The brand of memory had already been struck, and the flow of emotion was completely reversed. Kawasaki Saki and Kawasaki Keika nestled beside Kanjuro, with no one else in their eyes, only this eternally eighteen-year-old existence whom they recognized as their "father" and "man." Their former independence and stubbornness had vanished into thin air under the great power of his authority, leaving only total dependence and blind following.
To them, Taishi Kawasaki's cries and struggles were nothing more than insignificant noise, the unreasonable tantrums of a strange boy trying to disturb their reunion with their "father." With a single glance from Kanjuro, they obediently watched as he tied up the constantly kicking and cursing Taishi Kawasaki and dragged him deep into the room.
The door closed.
It cut off the clamor of the outside world, and also seemed to cut off the last trace of human ethics.
No one could detail what happened inside the room. One only knew that after the surging waves of desire, a deeper darkness descended.
Kawasaki Saki and Kawasaki Keika lay submissively beside Kanjuro like two completely tamed cats, their eyes glazed and faces flushed, unconsciously murmuring, "Daddy..."
Kanjuro's fingers idly toyed with Saki's hair, but his gaze fell on Taishi Kawasaki, who was tied up in the corner, shivering with fear and anger. His voice remained gentle, yet carried a chill that could freeze blood:
"Saki, Keika, if you want to be with me forever and truly become a part of me... you need to do one thing for me."
Two pairs of similar beautiful eyes looked at him simultaneously, filled with pure questioning: "What is it, Daddy?"
The corner of Kanjuro's mouth curled into a cruel arc as he lightly spat out the words that would decide a life:
"Go, kill that noisy brat."
The air seemed to freeze.
A faint instinct, a weak throb originating from the most primitive bond deep within their blood, rippled almost imperceptibly in Saki and Keika's hearts. But that feeling was too weak and too brief, instantly submerged by the tampered memories and deep-seated obedience.
In their reconstructed worldview, Taishi Kawasaki was no longer a brother connected by blood, but merely an annoying existence attempting to destroy their "family" harmony. It was their father (Kanjuro) who had given them everything; their father's will was their truth.
"Yes, Daddy."
Without much hesitation, the two responded obediently. They stood up and walked toward the boy in the corner, whose eyes were wide and filled with disbelief and despair.
Taishi Kawasaki watched his two sisters, who used to love him most, approaching step by step. There was not a hint of familiar warmth in their eyes, only an empty, cold indifference as if they were executing an order. He wanted to call out their names, to wake them up, but his throat felt as if it were being strangled, and he could only make desperate, rasping sounds.
Changing memories meant changing the world line. In his perception, these two women had also become strange and terrifying; they were the demon's accomplices, not his family.
The process was brief and silent.
There was no intense resistance, nor were there any shrill screams.
When Kawasaki Saki and Kawasaki Keika completed that dark ritual and returned to Kanjuro's side, their hands were stained with a warmth that didn't belong to them, yet their eyes still carried a trace of expectation for praise after completing their father's task.
Kanjuro pulled them back into his embrace with satisfaction, gently kissing away the sweat on their foreheads and the blood spots that had inadvertently splashed on them.
"Very good, that's my good girls."
In the corner, Taishi Kawasaki's life force had already dissipated. To his death, he didn't understand why the world would be so absurd, or why his closest relatives would turn into murderous asuras.
As for Kanjuro, he simply embraced his newly acquired, thoroughly blackened "daughters," enjoying this twisted peace. Under his power, family bonds could be easily erased, life could be taken at will, and so-called ethics and humanity were but playthings to be kneaded as he pleased. Another soul had fallen silently in his game.
The next day, the sunlight at Sobu High School was as bright as ever, as if the blood and ethical collapse that occurred in that dark corner last night had never existed.
Kanjuro stepped into the classroom as usual, his expression composed, even showing a bit more lazy leisure than usual. What made some observant students feel a bit "surprised" yet somehow "natural" was that Kawasaki Saki, who had always been a loner with a cold expression, was actually following closely behind Kanjuro today, her face wearing a soft expression of near-dependence that had never been seen before.
When a familiar classmate curiously asked about her relationship with Kanjuro, Kawasaki Saki actually answered naturally and with a trace of imperceptible pride: "Kanjuro... is my dad."
These words were like a stone thrown into a calm lake, yet they didn't stir up much of a ripple. The surrounding students who heard it, including Yui Yuigahama, were only slightly stunned before showing expressions of realization like "So that's how it is" or "No wonder they look a bit alike," and quickly accepted this setting. In their perception, Kawasaki Saki's father was Kanjuro; this was as if it were a natural law, a fact that had never changed.
Only Yukinoshita Yukino.
She sat by the window, her cold gaze sweeping across the scene of deep "father-daughter" affection, her delicate brows furrowing slightly. A strong, indescribable sense of dissonance swirled in her heart. She remembered that Kawasaki Saki was clearly independent and stubborn before, working hard for a living and having a younger brother to take care of... A brother?
Yukinoshita Yukino was suddenly startled.
A brother... Kawasaki Saki's brother? What was his name? What did he look like? She tried hard to search her memory, but found that the impression of that "brother" was blurred to the extreme, as if through a thick fog, with only an illusory shadow and no specific details; she couldn't even remember his name clearly.
This feeling was very eerie, like a memory that clearly should have existed but had been crudely gouged out by someone, leaving only a hollow, aching scar. She looked around; other classmates, including Teacher Hiratsuka Shizuka, didn't seem to think it was strange at all that the Kawasaki family was missing a boy.
(Am I overthinking it?)
(Or... is something wrong with this world?)
She looked at the overly "bright" smile on Kawasaki Saki's face and saw how Yui Yuigahama was genuinely happy that "Saki and her father's relationship had reconciled," and a chill quietly climbed up her spine.
Kanjuro seemed to notice her probing gaze. He patted Kawasaki Saki's shoulder reassuringly, told her to return to her seat first, and then walked straight to Yukinoshita Yukino's desk.
"What's wrong, Little Yukino?" He leaned down, his voice gentle, but his eyes held a trace of imperceptible provocation. "Isn't it a good thing to see Classmate Kawasaki no longer burdened by life, reunited with her father, and her mood brightening? Haven't I done a good deed?"
Yukinoshita Yukino looked up, her ice-blue eyes staring directly into Kanjuro's bottomless ones, trying to find even a single flaw. She took a deep breath, suppressed the thumping in her heart, and her voice was cold and certain:
"Kanjuro... what exactly did you do? Kawasaki... and that sense of dissonance... did you use some... abnormal means?"
Kanjuro met her gaze and remained silent for a moment. The perfect smile on his face seemed to freeze for an instant, finally turning into an ambiguous sigh. He neither admitted nor denied it, simply shifting his gaze away indifferently.
At this moment of stalemate—
The light outside the window seemed to suddenly distort, the flow of time becoming thick and slow. The clamor in the classroom became distant and blurred in Yukinoshita Yukino's perception, as if separated by a thick layer of glass. Except for Kanjuro and her, everything around them seemed to have been paused.
An elegant, graceful figure radiating endless temptation and danger appeared out of thin air by the window, lazily leaning against the frame. She had a world-toppling beauty, her dark purple long hair moving without wind, and a world-bewitching smile on her lips; it was the Demon Sister—Chiyo.
"Mr. Kanjuro, long time no see." Her voice, with a magnetic rasp, entered directly into the minds of Kanjuro and (seemingly allowed to perceive it) Yukinoshita Yukino.
Kanjuro was not surprised by her appearance. Instead, he chuckled, his tone carrying a bit of familiar banter: "How can you bear to come out and see me? I thought you had long since lost interest in me, the contractor who completed the commission."
Chiyo covered her lips and laughed, her eyes rippling as they swept over the pale, defensive Yukinoshita Yukino, before finally landing back on Kanjuro with unabashed admiration: "Because you are so amazing, my dear contractor. So sometimes, even I don't know what reward to give you."
Her gaze seemed to penetrate all falsehoods, pointing straight to the core: "Moreover, your mastery of the Space-Time Authority has become increasingly skillful... Compared to the past when you could only unidirectionally modify individual memories, now you can easily distort the cognition of others and even the entire world, making the modified 'facts' the only 'truth'..."
Speaking of this, a strange light flashed in Chiyo's eyes. She no longer leaned against the window frame but walked toward Kanjuro with elegant cat-like steps, opening her arms in a welcoming gesture, her voice full of temptation:
"I'm here not just to catch up... but also to fulfill... a deeper 'promise' between us."
Kanjuro looked at her, the smile on his face deepening with a sense of understanding and calm control. Under Yukinoshita Yukino's shocked and complex gaze, he stepped forward and picked Chiyo up in a princess carry.
"Just as well, I also have some 'questions' I'd like to 'discuss' with you alone."
Holding Chiyo, who let out a joyful chuckle, his figure flashed and seemed to melt into the folds of space, instantly vanishing from the frozen classroom, leaving only the sunlight outside resuming its flow and Yukinoshita Yukino at her seat, her face pale and her heart in turmoil.
She looked at the place where Kanjuro had disappeared, then at her classmates who had returned to normal and were unaware of the anomaly, and then at Kawasaki Saki, whose "happy" smile was glaringly bright... (Distorted world... modified cognition... demon... promise...)
(Kanjuro... what exactly are you? And everything you've done... can it really be called a "good deed"?)
Yukinoshita Yukino clenched her fists, her nails sinking deep into her palms. Her cold logic told her that what she had glimpsed was merely a desperate tip of a massive iceberg. After Kanjuro disappeared with Chiyo, the stagnant, eerie feeling instantly faded from the classroom. The sunlight became bright and glaring again, and the laughter and book-flipping sounds of her classmates became clear once more, as if the scene of paused time and the demon's appearance was just a brief hallucination.
Yukinoshita Yukino snapped back to her senses, her heart still pounding violently. She looked around in disbelief; everyone looked perfectly normal. She couldn't help but grab Classmate Yuihama, who was happily talking to Kawasaki Saki, her voice carrying an urgency she didn't even notice: "Classmate Yuihama, just now... did you see anything... strange? Or feel like time... paused for a moment?"
Yui Yuigahama blinked her large eyes and shook her head blankly: "Strange things? No, Yukinon! Hasn't time always been fine? Did you not get enough rest last night?" Kawasaki Saki also cast a puzzled look, clearly confused by Yukinoshita's question.
Yukinoshita Yukino asked a few more nearby classmates and received similar, normal reactions. A deep sense of isolation enveloped her. Why was she the only one who noticed? That was definitely not an illusion! The feeling of the entire world being forcibly intervened and rules being distorted was too real!
She didn't know that this unique "perception" originated from an unspeakable secret at the beginning of her life—when her mother, Yukinoshita Yukino, had a relationship with Kanjuro, it coincided with Kanjuro having recently obtained the power of the dark bible, and the essence of his power was at its most active and invasive stage. During the formation of Yukinoshita Yukino's self-consciousness, she inadvertently inherited and fused with an extremely minute trace of Kanjuro's Black Magic origin traits. This trace was like a precision pollution detector, allowing her to have vague resonance and warnings when Kanjuro used his authorities on a large scale (especially powers involving the world's underlying rules like space-time and cognitive tampering), but that was all; she couldn't see the whole picture, let alone resist.
While Yukinoshita was lost in self-doubt and deep unease, Kanjuro and the demon Chiyo were already in an alternate dimension forcibly severed from reality, where the flow of time was completely different from the outside world.
There was no fixed form here; the surroundings were flowing chaotic colors and broken fragments of rules, as if it were the scene of the universe's birth. The so-called "epic battle" was not the clashing of blades imagined by mortals, but something more essential and terrifying—the collision of authorities and laws!
The light of the Eye of Truth and the Demon-Breaking Eye in Kanjuro's eyes grew intense to the extreme, perceiving the universal truths and magic loopholes contained in every one of Chiyo's movements. The Manifestation Authority of the Gospel of Matthew was used by him to perfection; with a wave of his hand, dark magic condensed into countless weapons defying physical laws—dark spears that devoured light, dimensional cracks that distorted space, and a rain of decay that eroded concepts, all pouring toward Chiyo.
Chiyo, as one of the avatars of Nyarlathotep, possessed even more unfathomable strength. She moved elegantly through the violent attacks, her figure graceful like a dance. With a light tap of her slender fingers, she could draw upon deeper chaos, neutralizing Kanjuro's attacks into nothingness or distorting their essence to hurl them back. She summoned unspeakable phantoms, whispering blasphemous knowledge enough to drive a mortal instantly insane, attempting to pollute Kanjuro's soul.
The time authority of the gospel of luke was used to the limit by both sides; time accelerated, reversed, looped, and shattered around them! One second Kanjuro's attack hadn't even been launched, and the next second Chiyo's defense was already in place; one moment space was torn apart, and the next it was forcibly mended. This was an intense confrontation existing at the conceptual level, transcending linear time!
This battle lasted "a day and a night"—calculated by the time flow of the alternate dimension they were in. When the final energy storm slowly subsided and the chaotic colors gradually settled, the figures of the two were revealed.
Kanjuro's school uniform was slightly damaged, and his breathing was a bit hurried, but his gaze remained as sharp as a blade, carrying the disdain of a victor. For the first time, obvious fatigue appeared on Chiyo's beautiful face, her hair was somewhat disheveled, and several traces of erosion from dark magic were left on her gorgeous dress.
She gritted her teeth and glared at Kanjuro, her world-bewitching eyes filled with unbelievable fury and a hint of... dread?
"You... you actually!" Chiyo's voice carried a suppressed tremble. "That last strike of yours just now... you tried to forcibly intrude your Life Source Brand into my core of existence! You want to get me pregnant?!"
Kanjuro sneered, wiping away a non-existent trace of blood from the corner of his mouth, his gaze full of aggression and a desire for control: "What? Do you think that with my current understanding of the Constitution Alteration Authority and the essence of life, coupled with the blessing of the dark bible, it's not enough for you, an avatar of Nyar... to bear my offspring?"
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