The sunlight was just right.
Sakura stood in front of the display window, considering her own reflection in the glass.
A white hooded sweater swallowed up the girl’s slim figure, making her look a touch younger than she was.
Below the pale beige knit skirt her two long, snow-white legs showed; the toes of her little white shoes were embroidered with clustered cherry-blossom blooms.
Sakura lifted her right hand and combed a strand of hair back behind her ear.
In the glass’s reflection, from the corner of her eye, she watched the man tailing her.
A middle-aged white man, maybe in his forties or fifties — broad forehead, deep-set eyes.
His hair was sparse, only a few strands left, but combed neatly.
His skin was unnaturally pale, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in a very long time.
The whole shape of him put her in mind of some professor stepping out of a foreign university.
And yet, from a figure so frail-looking, Sakura felt the unmistakable scent of danger.
Those cloudy, deep-red eyes — she felt as though she were looking at a wolf.
His mouth kept opening and closing in small, restless motions, almost like a churchgoer muttering through mass.
A hitman?
Some out-of-town gang member?
Sakura kept her head down, thinking hard, and made for the crowd.
He must be after my status as the Asagami family’s young lady.
Or… is he trying to use me to threaten Big Sis Shiki?
Outside of those two options, she truly couldn’t think of any reason this man would be following her.
She picked up her pace a fraction and looked up at a convex traffic mirror set at the next corner.
In the mirror, the man’s features were dragged into a warped, distorted shape.
Those cloudy, deep-red eyes seemed to glint outright with light.
He had noticed her — realized, in turn, that she might have noticed him.
In the same instant, Sakura noticed something else: his lips, which had been continuously, silently mouthing some incantation, had stopped moving.
A bad sign.
Bags hanging from her left arm, her right hand digging in her purse for her phone, Sakura turned the corner and slipped into the department store.
A heavy flow of people, easily obstructed sightlines, plenty of exits — the easiest place to lose a tail.
That was something Big Sis Shiki had taught her.
But the moment she stepped through the doors, Sakura knew — she had made the wrong choice.
A grim chill rose at her back.
It wasn’t the air conditioning.
It was the feeling, like in a horror film at its most tense moment, of a cold hand sliding in under your collar.
What chilled her more, though, was the world in front of her — strange, wrong.
The department store, which should have been thick with crowd-noise, was eerily silent.
Not a sound, anywhere.
Everything wore the same dim, washed-out cast, as if the world were being seen through a filter.
The people standing in front of her, about to walk past her — every one of them, frozen, motionless.
She couldn’t feel them breathing.
She couldn’t hear a heartbeat.
If she had to put it in words — it was as if time inside the entire department store had been stopped.
Hard.
Like prodding a stone — none of the give of a human body.
It was a thoroughly unscientific thing.
And yet — Sakura found, oddly, that not a thread of panic, not a thread of confusion, rose in her.
It was as if… without ever noticing it, she had already accepted that this sort of impossible thing could happen to her.
She broke into a small run toward the escalator.
Tap—
Tap—
The curtain at the entrance was pushed aside; unhurried footsteps came pressing toward her.
Sakura turned to look.
The man who’d been tailing her had pulled his mouth into a slow, jagged, vicious smile.
He spread his arms.
“Little girl.”
“Run all you like.”
“The hunt… has begun.”
The middle-aged man’s smile bared cold rows of teeth — and the fangs that emerged were exactly like a vampire’s from a picture book.
Sakura clapped a hand over her brow with a slight headache.
So this world really does have vampires in it.
She was a little startled by how easily she accepted the fact.
Thinking back to what Yumizuka Satsuki had said, she began to understand the reason Yumizuka Satsuki had pinned her to that wall with such violence.
It was said that to one just turned into a vampire, the most delicious meal in the world was the person they had been closest to in life.
So maybe… she was the one Little Satsuki had been closest to?
At the thought, the corner of Sakura’s mouth lifted.
She looked past the man, to where the sun behind the storefront glass came through that strange filter — coming out a vivid, jarring orange-red.
“You cannot escape.” The vampire was still going on, arms spread wide.
“This is the Reverse Side of the Coin — the world inside the mirror.”
“And it’s thanks to you, spending so long in front of that glass watching me, that I was able to complete the rite at all.”
He was grinning savagely.
He was already certain Sakura was his.
He could already picture himself receiving his reward from the Grand Duke after capturing the small human girl who clung so close to the Princess.
Sakura carefully set the bags from her left arm down beside the escalator and pressed both hands to her chest.
To the vampire, the pose she struck in that moment looked like that of a delicate young girl swaying in a downpour — helpless, pleading.
“Don’t worry, I’m not a cruel sort.” He licked his lips, and lunged at her in a red blur.
“And I don’t have any interest in naive little girls like you.”
“You’re worth more alive.
Four broken limbs, at most.”
The vampire let out a piercing, screeching cry; the sick expression on his face was already savoring the crisp, sharp sound he would hear when he broke Sakura’s small limbs.
It made Sakura frown faintly.
She wanted to cover her ears. Get faster updates on g.com.
So loud.
Her right hand gave a light tug at the chain at her throat, and the old blade came free.
I really should thank Shigure-nee.
Otherwise this would have been quite a bit of trouble.
She closed her eyes.
Her right hand dropped to her side, gripping the blade in a reverse grip, her knuckle pressed against the metal card.
She drew in a deep breath.
The sky-blue eyes opened.
Before this, Sakura had never seen a vampire — that storybook sort of thing.
Well, if it was a first time, she’d give it everything.
— The Dharma says: True Emptiness is the state of being self-existent, with no division of duality.
Sakura tipped her head to one side and looked at the blood-colored figure rushing at her, those pupils veiled with a faint, blue starlight.
「No-Self Consciousness: Mind-Emptiness, Wondrous Existence」.
Seems like… not all that fast, after all.
I can keep up.
The slim, willowy figure swayed; her foot kicked off the side of the escalator.
Sakura’s body shot upward and forward, faster than should have been possible, slipping past the vampire’s swiping claws.
In the instant Sakura and the vampire brushed past each other.
Less than a second.
At best — no more than a single thought.
Click—
The switchblade snapped open, and the edge sliced open the vampire’s arm in the same instant, not the slightest catch in the motion.
The arm dropped to the floor, severed clean at the root; a great gush of black blood pumped after it.
Sakura was panting in small, shallow gasps.
Her strength was poor.
Her stamina was worse.
But in technique — by the age of seven or eight she had already been able to thrash Big Sis Shiki’s older brother into the dirt.
And her intuition — even Big Sis Shiki openly conceded its keenness.
An intuition that could see the future.
The hand gripping the blade was trembling.
The girl she had just been was strange to her, and at the same time familiar.
It was as though she had slipped back into childhood, the days she had trained at swordsmanship with the Ryōgi family.
The Ryōgi family’s swordsmanship was the craft of killing humans.
To be precise — the craft of cutting down human-shaped things.
Sakura looked at the vampire in front of her — clutching what remained of his arm — and lowered her body a little, her thighs drawn taut.
“Apparently… I’m the stronger one?”
(Apparently Sakura’s a Sword Saint)
The release schedule isn’t completely fixed, but I guarantee at least 1 chapter a day, even when I’m extremely busy.