Aiko looked around. They seemed to be in a factory, but everything except for the open, lit-up space they were in was so dark that she couldn’t be sure.
Aiko checked herself next. Her uniform was covered in something like dust. The place must not get cleaned very often.
Her consciousness was gradually returning to her. Aiko remembered...
She remembered leaving her seat to head for the bathroom because Orihara’s lecture was so incomprehensible. She remembered noticing that the bathrooms in the old building contained nothing but dirty squat toilets, so she’d headed for the ones in the gym. She remembered doing her business and getting ready to go back to the club room, when something suddenly caught her around the neck, and...
This is... really bad, huh...
Natsuki thought that Aiko knew her secret. She had been trying to erase people who knew her secret...
“Hey... Takeuchi. Would you tell me what’s going on?” She decided to quietly probe at her abductor’s state of mind.
“The truth is, I wanted to abduct both of you,” Natsuki said. “I can’t have you dying at the school or in the city, but once I’ve brought you here, I can do anything I want with you. So I was watching the school, wondering how I would go about kidnapping both of you at once, when I caught sight of you, all alone. That’s when I realized that one was enough.”
Yeah, I figured she did this because she found out I knew about her!
“So I infiltrated the bathroom and got you in a chokehold from behind. Then you lost consciousness and I brought you here.”
It didn’t make a lot of sense to Aiko, but it explained why she remembered being strangled.
“Hey... Takeuchi, what are you trying to accomplish?” She couldn’t really figure out why she had been kidnapped. If Natsuki just wanted her quiet, she would have killed her already. But she had just been left on the floor. She wasn’t even tied up.
“I want to have a peaceful school life,” Natsuki responded. “A normal life surrounded by normal friends, having fun in the normal way. But not one day in, that all came crashing down. What would you do if you were me, Noro?”
Natsuki didn’t even seem to be listening for a response. She just seemed to be saying whatever she wanted to say.
“Um, I won’t tell anyone, so you could let me go... couldn’t you?” Aiko gave Natsuki her best puppy-dog eyes, even though she figured it was likely to be ineffective against a girl.
“No,” Natsuki said flatly.
“But we’ve talked a lot, you know? Aren’t we friends? Um, you know I’ll protect my friend’s secret!” Setting aside the ethical and legal issues for now, she was pretty sure she could keep the secret. She had a dark secret of her own, after all, being a vampire. She had a certain amount of sympathy for the other girl’s situation.
“Yeah, I thought we might be good friends too, Noro. It’s a shame.”
“No, no, no, don’t say that! We can still be... friends, you know?!” Aiko decided to push the friendship angle harder. Natsuki did sound like she really wanted friends, after all.
“Have you even been listening to me, Noro?” Natsuki asked disdainfully.
Aiko wasn’t sure what she had done to deserve this scorn. “Yeah, I have. You said you wanted to have fun at school with your friends, right? If you’d just knock it off and become friends with me and Sakaki, you wouldn’t have to do this!”
“I told you I want normal friends. Get it? I can’t be friends with weirdos who don’t mind being friends with a serial killer. I mean, honestly. Any normal, law-abiding citizen would call the police on me right away.”
“Huh?”
Well, that explained it. Natsuki Takeuchi was crazy. Hearing a crazy person call her weird really got under Aiko’s skin. The friend strategy didn’t seem to be working, so Aiko gave up on it.
She sighed. “So can I at least get you to explain why you kidnapped me?”
“To kill you. Why else?” Natsuki said it so casually, it didn’t seem real.
Aiko was alone in a room with a serial killer. She should have been more afraid, but Aiko didn’t feel much fear at all. She still couldn’t quite believe that Natsuki was a serial killer, probably because they were basically talking like they always had.
“You know... I could just run away.” Aiko wasn’t actually tied up. She was awake and alert and uninjured. If she wanted to run, she could do so at any time.
But Natsuki quickly doused those hopes. The girl who had been standing some distance away appeared in front of her in the blink of an eye. She flicked Aiko’s forehead with a finger.
“Ow.” Aiko unwittingly put her hands to her forehead.
“You’re free because I had confidence that I could catch you if I had to. Want to test that theory?”
“No, thanks...” Aiko scooted backwards a little ways. It was clear that she couldn’t take her.
I may be a vampire, but it’s no help at all in this situation... Maybe she could make it if she sucked some of Natsuki’s blood, but Natsuki was so much stronger, it was doubtful that she could even make it to the bite.
“Well, stay nice and quiet and you might get to survive until midnight,” Natsuki said offhandedly.
Aiko checked her wristwatch. It was 9:00 at night. That didn’t give her much time. “Why until midnight?”
“I called Sakaki. If he’s not here by midnight, I’ll kill you. Now, once he gets here, I’ll kill you both, so you might actually live longer if he stays away. What do you think? Will Sakaki come?”
Common sense dictated that he wouldn’t. Why would anyone come out just to be killed? That was probably why Natsuki had asked.
But Aiko responded without a doubt in her mind. “Of course he’ll come.”
“Huh?” Natsuki responded incredulously.
But Aiko was sure. She hadn’t known him long. She couldn’t claim to know everything about him. But she knew that, in this situation, the boy named Yuichi would come.
That was the reason she had been so calm before. She knew Yuichi would come to save her. It was the most natural thing in the world. “I mean, the hero always comes to save his love interest when she’s been captured by a killer!”
“Oh, spare me your embarrassing cliches,” Natsuki shot back, dryly.
“Right, sorry. Pretend I didn’t say that! I kind of embarrassed myself, too.” Aiko felt embarrassed about calling herself the love interest, and turned her eyes away.
But... even if I’m not the love interest, Sakaki will still come for me. That was the one thing Aiko knew for sure.
Chapter 9: At Last! The Battle Against Serial Killer I
Yuichi and Mutsuko followed Natsuki’s directions and arrived at the designated town. It was a slum full of homeless people, about an hour by train away from their hometown of Seishin.
They used their cell phone GPSes to find the exact location, which turned out to be a run-down old factory.
One would expect an abandoned factory to be full of homeless people looking for shelter, but that didn’t seem to be the case here. The building was silent and still.
Yuichi and Mutsuko headed inside, still on high alert.
Steel beams and materials lay around, suggesting a former metalworking plant.
Though the power seemed to be shut off, they could still see a light ahead. There was a low sound like the whir of turbines. Possibly a home generator.
They entered and walked toward the light until they saw a girl in a high school uniform. She was watching them with a sharp gaze.
Natsuki Takeuchi was standing at the center of a wide open space lit by blindingly bright lights.
Aiko was sitting at her feet. She wasn’t tied up and didn’t seem to be injured.
“Sakaki!” The moment she saw Yuichi, Aiko stood up and ran straight for him. Natsuki didn’t try to stop her, but just watched her go.
Aiko threw her arms around Yuichi.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked. She seemed pretty terrified. Yuichi patted her head g
ently.
“Yeah, I’m okay... Um, sorry I got caught.” Aiko’s momentary smile clouded over with regret.
“Don’t sweat it. You’re okay, and that’s all I care about.” He looked her up and down, but he didn’t see anything wrong with her beyond a dusty uniform.
“Oh my, Noro! How forward of you!” Mutsuko exclaimed.
Mutsuko’s words snapped Aiko back to reality. She quickly tore away from Yuichi as if she had realized what she was doing.
The hug had felt a little odd to Yuichi, so he was kind of relieved. But just then, he noticed the label above Aiko’s head.
It read “Love Interest.”
When did that happen?
“What does ‘love interest’ mean?” Yuichi murmured, sounding it out like a punchline.
“Y-You heard that?!” Aiko cried out, her face turning scarlet.
“Huh? I just mean, your label says ‘love interest’ now...”
Aiko swept her hands over her head as if trying to erase the words. It didn’t disappear, but as she worked at it, Mutsuko linked her arms behind her back and strolled into Yuichi’s line of sight, humming.
“What are you doing, Sis?” he asked, silently wishing she wouldn’t sabotage the mood.
“Come on, what does my label say?” she asked.
“Huh? It says ‘Big Sister,’ like always.”
“Oh, come on!” Mutsuko groused. “If you’re the protagonist, and Noro’s a love interest, then I should be a love interest, too!”
“Um, you are my real sister, aren’t you?”
“Yes! We’re siblings, no question! There’s not gonna be any ‘not related by blood’ twist later on!”
“Then don’t you find that idea weird?!”
“Why can’t your sister be the love interest?” Mutsuko pouted at him.
Yuichi pushed her aside to step forward. He could hear her behind him, still sulking, but he was relieved that she wouldn’t do anything more to get in his way.
“Anyway, you two get back. I’ll deal with the rest.”
“Noro! I think that spot should be good. It’s just the right height for sitting.” Mutsuko pointed to a mountain of steel materials, and the two sat down.
Yuichi checked to make sure they were at a safe distance, then began walking towards Natsuki.
They were about ten meters apart now, facing each other.
“Jack the Ripper,” her label read. The serial killer who had terrorized England in the year 1888. The case had gone unsolved, and the killer’s identity remained unknown. Who could say what his weakness might have been?
Mutsuko didn’t know the truth behind the incidents either, but... “Over a hundred years have passed since then. So maybe the legend gave rise to some sort of yokai!” she had said with great interest.
Of course, it wasn’t Natsuki Takeuchi herself who had committed those murders. She didn’t even look English. Despite her exotic features, she was clearly Japanese.
“Good evening. All done with your emotional reunion?” she asked.
“I’m surprised you let her go so easily. I thought you would want to hold her hostage,” Yuichi commented. He had assumed she would want to use Aiko to keep him docile, but apparently not. On the other hand, that might also be a sign of how confident Natsuki was. If so, that could spell a new kind of trouble.
“My time and energy are valuable. Getting a rope all ready and tying her up would just have been so much trouble. And I don’t need to do that to finish you.”
“I can tell you’re really confident. But wouldn’t it still be more efficient to use a hostage as a shield to kill me? That would save you a lot of time and energy, too.”
“True, but killing a defenseless person just isn’t satisfying, sorry to say. So if you’re tied up, or if you can’t resist because I have a hostage, the kill doesn’t do a thing for me. I mean obviously it doesn’t make a difference if I’m killing you to shut you up, but why not sate my hunger while I’m at it?”
“You’re telling me an awful lot.”
“You’re about to die, so I can say whatever I want.”
“Takeuchi, no! That’s a red flag!” Mutsuko exclaimed. “The ‘You can take that to hell with you’ line is a sign that you’re about to lose!”
“Who is she?” Natsuki looked at Mutsuko in puzzlement. She must have expected him to come alone.
“That’s my big sister. I accidentally told her your identity, so I brought her along.”
“Oh? You did that for me? How considerate... By the way, did you leave a letter behind before you came?”
“No way. I came here to talk. I’m sure we can find a compromise to get out of this without killing anybody.”
“Hmm, all right. Do you have a cell phone? That might be more natural. You can just send an email to your parents later... Hmm, but your sister being here complicates things.” Natsuki exuded casual confidence, seemingly thinking that everything was going her way.
“Hey... What is this place?” Yuichi asked. Since Natsuki wasn’t engaging at all, he was going to move on to another subject. His first objective was to get her talking to him. He needed some way to hook her.
“It’s our coliseum.”
“Huh?” Yuichi was dumbstruck. That was the last thing he had expected to hear.
“You think I hunt the local homeless? You think I’m an indiscriminate killer?” she asked.
“You mean you’re not?” Yuichi had just assumed that when he heard this was her hunting ground. This place saw several hundreds of deaths by freezing and starvation every year. It would be easy enough for her to mix her killings in with that.
“How rude. I feel insulted. You think I kill defenseless opponents? Sure, I’m a killer, but I still try very hard to blend in with society. I don’t cause unnecessary suffering, and I don’t kill people who aren’t prepared to die.”
“Noro wasn’t ready to die, but you were going to kill her.”
“That falls under the category of ‘necessary suffering.’ It’s a completely separate issue from sating myself.”
Yuichi decided to give up on understanding her logic. He wasn’t going to get into the mind of a serial killer.
“This is a coliseum where the fearless come to fight. Everyone who comes here knows there’s a chance they might die. Thus, if they do die, no one can complain, and it makes cleanup much easier. Of course, we don’t advertise what kind of place this is, but the smell of blood still permeates it. So even though it might make a nice refuge otherwise, the homeless stay away.”
“This is so cool! I thought the underground Tokyo Dome coliseum was the only one of these!” Mutsuko squealed.
“Look, there is no underground Tokyo Dome coliseum,” Yuichi said, instinctively turning away from his confrontation with Natsuki to correct Mutsuko’s ridiculous statement.
“Do you stream your fights on the internet?” she asked excitedly.
“The membership fee is expensive, but it’s possible to view it online... Who is she, again?” Natsuki turned back to check with Yuichi. She clearly had little experience with mood-shattering comments like Mutsuko’s. Yuichi couldn’t help but sympathize.
“Sorry, please ignore my sister. Anyway, we won’t tell anyone else about you. So please... won’t you let us go?”
“You know I can’t. Killing you two is the simplest way out of this.”
“You know, we could just run away.”
“Can you? I have no intention of letting you leave here, and even if you got past me, I have a friend blocking the entrance.”
“A friend?!” Yuichi hadn’t even considered that. He’d just assumed she was alone.
“Yu... You should have thought of that when Noro was captured! How else could she have brought her here when she was unconscious? She’d need a car! And Takeuchi’s a teenager, so she wouldn’t be driving. She must have had a collaborator!”
“Sis... Did you just come up with that deduction now?” Yuichi turned back to Mutsuko in annoyance. He could h
ave used that information earlier.
“C-Certainly not!” Mutsuko’s triumphant expression collapsed into despondency. He must have been right. Yuichi knew that if Mutsuko had come up with such a theory beforehand, she wouldn’t have waited to reveal it.
She was really ruining the tension in the air. But even so, Yuichi turned back to Natsuki and continued the conversation.
“A friend... You mean an oni like Ibaraki?”
A serial killer friend, Yuichi thought. At the very least, whoever it was probably wasn’t human.
“Hmm? What do you mean? Did he reveal his secret? I can’t imagine how...”
“He talks a lot. He must really hate you.”
“Oh? That’s unexpected... I wonder if he underestimates me. Maybe I should have killed one of their species as an example to him.”
Fighting multiple opponents would be tricky by itself, and Yuichi still didn’t know how skilled Natsuki was. He decided to just ask.
“Are you... really tough?”
“Hmm? Good question. I’m no match for an oni in terms of brute strength. But that’s overrated in this day and age.” Natsuki reached into her breast pocket and pulled out something, then turned towards Yuichi.
“Huh?”
In a way, it was suited to the movie-like set stage around them, yet its appearance still took Yuichi by surprise.
It was a gun.
“Oni and other beings of the old world are extremely vulnerable to this kind of thing. Of course, it works on humans, too.”
Yuichi glanced at Mutsuko while trying not to take his eyes off the gun for too long.
“I’m sorry, Yu. I don’t know much about guns.” Mutsuko sounded genuinely apologetic.
It wasn’t a disappointment, though. His hopes hadn’t been high to start with. He knew that Mutsuko didn’t study small arms in detail, claiming they weren’t a realistic concern in Japan.
“Now, talking seems to be getting us nowhere, so I think I’ll kill you now. Are you sure you don’t want any final professions of love with Noro? I don’t mind giving you that long.”
“Nope, nothing like that,” Yuichi said with a sigh.
The World's Strongest Little Brother Page 13