Clap, clap, clap…
Chika heard another sound close by. Was somebody applauding her?
She looked up to see two people standing in front of her. She had no idea where they’d come from, but she had seen them before. One of them was the girl in the neon-pink hoodie who had given her the Gap Entry Ticket. The other was the man in the hat and scarf whom she’d seen at the bazaar.
“Nice work, Chika. You didn’t just get your flower back, you also sealed the Flower Thief away. You’re really something!” the girl in pink said when she stopped clapping.
The eye patch over her right eye now had a butterfly illustration on it. Chika was sure that hadn’t been there the last time.
“Now that the thief is down that well, you should be fine. It doesn’t have the strength to climb out of there on its own.”
“You guys…knew about the Flower Thief?”
“A little. We knew it liked to collect human emotions and turn them into flowers. And since students at this school have a lot of unwanted emotions, it probably seemed like the perfect place to set up shop. We figured it might have created its own pocket dimension here. But that’s all.”
Perplexed, Chika stared at the strange girl in front of her. She’d known about the thief, and she went around with crazy stuff like the Gap Entry Ticket on her… Just who was she?
Then there was the guy next to her. Back at the bazaar, Chika had thought the shadow around his face was just a trick of the light. Now that they were out in the open, she could see the truth—he didn’t have a face. Underneath that hat, where his face should have been, there was only darkness.
“Are you two…not human?” Chika asked.
The man proceeded to remove his hat and scarf. Chika’s eyes went wide with surprise.
Underneath all that was…nothing.
It was just a solid mass of shadow, vaguely head-shaped, but with no facial features whatsoever. It was attached to his neck by thick, black threads that had been hidden by the scarf.
“Indeed,” the man said. “As you can see, we are not human. Not I, nor Nozome here.”
His voice was much gentler than Chika had expected. It was even stranger considering he didn’t actually have a mouth to form those words…
“But you’re not like that Flower Thief, are you? You’re not that thing’s friends…?” said Chika.
“Hmm, I dunno about that… You could say we are, but you could also say we’re not.” The girl—Nozome—gave her an evasive answer and snickered. “Both we and the Flower Thief are something called Inhumans. In that sense, I guess we’re the same. But ones like that have been Inhuman their whole lives. You could think of them like ‘wild’ Inhumans. But I’m the kind who used to be human. Nieno is too, I think.”
The silver-haired girl looked up at the shadow-headed figure standing next to her. The man she called Nieno nodded at her words.
“And we’re a special kind of Inhuman called demons!” Nozome added.
“Demons…?”
“You could say ‘daemons,’ too, if you wanna be fancy. And as for what we do…” The strange girl took a small black book from under her arm and showed it to Chika. “This is a catalog of wonderful items born from people’s desires. We get the items from this catalog and look for humans with desires to match them. Then we sell the items to those humans…and transform their hope into despair. That’s what demons are all about.”
Nozome paused and cleared her throat dramatically.
“Anyway. Let’s move on to the main event.” Her one uncovered eye fixed Chika with a piercing stare. She smiled wickedly. “How would you like to join us, Chika?”
“Huh…?” An invitation like that was probably the last thing she’d been expecting. “Wh-what? Why me…?”
Chika was still trying to make sense of things; that was all she could stammer out.
Nozome’s smile disappeared, and she looked away, her eyes downcast. “Okay, so… Us demons, right? All of us were denied happiness when we were human. Because of that, we don’t want other people to be happy, either.”
She practically spat this explanation out. But then she brought her head up again and smiled kindly.
“So I figured you might be like us… Now that you’ve got your anger back, you can see what kind of place your school really is, right? You know the world around you isn’t interested in your happiness, right?”
“…!”
Nozome’s words were like an arrow in Chika’s chest. The pain still felt raw.
“If you become a demon like us, you’ll get catalogs of your own. Then you can inflict despair on lots of humans! Oh, and one more thing… If you successfully use all the items in a catalog, you get a special perk—an all-new item to help you fulfill your own deepest desire!”
She delivered all this with an exuberant grin, as if what she was describing was the best thing in the whole world.
But Chika didn’t smile back. The harsh reality of her situation had suddenly become so much clearer to her. And that, combined with everything Nozome was saying, gave her a tight, squirming feeling in her chest.
Before Chika could say anything, though, Nozome extended her arm forward, offering Chika the little black book.
“Read this. It’s got the stories of humans we’ve sold these products to. Once you’ve read them, you’ll get a better idea of what it means to be a demon.”
“…”
Chika said nothing, but she took the book all the same. When her hands closed around the cover, the butterfly on Nozome’s eye patch fluttered into the air and came to rest on Chika’s shoulder. Up close, she could see that it had neon-pink wings with an elaborate black pattern on them.
“This is…”
“That butterfly is a part of me. These catalogs are only meant for Inhumans—regular humans aren’t allowed to read them. But as long as you have that butterfly on you, you’ll be fine.”
Chika stared for a moment at the butterfly. It looked familiar, somehow.
“Okay, pop quiz time! There’s a saying, ‘Good girls go to heaven’… What comes next?”
“Um…excuse me? We’re asking trivia questions now?”
Letting the Inhumans’ conversation fade into the background, Chika ran her finger over the catalog’s cover. There was no title. At first glance, it looked like a regular book with a plain black cover…