creature in front of a hunter. Among adolescent girls like her, many wanted to avoid the topic of Rosclay’s death altogether, but the nature of her reaction was different. “…Huh? Don’t tell me you didn’t know that Rosclay died? Wait, if you live in Aureatia, there’s no way you’d not know that…” “Um, no…” The girl covered one eye with her hand and shook her head as if trying to dispel something from her mind. “Th-they died because…Rosclay lost?” “Wait, that’s what you’re hung up on? If anything, I expected a whole lot more people to follow him. After hearing a man like him died, nobody’d bat an eye if ten or even a hundred people died with him. Honestly, I’m shocked Aureatia even announced it.” “There were far too many witnesses watching the match. A cover-up was probably impossible.” “…Ruin…someone’s future…” The plain girl was compulsively mumbling to herself. Rouki thought it was incomprehensible that someone would be less shocked about Rosclay’s death and instead more concerned about the deaths that had come about as a result. Rouki understood mourning the dead as much as anybody, but ultimately, they had all chosen it for themselves, and it wasn’t like Rosclay, or anyone else for that matter, bore any responsibility for it all. Perhaps, though, it was a cold, or numbed, way of thinking about the death of another. Yuno hadn’t actually wanted to make Soujirou the Willow-Sword win. Even now, she didn’t really like him. If anything, she should have felt a debt of gratitude for slaying the Dungeon Golem that day, but there was some illogical emotional part of her that wasn’t able to accept that. There were many things she had been too afraid to say out loud—about how he saved Yuno on a whim after she had lost her reason for living, about how he possessed so much power yet never thought to save anyone, about how he didn’t try to empathize with people tormented unfairly—which she had wanted to say to him the next time they met face-to-face. Perhaps that was why she wanted Soujirou to win and come back to her? She thought that wasn’t quite right, either. Yuno was sure that Soujirou would have accepted the results of the battle equally, whether he won or lost. For some reason, she was fully confident in that fact. While they had traveled together, Yuno had come to understand Soujirou, despite how indecipherable he was, just a little bit. In order to carry out her revenge, she needed to ensure that the target of her vengeance understood her, or it was all pointless. She wanted none other than the target of her vengeance to acknowledge this hatred that never disappeared, that Yuno was forced to carry with her for the rest of her life. Yuno was convinced that this wish, and understanding her foe, were two sides of the same coin. Which was why Yuno and Soujirou’s wishes had been the same. She didn’t care about victory or defeat; she had simply wanted to give Soujirou the fights he wanted. …But. Even after disembarking from the boat and stepping into the forest, Yuno had kept dead silent and looked pale. Kuuro ahead of her walked with Linaris on his back. Yuno’s pace was slow. I…killed…Rosclay? What had this internal desire of Yuno’s ultimately brought about to the world? Yuno had simply etched marks in a way to communicate to Soujirou and nothing more. Though she might not have been seen as ultimately responsible, she had nevertheless tried to get Soujirou and Rosclay to fight. Not just that, but she had acted with clear intent, to create the chance for Rosclay to die. Whatever a weakling like her did, it shouldn’t have had any great effect on the world. That was why, even if it was meaningless, she at least wanted to carry out her one wish—that had been the impression she was under. That wasn’t so, though. No matter how fervent or irreplaceable this wish of hers was, to those trampling her underfoot, it should have been totally unrelated to them at all. She could have realized it all and stopped what she was doing, yet she hadn’t even been cognizant about the brutality signified in this act of hers until this moment. It was exactly as Kuuro the Cautious had pointed out to her. Yuno had believed herself to be totally powerless, that she had abandoned her position and future before reaching where she was now, and yet at some point, she had become one of the unfair and powerful herself. I… I can bring ruin to absolutely everything… Now Yuno carried a bomb with her. Why had Nihilo told Yuno about the legacy Yukiharu the Twilight Diver left behind? If she had told one of the Twenty-Nine Officials, or the Gray-Haired Child instead, they would have been able to dispose of the truth for the betterment of the world. Yuno didn’t have the courage to do such a thing. “Yuno. Watch where you step. You’ll fall,” Kuuro told her without looking back. “…I will.” The words helped her regain her sense of reality, and she saw a moss-covered rock on the ground just two steps ahead of her. She carefully stepped over it to continue forward. Kuuro’s guidance was always accurate. There must have been a great number of traps laid out across this forest, yet even a young girl like Yuno was able to advance through the brush as if none of them were ever there at all. “…Kuuro.” “What?” “What…is going to happen to us from here?” It had been Kuuro who found them a smuggler in the Outer Ward and laid out the course they took. Yuno and Linaris were still effectively Kuuro’s hostages, and life-or-death power over them lay entirely in his hands. “The plan is still to head to the rendezvous point with Enu and hand Linaris back over to him. That’s if Enu shows up…” “But we’re heading to the Obsidian Eyes mansion right now, aren’t we?” “You’re sharp.” The trees and vegetation in the forest were the same as Yuno had seen around the mansion. She couldn’t imagine Enu and Kuuro had set their meetup point at the base of operations that already had been exposed by the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists once before. “…Master Kuuro. Are you all right with this?” Linaris said from atop Kuuro’s back. Her complexion had been terrible the whole way. Although Viga the Clamor’s treatment had gotten Linaris out of critical condition, Yuno worried the whole time about whether the far more terrible and agonizing pain they subjected to Linaris hadn’t whittled her life away even further. “This is something you need to do, mistress.” “……Yes… I thank you for this…” Linaris shut her long eyelashes. Yuno wasn’t able to surmise what Linaris wanted. She couldn’t have been hoping to reunite with her comrades here. Kuuro wouldn’t want that to happen, for one thing, and an organization like Obsidian Eyes would certainly understand the dangers in returning to this hideout. As they continued through the forest path, the mansion finally peeked out from dark green forest underbrush. It was abandoned. The exterior of the mansion looked almost untouched, perhaps because Obsidian Eyes had fought to limit evidence of destruction, even when intercepting the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists. The traces of the battle in the forest seemed to have been erased by the flora and fauna in the time they had been away. “Ah…” A lonesome sigh slipped from Linaris’s lips. “I’ll be watching from here… Can you get there alone?” “…Yes.” Linaris then quietly entered the manor by herself. Yuno could only look on without saying a word. Kuuro let out a long, exhausted sigh. “…How much longer is Cuneigh going to stay sleeping? I’ve been waiting for her.” Then he sat down on a parched rock and patted his chest pocket. Viga had said that a tiny homunculus with a weak life force like Cuneigh needed to be placed in a type of hibernation state for a period of time. It was impossible to say just how long Viga’s life-prolonging treatment had managed to actually extend Cuneigh’s life. “Kuuro, why…did you bring Linaris here to the mansion?” “It’s a personal matter for her. What’s the point in you knowing about it?” “She’s my friend… Does it involve her father?” “……” When Yuno had lived in the mansion, Linaris had mentioned her father several times, but Yuno had never once seen him. “Father.” “Please forgive me.” “Please praise me.” “Please punish me.” Linaris had repeatedly mumbled these incoherent thoughts as she lay delirious from the torturous experiments. Perhaps he was like Lucelles was to Yuno, a source of regret impossible to forget, even on death’s doorstep. “The mistress…” Kuuro pulled his hat farther down his face. “…killed her own father. At the very least, she believes she did.” “Her own father…” Of course Yuno hadn’t encountered him, then. He had been dead after all. “I didn’t find that out by questioning Linaris. At this point, trying to unravel the cause of her father, of Rehart the Obsidian’s death, is all but impossible, too… But while it may have just been delirious, unconsciousness mumbling, Linaris was speaking from the heart.” Yuno had only been able to hear fragments of what Linaris had said, but Kuuro had perceived everything that went on inside that tower. Given his Clairvoyance powers were able to accurately deduce the future with information from the present, he must have gotten a clear understanding of exactly what sort of past continued to haunt Linaris. “What do you think? Do you think that Linaris killed the previous Obsidian and stole the organization from him?” “…Linaris was…a spontaneous mutation, right? A vampire that infects through the air. How did Obsidian…? How did Linaris’s father feel about that spontaneous mutation…?” Vampires never infected the same person simultaneously with viruses from two different parental units. Linaris, meanwhile, could infect others all too easily—and through a completely different route from existing vampires. Her presence alone created a situation where Obsidian, the one in control of the organization, had no way of knowing which one of his agents had been infected by who first. Obsidian Eyes was an organization based on the vampire’s power of control. The spy guild once said to be the greatest in the land, able to prevent treachery in a more concrete way than through trust or discipline. If he then learned that a foreign body that threatened that very premise had slipped in among them… “…I think he might have feared betrayal.” “Me too. Rehart the Obsidian killed the organization’s enemies, killed anyone who knew the truth behind him, and killed anyone who betrayed him… He was a monster, far more cold-blooded and crueler than any of us, but there was one part of him that resembled Linaris, too. He was a coward.” Yuno thought back to the conversations she had exchanged with Linaris while confined together. Their enemy was terrifying, so they willfully blinded themselves to any points of commonality with it. “To Linaris, Obsidian Eyes were her only friends… But for the previous Obsidian…that wasn’t so for Obsidian Eyes or even his own daughter…” “That might’ve been how it was. Impossible to stay honest and decent if you keep being suspicious of everything. After all the war was done, I heard stories from the scattered remnants of Obsidian Eyes. About how deranged Rehart was in his final years—and how much he guided the organization’s decline.” “……” Yuno guessed that Kuuro didn’t think Linaris had actually killed Rehart. On the other hand, Linaris believed from the bottom of her heart that the responsibility for Rehart’s death lay with her. Which was the truth? Regardless, Rehart doubted everything and everyone, and as if the karma from all the lives he had taken came back to haunt him, he suffered a long, agonizing death. “You asked why I brought the mistress back here, right?” “…Yes.” “She asked me to. She at least wanted to see her father.” Linaris’s father was dead. Nevertheless, Linaris spoke as if he was still alive. Kuuro advanced through the manor without pause, until reaching the largest library on the second floor. When the door opened, Yuno instinctively gasped. It’s a corpse. A rotted corpse sat in a wheelchair. The dissolving, crumbling tissue was adhered to the seat and wheelchair back, and the foul odor felt like daggers in her nasal cavity. Right in front of the wheelchair Linaris sat limply. “Linaris…” Linaris looked up at Yuno with hollow eyes. Limpid, fine tears ran down her face. “Rehart the Obsidian. So he really was dead.” Kuuro walked up to Rehart’s corpse with his hands still shoved in his coat pockets. Without a hint of grief or disappointment, he seemed simply fed up. “If the timing of his death I heard was right, enough time’s gone by for him to be totally bones by now. But seeing as his stomach hasn’t swelled up from putrefaction—the body’s insides got pulled out, and he’s been maintained with Life Arts up until now. When the same Obsidian Eyes you stole from him cleared out of this base, the corpse was abandoned. So there was no one here to use Life Arts on him anymore…” “…Th-that’s not…” Linaris’s throat caught, just barely forming into a voice. Kuuro kneeled down to meet Linaris’s eyes. “Mistress. This thing is just a doll Obsidian Eyes used to control you. The fact that you assured me that you could see Rehart if you came here meant you knew the truth yourself. If Rehart was truly alive, he would’ve never stayed here waiting for you in this hideout.” Kuuro had satisfied Linaris’s desire—and nothing more. Linaris wished for her dream, reuniting with Rehart, and had come this far of her own accord. “…I won’t tell you to pay for the lives you took. You have to decide that for yourself. That said, you never had any reason to be bound to Obsidian Eyes in the first place. That’s the truth.” If the cruel truth couldn’t be changed, what was the correct choice—to stare straight at it like Kuuro or hide it away forever as Obsidian Eyes had? “K-K…Kuuro!” Yuno shouted. “Wh-why would you do all this…?! When she…doesn’t have a home to return to and is separated…from all her friends…! Just what sort of life are you expecting her to live from here?! She’s—she’s lost…everything…” “I needed to do this. I…I followed Obsidian Eyes’s code and carried out my revenge. I want this to be the last victim of this organization. I’ll be failing my duty to Enu, but if you so wish for it, mistress, I can find somewhere to take you in where you can live a quiet life without having to kill anymore.” He punctuated himself with a hoarse laugh. Linaris adored Kuuro like a much older brother. Similarly, Kuuro couldn’t have wanted to harm Linaris, yet this was the way things had to be. Code, duty, revenge. Kuuro, too, had been forced to live bearing those unwanted burdens and performing nothing but unwanted deeds. “If someone hadn’t shown this to her, then it never would have ended… You think my methods here were wrong.” “Th-they…are wrong…” It was painful. Kuuro was surly, but he never trespassed on Yuno’s dignity. Linaris was gentle and kind, and it made Yuno happy to be her friend. Yet every time the two of them suffered, Yuno’s own chest grew tight and painful. “Being a slave…to a dead person…” “Losing absolutely everything’s the best place to start.” “Doing something…you don’t even want to do…because you’re supposed to…” “Sounds like you’ll never be free.” “There’s nothing…nothing free about any of that. Th-that’s why…” Yuno the Distant Talon had lost everything, just like Linaris had now. She didn’t want that loss to be meaningless, and that was why she had desired to push forward with her egocentric and mistaken revenge. Since freedom was the real hallmark of the strong. “Unngh…hic, nggggh…” “…Why are you crying?” “I don’t know… I just don’t know!” Everything was a chaotic mess. She didn’t have the power to redeem her regrets. Nor the heart to remain consistent. She couldn’t even save the hearts of the two people right in front her. Yuno remained unable to gain anything that she wished for, and yet Yuno herself had long fallen on the side of the strong who pushed their irrationality on others. “…Miss Yuno.” Linaris let out a faint, feeble voice. “It is…all right now. Please, just leave me…” “…I—I can’t do that! We’re f-friends, aren’t we?! We’re…” Before she could finish her thought, Yuno was pulled backward by the scruff of her neck. It took a second to understand Kuuro had grabbed her and jumped backward with unimaginable agility. “…K-koff! Kuuro!” “Linaris, stop!” They were in the hallway. Yuno understood that Kuuro determined they needed to put that much space between them. The calm expression from moments ago was totally gone, and sweat poured down his brow like a waterfall. “Koff! Wh-what…?! Why’d you pull me…?!” Kuuro had no knowledge of microbiology. While his Clairvoyance was able to perceive changes in the microscopic world, it couldn’t then recognize what said changes then meant. Despite all that, he had still foreseen a tremendous danger. It’s just like what happened back then. Yuno then realized what had happened at that moment. A mutation, caused by her own volition. “…You think…someone like me…” In the middle of the ruined room, Linaris swayed back and forth as she stood up. She had the beauty of an ephemeral dream. “…could ever atone…for such terrible sins…” “Linaris! If you are truly able to cause a mutation at will, then—” “L-living without…any more killing…isn’t…” Kuuro was unable to finish his sentence. With Yuno in his arms, he ran at full speed. Yuno was sure he had so many other things he had wanted to convey to Linaris, yet he had needed to escape. They couldn’t let her get close. He ran at the speed a disease spread. Something even more lethal than total control was infecting the air. “Linaris! Don’t do it! Linaris!” Even as Yuno called after her, practically tearing her throat apart, she also knew that her voice wouldn’t penetrate the unfathomable depths of despair. It had been the same for Yuno the day Nagan fell. Linaris’s voice alone reached her, like a dying breeze. “Farewell.” Evening. Having finished his work for the day, Rouki the Small Digger walked the road home. Instead of carrying goods, he had transported three bizarre passengers—but what was even more bizarre was that he couldn’t remember the details that made them seem so unusual. He barely still retained his memories of heading off to their destination. He was sure that he had been working up until that moment. However, he felt as if he had been simply handed his reward at the port and turned right back home. Everyone who came into contact with Linaris the Obsidian, regardless of any malice on Linaris’s part, were made into corpses. Despite her beautiful features that attracted more eyes than any other, Linaris never remained in anyone’s memory. She was constantly manipulating perceptions to erase the memories of any corpse who witnessed her. Cripes. I’m not nearly old enough for this, but maybe I’ve started growing senile like the old man next door. Nevertheless, he was an optimist by nature. Rouki quickly forgot about his uncertain misgivings. What really mattered was that, with this job, he had gotten enough money to buy his two young sisters some proper clothes. Though it wasn’t as profitable, compared to running illegal goods, just continuing with these safer types of jobs would be enough to at least feed their three-person family for the time being. Rouki’s feet carried him to a grilled food place. They used cheap ingredients, and the taste was awful, but the amount of food they served couldn’t be beat. “…Huh?” Rouki felt that something was weirdly off. He didn’t see the shop owner standing on the roadside amicably drawing in customers like usual. Instead of the typical smoky smell of grilled food, a foul smell, like raw fish left out to spoil, hung in the air. “Ummm, ’scuse me, it’s Rouki! Hey, Pops, you closed for today?” He peered behind the counter. The shop owner was lying down on the ground. His neck was bent all the way to his back. His throat was almost entirely gone, only held together by strands of skin. All the fingers on both hands seemed to have disappeared somewhere. Both of his shoes were off, and all his toes were missing, too. “Uh…Pops…,” Kouki muttered in blank surprise. There was a pool of blood at his feet, but the blood had dried a long time ago. “You sleep in a spot like that, you’re gonna catch a cold, y’know…” He knew without a doubt that he wasn’t going to be able to buy any grilled food today. Rouki looked around the alleyway lined with shops. Calm and tranquil. Several people even passed through the alley. Even though a lot of time must have passed since the shop owner died. No one’s called the city guards or nothing? Rouki teetered away before he broke into a run. He wanted to go back to his daily life and pretend like nothing happened. His shady occupation meant he was the type to be immediately suspected when anything cropped up. He had lost the courage or the willpower to inform anyone. “Crap, crap, crap, no, no, no…!” Though he didn’t feel tired, when he finally reached his home, he was totally out of breath. It wasn’t his first time seeing a corpse. Anyone who had lived through the age of the True Demon King, even children, had seen them. However, there was an indescribable creepiness to the corpse Rouki had seen. As if a mysterious something had played with the man while killing him. He hadn’t seen anything. Eventually someone would discover the body, and the authorities would take it from there. He rubbed his face while leaning against the door to his house to try to regain his usual demeanor. It had nothing to do with Rouki. He’d go to sleep tonight and forget everything. “I’m home!” He opened the door. “Sorry, Retta, Nabi! I didn’t have time to buy any sides for tonight, so we’ll use yesterday’s…” It didn’t smell like his home. It was like raw fish left out to spoil. The scene in the room before him was different. He thought he had returned home to someone else’s house. “Mwee-hee-hee-hee!” A creature, resembling a naked young girl, was lying down on the table. On top of the table, a crimson-and-white something was scattered in a sloppy mess everywhere. Amid all this, his youngest sister, Nabi, simply sat with a smile. Wait, that’s weird. For some reason, the girl looked like she had three arms. Right. There were too many arms. He mistakenly saw the extra arm, because there were the arms of another young girl on the table—scattered on the table—and smeared all over the young girl was the torn-apart body of another young girl. “………Retta.” Why? More than fear, despondent bewilderment took over Rouki’s brain. He couldn’t move a muscle, like an herbivore face-to-face with a predator. Why was everyone—even his youngest sister, Nabi—able to stay indifferent amid what was happening? “Mwee-hee-hee-hee. I love Retta.” The naked young girl kissed a lifeless chunk of flesh. Then she looked at Rouki and smiled like an angel. “I’ve fallen in love with you, too, mister…”
Chapter 238
29 min read