Surprised, Aiko looked towards it, and saw two girls squatting there. One was pointing towards a door. It seemed there was a toilet, at least.
“They’ll feed you, too. At least, a little bit. We’re sacrifices, apparently, so I guess they don’t mind if we look a little scrawny...” the other girl said with a trace of sarcasm.
“Um, who are you guys?” Aiko asked hesitantly.
“I’m Akemi,” the girl with the ponytail said. “That’s Manaka.”
So the girl with the ponytail was Akemi, and the girl with long hair who had pointed out the toilet was Manaka. That was how Aiko memorized them. They both looked older than her — they were probably out of high school, at least — and were both dressed in simple kimonos that looked like pajamas.
“Did you say... sacrifices?” Aiko repeated.
“Seems so,” Akemi said. “At the next full moon, they’re holding a festival to their god, and we’re the tribute. So I guess we get to live until then? We’ve got futons, and some changes of clothes if you don’t mind stuff like this... It’s pretty awkward to have that guy leering at us all the time, but otherwise they take pretty good care of us.”
The girls were in college, it seemed. Five of them had come to Madono Island for summer vacation. They had fallen asleep in their inn, and when they’d awakened, they’d been trapped in here. Which meant that the girls didn’t even know that they were on a remote island called Kurokami.
“A remote island, huh? Which means even if we get out of here, we can’t get back home...” Akemi said, sounding less frustrated about it than one might think. She must have already resigned herself to the situation.
“There were five of you, you said?” Aiko asked.
“Yeah. So why are there only two of us here, you mean? Are you guys virgins?”
“U-Um?” Aiko asked, wondering if she’d heard the girl right.
“I asked if you’re virgins.”
The second time she was asked the question, Aiko looked around, confirming the responses of her fellow club members.
“Well, yes, but what does that have to do with anything?” Aiko whispered self-consciously.
“I think they’re putting the virgins in here,” Akemi explained. “The other three played around a lot... and virgins and sacrifices usually go together, you know?”
“Ah...” Aiko wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“Bingo,” the man sitting outside the prison spoke up suddenly in a voice that somehow felt as sticky as the air around them.
“Boy, what a shame,” he continued. “I thought all high school girls these days played around.”
Chills ran up Aiko’s spine as she felt the man undress her with his eyes.
“Wanna know what happened to the other three?” There was a sadistic tone to his voice that made their fate easy to imagine.
“No! Don’t say it!” Manaka screamed, covering her ears.
The man didn’t seem to want to have to deal with her starting a fuss, so he didn’t say anything more. Aiko was glad for that; she didn’t want to hear any more of the man’s cruel words, either.
“Hey! Why don’t we do some image training, like Gohan and Krillin in Dragon Ball Z? It really kills the time during situations like this!” Mutsuko happily shattered the mood.
“Um, Mutsuko?” Aiko ventured.
“Noro! It’ll be fine, so relax, okay? Once Yu gets here, everything’s gonna work out! We’ve just got a lot of time to kill until then, that’s all. Wanna play Word Chain? What about you guys? Manaka, Akemi?” Mutsuko blithely called to the two college girls.
“Mutsuko and I aren’t worried, so you can calm down, too, Noro,” Yoriko said haughtily. “Of course, the situation being what it is, I’ll be a bit nicer to you.”
Aiko was starting to feel like she was the silly one for worrying.
✽✽✽✽✽
Yuichi regulated his breathing, using that to force his body into fighting condition.
He couldn’t tell if the anthromorphs around them were friend or foe yet, so he wouldn’t necessarily have to fight. But if he did, he had to be prepared.
“Kill the man. The woman’s a virgin, so we’ll take her,” said the unicorn anthromorph, who was apparently their leader.
Those words confirmed to Yuichi that these were enemies.
“Your special skill is so creepy! What the heck?! I know you’re a unicorn, but still! It’s so gross that you can tell that by smell!” the cow told the unicorn. She sounded like she really meant it; they must not have been particularly good friends.
“They’re fighting with each other...” Yuichi whispered.
“Don’t let your guard down,” Natsuki responded quickly.
“Shut up, virgin!” the unicorn guy snapped. “How can you be a virgin with tits like that, anyway? Give me a break...”
“That’s sexual harassment! Knock it off or I’ll sue!”
The other anthromorphs just watched as the cow and the unicorn bickered.
It didn’t look like they were going to be fighting right away, so Yuichi evaluated his situation again. They were standing in the middle of a pier about ten meters wide, sticking out from the land over the ocean.
Jumping into the water would be the easiest escape route. But given Yuichi’s weakened state, he wasn’t sure how far they could get.
The anthromorphs had fanned out in front of them, as if to cut off any escape route further onto land. From left to right, it was pig, cow, horse, elephant, snake, and dog.
“What should we do?” Yuichi murmured. “I don’t think I can fight for very long...”
“We’ll just have to beat them all,” Natsuki agreed. “From what I can see, there are six here right now. I don’t see any sign of reinforcements, but if any get away, they might call for some. If we want the freedom to search the island for the rest of our club members, we’ll have to beat every last one of them.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s what it comes down to,” Yuichi agreed. “It wouldn’t be hard to knock one or two of them down and make a run for it, but that would lead to trouble later...”
Yuichi wasn’t sure he could hold out long enough to beat them all, though, which was why he had asked Natsuki for advice. But it seemed she had an answer to that, too.
She took one step in front of Yuichi.
In response to that, the cow and the horse realized their prey was getting ready to fight, and they stopped their bickering.
Natsuki reached behind her with both hands and picked out as many scalpels as she could hold.
The anthromorphs were just about to move when Natsuki swung her arms forward as hard as she could.
The follow-through posture was like the unfurling of wings. The scalpels went flying, drawing red lines behind them. It was hard to tell if the anthromorphs even saw them.
One scalpel opened a hole in the elephant’s face, while another took off the unicorn’s head. A third and a fourth cut open the dog’s stomach and bisected the snake’s head.
Following Natsuki’s throw, Yuichi leaped into action, running after the scalpels. He got around behind the uninjured cow and pig and thrust the heel of his palm at each. Both fell to the ground with a dull smack.
With the anthromorphs neutralized, Yuichi fell limply to the ground.
He really was still hungry. Yuichi needed more food than you would expect for a young man of his size and build. Though the dietary supplements had given him the vitamins he needed, they hadn’t had a lot of calories.
He looked over at one of the scalpels, which had hit the ground nearby. There was a red string attached to its handle. That must have been why they seemed to trail red.
“Ah, that’s something the club president taught me,” Natsuki said.
Putting strings on throwing weapons was a wise move, Yuichi reflected. It made them fly straighter.
“A little risky, wasn’t it? It’s hard to put a lot of power behind a thrown scalpel...” Yuichi said, looking over the tragic state of the ant
hromorphs.
“You remember I can cut through steel, don’t you?” Natsuki asked. “At this range, even if they’re not in my hand, I can still put considerable power behind them.”
As a thrown weapon attack, it would be hard to defend against. Yuichi remembered the first time he had fought Natsuki, and he had to admit that it was definitely a troublesome attack.
“So what’s with the outfit?” he asked.
Natsuki was wearing a black leather bodysuit that clung to her curves. He had wondered the same thing when she’d come to training in a leotard, but she looked even more like an assassin now.
“The club president prepared it,” Natsuki said. “It’s convenient. It holds a lot of scalpels.”
“Sis, what are you getting up to now...?” Yuichi muttered. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you could buy in a store, so Mutsuko must have designed it and had it made somewhere.
“Are they alive?” Natsuki asked as she looked at the cow and the pig. They had returned to human form, perhaps due to having lost consciousness. One was a girl with a cow’s horns and tail; the other was a man with a pig’s ears and snout. They were both naked except for cloth wrapped around the girl’s hips and chest, and the man’s hips.
“...We probably don’t have to kill them,” Yuichi said. “Just depowering them is enough. But they were trying to kill us, so I won’t complain about the ones you killed.” Even as he said that, he knew it sounded like he was making excuses.
“I see,” Natsuki said. “Then I won’t complain about your way of doing things, either. Can I bring something to tie them up?”
“Yeah. There’s probably something in Mutsuko’s luggage.”
As Natsuki made a beeline to the bags piled on the ground, Yuichi found himself watching her walk away. Usually he would have noticed the preliminary signs of attack and never be distracted like that. But Yuichi was completely off his guard.
The pig-man suddenly sprang up.
He must have been waiting for his chance, because he turned to his beast form in an instant, and kicked out with a hoof.
Yuichi’s response came too late. Even though he knew that the attack was coming, his body wouldn’t respond quickly enough.
He just stood up, preparing to take the attack and counter it.
But the hit never landed.
Blood shot from the pig-man’s forehead.
Yuichi turned around. Natsuki stood there, arm outstretched in a throwing stance. She had thrown one of the weights Yuichi had been wearing before.
“Look alive, would you?” Natsuki called. She searched through Mutsuko’s bag and produced a rope.
“Yeah, no excuse for that one,” Yuichi agreed.
“I could so easily kill you right now, Sakaki,” Natsuki murmured. She exuded malice.
Or rather, Yuichi could detect the faintest movements of her muscles, the kind that would presage a killing strike, and he interpreted that as malice. In that moment, Natsuki really was thinking about killing him.
“...But I won’t,” she concluded. “Knowing you, you probably have something up your sleeve.”
But it was only for a moment. She quickly dismissed it, and the malice around her dispersed.
“I don’t have anything up my sleeve in this condition...” Yuichi muttered self-reproachingly.
Natsuki didn’t respond as she began tying up the cow anthromorph with the rope.
Yuichi recognized that rope. It was made from braided artificial spider silk, the strongest textile in the modern era. Anthromorphs were likely stronger than humans, but there was no way they could break through that.
“We should hide for a while,” he said. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah. We need to recoup.”
Natsuki threw the dead anthromorphs into the sea, but the bloodstains around the area made it clear that there had been a battle, and taking any more time to try to cover that up would likely be pointless.
After disposing of the bodies, Natsuki broke the lock of a small warehouse on the harbor and opened the shutters. She dragged the cow anthromorph in and left her.
Yuichi thought about helping, but Natsuki finished everything in the time it took him just to limp over.
They entered the warehouse and closed the shutter. They didn’t intend to stay long, so they’d decided the minimal cover-up would do well enough.
Yuichi collapsed on the floor, while Natsuki rested her back against the wall. The anthromorph cow was on the floor, as well.
“So, what do we do next?” he asked Natsuki once everything seemed stable.
She said nothing.
“First, food,” Yuichi decided. “I need to eat to recover. Meat. I need to eat meat.”
“...You mean you want to eat me?” Natsuki asked, her face slightly red.
“I don’t have time to play along with your jokes right now. Come on, beef or something.”
“No! Don’t eat me! No matter how delicious I might be...”
The sudden cry caused Yuichi to look over at the source of the voice. The cow-girl had awakened.
“I wasn’t planning to eat you!” he shouted.
“Don’t worry,” Natsuki assured her. “Sakaki means it in a sexual sense. That’s the reason he let you live. If he’d wanted to use you as provisions, he would have killed you, wouldn’t he?”
“S-Sexual? Is that the reason you didn’t kill me?!” The cow-girl gulped.
“Seriously, enough with the jokes already,” Yuichi muttered. “I’m not up to playing along with them right now.”
“Boring,” Natsuki complained.
Yuichi felt anxious; Natsuki was clearly picking up some habits from Mutsuko.
Regathering his calm, Yuichi turned to talk to the cow-girl once more.
“Hey, I have a few questions. Could you answer them?”
“What will you do to me if I don’t?” The cow-girl wriggled, trying to maintain her distance. It seemed she was still under a misapprehension about the situation.
“If you don’t want to answer, I won’t make you,” Yuichi said. “I won’t try to force you to talk. But I will have to leave you where you are, unfortunately. If you answer my questions, I’ll take off the rope.”
After a moment’s thought, the girl acquiesced. “...Okay.”
“Okay. First, why did you attack us?”
“The island is preparing for the festival,” the girl said. “We’re supposed to attack outsiders on sight. We ended up on patrol around the island when we suddenly found you.”
“On sight? Isn’t that a little reckless?” Yuichi asked.
“Not really. The island’s residents are all people like us. Outsiders aren’t welcome.”
“What did you mean when you said you ‘ended up’ on patrol?” he asked.
“It’s our first time being assigned this job. I never expected anything like this to happen.”
“Are there any other patrols?”
“Yeah. Quite a few, I think.”
“Do you know of anyone who’s come to this island besides us?” Yuichi asked.
“No. We only just came out here ourselves.”
“What happens when a patrol finds someone?”
“We’re supposed to kill them,” the anthromorph said. “Unless they’re virgins, in which case we’re supposed to bring them to the Kukurizaka house. But most of us can’t tell one from the other, you know? The unicorn guy’s a special case, see...”
“What’s Kukurizaka?” Yuichi cut in. If he let her go off on a rant about the guy she didn’t like, it might take a while.
“The family that runs the island,” the cow anthromorph said. “Their house is on the mountain at the center of the island. About halfway up, I think.”
“What happens after you take them there?” he demanded. That was what worried him. The others could be in a really bad situation right now.
“They’ll be sacrificed, I hear,” the girl said. “They’re going to be tributes to The Head of All, but they’ll probably be sa
fe until then... you asked before, but did anyone else come here?”
“Yeah, some friends and family,” Yuichi said. “Now, my final question. Do you know where I can find some food? Not instant stuff. I mean real meat and vegetables.”
“Food? There should be fields in the area. There’s kind of a small supermarket a little ways away from here. Is that enough?”
“Yeah, that’s a big help.” As promised, Yuichi untied the girl. “Okay, we’re going. If we meet again, it’s going to result in a fight, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stay away. You don’t want to die, right?”
Yuichi couldn’t imagine killing her, actually, but any fight could end in death. He carried that thought with him every day.
He stood up, but got a head rush and stumbled. His exhaustion really was severe.
“Wait!” As they were about to leave the warehouse, the cow-girl called after them.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Hey, you want something to eat, right? Why not come to my house?” she offered.
Chapter 6: Yuichi Sakaki Eats a Lot
Takashi Jonouchi was walking around the Kukurizaka mansion.
There wasn’t much light. It was hard to see anything like this. But the faint light was enough for the people who lived in the mansion. Takashi understood that now.
Perhaps it was the awakening of his anthromorph nature, but he could see clearly even in the dark. All of his senses had become sharper, as well. Perhaps there were breeds of anthromorph that couldn’t see as well in the dark, but they probably had methods of their own to get around.
With every step he took, Yuri Konishi walking beside him, the corridor let out a sound like a scream. Before long, they arrived at the island chief’s room.
The Kukurizaka family were the rulers of Kurokami Island. In other words, the man who controlled the entirety of this isolated nation was in this room.
“I’m not particular. Just come in and sit down,” a voice said from deeper within as Takashi dithered about how to comport himself within.
Takashi did as he was told, moving further in to sit down. His companion did the same.
He thought he should sit in formal kneeling position, but Yuri was sitting at ease beside him, so Takashi shifted to a cross-legged posture.
Humanity’s Extinction Happens During Summer Vacation?! Page 10