Drip.
The bead of blood trembled once in the afternoon light, then slowly slid down the curve of skin, drawing a twisted red line before silently shattering against the ground.
Then Mashiro moved.
Swift. Distorted.
Her movements were like those of a beast in the middle of a hunt.
Within the dust and smoke, only those blood-red eyes remained, swaying into crimson lines.
“—!!”
Yukina had no time to escape.
She did not even have time to make a sound.
Jet-black claws tore through the dust mist and thrust straight toward her.
Death.
For a brief moment, Yukina saw a vision of herself being gutted open, her heart crushed without mercy.
It was the moment the original owner of this body had been killed by Mashiro in the game.
Yet such a thing did not happen in reality.
The hallucination faded. She was still alive.
The current situation, however, was equally terrible.
“Guh…”
Both feet left the ground.
The collar of her school uniform was seized in an iron grip.
An unreasonable force lifted her entire body into the air.
Her right dress shoe slipped off during the struggle.
It hurt so much…
She could not breathe.
The sensation of suffocation spread from her neck into her entire chest cavity.
The blood vessels and organs in her throat were being compressed.
Every attempt to breathe felt like trying to pierce a layer of plastic film with the tip of a needle—impossible to break through.
The thin fabric of the school uniform could no longer bear the strain.
Soft cracking sounds of tearing fibers rang beside her ears.
The instinct to survive forced Yukina to kick her legs, but the tips of her toes only scratched futilely through the empty air.
She could kick nothing.
Her vision gradually blurred.
Just as she was about to lose consciousness from the lack of air, the hand gripping her collar suddenly released.
The sensation of weightlessness crashed over her at once.
The world spun.
The hole in the tin roof, the fallen scoreboard, the dancing dust—everything before her eyes twisted into a single blur of light and shadow.
She had been thrown.
Thud.
Her back slammed hard into something.
It was soft.
It was the pile of gymnastics mats that had been stacked in the corner earlier.
“Cough—”
The air in her lungs was forced out by the impact.
Yukina’s mouth hung open, unable to draw breath for a long time.
Fine dust was shaken into the air, spinning wildly in the sunlight.
“…Cough, cough.”
She tried hard to regulate her breathing, but more dust rushed into her respiratory tract, carrying the smell of rust and old sponge.
Within the rising dust, a figure looked down at her from above.
It was Mashiro.
But it was not the Mashiro she knew on ordinary days.
Her silver-white long hair hung in disarray.
Her skin was pale like that of a drowned corpse.
Under the weak light, fragmentary crystal-like gleams faintly showed through.
Those originally clear and cold blood-colored pupils were now more than half occupied by turbid black.
Her nails had become sharp and jet-black.
They no longer looked like human fingers, but like tools that existed solely to tear prey apart.
Beneath her slightly parted, panting lips, two sharper fangs could be faintly seen.
She had already… been completely taken over by the Blood Moon Disease.
“Mashiro, you… calm down a little…”
Yukina was so frightened she wanted to cry.
She propped herself up on the soft mats and retreated inch by inch.
Her slender body trembled uncontrollably.
“Shut up.”
Yet Mashiro did not listen. She pressed down on her directly.
Her knees pinned Yukina’s thighs on either side. Silver hair hung in disarray, brushing across Yukina’s cheeks and neck.
“There’s no need to keep pretending.”
Mashiro’s voice was very low—so low it seemed scraped out from the depths of her throat.
“All of this was your plan. The time, the place, the identity, the method… from the moment we met, you were already calculating something.”
One hand pressed down on Yukina’s abdomen, pinning her firmly against the mats.
The sharp jet-black nails pressed against the thin fabric of the school uniform, as if they could slice through at any second.
“It was too fake. I should have noticed earlier. You… are from the Family.”
“N-No.”
The sensation of her organs being compressed made it nearly impossible for Yukina to speak.
She shook her head desperately.
Her pinkish-white hair swayed against the mats.
She wanted to say that she was a transmigrator, but she could not.
It seemed to be a taboo of this world.
The moment such a thought arose, an invisible force would clamp down tightly on her throat.
“I only wanted… to help you, Mashiro…”
“Help me?”
Mashiro let out a low laugh.
There was not the slightest trace of amusement in that sound—only the pain of being cut by a blade.
“Help me do what? Gain my trust, and then at the critical moment, betray me… just like now?”
“That’s not it.”
“Do you know, Takanashi-san.”
Mashiro leaned down, bringing her face close to Yukina’s until their noses nearly touched.
Turbulent black mist surged within those dark-red eyes.
The most primal instincts were flooding through her body in a frenzy.
“I hate being deceived more than anything. Especially people who… first give me hope, then tear it apart with their own hands.”
Her hand moved from Yukina’s abdomen to her shoulder.
All five fingers clamped down, the tips digging deeply into the school uniform and the skin beneath.
“It hurts…”
Yukina cried out in pain. The mist in her eyes condensed into tears that rolled down.
Mashiro did not let go.
“You say you’re not from the Family. Then prove it to me.”
“How… am I supposed to prove it…”
“Be quiet. Don’t resist.”
Mashiro straightened up, released Yukina’s shoulder, then raised her hand and pulled the ribbon from her own uniform.
The white ribbon traced an arc through the air. In the next second it wrapped around Yukina’s wrists.
The movements were clean and practiced.
In just a few motions, both of Yukina’s hands were firmly bound in front of her and tied with a knot.
It was a slipknot, but it was pulled very tight.
The edges of the ribbon dug deeply into the delicate skin.
“I-It hurts, Mashiro, don’t do this…”
Yukina tried to struggle, but it was meaningless. Every twist only made the ribbon bind tighter.
Mashiro paid her no attention.
Her hands returned to Yukina’s body.
Those slender fingers started from the collar, traced downward along the collarbones, then slipped into the inner pockets of the jacket and searched thoroughly.
The movements carried not the slightest gentleness.
This was not caressing.
It was a search, as if she were looking for something, hunting for certain clues on Yukina’s body.
“Nnh…”
Yukina bit her lower lip hard, desperately suppressing the rising discomfort.
Those hands, even longer and more slender than she had imagined, were moving across her body inch by inch.
Fingertips slid over her ribs through the thin fabric of the shirt, over the curve of her waist.
Every touch carried a scorching heat.
She felt like a mouse pinned under a cat’s paw, never knowing when that claw would lose patience and hollow out her organs.
Please, stop soon.
Yukina forced back her tears and silently begged in her heart.
When those hands reached a certain spot at her side, they suddenly stopped.
Mashiro’s fingers paused.
She slipped two of them inside and pinched something out of that pocket.
It was a phone.
Yukina’s phone.
“Unlock it.”
Mashiro held the phone up in front of Yukina.
The screen lit up, and the face recognition interface popped out.
“Don’t…”
Yukina instinctively turned her face away.
A hand seized her chin and forced her face back.
The thumb sank into the soft flesh of her cheek with enough force that her lips unconsciously parted slightly, revealing a small section of her tongue.
“I said, unlock it.”
Those blood-red pupils closed in. There was no room for negotiation.
The recognition light of the screen swept across Yukina’s wet eyes.
The phone vibrated once and unlocked.
Mashiro released her chin and began to scroll.
Message records.
Nothing unusual.
Call history.
Only numbers dialed to family and food delivery.
Social apps. Almost no friends.
Photo album—
Mashiro’s fingers stopped.
The screen was filled with photos of bento boxes.
Fried chicken bento.
Thick omelette bento.
Octopus sausage bento.
And one blurry photo that was probably a burnt egg roll from her first attempt.
Mashiro did not move.
The light from the screen reflected on her face. Something trembled faintly within those turbid eyes.
These bentos had all been made by Yukina’s own hands, and every single one of them she had tasted.
These were all… bentos that had been specially prepared for her.
Only near the very end were a few other photos mixed in.
A fat orange cat curled up sleeping in the sunlight on campus.
A Shiba Inu wagging its tail in front of a convenience store.
A black stray kitten with one drooping ear rubbing against Yukina’s palm.
No intelligence. No secret reports. Nothing related to the Family.
Only bentos, and cats and dogs.
Mashiro’s pupils wavered slightly, but the wavering lasted only an instant before being swallowed once more by deeper darkness.
“…So you’ve already disguised yourself to this extent.”
She murmured in a low voice, as if trying to convince herself, then tossed the phone aside and pressed both hands back onto Yukina’s body.
“Don’t move.”
Her tone was colder and more resolute than before.
Both hands easily encircled Yukina’s excessively slender waist, flipped her entire body over, and then slid downward along her spine.
“Wait.”
Yukina suddenly panicked, but her face was pressed into the mats and she could not speak properly.
The touch traveled from the gaps between her shoulder blades all the way down, tracing every protruding vertebra, until it reached the position just below the small of her back—
And stopped.
“What is this.”
Mashiro’s voice suddenly dropped.
Her fingers had touched something attached near the base of the tailbone—hard, carrying a faint plastic coolness.
The shape was small and delicate, pressed tightly against the skin, concealed by the edge of the belt and skirt.
Yukina’s body stiffened violently.
She resisted with all her remaining strength:
“Wait a second, not there…”
But before she could finish, a fierce pain tore through her body.
Mashiro’s fingers hooked the edge of the device and yanked it outward with force.
—!!
Yukina arched her neck and let out a near-voiceless cry of anguish.
In that instant the pain seemed to explode from the depths of her spine, spreading along every nerve ending throughout her body.
Stars danced before her eyes.
Tears burst forth.
The device left her body.
The skin was exposed to the air, carrying a strange coolness.
Immediately afterward, something sprang free.
It was a tail.
Jet-black. Slender. Ending in a small heart-shaped tip—a demon’s tail.
Having been confined inside the device for far too long, the tail finally gained its freedom.
It thrashed wildly through the air several times, then curled up and pressed tightly against the back of Yukina’s thigh, trembling.
Mashiro lowered her head.
She looked at the device in her hand that still retained a faint body heat, then at that demon tail that could no longer be hidden no matter what.
The last trace of hesitation vanished from those blood-red pupils.
“Demon race.”
Her voice had dropped to the freezing point.
“So your true identity is… a succubus.”