Murderer in the Flower of Death (24 page)

Not paying her any attention, Mohawk had slipped the pair of underpants onto his head and was wearing them like an impromptu balaclava. He swung the iron chain menacingly and lifted the ball marked “One Ton” off the ground.

“…As I was saying, today is the day you’re going to surrender, wee little Kurumiyaaa! I’ll show you how serious I am! Try not to fall head over heels now!! Gyaaa-ha-ha-ha!”

No sooner had he shouted this than Mohawk took off. Swinging the iron ball overhead, he dashed headlong into a direct suicide attack.

Opposite him, Kurumiya was silent. She let both arms hang loosely and quietly closed her eyes.

“Hyeeeeaaahhh!” With a loud war cry, Mohawk swung the iron ball straight at her face.

“Diiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee!” Suddenly Kurumiya opened her eyes wide and struck the iron ball with the pipe in her right hand. With high-pitched metallic clank, the one-ton metal ball exploded into smithereens.

“…Hyeaa?” She bashed the befuddled Mohawk’s face with the iron pipe in her left hand. “Gya-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa—oof!!” Sent flying, Mohawk crashed headfirst into the iron fence and stopped moving.
He landed next to Renko, who had still not woken up, and his eyes rolled back in his head as his body began to convulse.

His ruined, caved-in face couldn’t have been shown on television. The teddy-bear print quickly became soaked with blood.

“Hmph. Finally some peace and quiet, how annoying…” Kurumiya sent a fragment of the iron ball flying with a kick. “But don’t think I’m going to let you get away with just that little scolding! The iron ball is one thing, but ruining my lucky underpants…I’m gonna be up all night tormenting you.” She approached Mohawk’s crumpled figure, the two iron pipes gone, unnoticed, from her hands.

Just as no one ever saw where she pulled them out from, so, too, was it impossible to see where she had put them away. Lucky teddy-bear underpants notwithstanding, she was a truly frightening teacher.

“…Hey, Kamiya. For your correctional duty today, clean up that garbage over there. I’m going back to the staff room. After I reinstall Renko’s safety device, I have to deal with this pig bastard.”

She lifted Renko with her right hand and Mohawk with her left. On her way out, she picked up the gas mask that was lying on the ground and turned to face Kyousuke again.

“Renko Hikawa, who can’t do anything but kill. Eiri Akabane, who can’t
bring
herself to kill; Maina Igarashi, who kills by accident… Every last one of this lot that you’re so friendly with has a bothersome defect—however, they’re all child prodigies for whom we have great expectations, based on their abilities. I’m going to use you to help correct their faults. Hee-hee-hee! …Of course, you yourself will be fully reformed as well. I’m going to make you into a splendid
professional killer
. You, the ordinary Kyousuke Kamiya!” She laughed, eyes narrow and cruel.

Kyousuke stared back at Kurumiya with an indomitable glare. “Bullshit! I’m not going to become a killer or anything close to it!! I’ll neither kill nor be killed… No matter what happens, no way. I’ll resist… Don’t think I’ll be broken that easily!!”

Kurumiya’s expression grew even more joyous under Kyousuke’s angry gaze. “…Is that so? Well, it’s good that you can be assertive. Please, by all means try to resist. If you’re confident you can endure it, that is… Heh-heh-heh, very good! I’ll tell you what… If, for three years, you can survive life at Purgatorium Remedial Academy…if you
live to graduation without killing anyone and without being killed—I promise that then, and only then,
you will be allowed to return to your normal life
. Any false charges against you will be wiped clean.”

“……?! Are you serious?!”

“Yes, very serious. I thought I told you that, Kamiya? I only speak the truth. Put it this way: No matter how strong a piece of metal might be, if you can’t make it into what you want, it’s worthless. I’ll review our conversation with the chairman of the school board. You just try and persevere…but three years is a long time, you know. I’ll make sure to take my time and have plenty of fun with you! Heh-heh!”

“…I’m looking forward to it,” Kyousuke replied, eyes fixed on Kurumiya’s retreating back. “I’ll endure it… I’ll resist all the way to the end!” Gritting his teeth, he clenched his fists so tightly he could feel his bones grind.

His situation seemed so hopeless that he wanted to burst into laughter—and yet, at the end of it all, there was a faint ray of hope.

Kyousuke vowed in his heart never to give up.

“This time I’m going to get home really late, but…please wait for me, Ayaka.”

Looking up at the sky, where the deep red twilight had begun to mix with the dark blue of dusk, Kyousuke thought to himself:
Somewhere, far away, Ayaka might be looking up at this very same sky…

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaattt?! Is it true you’ve really never killed a single person, Kyousuke?!” Maina’s hysterical voice echoed throughout the deserted infirmary. An entire day had passed.

“Hey…your voice is too loud! Drop the volume, Maina!”

“What are we gonna do if someone heard you?! Plus, coming out and repeating it is— Oww!!” Eiri, who added her complaint to Kyousuke’s, held her stomach and groaned. Propped up on the bed, she wore a stripe-patterned shirt. Her rust-red hair, usually in a ponytail, was loose, and it fell, long and wavy, about a face that, lacking its usual composure, was screwed up in pain.

“Eiri?! A-are you okaaayyy?!” Maina leaned forward in concern.

“Huh?! Oh yeah, I’m fine!” Eiri stiffened. “I’m fine, so…j-just calm down, okay?” Her body was covered in wounds. Band-Aids and gauze decorated her cheeks, and a thick wrapping of bandages covered everything else.

The
perpetrator
who had inflicted these serious injuries, painful even to look at, hung her head and apologized. “Ohh…I’m sowwy! I was really frantic back then, thinking about what would happen if I didn’t call for help quickly…oh no. And then, well…evewything just…ahm, well…”

“…It’s fine. So don’t worry about it so much. Aside from my ribs, which was Renko’s doing, it’s no big deal, see? Although those probably got worse from you falling on them over and over again. I mean, you did do that, but…a-anyway! I’m not upset, so it’s fine. Only, just…until my injuries heal, don’t come too close to me, okay?”

“…Yeah. I understand.” Maina’s shoulders drooped at the harsh truth of Eiri’s words.

Eiri’s reaction was completely understandable, however. On their way to the infirmary, Maina’s incredible clumsiness had led to one disaster after another—and as a result Eiri had suffered through an utterly terrible experience, ending up with almost twice as many injuries as before.

Kyousuke, who had entrusted Eiri to Maina, also felt very guilty.

Reflecting on the situation, and looking at Maina and Kyousuke with their heads hung in shame, Eiri let out a sigh. “…Look, we don’t need to worry about me. Let’s talk about Kyousuke now.”

“No, we do need to worry about you, but…well, you’re right, anyway. Let’s get back to what we were talking about.” Smiling at Eiri’s harsh but kind concern, Kyousuke cleared his throat, pulling himself together. “…As I was saying, the Warehouse Butcher thing is a false charge. I’m really just an ordinary person. I’m okay at fighting, but—”

“I’ll call that bluff,” Eiri interrupted. “You’re not ‘okay’ at fighting.”

“She’s right, she’s right! You’re nothing like a regular ordinary person…you’re an extremely strong ordinary person! You’re a superhuman!”

Kyousuke clenched his fists and shook his head as the two of them protested his claim. Lurking in the back of his mind were the terms of graduation set forth by Kurumiya. “I’m really not that strong… I mean, I’m probably stronger than most people, but not strong enough to survive these next three years alone. I’ve already almost died way too many times! However…”

He stopped there for a moment and looked intently at Eiri’s and Maina’s faces. These were the only friends he had met in this Purgatorium Remedial Academy. They were the only people he could trust. “If the two of you work together with me, I think we can make it somehow. Of course, I’ll also do everything I can to make sure that happens. So, I’m asking you… Please lend me your strength!” As he finished his request, Kyousuke bowed deeply to both of them. Up to this point, they’d helped each other out with this and that, but now he had made a formal request for aid. Kyousuke closed his mouth and stared at the floor.

Above his head, Eiri muttered in surprise. “You really are stupid, Kyousuke… What are you saying, after all we’ve been through? Something like that should be obvious.”

“She’s right, she’s right!” Maina cheerfully agreed. “You’re too preserved, Kyousuke! Especially in my case, I’m always depending on others… Please let me be helpful for once! I won’t be very useful, though…” Though she should have said “reserved” instead of “preserved,” it didn’t really matter. Moved by their warmth, Kyousuke looked up, wiping the corners of his eyes.

“Wow…thank you. You’re good people, both of you—ah, huh?”

In that moment, Kyousuke saw the momentary image of a black gas mask in the corner of his eye, peeking its face through a tiny crack where the door stood open, staring directly at him. But when Eiri and Maina looked over, following his line of sight, the gas mask slipped out of sight behind the door. The two girls tilted their heads in confusion.

With a strained smile, Kyousuke called out in a loud voice. “Heeey, Renko. What are you sneaking around for? Get in here.”

However, Renko’s form did not appear. She probably felt awkward, as one would expect after everything that had happened. Some moments passed, and then a frightened-sounding voice was audible from the direction of the door.

“Waah… B-but…you’re definitely mad at me. And once you get mad, you’re gonna lash out at me, and…”

“Hold on a second. Just what do you think of me? I’m not going to lash out at you, so get out here already.”

“But you must be angry! And you probably hate me! I let you see my bare face and everything… There’s no way you don’t hate me…
sniffle
.” From the sound of her voice, she was curled up on the floor.

As if she wasn’t sure how to deal with the situation, Eiri clicked her tongue and glared in the direction of the door, placing a hand over her chest, which had been further diminished by the medical chest band wrapped around it.

Eiri had taken the most severe damage from Renko’s attack. Aside from external wounds and some serious internal bleeding, one of her broken ribs had punctured a lung. The complete recovery from her injuries was expected to take at least a month.

Earlier, when Eiri had discovered that Kyousuke, who should have been beaten even more to hell, had gotten away with only a few light wounds, she’d demanded, “…Are you actually even human?”

It wasn’t hard to guess Eiri’s feelings toward Renko right about then. As if her injuries weren’t bad enough, an aura of sullenness emanated from her whole body.

“Shutupshutupshutupshutup! …You’re so annoying. If you think you were wrong, then face up to me and apologize properly. You’re pissing me off, acting like that.”

Hearing Eiri’s harsh words, the gas mask poked its head out halfway.
“…I don’t think I was wrong, and I’m not thinking of apologizing, either. I told you that was my real self. If were to apologize now, I’d be negating my own raison d’être… Plus, it’s not like you would accept an apology, anyway. You hate me! I don’t want to be hated by you guys… I understand why, but I don’t want to see it with my own eyes. That’s why—”

“That’s why you were sneaking around hiding? I thought I told you before. I feel irritated by you acting like that. If you don’t feel like apologizing, then don’t. You can say that openly. You understand why you’re hated? …Don’t decide such a thing of your own accord.”

Renko was at a loss, faced with Eiri’s unconciliatory grumbling.

Then Maina, who had been hanging her head quietly, looked up. “I…I heard the whole story from Kyousuke! Renko with her mask removed is, well… He said she can’t help killing. Somehow, I feel like that’s similar to my clumsiness. Like it can’t be helped, or there’s no way around it… Renko accepted me even after she knew about my clumsiness, didn’t she? So I won’t start hating Renko because of something like this!”

At Maina’s straightforward words, Renko appeared in the doorway again. “Maina…”

When Renko still did not come in, Kyousuke scratched the back of his head briskly and spoke up. “Anyway, you’re wearing the mask now, so it’s irrelevant, right? When you don’t have it on, of course it’ll be hard to get near you, but…that’s for safety’s sake, not because we hate you. Like a lion or something, yeah? No one hates the lion, but if you get close, you’ll end up getting attacked…it’s like that. We’re not mad about what happened earlier anymore, so hurry up and get in here. Come on.”

Seeing Kyousuke beckoning her, the halfway visible Renko fidgeted nervously. “Waah…b-but…”

“No buts about it. You said it yourself when we first learned about Maina’s clumsiness, remember? As long as we understand that that’s
how Maina is
, then we can support her and cope with her as we like…those were your words. Now I understand that that’s
how you are
. And knowing that, I have this to say: Me, and Eiri, and Maina…we don’t hate you! Yesterday we waited all day for you to show up, Renko!”

Renko froze. Silently, she looked at each one of them in turn. Eiri
shrugged her shoulders, Maina cheerfully wore an embarrassed grin, and Kyousuke’s smile was strained.

And then—

“Waaaaaaaaahhh! You guuuuuuuuuyyysss!” Renko threw open the door and rushed into the room. “Thank you…thank you, everyone! Waah…
hic…kksshh
.” She vigorously embraced each one of them in turn.

“Oww!! Idiot… If I say it hurts, it hurts!” After Eiri had pushed the teary-eyed Renko off of her, she guarded her chest with her arms. “…J-just die already…”

Maina said, “Eehh…Renko, d-don’t cry…wah…
hic
,” and started bawling in sympathy, squeezing Renko back.

Kyousuke was last, and as he patted Renko’s back while she hugged him, he said, “…To think, the day before yesterday, she almost killed me,” as if it had happened to someone else.

He felt neither wonder nor resentment. Well, he probably felt a little of each, but it went beyond those to things more like amazement and resignation…
I guess it can’t be helped.

No one could stay angry at such an innocently happy girl. Plus, the fact that a girl this sweet (and an incredible beauty without her mask) could have feelings for him gave him at least one reason not to hate the situation.

“…Kyousuke, just you wait,” Renko whispered sweetly in his ear. “Soon, I’m going to make you like me, okay?”

At this sudden and straightforward declaration, Kyousuke’s heart jumped in his chest. However, when he heard the words that came after it, his heart skipped a beat.

“
And when you do, I’ll kill you! Kksshh.
Of course, as I am now, I don’t feel like I want to kill, but…after all, I am the Murder Maid. I’ll make you fall madly in love, and then I’ll kill you. Relax, Kyousuke. I won’t let you get killed by anyone else. I’ll absolutely protect you. If you were to be killed by anyone else…the one who’s going to kill you is me. I’m the one who’s going to capture your heart.”

“……”

His blushing face had blanched white in an instant, the pitter-patter in his chest quickening to the pounding pulse of fear.

So, ummm…what is she saying?
Renko said that she was going to protect Kyousuke, just so that she could kill him.
The instant that Kyousuke fell in love with Renko, Renko would kill Kyousuke
—in other words.

“I’ll use any means necessary to get you to like me, Kyousuke!
Kksshh.
” Smiling ruefully, Renko squished her breasts together.

He had a hunch these would be a dangerous hazard.
She’ll use any means necessary, geez…

“I’ll let you do this and that and the other thing, anything you want to do with me, Kyousuke. If you want, I’ll even take off the mask! I can’t kill you now, so it’d be fine. I’ll take off my clothes and let you indulge yourself with me, exposed from head to toe!”

“What…did you say?”

“Kksshh…”
Kyousuke gulped hard at the ominous sound.

If she let him do all that, he might not be able to help actually falling for her, even knowing that she was a creature designed and produced for murder. Of course, without her bloodlust, she had a wonderful personality…an excellent sense of style…an ultra top-rank beautiful face… For Kyousuke, dead in the thick of puberty, he didn’t like it, but it was hard not to be attracted…

“…Okay, okay, stop it. You’re getting too carried away. Get away from Kyousuke.” Eiri forcibly inserted her elbow between them and wedged the two of them apart.

Renko gave a complaining groan, then turned on Eiri. “What the hell, Eiri? Are you targeting Kyousuke, too? If you are, then we’re rivals!”

“…Huh? Not really. I don’t have any interest in Kyousuke. Not at all. Seriously, none.”

“Oh, is that so! Well, then, could you not be too much of an obstacle? I mean, if we did get into a contest, the results would be obvious, but. Our styles are too different.
Kksshh.
”

“What?! What is that, are you trying to start a fight?! All I was saying was that it’s incredibly irritating for you to be making out right in front of me, and I don’t especially want to see it, so— Oww!!”

“Heyheyhey…y-you two! Please calm down! C-cawm…pwease cawm…oh no. I’b sure dat Kyousuke is gweat, but…” Looking back and forth between Renko and Eiri, between whom violent sparks were flying yet again, Maina grew more and more flustered.

At first, Kyousuke just stared at them, gaping, but gradually a smile spread itself across his face. Kurumiya had said it. Three years is a long time.

Purgatorium Remedial Academy—a strange school only murderers attended. If Kyousuke were alone, he wouldn’t be confident that he could endure even one year out of the three. Everyone around him was crazy, so his mind would probably snap before his body broke. But now…