Just as the moon broke clear, listening to the even breaths beginning to rise from the bedroom behind her, the maid let a small smile lift the corners of her mouth.
Guarding the Little Young Miss was a duty she would bear all her life.
Today she had caught an unfamiliar scent on the Little Young Miss.
Faint, very faint — but she could pick it out clearly.
It was the scent of a Dead Apostle.
More specifically — the scent of Dead Apostle foul blood.
But the Little Young Miss was unharmed.
That was what mattered.
She slipped along the corridor without a sound, soundless as a ghost.
Through the tall window at the end of the hall, the half-full moon hung in the sky, faintly washed in a nauseating red.
The maid quietly drew off the lace-trimmed glove from her left hand, took down a wakizashi from the wall of the front entry, and slowly eased the door open.
“One…”
“Two…”
“Three…”
“Four…”
“…”
Counting under her breath, her serene, pretty face turned across the Asagami estate.
Those indigo-blue eyes were veiled in a faint blue glow.
Unlike Sakura’s 「No-Self Consciousness: Mind-Emptiness, Wondrous Existence」, what the maid possessed was closer to a bloodline ability.
A thing called Pure Eyes — a fated inheritance running through demon-hunter families.
Before her eyes, threads of red appeared, wrapping themselves around the Asagami estate — the residual energy a Dead Apostle gave off.
She reached, half by reflex, for the slim cigarette she kept in her pouch.
Then she remembered.
Tonight, she had come for the killing.
Her hand settled on the wakizashi’s grip at the small of her back.
The beast within her no longer needed restraint.
The maid tilted her head, and the corners of her mouth slowly drew up into a wild, savage smile.
She walked toward the courtyard, step by unhurried step — wild, savage, no longer restrained.
“If you’ve come to die, hurry it along.
I have to pack the Little Young Miss’s lunch for tomorrow.”
That cold voice had nothing of its everyday softness.
The blue glow in her eyes — pulsing in the dark — gave the Dead Apostles hiding in the shadows a glimpse of something deeply unpleasant.
“Ah… I’d forgotten.” The maid swayed slightly where she stood.
“Tomorrow is Sunday.
The Little Young Miss has no school.
So—”
“Now then—”
“Come and play with me.”
Her left hand drew the wakizashi still in its scabbard, reversed in her grip.
Her right hand flashed a gesture — the universal taunt of the Dead Apostle world.
In the darkness, a churning blood-red shadow shrieked and lunged at her.
Faster than that Dead Apostle.
The maid sank into a crouch — and then her form vanished.
「Flash Sheath: One Wind」
The Dead Apostle’s shriek cut off.
“Hush—”
“Quietly, please.
If you wake the Little Young Miss, I’ll cut you into ten thousand pieces.”
The maid’s tone, unlike anything she’d ever shown by daylight, smiled cruelly through every word.
「Flash Step: One Deer」
A small, polished boot pressed down on the Dead Apostle’s spine where it lay pinned.
A crack.
The creature’s claws fell open little by little.
Low-tier Dead Apostles were nothing more than wretched things hiding in shadow.
Standing on the corpse, the maid’s serene, mad blue eyes swept the courtyard.
She said nothing.
But the invisible pressure she gave off crushed down on the other Dead Apostles, and they grew more frantic with every breath.
But… they were dead if they went back.
Worse-dead, even.
Someone had cut off the Mirror Demon’s head and his hands and thrown them at their leader’s feet as a mockery.
Even if they died for it, they had to know how the Mirror Demon had died in the department store.
The Dead Apostles rushed her, swarming in from every direction.
The maid sank into a crouch.
Beneath the matte black sheen of her stockings, her legs were long, lithe — line by line, the lean beauty of an athlete in motion.
She launched forward at the Dead Apostle directly ahead of her.
「Flash Step: Six Rabbits」
The toe of her boot pivoted lightly off the grass.
Her right foot slammed into the chest of the Dead Apostle in front of her.
The black-and-white lace skirt flared.
Beneath, a stretch of moon-pale skin showed — the tantalizing strip between stocking-top and skirt-hem — and higher, beneath the ruffled folds of the skirt, a glimpse of hidden things.
A pity no one was alive to see it.
The Dead Apostle in front of her had been killed in one strike.
He folded softly to the ground.
A cold wind came at her from behind.
Sharp claws sang through the air, pressing the thin fabric of her uniform tight against her back, the lines of her undergarment straps showing through.
The maid swept the wakizashi in a horizontal arc.
A flash of silver out of the scabbard.
Black, scorched-looking foul blood instantly painted her field of view.
“Act One… Nanaya…”
Her voice rasped slightly.
She smiled, almost wistful.
Watching the last Dead Apostle who had managed to slip around her, charging instead toward the Asagami estate, the maid hurled the wakizashi.
It pierced through his heart and pinned him to a column.
She looked up at the second floor.
The curtain had been drawn back.
Asagami Fujino was standing there, quiet, looking down on the courtyard.
The maid folded both hands at her hip, drew herself, with effort, out of the killing stance, and bowed to Asagami Fujino.
Asagami Fujino looked back at her with quiet worry, then drew the curtains closed.
The maid’s hand shook as she pulled a slim cigarette from the little pouch on her apron and lit it, leaning against one of the columns.
The blue glow in her eyes faded, little by little.
She wasn’t fond of cigarettes.
But to suppress the Inversion Impulse running in her blood, there was nothing else she could do.
The Eldest Miss had once complained to that Aozaki woman — why make the sedative in the shape of cigarettes?
But the woman had only taken off her glasses and looked at her.
“It’s the things you despise that you’ll remember best, isn’t it?”
Haah—
She breathed out a long stream of stale breath and looked at the wreckage of the courtyard.
“What a mess.”
…
The curtain was drawn open.
Morning light fell across the girl’s serene little face.
Asagami Fujino knelt lightly on the bed and looked at Sakura.
The phone lay on the pillow beside her.
Fujino’s brow gave a tiny pinch at that.
The girl’s soft, sleeping face made Fujino want, very much, to pull her straight into her arms.
Watching Sakura wriggle and gasp in her embrace, only to give up and lie obediently against her chest with a sullen little look — that was one of Asagami Fujino’s favorite pastimes.
Two days ago, Sakura had, with great dignity, refused to be the subject of such treatment any longer.
So such play was off the table for now.
Fujino looked faintly put-upon about it.
Her deep-violet hair fell forward, brushing along the soft skin of Sakura’s neck.
Sakura cutely furrowed her brow.
Watching the way Sakura twitched at the sensation, Fujino’s eyes brightened with sudden inspiration.
She sat up, grabbed a feather, and brushed it along the sole of Sakura’s foot.
The arch flexed sharply.
Sakura’s eyes shot open.
Fujino’s mouth curled into a smile.
“Sis, sis, sis — Sister!”
Sakura, mortified, twisted to escape — but, still half-drained of strength, she couldn’t slip away.
She seized the pillow next to her and hurled it.
And then Sakura watched as her sister’s arms swooped down toward her face instead.
Asagami Fujino was laughing.
Sakura had said no waking her up like this~
But — if she was already awake, then it didn’t really count, did it?
(Mew?)