Murderer in the Flower of Death (23 page)

“…Hmm. Too bad she’s not here, I want to kill her, but I can’t…! Aaaaaarrrggghhh, this is really irritating!! Of course, it’s annoying wanting to kill but not being able to, but…it’s not just that… I’m angry at you, too, Kyousuke! I’m incredibly angry at you for not thinking
about me…” The fury in Renko’s voice quickly deflated as the light in her eyes faded away. Soon she sounded frail and distant.

“…I’m so, so sad, Kyousuke. You weren’t thinking about me at all! You were thinking about some other girl… I’m heartbroken. It feels like my chest is about to split open…and all my different emotions will spill out in a disarray…and then—then the murderous melody that ties them all together will come screeching to a halt!”

As she spoke, Renko grasped at her chest as though in agony. Biting her lip and frowning, she turned her blue eyes up at him, looking utterly miserable.

Seeing Renko in such a pitiful state, Kyousuke gradually recovered his composure. It seemed that the idea that he could fall in love with another member of the opposite sex (in truth, Ayaka was his little sister, and he didn’t hold any romantic feelings toward her, but still)—the idea of that seemed to fill Renko with unbearable resentment and sadness.

She wondered why he hadn’t been thinking about her.

She had been thinking so intensely about him, so why…

Why wasn’t he thinking of her in return?

“Could it be—?”

It all clicked into place. Irritation and sadness, like a hard pressure on your chest…negative emotions like jealousy… Kyousuke remembered feeling them himself, these sweet and bitter emotions— “Renko.” He called her name.

Renko turned her face up. “…Hmm?”

Placing his hands on her shoulders, he gazed into her upturned eyes. “Ayaka is a very important girl. She’s the most important girl in the world to me, and she’s waiting for me on the outside. So, I’m sorry Renko, but I can’t return your feelings. You are not my number one. I’m so happy that you feel that way about me, but, well…that’s why…I’m sorry.”

“—”

Listening to Kyousuke’s words, Renko’s facial expression became blank, and she was silent. “The most important girl…sorry?” She suddenly screwed up her face.

“Ww…aaa…waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” she wailed loudly, clinging to Kyousuke’s chest, and gave herself over to sobbing, warm tears soaking the front of his shirt. “Waaahh…Kyousuke…rejected me…
sniffle…hic
.”

Kyousuke stroked the sobbing girl’s hair. “You like me, don’t you? And this is your first time falling in love, isn’t it? The thing is, Renko… Love isn’t something that always goes smoothly—more than anything, it’s hard. Why do you think that is? The feelings you have when you come to love someone, well…
they aren’t something you can satisfy on your own
. It’s different from simple annoyance or sadness. Throwing your one-sided feelings out there, or one-sidedly butchering another person…there’s no way you can be satisfied doing that. As long as that other person doesn’t also hold the same feelings…as long as it’s not mutual love, you won’t be satisfied.”

The force that had halted Renko’s bloodlust wasn’t jealousy, it was the bitterness of unrequited love. The moment when Kyousuke had called out Ayaka’s name—and the next moment, when she had realized clearly that the person she liked was not thinking about her—a torrent of violent dissonance had overwhelmed Renko.

Jealousy, annoyance, resentment, heartache…and then sweetness. Those emotions, gushing out one after the other, jumbling together in a chaos of feeling—that was what must have stopped Renko’s murderous melody. An intolerable discord that wore away at her heart…

“……Hmm?” Renko slowly withdrew her face from his shirt. At the corner of the slight curve of her lips peeked out a bright white canine tooth. “…That’s right, it’s unrequited love, hmm…yeah. It certainly doesn’t feel good. It feels really bad. But Kyousuke…isn’t there also a saying? Hatred is the flip side of love. If you won’t return my love, then the anger I’m feeling now—this hatred—I’ll surrender myself to it…!”

Opening her ice-blue eyes wide, Renko wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace. “There’s no way I can do that! My love for you is sooo much greater than any hate I feel. Ohh…I want to kill you…I want to kill you so badly! But you don’t think of me that way…waah. What should I do…what should I do?! Ohhhh!”

Afraid of what Renko might do, Kyousuke wiped the sweat from his forehead and smiled ruefully. “Geez, you…you say such nice things to me…thank you, Renko.”
I’m reconsidering her. Turns out Renko is a nice girl after all.

Sure, her overwhelming bloodlust might pose a problem, but that was in her nature—it wasn’t her true personality. Without the bloodlust, Renko was a pure, kind girl…just like when she wore the gas mask.

If she wasn’t, then Kyousuke would surely be dead by now. It was precisely because she was earnest and sincere about her feelings that Renko’s murderous melody had stopped. Kyousuke could live with her like this…

“Murder Maid…what the hell are you doing?”

In the fiery twilight, a threatening, girlish voice rang out.

Renko, who had been pressing her face into Kyousuke’s chest and rubbing it back and forth, suddenly stopped. From the direction of the doorway, a petite figure slowly stepped toward them, dragging something heavy in each hand.
Clank, clank, clank…

“……Ms. Kurumiya…”

“Hmph. I never thought you would still be alive, Kamiya. You’ve been fawned over by the Murder Maid with her safety device removed, and yet here you are in perfectly good health… And? What the hell are you doing, Renko? Are you up here flirting? You who can do nothing but kill? Why the hell is that?!” Kurumiya shook the iron pipe gripped in her right hand.

Lifting her face from Kyousuke’s chest, Renko watched Kurumiya approach. Like a young child being scolded, she puffed out her cheeks in a pout. “Well, wasn’t it inevitable? It’s because Kyousuke doesn’t love me! If Kyousuke would just say, ‘I love you,’ then I could kill him quite happily, but…”

Hearing Renko’s words, Kurumiya opened her marble-like eyes wide.

She narrowed her eyes. “…Oh?” The iron pipe turned toward Kyousuke. “Well, then, hurry up and tell Renko, ‘I love you,’ Kamiya. If you don’t, I’ll have to—”

“Stoooooop! I’m the one who’s going to kill Kyousuke. I absolutely, unconditionally, will not let you kill him! And if you force him to say that against his will, I won’t be satisfied…because my murderous melody won’t play!” Renko, who had stood up in great haste, protected Kyousuke with her outstretched arms.

“…Whaaat?” A deep furrow appeared on Kurumiya’s forehead.
Looking back and forth between Renko and Kyousuke suspiciously, she lowered the iron pipe. “Your murderous melody won’t play? What are you talking about? Are you broken…Murder Maid?”

“Heh-heh. Probably. But…Kurumiyaaa…” Renko’s body began slowly swaying from side to side. Bobbing her head to the inaudible rhythm, she slowly lowered her stance. “For anyone other than Kyousuke, the melody plays just fine, you know… Seeeeee?!”

Renko kicked off the ground in a burst of motion, leaping toward Kurumiya with astounding speed. She covered the ten-foot distance in less than a second. So fast it was almost impossible to see, her left arm smashed down—nearly crushing Kurumiya’s head.

“Urgk!!” With speed surpassing even Renko’s strike, the iron pipe interrupted her attack, crashing into her side. Renko’s head struck the iron fence with a
clang!
as she was thrown away, and she stayed there, not moving.

It looked like she had actually fainted. Leaning her head against the fence, she appeared to have lost consciousness, blood leaking from the place the pipe had struck.

“…Hmm, interesting. You don’t seem to be defective. Your movements haven’t dulled…on the contrary, you’re in great shape, aren’t you? You really tried there for a second! …You really are a monstrous thing, Murder Maid. Snatching away my composure, even if it was for just a single millisecond…hee-hee-he!”

…Without a doubt, Kurumiya is the monstrous one.
She’d reacted so fast to counter a surprise attack, and she’d taken Renko down with just a single blow, and now she wasn’t even bothering to acknowledge either of those things— “Really, what kind of person are you…are all of the teachers here monsters like you?”

Watching Kyousuke tremble, Kurumiya shouldered her deadly weapons. Crossing the two pipes behind her head, she grinned widely. “I’m a professional killer, Kamiya.
As are all of the other teachers
. Not third-rate junk like Rusty Nail, but top-tier professionals. I mean, obviously the teachers at a school for training killers would be murderers themselves, right? Among other things, I am called ‘Bellows Maria’…I’m quite famous. Your strength may be impressive, but I could waste an inexperienced pup like you in two seconds flat.”

“…Are you serious?”

Kyousuke had thought his situation was serious before, but now… He silently vowed to never meet any of the teachers at this school in battle—that included Kurumiya.

Even just imagining a lineup of others like her was scary…

“Well, enough of that, Kamiya…what the hell kind of witchcraft did you use, you bastard? I sent Murder Maid with explicit instructions to kill you, and she not only
couldn’t
kill her target, but
wouldn’t
do it! This is the first time we’ve encountered this kind of error. Honestly, I’m surprised.”

Her smile vanished, and she looked down on Kyousuke. In her sweet-looking eyes swirled a mysterious darkness. It contained surprise and fear—or possibly something like jealousy—all negative emotions.

“She wanted to show you her honest face, and you also seemed to want to see it… Since I’m so kind, I went out of my way to unfasten the safety device, but…this was not the outcome I was expecting. Stopping Murder Maid is something even I can do. However, calming her bloodlust is impossible, and yet you somehow managed to do just that… Why were
you
able to? What the hell kind of witchcraft did you use?”

Of course, Kurumiya had been the one to set Renko after him. Knowing that Kyousuke was innocent, she had gone out of her way to torment him, illegally putting lethal weapons in the hands of other students…removing Renko’s “safety limiter”…
What kind of grudge does she have against me that she has to go that far?
Kyousuke resisted the urge to question her about it. “Well, I don’t really know myself, but…the magic of love, perhaps?”

“Who said you could get wise? Are you making fun of me? I’ll smash you up!”

“Umm…”
…Could it be that she just enjoys bullying me?
As the thought finally occurred to Kyousuke, his teacher’s eyes lit up with a gleeful malice, as if to say,
I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out
.

To Kurumiya, a sadist among sadists, Kyousuke, who was just an ordinary person, must have seemed like a chew toy. And because he was unreasonably sturdy, he wouldn’t break from a little rough treatment.
Ah, could that be it? I’m just a source of amusement for her…could that be what’s going on?
It was almost too absurd.
Is there no PTA at this school?

“Hmph, fine, then. It sounds like it will be faster just to ask her. I’ll interrogate her while I attend to her discipline. I’ll ask her body, not her mind, using all my favorite torture methods… Heh-heh-heh!” Giggling, Kurumiya turned her eyes toward the unconscious Renko. She lowered her pair of deadly weapons and began to walk over, licking her lips.

Kyousuke rose in a panic, standing in Kurumiya’s path.

“…Hey, you’re in the way. Move. Do you want to be disciplined, too, Kamiya?”

Why did he do it, even in the face of Kurumiya’s threats? Even Kyousuke himself did not know. His body had moved of its own accord. A little late, he understood.
Oh, is it true? I don’t want to see her battered body.
The spectacle of a girl who had honestly expressed her feelings for him, being injured in front of his eyes—Kyousuke did not possess the patient disposition to silently allow that to continue.

Standing fast, Kyousuke stared into Kurumiya’s eyes, which suddenly twinkled with cruelty. “…Move? No way. If you’ve got something to ask, then ask it! There’s no need for violence, or ‘discipline,’ or torture.”

“There is, though. Plenty of need… She told you, right, Kamiya? Murder Maid is a creature purposefully built to kill, a tool. No matter the reason, a tool that doesn’t work when it’s needed is worthless. It’s necessary to quickly determine the cause of the malfunction, and thoroughly retrain the tool. In her case it’s more appropriate to say ‘retune’ or ‘repair,’ though… Anyway, don’t worry, I won’t destroy her. Murder Maid—Renko—is even sturdier than you. She can quite calmly endure a level of torture that would kill an ordinary person.”

As she finished talking, Kurumiya thrust a long, dull, metal pipe toward Kyousuke’s throat. Striking a pose with the deadly weapon, still bent at the end where it had smashed into Renko’s head, Kurumiya laughed.

“…
She
can, but how about you, Kamiya? This is perfect. If you say you won’t move aside, even after this warning, I’ll put your endurance to the test. I’ll push you until you die or until your mind craacks!”

“……”

Kyousuke still did not step aside, despite the finality of Kurumiya’s threat. Though his bones might be cracked and shattered, his heart
would never break. Once he had made a decision, he would follow it to the end. He would persevere. That was Kyousuke’s nature.
How weak would I be if I gave in to my fear now?

If I wasn’t so hardheaded, I probably wouldn’t have ended up here in the first place, but—oh, well.
This way of life was all he knew. Kyousuke had decided to protect Renko, the girl who had told him she loved him. He hadn’t been able to return her feelings, so he would endure physical pain in equal measure to her emotional anguish—that’s what he decided. That was the best way he could respond to Renko’s feelings, with gratitude.

“…Oh? You’re quite the lady-killer, aren’t you, Kamiya? That’s just fine… If that’s how you want to do it, I’ll fully savor the experience. I’ll show you the reason why Bellows Maria is feared even by other professionals…hee-hee-hee!”

Shouldering the two iron pipes once more, Kurumiya took a step toward Kyousuke. The bloodthirst emanating from this top-tier killer was palpable. Kyousuke broke into an uneasy sweat. He clenched his fists hard, as if to control his body’s shaking—

“Hyyyeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!”

A thunderous war cry roared across the rooftoop. Kurumiya’s advance halted at the sound, her smiling face instantly steeped in exasperation.

“Y-you… How many times do you have to get in my way before you’re satisfied…
Mohawk
?!” Her shoulders trembling slightly with rage, Kurumiya turned to the door with half-lidded eyes.

In the doorway stood the male student wrapped in bandages, looking triumphant. “Gya-ha-ha! You should know that already, widdle Kurumiyaaa! Until I make you surrender, of course. In other words, today! This very moment! Gya-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Behind him, the loudly laughing Mohawk pulled a huge iron ball attached to a heavy chain. “One Ton” was neatly written on the surface.

“Don’t call me little! It makes my hair stand on end. Anyway, that ball and chain…isn’t that my private property? Meaning that you snuck into my staff room? I will
not
let you get away with that!”

“Heh-heh-heh-heh. Oh, but there’s more! For instance, there’s this!!
Ta-daa!” Reaching into his breast pocket, Mohawk held aloft a pair of cute teddy-bear print underpants.

“……?!” The iron pipes slipped from Kurumiya’s shoulders.

“……?!” Kyousuke, too, gaped at the sight.

It was hard to tell which was more shocking: the appearance of the teddy-bear underpants or the fact that Mohawk was waving them about, grinning like an idiot.

“Mohawk, you…”
Must be a hard-core idiot
, Kyousuke thought.

Mohawk wore a nihilistic smile. “Hah! Sorry, but little Kurumiya is my girl… If you lay a hand on her, I won’t forgive you! I may not look it, but I’m an extreeemely jealous man, so watch out! Gya-ha-ha!”

“Uh…o-okay…well, I guess…you go for it? Ha…ha-ha-ha…” Returning a stiff smile, Kyousuke quietly moved away from Kurumiya.

An ominous, miasma-like presence swirled around Kurumiya, who stared silently, her shoulders trembling. The illusion of her flickering rage appeared to Kyousuke as dancing black flames. A low growl slipped from between her gritted teeth. “Since…when…did I…become…your…
girl
?”