“Maina’s cooking… To tell the truth, I wasn’t so sure myself. Is it possible, I wonder, to kill people with ordinarily prepared food, not adding in any poison? So this is very exciting! And even if Maina’s story should turn out to be true, the only one who’s gonna die is that creepy upperclassman… No matter how it goes down, it’ll be a tasty outcome!”
Rocking her body back and forth cheerfully, Renko laughed with a “kksshh.” The music flowing out of her headphones—she seemed to be giving her body over to it as an alternative to her murderous melody.
Kyousuke stared at her black gas mask in surprise. “This is rare, Renko…you being so bluntly prejudiced against someone.”
“Hm? You’re right… It seems like it might be something like disgust. We’re the same.”
“…Same? You and Shamaya?”
“Yeah. From her I can sense, how do I say… She has the same smell as me. And—” Nodding, Renko calmly folded her arms beneath her two plentiful tracts of real estate. “Her boobs are quite large. That’s why I’m irritated.”
“…I’m irritated with you on that account,” Eiri interrupted.
“That account? Oh, because my boobs are big, right?!”
“…No way. It’s because every time you say something serious, you immediately crack a joke and throw up a smokescreen.”
“Don’t worry about it, Eiri.”
“Watch where you’re looking when you speak, you waste of boobs. You should just die already…”
“Ah-hah, so you are irritated because of Renko’s chest, aren’t you…?” Kyousuke noted.
“…What did you say?”
“Nothing at all.” Pierced by Eiri’s gaze, which was sharper than any kitchen knife, Kyousuke hung his head.
“…Hmph.” Turning away, Eiri changed the subject. “Anyway, I wonder what the truth is…about Maina’s cooking.”
“I think there’s a good chance it’ll be edible…at least, it’s more likely than your chest ever filling out!”
“……”
“—Hey, Kyousuke? What do you think?”
“Hm? G-good question… You’re still in your growth period, so you’ve probably still got some filling out to do, right? Look, there’s the saying that great talents mature late, so—”
“Who told you to talk about my chest?! Maina’s cooking! We’re talking about Maina’s cooking!”
“Kksshh. That’s what you get for ignoring my joke! They’re gonna stay like that no matter how much time passes, so I think you’re stuck with tiny breasts.”
“…Do you want to be thrown in with the kindling? You can burn to a crisp, fat and all.”
“Next, I cut the onion into bite-sized— Ahh!! Y-your eye! I hit your eeeyeee!!”
“Eeeeee, I’ll kill yoooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuu!!”
“…This is a lively outdoor cooking event, isn’t it, Michirou?”
“Right you are…but don’t forget, Chihiro! My true name is ‘Kuuga Makyouin’!”
Everywhere, the cooking area was filled with friendly, boisterous conversation from the students. Michirou, with the curry pot in his hands, was headed to the hearth together with Chihiro. Bob, looking over the state of their cooking utensils, shook her huge body, flour sack and all, with laughter.
“It’s great that we’re such close friends. I’m glad I came to this academy!”
“Heave, ho… Carry the pot, light the fire—whoooaaa!”
“That’s enoooooouuugh, no moooooooooooore!!”
The sound of something breaking echoed through the cooking area, quickly followed by Shamaya’s frantic shouting. In the clear blue summer sky, fluffy cumulonimbus floated by.
“I-it’s finished… Finished!”
Looking down at the simmering curry, Shamaya shouted with joy. Her appearance was one of total exhaustion. She bore no injuries, but her honey-colored hair was frizzy, her clothes were disheveled, her emerald eyes were overcast, and her cheeks were sunken.
“Phew…so t-tired. Cooking sure is hard…” Maina, similarly exhausted, slumped to the floor.
She let out a sigh as she wiped her sweat away. Shamaya, however, turned a scornful eye on her partner. “…I’m the one who ought to be saying that.” She looked down at the contents of the pot again. “…It’s normal, is it?”
“…It’s normal, sure.”
“…Normal, yeah.”
“…Kksshh.”
Kyousuke and the others had joined her in peering into the pot, and voiced similar impressions.
Normal. Bite-sized pieces of potato, carrot, onion, and puffer fish floated in a thick, dark-brown roux. By all appearances, a completely normal curry.
“You even pulled the skins off the vegetables. It looks delicious, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. And there is no room to question her food preparation methods. By which I mean, there were many dangers along the way, but…as for the food itself, it is absolutely an improvement upon the previous disaster…”
“Oh?! When on earth did you manage to cause such a gruesome incident, Eiri? I was preoccupied with the hearth, so I didn’t even notice…kksshh.”
“Sh-shut up! What does it matter what I did?!” Eiri’s face grew red with anger as everyone stared at her.
Looking flustered, Maina asked, “Are you really…going to eat it? I-I think you’d better not—”
“Of course. With utmost gratitude!” Shamaya announced, immediately brushing aside Maina’s words—even though her voice was tense. In one hand, she gripped a tasting spoon that she had procured without anyone noticing.
“……”
Disregarding the nervous Kyousuke and crew, Shamaya herself smiled calmly.
Maintaining her composure, she placed a hand on her chest and spoke slowly. “You need not worry so. I watched her cook with my own two eyes. Start to finish, her every move… I kept a watchful eye on her to ensure that I would absolutely not overlook any suspicious behavior! I did not give her even a single opportunity to add any poison, so her cooking methods cannot be suspected. I can absolutely assure you—nothing will happen to you if you eat this curry, I say!”
Her demeanor full of confidence, Shamaya readied her spoon. There was not a shadow of anxiety anywhere in her expression; her smile did not waver for a moment. “…Well, then, I shall sample it!”
Positioning herself in front of the simmering curry, Shamaya looked around at everyone’s faces. Kyousuke gulped loudly, Eiri furrowed her brow, Renko laughed cheerfully—“kksshh”—and Maina squeezed her eyes shut very tightly. She pressed her hands together, as if in prayer.
Shamaya lowered her head solemnly, blowing on a spoonful of curry.
“Bon appétit.”
Without hesitation, she put it in her mouth.
“……”
For a short moment Shamaya looked upward, carefully tasting the flavor. Her severe expression gradually softened.
Turning toward Maina, who had timidly opened her eyes, Shamaya smiled broadly, satisfied. It was as if to say, “See, there’s nothing wrong with it!” She swallowed down the curry—or tried to.
“……?!”
Shamaya’s eyes suddenly opened wide. In an instant her expression stiffened, her face went pale, and beads of sweat appeared on her skin.
The spoon fell from Shamaya’s hand. She held her mouth with both hands.
“Bwuh?!”
She spit out the contents of her mouth in a magnificent spray.
The intense smell of curry enveloped them, and Shamaya crumbled to the ground.
“Ah…gah…ha…be…what is…this…ohh…”
As she lay facedown on the ground, a painful wheezing escaped the blonde’s mouth. Her body trembled slightly, and she tried desperately to spit out what was left of the food.
“Miss Shamaya?! Miss Shamayaaa!”
“Everyone, back up! You must not inhale that poison mist!”
Quickly realizing that something was amiss, Renko held back Kyousuke and the others who were about to r
ush over to Shamaya. She used all of her strength to keep them at a distance, protecting them from the yellow curry mist that was hanging in the air around her.
“Impossi-ble…impossible, it’s…th-this…taste…ohhh.” Shamaya, abandoned in the sickly curry fog, continued suffering, shedding sweat and tears. Likely unable to breathe, she looked to Kyousuke with imploring eyes.
“…?! Miss Shamaya—”
“I’ll go.”
Intercepting Kyousuke, who was about to take off running, Renko dived into the toxic mist. Equipped with a gas mask, she managed to reach Shamaya despite the dangerous curry. Scooping the twitching upperclassman into her arms, Renko carried her blank-eyed charge out of the mist.
“Midd Chabaya! Midd Chabayaaaaaa!” Maina immediately ran over to them.
“Ah, hey…wait, Maina!”
“Idiot! If you get close to her now—”
Ignoring Kyousuke’s and Eiri’s warnings, Maina charged over to where Shamaya was.
This is bad, Kyousuke thought. Flustered as she is right now, Maina will surely…
“Whooooooaaaaaa!”
“When she screams, you know it’s dangerous.”
“Oooph!!”
Maina, whose legs had somehow gotten tangled up, grazed Renko, who jumped out of the way, and fell directly onto Shamaya. Bending over Shamaya, who had turned faceup, she apologized frantically. “Aahhh!! So-sosososo-sowwy—”
“Gruaaaaaaaaahhh, oooooooooooohhh!!”
As if to revive her dead body, Maina pressed her hands into Shamaya’s stomach and delivered a secondary attack. Shamaya writhed in agony, on the receiving end of pressing attack after pressing attack.
Watching the situation from a distance, Renko let out a sigh of relief.
“…Kksshh. Somehow, she still looks to be alive. That’s great.”
“It’s not great! If we don’t stop Maina soon, Miss Shamaya is as good as dead!!”
“Waaahhh. So-sosososo—sowwy!”
“Gyah!!”
Jumping up and kneeling on the ground to apologize, Maina’s head struck Shamaya in the face.
Kyousuke, who had concluded that it was risky to leave things as they were, quickly restrained his friend.
Busujima, who had heard the uproar and come running, promptly called the medical team—
“I don’t…accept…I absolutely do not accept this…gah!”
When Shamaya was loaded onto the stretcher and carried away, the situation finally calmed down. There was only the matter of the curry that had caused the whole uproar.
“…Hm…hm. Quite interesting. You don’t mind if I take this?” Busujima, the poison specialist, was very interested in recovering the pot and its contents.
What became of Maina’s special Murder Curry after that remains unknown.
“Um…Miss Shamaya?”
“……”
An hour had passed since the uproar around Maina’s cooking. As soon as the outdoor cookout had come to a close, Kyousuke and the remainder of his squad had visited the infirmary. The corner room on the first floor of the House of Limbo was narrow, with three beds standing in a row.
In the bed closest to them slept Mohawk (in critical condition), wearing an artificial respirator. The middle bed was empty, and in the farthest one sat Shamaya, gazing out the window at the forest scenery. They called out to her, but there was no response.
Next to Kyousuke, Maina’s eyes teared up, and she vigorously bowed her head to apologize. “…I’m so sorry! Um…I-I just cooked normally, but it turned out like that, and then…I did all those other awful things…but it wasn’t on purpose! Truly, truly, I’b sowwy—”
“That’s enough.”
“…Ehh?” Maina, who had delivered her sobbing apology with her head bowed, raised her tear-streaked face.
Shamaya’s voice was dry. She let out a long, thin sigh, shifting her gaze from somewhere outside the window to Maina’s face. “I said that you don’t need to apologize. The one who forced you to cook was me…the chair of the Public Morals Committee herself. All you did was follow my instructions and act under my careful watch, right? I cannot help but be stunned that such a thing could befall me despite my supervision. So there really is no need for you to apologize. After all, you did nothing wrong…isn’t that so?” She smiled gently, as she always had before.
Under her calm gaze, Maina was at a loss for words. “…Ah…”
“However…” Shamaya’s eyes dropped. “I was truly surprised by that curry… It had a dreadful taste. It wasn’t all that bad at first, but it came from behind later. It was a taste the likes of which I have never experienced before, with dozens or maybe hundreds of flavors assaulting the tongue all at once—I thought I might be killed by the taste! If I had swallowed instead of spitting it out, my digestive organs might have been overwhelmed by the stimulation, and I may well have died of shock. Wh-what a fearful weapon that was…” Perhaps recalling the flavor, Shamaya held a hand over her mouth.
Maina listened with a complicated expression on her face. She herself had thought that she was cooking normally, which made it difficult to respond.
Shamaya nodded reassuringly at her junior, who stood stock-still, stumped. “In any case, I am unharmed. My apologies for causing you any worry. I have no excuse for doubting Miss Igarashi’s story… I shall accept the agony that I have suffered as a form of self-admonition. Everyone, please do not be concerned.”
“S-sowwy, Mith…” Deeply moved by the warm words, Maina looked like she might start crying again. What a good-natured person Miss Shamaya is… Thanks to her, we smoothly came to a reconciliation. Kyousuke and the others let the tension out of their shoulders in tandem.
“By the way, everyone, what did you do about lunch? Certainly there was no way you could have eaten that Murder Curry. Of course, on my account the meal was—”
“Oh, don’t worry about that!” Renko said proudly, pointing at her own gas mask. “As you can see, due to the fact that I am wearing this mask, I cannot eat anything! Even if it’s the curry that everyone worked so hard to make, or the steak that you went out of your way to offer me, the mask is in the way and for the most part I cannot eat, so…I divided up my group’s curry and gave it to them.”
“My, did you? That’s wonderful. Oh-ho-ho!” Not touching on the topic of the steak, Shamaya smiled broadly. She seemed to find it quite disagreeable that Renko would expressly make a snide remark about such a thing.
“W-well…we did boil the rice. When we left the cooking up to Eiri, we had already resigned ourselves to having only white rice for lunch. Compared to our expectations, their curry was way better.”
“Michirou is a great cook, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, yeah. My bad for not being the perfect chef… Don’t ever let me forget it,” Eiri grumbled, glaring at Kyousuke and Maina with scorn.
Watching the scene with a friendly grin, Shamaya narrowed her emerald-colored eyes. “You all certainly are interesting. I would very much like to continue talking this way at our leisure, but…I’m sorry to say that I have no such time. The prison camping schedule is quite tight, you see. The next item on the program is Woodland Exploration, I believe. Do take care not to be late! After I rest just a bit longer, I, too, shall return to my official duties. There are a number of things that I must prepare, so… Yes, all sorts of things. Oh-ho-ho-ho!” Shamaya continued to smile cheerfully.
Casually turning his gaze away from her face, Kyousuke noticed something.
He unfortunately noticed.
Placed in the shadow of the medicine shelf, a garbage can. Inside it rested…
* * *
…a crushed, discolored, ripped and shredded light pink hand towel.
“……?!”
Speechless, Kyousuke gasped. His body stiffened in an instant.
Noticing his expression immediately, Shamaya tilted her head. “…Do I have something on my face?” Just like a skilled murderer, concealing her deadly weapon before the moment of the kil
l… With her gentle voice and calm demeanor, she had cleverly disguised her murderous intentions.
“Ah…n-no! It’s nothing. W-well, then…so sorry, but we should be going now, okay? Now that we’ve checked in on your well-being Miss Shamaya…”
“…Kyousuke? What’s the matter? You look awfully pale—”
“Miss Shamaya mentioned it, too, didn’t she, Eiri? We don’t have much time. C’mon, let’s hurry!” As he spoke, Kyousuke headed directly for the door. He wanted to get away from this place as quickly as possible.
“Hm…th-that’s true, but…” Eiri grumbled suspiciously but followed.
Maina said, “Take care, Miss Shamaya! And…th-thank you!” and bowed her head before catching up to them. Renko added, “Okay, see you later!”
Shamaya waved calmly at Kyousuke and the others as they hurriedly left the infirmary. “The pleasure was all mine. Thank you for coming to visit me! Adieu… Oh-ho-ho!”
The last they saw of Shamaya’s face, she was wearing a pure smile. Her expression, which had remained perfectly unchanged the whole time, was just like a mask.
“You must have been mistaken.”
They were sufficiently far away from the infirmary, in a deserted hallway. Eiri questioned Kyousuke suspiciously, having heard his explanation of the situation.
Kyousuke shook his head no and repeated himself. “It was no mistake. The thing in the garbage can was Maina’s hand towel. The pink towel that Maina handed to Shamaya during Outdoor Cooking was…mutilated—”
“No way!” Maina shouted. “That can’t be true…” Her feeble voice trembling, she mumbled frailly as she continued, “Miss Shamaya forgave me with a warm smile, and encouraged me with her kind words… To say that all that was a lie is wrong. It’s absolutely wrong! I won’t accept it! It must be your mistake, Kyousuke—”
“I saw it, too.”
“…Huh?” In surprise, Maina looked at Renko. Her face, concealed by the gas mask, stared back heartlessly. “A pink hand towel, looking like a beat-up dust cloth, was in the garbage can. We don’t know whether it was yours or not, but…at least, he’s not mistaken that such a thing was there.”
Murder Princess and the Summer Death Camp Page 13