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alpindale

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light-novels

like 24

Her purity, her naïveté. Her good works and her goodwill.

If it had all been an act─then still, even after being saved.

“It’s over, this is the end! The truth’s been revealed… All the killing─the broken promises, the betrayals─”

Betrayal, betrayal, betrayal.

Tricking your friends first, in order to trick your enemies.

Repeated over and over and over.

Hime-chan was so pitiful. Too painful to look at. Too painful to abandon.

“That’s…enough, Hime-chan─”

“Shut up, be quiet, shut your mouth! Stop calling me that! Why don’t you learn some manners!” yelled Hime-chan, glaring at me this time, her eyes bugging out of her head. It was an expression without a shred of purity or loveliness. And yet, no expression could’ve aroused more pity in me. “Don’t be kind to me! Don’t get up on your high horse and think you can do me a favor by being my friend! It’s─it’s disgusting!”

“…Hime-chan.”

“What the hell is that face? Do you feel bad for me? Compassionate, even? And you were so repulsed by murder…how kind of you. But─it’s not just the Director, and Saijo and Hagihara. You know that, right?”

She scrutinized me with something like pity in turn, her eyes filled with a deep-seated malice that didn’t suit her at all.

“Have you still not figured out─why none of the ‘faculty’ or ‘security’ ever showed up?”

How could they, when that was all taken care of before I ever even set foot on the school grounds─

I tried to envision it.

The faculty building. The staff room.

Just beneath the floor of the Director’s office─sealed up tight.

A bloodbath unfolding within─

“Murder” didn’t cover it anymore.

“Serial killer” didn’t quite work either.

That enclosed space.

Obstructed on all four sides by walls, with no way to see inside. To see living people─or dead people. No way to see inside, not until the walls crumbled.

And─

By that time, it’d already be too late.

“Either way, this academy is finished.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Aikawa said. “But you don’t get to decide when it’s over.” She pointed at Hime-chan. “I won’t let you.”

“I keep telling you! Enough already, Ms. Aikawa! Enough, it’s all over!”

Calling Aikawa by her last name─Hime-chan flicked up both arms.

Whum whum whum─that sound, like a child whimpering, like the air being rent into a vacuum, reverberated down the hall, all of it aimed at Jun Aikawa. Because of their thinness and speed, it was impossible to visually track them. Yes, it was an undeniable fact: the moment we’d set foot in this hallway, we were caught in Hime-chan’s spider web. Visibility was poor, and even the world’s strongest had no hope of avoiding every one of the myriad “lines” closing in on her from all directions by way of every bump and hollow of this locked-room hallway.

But the contractor─

Didn’t even try to avoid them at all.

The invisible wires coiled all around Aikawa’s body. Hime-chan herself was so taken aback that she stopped moving, and as she stood there staring in surprise, Aikawa snarled, “What’s the problem? Oh, sorry, did you want me to try and dodge these? Not losing your nerve this late in the game, are ya? Or, hahaha, were you hoping I’d end your life for you?”

“…nh. Guh.”

“Bull’s-eye, huh? Well, sorry to disappoint, but I’m eeeeever so fond of you. I will ostentatiously, thoroughly, and without reservation spare no effort in sparing you. Don’t expect me to be your easy way out. I’m not going to kill you, I’m going to give you all the tepid love I can muster, so we’ll never be apart again. Ha, though I’m pretty sure death might be the only way to cure you of your stupidity.”

“Don’t you, make fun, of me…” Chewing her lower lip, Hime-chan shivered uncontrollably. Not in fear, not anymore. This was rage─rage at Aikawa. Or was it─the battle frenzy of the zigzag berserker?

“You’ve really improved, though, allow me to compliment you on that. Casting your webs so precisely without weighting the ends of the lines… You could find a lifetime gig with an acrobatic troupe if you wanted. Who are you, Takuya Yamashiro? Way to perfect such a pain-in-the-ass skill. Could it be? Do you still feel beholden to her?” Aikawa sneered at Hime-chan, clearly mocking her.

At being openly insulted like this despite holding the overwhelmingly superior position─and the home-field advantage, Hime-chan’s face twisted and she screamed with all her might, “Do you not even realize this is checkmate, Ms. Aikawa?!”

“Look at this jumped-up pawn, prattling on and on. Sorry to say I was born a queen─what do I care if lesser pieces like the king get taken?”

Hime-chan seemed determined─but then, for an instant, she hesitated. An instant is only an instant, though, and she whipped both determined arms into the air at the same time. “This is the end of the line! Your objective─”

And for the final time─

“First, despair. I hit my cutoff with you a long time ago, you little shit.”

And─and I must’ve been seeing things, but Aikawa smiled with a certain tenderness.

“Also, relax. Because the bonds between us can never be cut.”

(2) chapter number given is likely out of range: 0

Chapter: 30

Suspension 1

2

Before she could snap her arms down for the final time, Hime-chan herself collapsed to the floor of the hallway. Or perhaps I should say, she pitched forward, as if her body was being dragged down by her own arms. She lay facedown in a very unflattering position, with a look on her face that made it clear she had no idea what had happened.

“Huh? What the…”

“Anything the matter? Lose your balance? Hm?”

Aikawa─had not, of course, been sliced to pieces. She just stood there grinning, acting like she had nothing whatsoever to worry about. Hime-chan immediately tried to get up, but in this too she failed, ending up flat on her face like a passed-out drunk.

When I looked at Aikawa─there was no indication that she’d done anything at all. Of course not, at this distance how could she? In the absence of any missile weapons, and without recourse to superpowers, to send Hime-chan sprawling like that…

Or wait.

Was her position─slightly different than it had been before?

“Seems like you use a lot of different ‘lines’ to create variation in weight, speed, and thickness. Still, the principle of the weaver’s attack is always the same. Using ‘speed’ and ‘thinness’ to cut. Kind of like slicing bread, I suppose. In which case there are, broadly speaking, two ways of avoiding it─‘moving slowly.’ And ‘moving quickly.’”

Aikawa’s words were clearly contradictory. Hime-chan ignored them in her frantic attempts to get back up, but every time she tried, she went sprawling ungainly on the floor once more, as if something was dragging her back down. Almost as if─almost as if she was a puppet, dancing on an unseen string…

“Ah.”

“Light bulb finally going off, Iitan? Yup, you got it. As long as I’m outside that ‘web barrier’ she’s got strung up─regardless of what surfaces she’s using as mediating pulleys, the lines wound around me right now are all connected to her gloves. So it’s a piece of cake, right? As long as I move faster than Himecchi does, I’m fine. As long as I’m faster, and stronger.”

The moment I figured it out─Aikawa’s position shifted again. And at the same time, Hime-chan collapsed again to the ground as if dragged down by her own arms. I guess in principle it was like holding a dog’s leash. But all Hime-chan had to do was move her fingers. In that sense, her small stature and short reach were well-suited to being a weaver. She could lift and lower her finger much more quickly than the average person, which gave her a serious advantage. By contrast, Aikawa had to move her entire body, since the lines were wrapped all around her. Very much easier said than done.

“The drawback to this as a killing technique is the time lag between impetus and impact. And that lag is decisive when you’re dealing with me. However fast your lines may be─against me, they’re light-years too slow. And even if we move at the same speed, victory goes to the stronger─it’s just a tug of war, Ichihime. Weakness is tragic, isn’t it. Turns out strength is important after all. I don’t know how dangerous these threads you’ve got wrapped around me are, but as long as I can move faster than them, they’re nothing but accessories. Ha, nothing more than a street performer’s trick. If you can only target people who are standing still, you’ll never be a killer like her.”

“Sh-Shut up─shut up shut up─” Hime-chan glared at Aikawa from where she lay immobile on the hallway floor. “H-How can this─”

It was a good question, how can this be? Who would ever expect their target to move faster than the flick of a finger? It felt like it wasn’t Aikawa who was fast but us who were slow, like Aikawa herself wasn’t moving and the observers, me and Hime-chan, were revolving around her in tandem. There was no wind-up and no follow-through, very much indeed like a superpower, like she was teleporting.

There was no time lag whatsoever between when Aikawa decided to move and when she’d already begun moving. Starting and stopping simultaneously─it wasn’t that she acted quickly, she acted so quickly that one action became the next.

“Aww. I guess this is how it goes when your opponent is just some little brat,” Aikawa sneered maliciously, looking down her nose at Hime-chan where she lay like a baby crawling across the floor. “A duel to the death with you turns out to be pretty boring after all. I’m done.”

“Done? Please, give me a break─in that case, there’s still a way!” groaned Hime-chan. “Even if you can neutralize my direct attacks, Ms. Aikawa, as long as you can’t cross this barrier─”

“You’re not listening. I told you, the bonds between us can never be cut, we’re connected.”

Aikawa opened her fist, revealing the stun gun clutched inside it. Hime-chan’s eyes went wide, but it was too late. There was no way she could reel in her lines from where she lay crumpled on the floor, and Aikawa had most likely tangled them up anyway. Finally realizing this, Hime-chan tried to get the gloves off her hands, but─

She was, indeed, too slow.

Against Jun Aikawa, she was light-years too slow.

The contractor unhesitatingly jabbed the tip of the stun gun into her own arm and pressed the switch.

It was all over in a flash─would not be a wholly accurate statement.

It was over before that moment arrived, long before, the instant Hime-chan decided to take on Aikawa.

Hime-chan tensed up like someone had pushed the pause button. Then, she started twitching like a shrimp and flipped violently over to lie face up with her back arched, freezing once more in that position─and at length, as black smoke started to rise from her smoldering form, she slumped to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She seemed to have completely lost consciousness, but her body continued twitching and spasming.

“Dear oh dear…and after I took the trouble to change and everything.”

Aikawa looked down with regret at her clothing, scorched like Hime-chan herself, and tugged idly at the frayed ends. Parts of her shoulders and belly were exposed, which was quite a sight, but it wouldn’t do to stare so I turned to peer at Hime-chan once more. She was still twitching. The spasms in her fingers, which had borne the brunt of the direct electrical discharge, were particularly severe. They continued to vibrate minutely, as if each was a distinct creature with a will of its own.

“Gwa. Right, I guess aramid fiber is an insulator. There’re still a few lines left. Is this Kevlar? Shit, am I gonna have to unravel these myself? What a goddamn pain in the ass.”

Grumbling away, Aikawa began to extricate herself from the remaining lines that hadn’t been fried by the electric shock. Without their master to control them, they were apparently not easy to reckon with, and she seemed to be struggling. Enjoying the sight of Aikawa in this fix, I said, “So this is what the stun gun was for, huh?” Asking this sort of question also fell within the purview of my job.

“Yeah. I toldja, didn’t I? That ‘the need arose to get a certain person out of here in one piece.’”

“I was sure it’d been for me.”

“Hunh? Why? I’d never do something so horrible to my beloved Iitan,” Aikawa dissembled. “Well, worrying about foolish brats is all part of the job. If I was going to take on her Zigzag directly, I couldn’t do it without injuring her.”

So being armed actually made Aikawa weaker?

Maybe an explanation is unnecessary, but here we go: Aikawa had applied her pocket-sized stun gun, which put out enough voltage to knock out a person’s memory of the past two or three days (and that was with the limiter on), to Hime-chan’s “lines.” This time Aikawa had the limiter off; she unleashed the maximum voltage, piling on more than the usual current. It was basically like touching a power line. This was no ordinary hit from a stun gun…it was a massive burst of power, more like an explosive. Sparks went flying all around the hallway. It was such a mindboggling discharge that I’d gotten a taste of it just from standing nearby.

No matter how robust the various strings might’ve been, it was difficult to stand up to such high voltage and high heat at the same time, and the majority of them had been fried instantly─but that instant while they were still intact was more than enough. Their master had taken maximum damage. Excepting the insulators among them, all of the “lines” had become Aikawa’s weapons.

If her opponent’s trump card was speed, Aikawa would overpower her with that very speed. If they used strings against her, she would exploit those very strings. Hime-chan thought she’d caught Aikawa in her web─but it was the other way around.

No matter how large a web the spider weaves.

The eagle can penetrate it effortlessly.

“…”

Connected to the same lines, Aikawa was of course subject to the same conditions. And not only that (I don’t know what she was thinking), she’d applied the stun gun directly to her own arm, so she must’ve taken the same high─no, an even higher voltage than Hime-chan. You could say it was like settling things with a suicide bomb, except that Aikawa seemed totally fine. She had lost neither consciousness nor her memory, and was unharmed save for her clothing─it was lined with custom insulation, hence the costume change… That kind of explanation would certainly add up, but I didn’t see the need for such trivial arithmetic in the face of this contractor. Jun Aikawa could probably crash a plane into the crater of a volcano and walk away without a scratch. Theorizing about someone who transcends theory is a losing proposition. Even if it seems illogical, zero factorial still equals one.

“Whoa, these threads are all tangled! Ow, they’re biting into my skin! What are you standing around for, help me! Are you the Devil or something?!”

“…”

I approached Aikawa without a word and carefully undid the lines one by one. My fingertips got a little cut up, but somehow I managed to undo enough of them that Aikawa could move freely.

“Woweee. Thanks, Iichan. Wawawa. I love you Iichan!”

“Please don’t do that.”

I really hated it.

“C’mon, I’m just trying to get equal stage-time for the other characters…”

“Then how about doing an impression of Akari?”

“I can’t just do anyone on command…”

“Getting angry like that─I didn’t know you had it in you.” I looked down at Hime-chan where she lay fallen. “So you get plain old angry sometimes, all recrimination and forgiveness aside?”