Volume 5 - CH 1.2

Black fingernails brushed her pale cheek. “Hmm, a case, you say.” She sounded tired. “A case from you guys does not sound very appealing. Asking a person who worships a living god to solve supernatural problems is sheer madness. Not that I’m in any position to talk, I suppose.”

Mayuzumi reached for another piece of chocolate from the table. She fiddled with the marbled chocolate with her fingers. It snapped in half.

“All right. I’ll take the case. I’m not a god, yet you call me one. You ask a god for a favor, and I agree to guarantee my own freedom. A very unpleasant arrangement. But for the record: I will meet with the client, but what I do after that is up to me. You shouldn’t even be asking me to deal with oddities.”

“Like I’ve said countless times, I don’t offer salvation to anyone,” Mayuzumi added with a cynical smile.

She tossed the chocolate into her mouth.

I knew who she was talking to then. The person who worshiped Mayuzumi as a god was a member of the Mayuzumi clan. Did she receive some kind of case through them? I readied myself.

As Mayuzumi went on, her eyes widened slightly. “Is that even an oddity?” she grunted. “I will not get involved with an ordinary incident. I mean, think about it.”

Red flowers swayed on her small wrists. Glass glittered on the large roses.

“Flowers don’t kill people,” she muttered low and sweet.

After a few more back-and-forth, Mayuzumi hung up the phone. She returned to the couch and lay down.

A few minutes later, I asked, “What kind of case did you get this time? I could tell that it came through your family. What kind of an oddity is it?” Just normal questions.

Mayuzumi picked up a round piece of chocolate and ate it.

Reddish-black liquid spilled from the thin crust. Internal organs came to mind. A small tongue touched the liquid.

Licking off the raspberry puree, Mayuzumi smiled. “What kind of place is a school, I wonder?” she said randomly.

“…What?”

Where did that come from?

She picked up another piece of chocolate. “I’ve never gone to school. People wearing the same clothes, following the same rules and schedules. From the outside, it looks both comical and bizarre. Makes me think of livestock, personally. I know, I know. It’s a rude metaphor.”

Mayuzumi met my gaze and smiled.

“What I find bizarre is this system of overseeing humans,” she went on. “Any infrastructure meant to preserve society is inherently absurd. Not that the pros and cons matter. But consider this: What happens when you take unstable adolescent girls and put them all together in one place? Human emotions are as fragile as glass. It wouldn’t take much for them to wish for death’s sweet embrace.”

“…I get it.”

I started to see what was going on. Roundabout as always.

Her red lips curled up in amusement. She tossed chocolate into her mouth.

“I see you’ve figured it out, Odagiri-kun. It’s surprisingly difficult to survive through a period where everyone is unstable and irritable. Nothing new, of course.”

“So what you’re saying is: the client is someone from a certain school, where a student committed suicide.”

“Bingo. The task is to determine why a girl killed herself. Not exactly my role. Anyway, there’s apparently something bothering them.”

Mayuzumi picked up another chocolate, its round surface adorned with a red flower. She held it between two fingers.

“Please don’t lay flowers on my body,” she said matter-of-factly.

Her voice was cold. Mayuzumi caught my gaze and smiled.

“Peculiar last words, wouldn’t you say?”

Crack.

Reddish-black liquid poured out. The flower fluttered down.

The candied petals smelled sweet.

The next day we departed in a hurry.

I had no time to share the my food. The freezer in my apartment was filled with plastic containers of re-seasoned stew. I sincerely hoped that Yusuke would break in and take it with him.

Letting out a sigh, I shook my head. There was no time to think about stuff. I needed to face a gruesome incident once more. As long as I continued to live with a child in my belly, there was no way to escape the supernatural. My only choice was to figure out what I could do.

I survived the fox’s ordeal, but I myself was powerless. I had to think about what I could offer.

Even if what I was doing was simply self-gratification, I had to stand proud. No other options.

I had no other choice but to assert that devouring others for your own sake was right.

“…Ugh.”

His words suddenly came back to me, and I covered my mouth. My heart was racing. A scene that I had forgotten during the days of peace flashed before my eyes.

A pale body was buried in a red sea. A boy who uttered nothing but lies spurned me as he sank beneath the surface. He was alone in that grotesque place. The rules of this world does not apply to the spirit plane. It might be difficult even to starve to death there.

‘The fox case was over,’ was glossing over it. What really happened was far more grim.

I left a person behind in that place.

“Papa?” Uka muttered with concern.

I felt a stroke from inside my belly. It ached. I guessed it was her way of making me feel better. I touched my belly gently. I could sense her delight. I took deep breaths and tried to divert my attention away from the pain in my chest.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I pushed the resurfacing image back into the recesses of my memory. I turned my face away from the eyes that were staring at me from below, and let his figure sink into the red sea.

I decided not to carry any burden. I decided not to let it bother me. I decided not to think about it.

I would never again be held captive. I would revel in his misery from the bottom of my heart and delete his existence.

I would never let the fox push me around ever again. I would never feel sorry.

I would live on with no memories of him.

“Odagiri-kun?” Mayuzumi said. “It’s time to wake up.”

I opened my eyes. I could feel the vibration of the car through my back. Dense greenery filled the outside. A box of chocolates bounced in Mayuzumi’s lap.

From Nago City, we took an express train for about three hours to Ishikawa Prefecture. After that, we met up with an academy staff at the designated station and switched to a car.

Our destination was an all-girls boarding school called Reisen Girls’ Academy.

A man who introduced himself as a teacher at said academy was driving the car. He regarded us with a skeptical gaze that was tinged with a mixture of trepidation and suspicion.

According to Mayuzumi, the headmaster and the Mayuzumi clan were close. The average teacher probably didn’t know who we were exactly. The school was originally founded to accommodate problematic girls from the upper class.

For this reason, the school was built in an inconvenient location, deep in the mountains of southeastern Ishikawa Prefecture.

Now that we were headed there, I was surprised to find that it was a much more secluded place than I had expected.

A single private road ran through the mountains, but there were no signs of it being frequently used. There was no public transportation of any kind in the vicinity, and the closest settlement was far away. There was another route used by business operators, but both required passes that teachers had in their possession.

Reisen Girls’ Academy was an educational institution with both middle school and high school. Students spent six years in a controlled space. As a rule, students were not allowed to go home even during long vacations.

The forest grew deeper.

“I see,” Mayuzumi muttered, staring outside the window. “It’s a place isolated from the outside world. Girls both live and grow up here. I know it’s an overused phrase, but a bird raised in a cage can’t survive outside. That’s what this place was built for, am I right?”

The teacher did not answer. He probably pretended not to hear her.

I silently agreed.

It was difficult for those who were ignorant of the world to become independent. They wouldn’t know how to survive. Even after the infrastructure known as school was removed from the picture, students would not be able to leave the confines of what they knew.

Mayuzumi was implying that the school was built to teach them that.

“We are almost there,” the teacher said.

I could see rectangular buildings in the distance.

Brown walls modeled after brickwork were lined with ornate glass windows. They looked more like aristocrat’s mansions than school buildings. Smaller structures stood next to them. In contrast to its location, the facilities seemed to be the height of luxury.

The academy was built along a gentle slope, with the high school on the left side of the fan-shaped clearing and the middle school on the right side, and each dormitory built next to the respective buildings.

A stone gate stood at the entrance and exit. The teacher presented the pass, and the iron gate creaked open. I glanced up; the gate itself was also ornamented.

A statue of a cat was looking down at us.

I felt a gaze through its yellow, glass eyes.

Judging from its placement, I wouldn’t be surprised if a surveillance camera was installed in its eyes.

“Impressive,” Mayuzumi said. “I can see why they’re close with the Mayuzumi clan.”

I shared the same thought.

I could sense a kind of malice from the completely-furnished space.

We returned to the car and entered the academy. The car was silently sucked into the parking lot near the entrance. As soon as we opened the door and stepped out, I caught a sweet scent.

There was a soft aroma in the air. I thought it was Mayuzumi’s candy, but apparently not.

It smelled more natural. What’s more, there was an unpleasant pungency in the fragrance.

Upon taking a deep breath, I realized what it was.

If you poured blood all over flowers in full bloom, it would probably smell like this.