“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.
✽✽✽✽✽
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.
“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.
Chapter 7: Looks Like Punching Will Solve This After All
Yuichi and the others had followed the feline Yuri into the depths of the underground tunnels.
There they had found a room locked in by a grate, with three people inside. They were Natsuki, the “Serial God Killer” he’d kicked to the curb over spring vacation, and the “Evil God” man he’d met before.
The moment Yuichi saw what was going on inside, he decided he had to destroy the grate.
“Takeuchi! Move out of the way!” he shouted.
He could tell Natsuki was in a trance-like state. But even so, she moved.
Furukami! In an instant, he unleashed the power that let him exceed human limits. He thrust out with his palm and struck the grate with all his power. Unable to withstand his power, the grate bent and went flying.
Yuichi slipped inside.
He ran to Natsuki and lifted her up. Natsuki was limp in Yuichi’s arms, having gone past her limit.
Yuichi had gone in to save Natsuki on instinct, but he didn’t actually know what was going on.
He looked around.
He was standing in a wide, dome-shaped space with an altar at the center surrounded by braziers. The walls were covered in murals with what looked like letters carved in them. The Serial God Killer was slumped on the floor a little ways away. Her arm was broken, her chest caved in. She still seemed to be alive, but she might not last long without treatment.
And then, there was “Evil God.”
He was standing in front of Yuichi, several meters away, staring at him in confusion. He really did look like a perfectly nice person. It was hard to believe he was an evil god.
“I met you people before, didn’t I?” the evil god asked. “Did you follow me here?”
“Of course not,” Yuichi shot back. “We just came here to save Takeuchi.”
“Do you know each other? That’s right, I was surprised to hear Natsuki was attending a normal school...”
Yuichi looked at Natsuki. She was crying like a child, clinging to Yuichi and trembling.
“You... what did you do to her?” he snarled.
“I’m sorry, did I owe you an explanation?” the man asked nonchalantly.
“You said you were an evil god or something, right? Is this part of your war?”
“Well, since you are a participant, I will answer you there: No, this has nothing to do with the war. Is that enough for you? I just happened to meet a little runaway child while I was in the city, and I wanted to bring her back.”
“Are you guys family or something?” Yuichi demanded. If he was, that wouldn’t make it right, but it would make things more complicated. There were some issues only family could understand.
Humanity's Extinction Actually Happens This Time With the Evil God's Revival?! Page 14
