Murder Maiden and the Fatal Final

by Mizuki Mizushiro

“……Kill you.”

  “Yeah. If I’m such a hateful nuisance, you’d better kill me.”

  “……Kill! Killkillkillkillkillkillkill, kill!”

  “Umm, yeah. But you can’t do it just by moving your mouth. Don’t you want to kill me?”

  “Sh-shut up! Be quieeeeeeeeet! You’ll get your wish! I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

  “Stop it!” Kyousuke shouted. He fell to his knees. “Please stop, Ayaka… Don’t kill Renko…I’m begging you.”

  “Big brother—” Ayaka looked on him with a half-lidded stare. As before, her dark eyes did not harbor even the faintest light. “Hmm…so she is important to you?”

  “She’s important. Of course she is.”

  “Oh, that’s right…you’ve been poisoned, haven’t you? But it’s all right. Because Ayaka is going to kill Miss Mask. And once she’s dead, Ayaka will kill you, too, big brother, and then herself…tee-hee! Right, well, we’d better get started.” She began to turn back to face Renko. “This time, right between the eyes—”

  “I meant that Ayaka is important!” Kyousuke shouted, baring his true feelings. “You are important to me, so I don’t want you to kill anyone! Especially not one of my friends… You may be jealous of Renko and the other girls, but you are an irreplaceable member of my family! You’re the one and only! Seeing you like this… If you commit murder over something like jealousy, I would…I would—”

  “Hey, Ayaka…” Renko asked, in a quiet soprano voice. She gazed at Ayaka’s face. “You think nothing of doing that, do you?”

  Ayaka furrowed her brow in suspicion and glared at her opponent. “What was that? If you’re talking about killing you, then not reall—”

  “Not that. I’m talking about Kyousuke. He looks like he’s in awful agony, doesn’t he…? He looks sad, and in pain, doesn’t he? Don’t you care that you made someone so important to you look like that? I’m asking you, Ayaka.”

  “Hmm……” Ayaka seemed to falter, just for a moment, but her eyes quickly filled with anger. “You’re the ones who have been hurting big brother! You all corrupted him… All of this is your fault!! If only you all weren’t here, Ayaka wouldn’t need to do things like this! Ayaka never made her big brother look like that… It’s all your faaaaaauuuuuult!”

  When she had finished squealing, Ayaka stood panting hard. “Fuu, fuu!”

  Renko calmly waited for Ayaka to catch her breath before answering. “—For your information, little Ayaka…” Her lips curved into a ferocious smile, showing off fangs that glittered like knives. “I can kill you at any time! I could break your arms faster than you could pull that trigger, and I could blow off your head faster than that gun could fire…hee-hee! A few seconds would be plenty of time to deal with a fragile little human like you. I wouldn’t even need a weapon. It wouldn’t be necessary. I could tear you to shreds with my bare hands and scatter the pieces!”

  Renko stuck her tongue out. Her eyes blazed, and her pupils were dilated.

  “…Uh.” Ayaka cowered in awe.

  “But I’m not going to kill you. Do you understand why that is?”

  “I…I don’t know, I don’t get you! Anyway, I don’t really—”

  “Because Kyousuke would be sad.”

  Renko’s expression seemed almost gentle. Possibly, when she had been watching Kyousuke eat Ayaka’s cooking during cooking class, Renko might have been wearing such an expression underneath her mask.

  “……?!”

  Ayaka’s eyes were wide.

  Renko held her gaze as she continued. “I love Kyousuke. I can’t bear the thought of making him sad. So for the sake of my love, Kyousuke, I can kill even the strongest murderous impulses. I can kill jealousy. I can kill uneasiness. I can kill selfishness. I can kill my own raison d’être. I can kill my own identity. And even if I can’t kill it, I’ll still try!”

  “Wha…?”

  Ayaka was speechless. Renko’s words had been as plain and direct as her stare.

  The formidable young woman narrowed her ice-blue eyes. “And what about you, Ayaka? For Kyousuke’s sake, can’t you kill your own feelings? Are your feelings for Kyousuke that strong?”

  “…Sh-shut up.”

  “In the end, you are your own most important person, aren’t you, Ayaka? Not Kyousuke! You make up excuses, about how he was ‘poisoned’ and ‘defiled,’ but you really only care about your own feelings, don’t you?!”

  “…Shut up.”

  “Good grief. I’m very disappointed, Ayaka. It turns out that the most important person in the world to you isn’t Kyousuke at all…it’s you! What an easy victory! Heh-heh-heh! You can’t even kill your own murderous impulses… How could you ever think you could kill me? Come now, what’s wrong? If you think you can do it, then do it!! Ah-ha-ha!”

  “Shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!”

  Howling hysterically, Ayaka readied the gun again.

  Her bloodshot eyes were open as wide as they would go.

  The barrel trembled against Renko’s forehead.

  “I’ll kill you… I’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’ll killyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyouI’llkillyou, I’ll kill you…!”

  Ayaka was muttering to herself like she was reciting an incantation. Renko stared down at her tear-filled glare.

  “Ayaka!

  “Ayaka dear!”

  “……Uu…uuuu…uuuuuuuuu!”

  As Kyousuke, Maina, and Eiri watched attentively, Ayaka groaned and gritted her teeth. They weren’t sure whether she was trying to pull the trigger or trying to prevent herself from doing so.

  “Uu…uuu…”

  Before long, Ayaka’s face crumpled and distorted, and tears ran down her cheeks.

  The shotgun fell from her weakened grasp.

  “Uaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!”

  Ayaka broke down crying, and covered her face with both hands, sobbing as the words spilled from her mouth. “I love my big brother… I love him more than someone like Miss Mask ever could. I love him so muuuch! I love him, I love him, and I don’t want to give him up to anyone else…because my big brother is my greatest treasure…because he’s the only one in the world, the only family I can count on!”

  Ayaka continued sobbing as she poured out her feelings to Kyousuke.

  “I didn’t want you to be taken away by Miss Mask and Miss Akabonehead and Crafty Cat… I really, really didn’t want them to steal you away! If my big brother went away, I’d be so lonely again… It would be too awful! I couldn’t stand it. I’ve only got you, big brother…uuuuuuaaa… Don’t leave me, big brotheeeeeeeeerrr…!”

  “A-Ayaka—”

  “It’s okay, Ayaka dear.”

  Before Kyousuke could rush over, Renko knelt down beside her. “There, there…” She placed a hand on Ayaka’s head and gently stroked her hair. “You love Kyousuke, and Kyousuke loves you. You love each other as brother and sister. Is that relationship something that can be broken easily? Is it a fragile bond that will suddenly snap apart if other people try to split you up, Ayaka?”

  “No! It’s not like that!!” Ayaka quickly raised her head with a glower.

  Renko nodded with satisfaction. “Right!” She smiled broadly. “And if that’s true, you don’t need to worry, do you? Besides, I don’t want to steal Kyousuke from you. I just want you to let me be a part of your world.”

  “……Uh.”

  “Of course, I don’t mean right away! We’ve still only just met, and I’m going to work hard to win your trust! I like you. Honestly, at first I thought I had to get close to you because you were Kyousuke’s little sister, but…can I get along with a girl who likes the same boy as me, I wondered? Then I realized that I had to set that aside and try to become good friends with you, Ayak
a.”

  “”

  Ayaka cast her eyes down again.

  She chewed on her lip.

  “Uh, ummm…of course that won’t work, huh? You don’t want to be friends with a murderer like me! Actually, right now at this very moment, I can’t help but want to kill you… I won’t kill you now, because Kyousuke would be sad, but eventually I’ll kill Kyousuke…and you along with him…”

  “……nothing to do.”

  “Hm?”

  “It has nothing to do with you being a murderer! Ninety-nine percent of this world is worthless garbage…so people like that aren’t worth worrying about. I don’t care about them, no matter what. If they get in the way, I should erase them. I think nothing of it. I don’t have any feelings of ill will, or guilt about getting rid of garbage. Not at all…none.”

  “…Is that so?”

  “But…”

  Her gaze faltered. Ayaka looked almost bewildered.

  “—I didn’t shoot you.”

  She looked down at her right hand, at her finger resting on the trigger. “I couldn’t kill Miss Mask… Miss Mask would die. ‘She’ll disappear’—when I thought that, suddenly my chest started to hurt. I remembered all kinds of things, like going around the school buildings together, and running away from the upperclassmen, and the study party, and cooking class…”

  “Ayaka…”

  “I was really angry at you. Why couldn’t I kill you? What was so difficult about cleaning up one piece of garbage…? But now I think I understand.”

  Ayaka looked hard at Renko with upturned eyes, blushing faintly. “The reason I couldn’t kill you…it wasn’t because my big brother would hate it. I couldn’t kill you because I would hate it. Miss Mask, you’re—

  “Miss Renko, you’ve already become so much more than ordinary garbage.”

  “”

  Renko was silent.

  “Ah, um…Miss Renko?”

  Ayaka knit her eyebrows, looking concerned.

  “Uu…uuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!”

  Renko fell to the floor, rolling back and forth and screaming like she had gone mad.

  “Hyah?! What’s wrong, Renko—?”

  “Don’t come any closer!”

  As Ayaka was about to approach her, Renko shouted and slammed her head into the floor. “Ah, this is bad… This melody is bad neeeeeews! An ultra-high-speed sweep, then a gravity blast, and a torrent of seven-string bass kicks in like a drill—aaaaaah, it’s intense! It’s too inteeense!! I-I want to kill…I wanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwanttokillwantto killwanttokillwanttokill, I want to kiiiiiill! What amazing techno-death! I can’t control it… This violent melody, it’s out of controooooooool!!”

  “Renko?! Wait! Right now, your gas mask—”

  Kyousuke picked up the limiter and hurried over to where Renko was writhing in pain. Ayaka and the other astonished onlookers watched, without really understanding what was going on, as he replaced it on her head.

  “…I’m disappointed in you, Miss Kamiya.”

  Kurumiya had brought Kyousuke and the others to the staff room in the new school after Ayaka’s shooting incident. She sat with her legs stretched out on the black office desk and blew purple smoke in Ayaka’s face. The five of them stood lined up, side by side, before her.

  Ayaka coughed, and then looked at Kurumiya with upturned eyes. “You’re disappointed, Miss Kurumiya…but you gave me the gun, didn’t you?”

  “Indeed,” Kurumiya readily admitted.

  “Not ‘indeed’!” Ayaka shouted.

  Nobody was entirely surprised to learn that Kurumiya was the one who had lent Ayaka the shotgun. Apparently, Kyousuke and the others had not been able to find Ayaka during their search of the school because Kurumiya had hidden her. While they were in class, Ayaka had been learning how to handle a gun from a teacher named Mizuchi on the shooting range in the new school building.

  Kurumiya, who had masterminded the whole affair, shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not upset that you caused a disturbance. But just like the first time, you didn’t kill a single person—that’s why I’m disappointed, you idiot! You fired off eight rounds and missed with every single one of them! It’s one thing to get a failing grade, but you failed the makeup test, too! Don’t joke around.”

  “You’re the one who must be joking!!”

  Kyousuke leaned forward in excitement and grabbed Kurumiya by the collar. “What did you make my little sister do, you sadistic old hag? I’ll slaughter you, bitch!!”

  Kurumiya looked downright joyful. “Ohh, so you finally feel like killing! Very well, Kamiya. From now on I’ll be sure to pay little Miss Kamiya plenty of special attention. If your little sister suffers terribly, maybe then you’ll show me what you can do! Hee-hee-hee…! Just like I thought, letting your sister transfer here was the right call.”

  “Wha—?! Y-you—”

  Kurumiya’s words had cooled Kyousuke’s anger just as it had been about to boil over. Letting her transfer, she said. Could that mean that she approved the transfer, regardless of Ayaka’s “attempted” murder? Or possibly…?

  “Before she came to the academy, someone gave Ayaka a shotgun. Was it you, Kurumiya?”

  “It was not.”

  “Huh? Then who on earth—?”

  “Obviously, it was the delivery driver. I’m the one who sent it, but I’m not the one who gave it to her. Why would you think that I would go out of my way to deliver it in person?”

  “You’re splitting hairs!”

  “Shut up.”

  Kurumiya ground her cigarette into Kyousuke’s forehead.

  “Ah! Hot!”

  Kyousuke let go of Kurumiya.

  She stared at him boldly. “…Why are you so upset? Shouldn’t you be grateful? Thanks to the fact that the gun I gave her misfired, little Miss Kamiya didn’t actually kill anyone after all.”

  “Ah?! You’re full of shit! If you hadn’t sent a gun to Ayaka—”

  “Sooner or later, Miss Kamiya probably would have killed someone.”

  “……Huh?”

  “I merely hurried her along. If she didn’t have a gun, it would have been a knife, and if she didn’t have a knife, it would have been a blunt weapon, and if she didn’t have a blunt weapon, it would have been her bare hands… I’m sure she would have killed someone. In order to follow you, understand? This time was no different. Even if I hadn’t gone out of my way to get involved, Miss Kamiya would probably have tried to eliminate Renko and the other girls.—Right, Miss Kamiya?”

  “…………”

  Ayaka did not answer Kurumiya’s question. She remained silent, and neither affirmed nor denied the accusation. Her sulky, averted eyes told them exactly what was on her mind.

  “She’s still a virgin—barely—but it’s clear that Miss Kamiya is a psychopath. She thinks nothing of murder, after all. Without you, her limiter, around, she could easily step over the line. And anyway, the person who warped Miss Kamiya’s sense of right and wrong was…you, Kamiya.”

  …He couldn’t refute that.

  Kyousuke himself was beginning to understand it a little. The way that he had rescued Ayaka from bullying before had been too forceful, and that had narrowed Ayaka’s world. Limited relationships had given rise to abnormal attachments, and his excessive affections had warped Ayaka’s sense of right and wrong. Every time he’d raised a hand to protect Ayaka, he’d only pushed her further down into darkness…

  That was why Kyousuke could not blame his sister. He’d driven her to violence in the first place, and he should be the one to accept the blame—

  “No. My big brother didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Ayaka’s tone was forceful. She placed a hand on her chest and closed her eyes, speaking wistfully. “My big brother saved me. Not just this time…but time and time and time and time again he always helped me, and he always protected me. If my big brother hadn�
�t been there, I probably wouldn’t be here now. So I don’t want him to blame himself. Don’t apologize, big brother! Don’t think that saving me was a mistake… I’m the one who was wrong. I depended on you too much. I’m sorry, big brother.”

  “Ayaka…”

  “…Tch.” Kurumiya clicked her tongue and flopped down in her chair. “Ahh, this is boring. Boring, boring, really boring! Leave the soap opera out of it. I’m done with you two—get lost already! I’ll overlook it this time.”

  “…If anything’s being overlooked, it’s your actions.”

  “Shut up, Akabonehead.”

  “…You first.” Cursing under her breath, Eiri left the staff room.

  “Oh dear…” Maina followed after her.

  Kyousuke and Ayaka also moved toward the exit, when Kurumiya spoke up.

  “Oh, and, Kamiya…regarding the conditions of your graduation—let’s include your sister, too. If Miss Kamiya makes it to her graduation ceremony alive and without killing anyone, I will let her graduate into the free world. By the way, I’ve already told her about the true nature of this academy, so there no need for you to explain.”

  “…Thanks for that. I was going to ask you.”

  “Yep! If it’s for my big brother’s sake, I’ll do my best, too!”

  “Hee-hee-hee! Struggle as hard as you can, Kamiya siblings. And then there’s Murder Maid—” Her smile disappeared, and Kurumiya turned her half-closed eyes on Renko. She glared at the gas mask for a moment. “…No, it’s fine. You get lost, too.”

  “Kksshh-shh-shh!” Renko just laughed, and turned on her heel without saying a word.

  Kyousuke took Ayaka’s hand and they headed finally for the door. As they were leaving, they caught sight of Kurumiya, face twisted with anger, fiddling with her cell phone.

  “—Kill ’em.”

  “I’m disappointed in Miss Kurumiya!” The moment they left the staff room, Ayaka exploded with anger. “To think she was such a mean person… It’s just like you said, big brother! Miss Kurumiya is not a good teacher. She’s a bad teacher who was going to trick us and try to turn us into professional killers! She’s rotten by nature, that little pip-squeak.”