“Ah...” Yoriko stiffened.
“Hard.”
“Takeuchi?” Aiko asked.
“Too hard. It felt incredible. I couldn’t move for hours.” Natsuki’s face glowed with triumph. It was not an expression one saw very often.
“W-Wait... are you... talking about...” Yuichi’s fight with Natsuki replayed in Aiko’s mind. He had used a Double Crashing Palm strike to finish her off. From the side, it had looked like he was groping her breasts.
“He just shoved you across the room! Stop twisting the events!” Aiko shouted.
Yoriko remained frozen.
“The fact remains that I have had more physical contact with him than either of you,” Natsuki said calmly.
Was she joking around? Was she genuinely trying to lord this over them? Aiko hadn’t talked with Natsuki very much, so she had never seen this side of her before.
“H-He’s... touched my thighs, and carried me in his arms, too...” Aiko stammered, perhaps out of a strange sort of competitiveness.
“Noro?” Yoriko suddenly reactivated, and focused her attention on Aiko. “I’d like to ask you more about that later.”
Aiko wished she hadn’t said anything at all.
“Um...” She was just about to say something else, when she was interrupted by a loud crash outside.
“What could it be?!” Mutsuko’s eyes glistened at the potential sign of trouble.
✽✽✽✽✽
A little while earlier...
Yuichi had left the summer house to track down the vague presence he had sensed. It was a sweltering night outside, so Yuichi did the best he could to mask his footsteps as he got around behind the villa.
A faint wind was blowing. Yuichi knew more or less where he was going, and kept his target upwind from him.
He focused. The presence was up in a tree. Whatever it was, it was definitely watching the Noro summer house.
Yuichi walked up to the base of the tree. Whoever it was didn’t seem to have noticed him yet.
Now, what to do...
He had located his quarry, but he hadn’t figured out how to deal with it just yet. The minute he started trying to climb the tree, he’d be noticed.
Instead, he gently placed both hands on the trunk. (He didn’t know it, but this was around the same time Aiko was talking about his Double Crashing Palm.)
He steadied his breathing, then released all his power in a single blow.
His hands pierced the tree trunk with a crash. Something fell from the treetop.
Yuichi began judging his timing to kick the tree’s former occupant out of the air, but one sight of her gave him pause.
It was a girl with cat ears.
“Huh?” As Yuichi hesitated, the girl twisted in the air and landed on all fours. It wasn’t just her ears — even the way she moved was like a cat.
But it wasn’t just the girl’s feline nature that had caused Yuichi’s hesitation. It was that she looked just like a girl that he knew. It was his classmate Yuri Konishi, plus cat ears and a tail.
The cat ears were sticking out of her intricately-bound blonde hair. She was wearing a swimsuit that resembled a black dress, and her golden tail stuck out of it, swishing.
Above her head was the label “Anthromorph (Cat).” Previously, it had been “Heiress.”
“Um... this might sound crazy, but are you... Konishi?” Yuichi ventured. This was possibly last person he had expected to see when he struck that tree.
“Indeed,” she said. “Quite a coincidence, meeting you here.”
“A coincidence? You’re trying to write this off as coincidence?” Yuichi had never had a real conversation with her, but her personality was more frank than he’d expected. “Fine, we’ll say it’s a coincidence. But this is still Noro’s family property. You can’t be here without permission.”
“I see. But I don’t need permission... if there’s no witness to report me!!” Yuri suddenly sprang at him.
She brandished her right hand, readying a broad swing at Yuichi. Yuichi caught sight of the lethal-looking claws at the ends of her fingertips. They were the length of small knives. She was definitely not human.
Yuichi moved away, giving Yuri a wide berth. If he focused too much on the claws, she might hit him with a body blow. She followed up with another desperate left hook, which he dodged by dropping his upper body.
Yuri continued on her trajectory and landed, then turned back to Yuichi.
“What’s going on here?” Mutsuko came running towards them, naked except for a bath towel around her.
“Hey! Put some clothes on before you come out here!” Yuichi shouted.
Yuri took Yuichi’s moment of distraction to run off.
“What? Were you fighting someone?” Mutsuko asked. “Hey!”
“Go get dressed!” Yuichi ordered her. “I’ll explain everything inside.”
Yuichi kept his senses alert as he returned to the summer house, but all trace of Yuri had vanished. It seemed she had really run away.
✽✽✽✽✽
Aiko was lying on her guest room bed, gazing up at the ceiling.
She was worried about what Yuichi had told her. It sounded like her life was in danger.
Apparently, Yuichi hadn’t planned to tell Aiko about it at first. But now, with a real-life assassin hanging around, that would be irresponsible.
Yuri Konishi was here.
Of course, it was possible that it was just a coincidence. The Konishi family could very easily have a summer house here, too, and if so, this would be natural place for her to spend her summer vacation.
But if she was sneaking onto her property and spying on them, it had to be more than that. On top of that, she was also an anthromorph.
Aiko didn’t know why Yuri was after her. Yuichi didn’t seem to know much about that, either. He’d just said it would be hard to explain, and it didn’t seem like he’d been lying or trying to cover up something, so Aiko just let it go.
Strangely, she wasn’t particularly worried about her life being in danger. She had convinced herself that Yuichi would protect her.
She imagined the two of them as a princess and her knight in shining armor. If she was really in danger, then Yuichi would stay close and watch out for her. And, while maybe she shouldn’t think that way, she felt like that put her one step ahead of Natsuki.
Oh, what am I thinking... Aiko didn’t even know how Natsuki really felt about Yuichi, yet she had started to think of her as a rival.
But actually... how do I really feel? It was true that she had affection for Yuichi. But how deep did it run? She couldn’t even answer that question.
With the questions turning over and over in her mind, Aiko began to drift off.
She was walking unsteadily down a hallway at night.
There were no lights, but she knew what was around her as easily as if it were daylight.
The darkness didn’t matter to Aiko. She could smell Yuichi.
It was the blood — the syrupy sweet smell of blood pulsing under his skin.
Aiko was following Yuichi’s smell. With unsteady yet persistent steps, she walked towards where he was.
She heard a voice.
It was the same one that had whispered for her to kill Kyoya.
Now it told her to suck Yuichi’s blood. It told her to make him her slave.
In her heart, she knew that it was wrong. But she couldn’t fight the temptation. Yuichi would belong to her. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing, to have him all to herself?
The next thing Aiko knew, she was standing in front of Yuichi. He was in bed, breathing slowly in the rhythms of sleep. He had pushed the covers to the corner of the bed, perhaps because it was such a hot night.
Aiko smiled. Yuichi showed no signs of waking up.
She sat down on the bed and stroked his neck gently. The holes she had put in there once before had healed over. She drew her mouth to the same spot. This time, she would put her mark on him — her proof of ownership �
� and it would never disappear.
Small fangs grew in Aiko’s mouth. She lay down on the bed, her body on top of Yuichi’s. Her mouth drew close to his neck.
“What are you doing? I can’t let down my guard for a minute! I see I was right to stay up in case of this!” a voice shouted.
Aiko, who had forgotten everything except for Yuichi, froze.
The coverlet shoved into the corner of the bed moved, and Yoriko popped out from underneath it.
Aiko looked at Noriko with eyes glowing red.
“Noro? ...Who are you?!” Yoriko looked back at her in fear.
“...Huh? Yoriko? What is it?” Suddenly, everything snapped into focus, and Aiko was left confused. She wasn’t entirely sure where she was. She seemed to be straddling Yuichi, and Yoriko was nearby, yelling at her.
“‘What is it’? Th-That’s my line! You’ve got to be kidding me!” Yoriko shouted. “I never thought you’d try to sneak in here at night! I was on guard for that Takeuchi girl!”
“Huh? Sneak in? Huh?” Aiko asked.
“Were you sleepwalking?” Yoriko finally seemed to realize that Aiko wasn’t fully in her right mind.
“Hey, could you get off of me?” Yuichi asked. He looked at Aiko uncomfortably. It was only natural that he would wake up, with how loudly they were arguing.
“Oh! Um, sorry!” Aiko quickly flew off of him.
Yuichi sat up and scratched his head. He’d just woken up, and he was clearly confused about what was going on. “What are you two doing here?”
“Sorry, I think I was sleepwalking...” That was all that Aiko could say. She had a feeling that she had been dreaming.
Yoriko said, “I-I always sleep in your room, so I felt lonely by myself, and decided to come here with you...”
“Do whatever you want, just be quiet.” With that, Yuichi lay back down and immediately started snoozing again.
Aiko was at a loss for what to do next.
Chapter 4: Welcome to the Mystery-Filled Kurokami Island!
Yuri walked down the curiously bright and wide hallway.
The passage had been carved out in a perfect square, from some unknown, perfectly smooth material. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling all radiated light. Each side was about five meters.
Yuri had been told that it had been a facility used by the old Japanese army, who’d done experiments here on Kurokami Island.
She didn’t know if that was true; she found the claim dubious, to be quite frank. She doubted it would be possible to make something like this in the 1940s. Even with modern-day technology, it would likely be very difficult.
As Yuri came to a dead end of the corridor, a square hole noiselessly opened in front of her. Here was something else she didn’t understand. How could a hole open up like that, in a wall with no seams?
Yuri stepped through the hole and into the room beyond.
The room was lined with cylinders made of a transparent resin.
Each cylinder was full of a cloudy liquid, and things inside the liquid that squirmed with motion. From time to time, there was a dull bang as one of the somethings knocked hard against its cylinder.
Yuri walked amongst them.
She approached one particular cylinder, and then stopped. She looked at the panel in front of it. It contained a grid of buttons.
Yuri did not recognize the symbols inscribed on the buttons. They weren’t part of any language she had ever seen.
Yuri pushed the buttons with the symbols in the order she’d been told.
The cylinder burbled as the cloudy water began to drain out of it, revealing the form of a naked young man.
“I heard it was time,” Yuri asked as the cylinder lifted, freeing the young man. “How are you feeling?”
It was Takashi Jonouchi. For a few moments, he looked around in confusion, as if he didn’t know where he was. But at last, he fixed his eyes on Yuri in a furious glare.
“You... you! What the hell was this? What are you trying to do to me?!” He seemed to show no respect to someone who was helping him out.
“What am I trying to do? Help you regain your anthromorph powers, of course.”
“Like this? Like this?!” he shouted.
“What a strange thing to say. What did you think it was going to be? Reciting chants and burning incense? Ridiculous! Did you really think something like that could make you an anthromorph?” she asked.
“That’s...”
She had explained to Takashi that the village of the Beast God faith could hold a ritual for him that would turn him into an anthromorph.
She hadn’t been lying. This was indeed a village that venerated a god of beasts, and they did indeed hold such a ritual. It was just that the ritual hadn’t been at all what Takashi was expecting.
“If... If you could truly believe in it, that method would also have worked,” she said. “But as a citizen of modern society, I doubt you put much stock in the ways people used to do things, back in the time of myth and legend. Am I right? The only way a modern man like you would swallow the idea of being turned into an anthromorph would be through the power of biotechnology.”
“Really?” he demanded. “I hardly believed it would work at all!”
“But you did think ‘perhaps,’ didn’t you? Injected with drugs, stuck in a vat... it seemed more plausible than some mysterious ritual, didn’t it?” Yuri waited for her words to sink in. She intended to use him as a henchman, but he would be useless if he were too rebellious. He needed some degree of acceptance. “It worked for you, so what’s the problem?”
“It... worked?” he asked.
“Yes. You’re in human form right now, which means it’s a success. Would you like to see a failure?” Yuri turned her eyes to the next vat over.
A bloated hand banged repeatedly on the wall of the vat. She had been told that was one of the failures.
“If you’ve recovered sufficiently, we can go above ground again,” she said. “Aiko Noro will be coming soon, it seems. I suggest we go to meet her.”
Takashi stood up and looked down at his palm. Animal fur began growing out of it. His fingernails grew and sharpened, knife-like.
He then willed it back to his normal human hand.
“It’s back... haha... the power is back!” Takashi cried joyfully, all resentment forgotten.
He certainly was self-serving, Yuri thought.
✽✽✽✽✽
Day two of the training camp was all sunny skies.
Yuichi had spent the morning getting ready for their trip to Mutsuko’s weird island. He was hauling their luggage onto the Noro family cruiser, a large cabin cruiser with two floors, and a large deck on the second floor aft. The first floor contained cabins, as well as a bathroom and shower facilities.
Once they got to Kurokami Island, they’d be camping outdoors, so he had needed to pack tents and sleeping bags and other camping tools.
“Hey, do we need this umbrella?” Yuichi asked, carrying the large paper and steel monstrosity they had used as a beach umbrella the day before.
“I thought we might need it for the beach on the other side!” Mutsuko said, she herself bringing out light things, like cooking utensils.
“Hey, can’t you have Ibaraki carry a few of the heavy things?” he complained. Given that the guy had brought a lot of the stuff to the house in the first place, it seemed only appropriate that he should.
“Oh, you didn’t know? Ibaraki is in the dungeon with Noro’s brother,” Mutsuko said.
“The dungeon?! They have one here, too? ...What happened, anyway?”
“They were peeping.”
“Ahh...” Yuichi had been right. It seemed Mutsuko really had had defenses prepared.
“You take a gamble and lose, you have to take the punishment!” Mutsuko declared.
“How did you find them out, anyway?” Yuichi asked.
“I scouted out the best peeping locations in advance, and set Wooden Men at each of them.”
“Those things?�
�� Yuichi wrinkled his nose.
Wooden Men were humanoid figures made from logs: clockwork puppets, of a sort. She had recreated the training dolls she had seen in a kung-fu movie once. Yuichi didn’t know how they worked, but they made for seriously tough opponents. They were powerful enough that Yuichi had wondered why he bothered training when she could just send the puppets out to fight instead. She must have been using them like guard dogs. He sympathized with Ibaraki on this one, just a little bit.
“So, what? Are we leaving them behind?” he asked.
“I think we should give them a couple of days to reflect on what they did,” Mutsuko said.
Yuichi was surprised that Kyoya had participated in the peeping. Then again, he apparently did like big breasts, so maybe he’d wanted to catch a glimpse at Kanako.
“That’s a surprisingly harsh punishment, though,” Yuichi said. “I figured you didn’t mind being seen naked...”
“That’s so rude! I get embarrassed too, you know!”
“Then don’t walk around naked!”
Yuichi was referring to the night before, when she had come running out without putting on clothes after hearing Yuichi strike the tree.
“It doesn’t count when it’s you, Yu!” she said cheerfully.
“No, you should still be a little embarrassed in front of your brother,” he snorted. “It’s a basic decency thing.”
They carried one set of luggage after another as they talked. There were lots of other heavy items there besides just the umbrella.
“Is this all of it?” Yuichi asked.
It wasn’t yet noon as they finished their preparations, so they had lunch, then headed for the mysterious island in question.
Yuichi and Aiko stood on the prow-side deck, looking out at the ocean. Yuichi was wearing a shirt, jacket, and jeans, while Aiko was wearing a gray dress with frilly sleeves and a white, wide-brimmed hat.
“That hat makes you look kind of like an heiress,” Yuichi said.
“Huh? R-Really?” Aiko seemed a little delighted by the comment.
Feeling a little awkward that she was acting so pleased over a mere observation, Yuichi changed the subject: “So who is Akiko, anyway?”
Akiko was driving the boat. It was a surprising sort of thing for an ordinary civilian to have a license to do.
Humanity’s Extinction Happens During Summer Vacation?! Page 7