In the Service Club during the afternoon, sunlight streamed through the window, but it couldn't dispel the atmosphere that had suddenly dropped to freezing point. After Yui Yuigahama was sent away by Kanjuro, the door closed gently, leaving only Kanjuro and Yukinoshita Yukino.
Yukinoshita Yukino recounted Hachiman Hikigaya's plea for help in its entirety. Her voice was cold, but her clenched fists betrayed the lack of calm in her heart.
As Kanjuro listened, his lips initially curled up slightly, but then, as if he had heard the most hilarious joke in the world, he couldn't help but clutch his stomach and burst into uncontrollable, wild laughter:
"Haha... Hahahaha!! Hachiman Hikigaya!!! You really couldn't help yourself after all!! Hahaha!! I knew it!!" His laughter echoed in the empty club room, filled with mockery and a near-morbid pleasure.
Yui Yuigahama asked a curious question from outside the door, but was easily dismissed by Kanjuro. Yukinoshita Yukino looked at the youth before her who was laughing almost frantically, and her heart sank bit by bit. Her ice-blue eyes fixed sharply on him:
"You... you're testing him? Testing his level of trust in you?" She instantly understood the true intention behind Kanjuro's "perfect visit."
Kanjuro stopped laughing, but the smile on his face did not fade. He walked toward Yukinoshita Yukino step by step until their noses almost touched. He reached out and, with an irresistible force, gently tilted Yukinoshita Yukino's chin up, forcing her to look directly into his bottomless eyes, which were currently burning with a dangerous fire.
"Yes, I am testing him," Kanjuro's voice was low and magnetic, like a demon's whisper. "I acted so perfectly, so gently, like a true 'good classmate' and 'good guest.' I gave him and his family everything they expected of 'normalcy'... yet he still hides in the shadows, looking at me with those eyes that see a monster, convicting me in his heart."
His thumb gently caressed Yukino's smooth jaw, his gaze becoming even deeper: "Guess what happens to the outcome of this game when a person is given the greatest 'benevolence' but repays it with the deepest 'fear' and 'distrust'? Isn't this... his own doing?"
"You bastard!" Yukinoshita Yukino violently brushed his hand away and rebuked him sharply, her voice trembling with anger. "How can you toy with people's hearts like this! This isn't a game at all!"
However, her reprimand was brutally interrupted by Kanjuro. He suddenly leaned down and captured her lips, sealing all her protests and anger in a kiss full of predatory intent. Yukinoshita Yukino struggled with all her might, her hands pounding against his chest, but the disparity in strength was like a mayfly trying to shake a tree.
Gradually, her struggles weakened, her body pinned rigidly between the cold wall and his burning chest. Her eyes were wide, looking at Kanjuro's handsome face so close at hand—a face written with a desire for control. Her ice-blue eyes were filled with humiliation, confusion... and a sliver of sinking throb that even she couldn't deny. A single clear tear fell silently from the corner of her eye, rolling down her pale cheek.
Kanjuro ended the long kiss and pulled back slightly. Looking at Yukino's dazed expression and the tear stain, his tone returned to its previous indifference, even carrying a hint of cruel assessment:
"Don't worry, this game... hasn't truly ended yet. He, Hachiman Hikigaya, temporarily still has a chance to live." He spoke as if announcing a mercy.
Yukinoshita Yukino seemed to have all her strength drained away. She slid down the wall to sit on the floor, hugging her knees and burying her face in her arms, her shoulders trembling slightly as she let out suppressed, desperate sobs.
"I beg of you... Kanjuro... don't do these things anymore, okay?" Her voice came from her arms, heavy with nasal congestion and a deep sense of powerlessness. "Don't hurt innocent people anymore..."
Kanjuro looked down at her curled-up figure, tilted his head, and a complex expression—a mix of pity and mockery—appeared on his face.
"Yukino, you're a smart woman, very smart," his voice was terrifyingly calm. "Many things, you should have realized long ago. Especially... regarding the 'identities' of you and me, and that unbreakable 'relationship'."
He deliberately emphasized the words "identities" and "relationship," like a heavy hammer striking Yukino's heart.
"You can't persuade me," Kanjuro's voice carried the final judgment. "No one has ever been able to change what I decide to do."
Yukinoshita Yukino suddenly raised her head and looked at him with tear-filled eyes, fragments of the past crashing into her mind like a tide. She choked up and finally spoke the secret buried in the deepest part of her heart, one she hadn't even wanted to face herself:
"I have always... liked you, Uncle Kanjuro... ever since I was little..."
Her voice trembled, filled with pain and confusion.
"But... I don't know when it started... when I realized that you, Uncle Kanjuro, seemed to like getting especially close to me and Haruno, so close it crossed the boundaries of an elder, making those... very intimate gestures... when I began to gradually understand what true emotions are, and what the boundaries of ethics are..."
She took a deep breath, as if using up all her strength:
"I... I wanted to isolate you, to stay away from you..."
These words revealed the root of all her contradictory behaviors—that distorted emotion born from childhood dependence, yet tainted by the warnings of ethics and intuition during her growth. She craved that special attention from "Uncle Kanjuro," yet feared the all-consuming darkness represented behind that attention.
Listening to her confession, the cold smile on Kanjuro's face didn't change at all; instead, it became even more profound.
"Isolate? Stay away?" he repeated softly, as if savoring the powerlessness of those two words. "Unfortunately, Yukino, from the moment you were born—or rather, from even earlier... you were destined to be unable to escape. In this game, you, I, Hikigaya, everyone... are already part of the play."
He stopped looking at her, turned and walked toward the door, leaving Yukinoshita Yukino alone, sitting on the cold floor, drowned by endless despair and that inescapable, distorted love.
The sunlight still shone on the Service Club, but it could no longer illuminate the winter in her heart. The door of the Service Club closed gently, cutting off Kanjuro's departing figure, and seemingly cutting off the last faint light in Yukinoshita Yukino's world. She sat slumped on the ground, burying her face deep in her knees, her thin shoulders trembling slightly as her suppressed whimpers sounded particularly clear in the silent room.
Just then, a slight noise came from behind the storage cabinet in the club room. Yui Yuigahama cautiously poked her head out, her face filled with worry and a hint of guilt as if she had done something wrong. She hadn't gone far just now but had secretly hidden herself; she had heard almost every word of the tension-filled and desperate conversation between Kanjuro and Yukino.
She tiptoed to Yukino's side, squatted down, and gently patted Yukino's back, her voice soft as she tried to comfort her:
"Yukino... don't think of Daddy Kanjuro like that..." Her tone carried a sort of blind conviction. "Daddy Kanjuro is really good to us. He buys me delicious food, plays with me, protects me... and..."
Yui leaned close to Yukino's ear and said in an even smaller voice, as if sharing a secret:
"Daddy Kanjuro... he hasn't actually done anything truly overboard to me... he's always been very gentle. I believe in him; he must have his own reasons."
Yukinoshita Yukino slowly raised her head and looked at Yui's face, which was written with innocence and unconditional trust, through teary eyes. This was her half-sister; they shared some of the same blood, yet she seemed to live in another pure (or perhaps foolish) world. She didn't know whether to envy this blinded simplicity or feel sorrow for the destruction it might lead to. A thousand words were stuck in her throat, finally turning into a silent sigh and an even deeper sense of powerlessness. She didn't have the strength to refute or explain the abyss hidden behind that gentleness; she could only look desperately at the door where Kanjuro had long since vanished, as if she could see the unstoppable darkness gradually spreading.
Night fell. Deep night.
The moonlight was obscured by thick dark clouds; tonight was destined to be a sleepless night.
Inside the Hikigaya household, the lights were warm, but they couldn't dispel a certain tension lurking in the air. Komachi Hikigaya sat cross-legged on the living room carpet, absentmindedly watching a funny variety show on TV, but Kanjuro's words about the "game not starting" and "keeping it up" kept echoing in her mind, her mood complex and hard to describe.
Hachiman Hikigaya was like a startled bird, sitting upright on the sofa. His eyes swept toward the door and windows from time to time, and his ears were pricked, catching any trace of unusual sound. He didn't know how the conversation between Yukinoshita Yukino and Kanjuro had gone, and that sense of pending uncertainty was like a blunt knife, repeatedly cutting at his nerves.
Just then, the sound of a key turning came from the entryway—it was his father, Mr. Hikigaya, coming home from work.
Hachiman Hikigaya and Komachi's spirits both lifted simultaneously. Especially for Hachiman, his heart relaxed slightly, as if his father's return could bring a sense of security.
However, just as Mr. Hikigaya pushed open the door, stepped one foot into the entryway with a face still carrying the fatigue of a day's work, and prepared to say "I'm home"—
A sudden change occurred!
A viscous, pitch-black tentacle, seemingly condensed from pure shadow and malice, shot out from the darkness outside the door without warning! Its speed was so fast it exceeded the limits of the naked eye!
Puchi—!
A sickening, muffled sound of flesh being pierced!
That pitch-black tentacle, with precise cruelty, directly pierced through Mr. Hikigaya's neck from the front!
The expression on Mr. Hikigaya's face froze in a mix of fatigue and the slight relaxation of being home. His pupils dilated instantly, filled with extreme shock and incomprehensible pain. His mouth was open, but he couldn't make a sound; only blood surged from the wound and his mouth like a burst pipe.
In the next second, the tentacle retracted violently!
Along with the pierced neck and head—Mr. Hikigaya's head was brutally torn from his torso by that terrifying force!
In the darkness, Kanjuro's figure slowly emerged. He was still wearing the Sobu High School uniform, with that calm, even "gentle" smile on his face, as if he had just casually swatted a mosquito. His slender fingers were carelessly holding Mr. Hikigaya's head, which was still dripping blood and frozen in expression.
Then, under the gaze of Hachiman Hikigaya and Komachi Hikigaya in the living room—who were completely paralyzed, their pupils shaking, and their brains entirely blank from this horrifying scene—Kanjuro carried the head like an ordinary object. Effortlessly and elegantly, he stepped over the headless corpse lying in a pool of blood and pushed open the inner door connecting the entryway to the living room.
His gaze passed over the completely petrified Hikigaya siblings, whose souls seemed to have been sucked out, and landed precisely on Mrs. Hikitani, who was busy in the open kitchen with her back turned to it all, unaware of the impending tragedy.
Under the warm light, the aroma of food still lingered.
The variety show on TV was still emitting noisy laughter.
And the demon, carrying the head of her beloved, had already stepped into this once warm home.
The true, bloody "game" began its final act at this moment in the most cruel way. Time seemed to be held by the throat by an invisible giant hand.
In the living room, the fear on Hachiman Hikigaya's face froze into a distorted mask. He opened his mouth but couldn't make a sound. His pupils reflected the horrifying sight of Kanjuro holding his father's head, and his sister Komachi slumped on the floor, tears falling like broken pearls but suspended in mid-air. The noisy laughter of the variety show on TV was stuck on a strange pitch, no longer changing. Splattered blood droplets hung in the air like some cruel artistic decoration.
The entire space fell into a deathly, suffocating gray-white. Only Kanjuro was the absolute existence within it who possessed color and the ability to act.
He casually placed Mr. Hikigaya's head, still bearing its shocked expression, on the shoe cabinet by the door, as if placing an inconsequential ornament. Then, with unhurried steps, he walked through the frozen pool of blood toward the kitchen.
Mrs. Hikitani was holding a posture of leaning out from the kitchen, her face showing a hint of confusion at the noise from the entryway and the focus of preparing dinner that hadn't yet shifted. Her time was also frozen.
Kanjuro walked up to her and stopped. He gazed at this face, which bore some resemblance to Hachiman Hikigaya and still had its charm but was now filled with a static blankness. The "gentle" smile on his face didn't change at all; instead, it added a trace of hair-raising "tenderness."
He slowly raised his hand, his well-defined fingers carrying a gentle touch that was almost like pity, lightly covering Mrs. Hikitani's forehead. His fingertips were icy cold, forming a sharp contrast with the fake warmth on his face.
In the absolutely still space-time, his voice sounded low and soft, like a devil's sweet talk that only he could hear:
"No need to worry, no need to be sad... soon, you won't remember these pointless pains."
"You will have a new beginning... a happy beginning where only I exist."
He didn't immediately launch a large-scale Space-Time Authority; that required more precise operation and energy. At this moment, he was merely using his power to maintain the absolute stillness of this area and applying a preliminary influence to ensure Mrs. Hikitani was in a state of zero resistance, ready to be manipulated.
Then, he reached out his arms and, in a possessive posture almost like a princess carry, lifted Mrs. Hikitani's stiff body. There was still a bit of flour on her apron, and her body maintained its forward-leaning posture, looking like a doll in Kanjuro's arms.
Holding her, Kanjuro turned around. Without even looking at the Hikigaya siblings, who were frozen like statues of despair and grief, he walked straight toward the hallway leading to the bedroom.
His steps were steady, and in the silent house, only the sound of his own footsteps echoed, sounding exceptionally clear and hollow.
The bedroom door was pushed open by an invisible force and then gently closed after he entered.
Completely isolating the frozen tragedy and despair outside.
In this forcibly detached fragment of space-time, the demon carried his "trophy" into a more private and darker realm. Mrs. Hikitani's fate and the final outcome of this family were pushed toward an unknown and desperate abyss behind that closed bedroom door. In the living room, only two young and broken hearts remained, screaming frantically in the frozen time but unable to make a sound.
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