Catching hold of Kujou Katora's fingertips, Su Yuzu tugged her along toward Keigunen Private Academy.
When it came to Kujou Katora, Su Yuzu always preferred to take only her fingertips rather than her whole hand.
It was probably that sense of unsteadiness — the feeling that Su Yuzu might lose her grip at any second — that drew every nerve in Kujou Katora's body taut. She lived in dread that Miss Yuzu would let go.
It was less that Su Yuzu was leading Kujou Katora by the hand,
and more that Kujou Katora kept offering her fingertips up into the girl's palm herself.
The light in Kujou Katora's eyes wavered even as she forced herself to look unmoved, straining to hold her dignity together in front of everyone — in front of Miss Yuzu.
Her whole body had gone rigid, and still she worked at looking obedient.
Simply sensing Kujou Katora's state was enough to make Su Yuzu's smile threaten to escape her control.
But~ no laughing. Unless she truly couldn't hold it in.
Su Yuzu's brows and eyes curved into a lovely arc.
Kujou Katora watched the girl's delight. It wasn't anything that should have counted as Humiliation, and yet her pulse quickened, thudding harder and harder.
As a Blood Manipulation Esper, Kujou Katora could all but hear that heartbeat roaring beside her ear.
"Miss Yuzu…"
"Master Yuzu… is happy."
So it was true—
Miss Yuzu did like her.
The same way she herself liked dogs.
Dogs were obedient.
She… she could be obedient too.
"Yuzu… Master Yu— Miss Yuzu…" Kujou Katora's voice was soft to begin with, and in this state of near-total collapse it came out sounding like wheedling.
Su Yuzu came to a stop and turned to look back at her.
In the mild sunlight, Kujou Katora's long black hair spilled obediently down her back, and those crimson eyes held nothing but meekness.
One hand was caught in Su Yuzu's.
The other… tugged lightly at the chain that hung from the collar at her throat, down across her chest.
The matte black sheer fabric over Kujou Katora's chest gave off an eye-catching sheen in the sun, the tone of her skin showing faintly through.
Set against that black sheer, the silver chain seemed to glitter in the light.
"Raptor?" Su Yuzu said, looking at her.
And then—quick as anything—Kujou Katora peeled the leather glove off her left hand.
The one-piece black sheer she wore ran all the way up to the base of her middle finger, hooked in place by a silver ring.
Beneath the glove, the woman's palm was pale, her fingers long and slender, drawn in genuinely beautiful lines.
Gingerly, Kujou Katora tried to slip her fingertips back into Su Yuzu's palm, wanting to be held again.
Having Master Yuzu take her fingers through a layer of leather no longer satisfied her.
She wanted more. More, more, more—
Even if it was only a hand, she wanted Master Yuzu to take it directly, skin against skin, not through a glove.
The smile on Su Yuzu's face turned distinctly wickeder.
She plucked the discarded glove out of Kujou Katora's hand, tucked it into her Material Inventory, and then—under Kujou Katora's nervous stare—closed her fingers around Kujou Katora's bare hand.
The hand that had been shut away inside that glove wasn't exactly dry.
But it wasn't clammy with sweat either.
Quite the opposite—
It was warm. Soft.
Su Yuzu towed Kujou Katora straight in through the gates of Keigunen Private Academy.
Off to one side of the academy gate, the young female superintendent watched that strange look on Lady Kujou's face — something caught somewhere between bliss and Shame. She had already witnessed Lady Kujou's submissiveness toward Miss Soga once before, but… seeing that expression on Lady Kujou's face a second time,
she still found it nearly impossible to square this Kujou Katora with The Empire's Hound whose savage reputation rang through the entire Investigation Bureau — the woman who grinned like a devil while swinging a chainsaw and carving Aberrants into eight pieces.
"That's enough—"
"If you don't want Lady Kujou to silence you for good, some things… are better not looked at too closely." Miss Hayabusa, her face perfectly blank, planted herself in front of the young superintendent.
The silencing she referred to
meant transferring the girl in front of her out of the field-duty department and into the Fourth Action Division.
After watching Lady Kujou strip off her glove and hand it to Miss Yuzu, and then get hauled bodily into Keigunen Private Academy by a smirking Miss Yuzu, a strange, gentle warmth surfaced in Miss Hayabusa's eyes — something poised between envy and Doting.
She envied her superior for finally finding a Harbor where her heart could moor.
Even if the superior she had always taken for a sadist was now showing an entirely opposite side of herself in front of Miss Yuzu.
But… handing the chain of the collar at her throat over for Miss Yuzu to hold—
that was far better than her superior loathing Aberrants like a woman possessed, walking a tightrope on the very lip of falling into the Abyss.
As for the Doting…
There was a reason that Hayabusa — the one forever catching her superior in the act, the one forever reining Kujou Katora in — had served all these years as second-in-command of the Investigation Bureau's Fourth Action Division without a scratch on her.
Miss Hayabusa, who had lost her Little Sister in an Aberrant disaster, and Kujou Katora, who had lost her Sister in an Aberrant disaster.
Between the two of them ran a subtle, unspoken understanding.
"Tell me everything about Miss Yuzu's situation, from the top." Miss Hayabusa drew her gaze back from the retreating figures of Kujou Katora and Yuzu and looked at the superintendent in front of her.
"This time around, the circumstances are somewhat abnormal."
If the Kujou Katora who had stood at the gates of Keigunen Private Academy earlier, radiating menace like some vengeful god, had been a woman nobody dared look at directly,
then the Kujou Katora whose hand Su Yuzu was holding
was as docile as a cat waiting for her owner to rub the base of her tail.
Stripped of that ferocious aura, what remained was a flawless, exquisite face, delicate makeup with the faintest smoky-eye edge, and a figure that had been more than eye-catching to begin with — dressed, on top of everything else, so very… distinctively.
The head-turn rate was close to a hundred percent.
Especially since the person holding Kujou Katora's hand was Su Yuzu.
The members of the Yuzu-hime Fan Club were one step away from walking right over to beg for a photo together, then asking which anime character the woman beside their kouhai Yuzu was cosplaying.
But… this was Keigunen Private Academy, after all.
There were also students who had dealt with the Investigation Bureau, who had heard a thing or two about the Fourth Action Division. When they caught sight of Kujou Katora and confirmed who she was, their faces went from flat disbelief to the look of someone who had just seen a ghost.
That woman… was really The Empire's Hound, the Crimson Yama, the one whose name made people jump at every whisper of wind and every shadow of grass?
It had to be fake.
Su Yuzu, naturally, cared nothing for any of that.
Her first stop, with the ease of long habit, was to bring Kujou Katora to the crepe shop for the daily Feed.
"Is a chocolate cream crepe all right for you, Raptor?"
"I want the orange cream one~"
"We can swap partway and eat each other's."
Kujou Katora's consciousness seemed on the verge of evaporating.
Swap… and… eat…?
She had no idea how to refuse.
"S-sure…"
"This afternoon Raptor can come play games with me at my place."
"My bed's pretty big."
"There's supposed to be a good movie tonight. Want to go see it with me, Raptor?"
"Okay—"
Happiness had come too fast and too suddenly, like a tide flooding in all at once, past any hope of holding back.
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