The crow that had only just been screeching its sharp, ugly cries thrashed through a few seconds of dying spasms and dissolved into something like asphalt, hissing and corroding the concrete, sending up an acrid wisp of cyan smoke.
Sakura breathed lightly, her chest rising and falling with each inhale.
Her right hand trembled as she drew it back.
The girl’s constitution was frail—frankly not much better than that of any ordinary girl.
It was only by borrowing the secret art that the maid had taught her, the one called “Flash”, that she had been able, just barely, to use `「Cat Reversal」`.
The price was a dull ache already setting into the muscles of her right arm.
Sakura flexed her wrist gently.
It seemed that training her body was a matter she needed to move up the agenda.
If it had been Big Sis Shiki who’d stepped in just now, Yumizuka Satsuki wouldn’t have been hurt at all.
“Satsuki!” Sakura caught her by the shoulders, anxious.
“What do we do?
We have to go to the nurse’s office—or get a leave slip and go to a hospital.”
Yumizuka Satsuki looked at that worried little face, and the corners of her own mouth couldn’t help but tug up.
“It’s all right, Sakura.”
“I’m… a vampire now, you know.” As she watched Sakura’s frantic expression—as though she were the one bleeding—
Yumizuka Satsuki couldn’t keep the smile down.
She reached out to soothe Sakura, to pat her cheek.
Sakura is worried about me~~~
The moment she thought that, the pain in her arm seemed to dissolve.
Her hand drifted toward Sakura’s small face—but seeing her own hand, slick and red with viscous blood, Yumizuka Satsuki jerked it back as though shocked.
She didn’t want Sakura to touch the blood.
But Sakura was quicker.
She’d already caught Yumizuka Satsuki’s hand.
Feeling the sticky weight of blood against her palm, Sakura’s eyes welled, water gathering in them.
If I’d just reacted a little faster, Little Satsuki wouldn’t have been hurt.
With her hand warmed by Sakura’s, Yumizuka Satsuki led her into the shadow at the wall’s edge.
“Let me show you a magic trick~” She tucked herself into the shade of the corner.
Then—to Sakura’s astonished gaze—the gash on Yumizuka Satsuki’s arm and the lacerations across her hands began to knit closed at a speed visible to the eye.
“See?
Told you it was fine.” Yumizuka Satsuki forced an I’m-totally-fine smile.
“Liar.” Sakura stared into those bright red eyes in front of her—that look of absolute, biased devotion—and bit her lip, feeling she had wronged Little Satsuki.
If I’d refused more firmly that time…
If I’d just walked Yumizuka Satsuki home that day…
How was that fine?
Her face was as white as paper, no different from someone gravely ill.
“Eh~ Just used up a bit of stamina, that’s all.” Yumizuka Satsuki, of course, didn’t think it that serious.
A few blood bags at home and she’d be right again.
And once she reported to Ryōgi Shiki her heroic feat—wounded valiantly in defense of Sakura—what blood bags wouldn’t be hers tonight?
Want type A?
One bag drained, another tossed aside—the little rich vampire of the neighborhood.
Sakura sighed and said nothing.
She trotted over to where the crow had been shot down, gripped the knife’s hilt with both hands, and pulled.
She put her whole weight into it, pulled until her face went red, and still it wouldn’t come free.
Watching her crouch there, cheeks puffed in indignation, Yumizuka Satsuki slowly squatted down too and laid her own hand atop Sakura’s, fingers clasping around the hilt with hers.
“Let me.”
The short knife, immovable to Sakura, slid free of the concrete with the faintest pull from Yumizuka Satsuki.
She started to hand it back—but Sakura’s face was tipped up, eyes wide with alarm.
“What is it?” Yumizuka Satsuki followed Sakura’s line of sight upward, and her own lip caught between her teeth.
“Caw—”
“Caw—”
“Caw—”
A flock of cyan crows wheeled in the sky, and from a place in the distance, still more crows kept rising up to join them.
Yumizuka Satsuki cast a glance toward the spot they came from.
Her sharp vision picked him out—a figure wrapped from head to foot in a long black overcoat, standing there.
Tall, but stooped, somehow.
He lifted his head slowly.
His eyes met Yumizuka Satsuki’s.
Yumizuka Satsuki could see it clearly: a curved black beak protruded from the coat, and behind a great pair of goggles, eyes the same blood-red as her own.
He looked like a medieval Plague Doctor.
He was a vampire too.
And the crows were all his Familiars.
And his target… was her.
“Run!” Yumizuka Satsuki’s left hand caught Sakura’s.
The two of them broke for the stairwell.
Behind them came that shrill, raucous screeching, and the flock dove.
The stairwell was right there—but Yumizuka Satsuki and Sakura saw it too: a slim figure was already standing in the doorway.
“Big Sis Azaka?”
“Teacher Kokutou!?”
The girls cried out together, and shouted for Azaka Kokutou to run.
Explanations could come later.
The most important thing now was to survive.
Azaka Kokutou didn’t move.
She looked at the dark, dense mass of cyan crows behind the girls, and rubbed the space between her brows with a hint of headache.
“What troublesome little brats.”
She slowly drew a dark-red glove—something like lizard skin—onto her right hand, then stepped aside to let Sakura and Yumizuka Satsuki tear past into the stairwell.
Then, the corners of her mouth tilted up, and she threw a punch forward. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“AzoLto—!”
Brilliant flame erupted, and Azaka Kokutou launched a massive fireball.
To the hissing crackle and acrid asphalt-stink of burning crows, Azaka Kokutou turned at her leisure and pulled the iron door shut.
The lingering heat of that blaze could still be felt faintly through the iron.
And then came thud after thud against the door—the screech of sharp claws raking across the metal.
Raised dents bulged outward across the surface, one after another.
Azaka Kokutou fished a keyring from her pocket, unhurriedly unhooked a small black-cat charm, and tossed it over her shoulder.
“Mrowww!!!”
With a sound like an angry, bristling cat—the relentless hail of impacts outside finally ceased.
Sakura and Yumizuka Satsuki stared at Azaka Kokutou, dumbstruck.
“Is Big Sis Azaka… a magical girl?”
“Pff.” Azaka Kokutou couldn’t help a small laugh.
She reached out and ruffled Sakura’s hair.
“Just a Mystic Code.
You can buy them, with a bit of money.”
“No…”
“If it’s Sakura, all you’d need to do is wheedle Senior Touko a little, and she’d give you one for free.”
Sakura’s expression turned grave at that.
So it really was true.
That old hag, Aozaki Touko—she was someone from the hidden world too.
Only…
Magecraft?
What was that?
Faintly, faintly, Sakura felt she had heard something like it before, when she was very, very small.
“Who’d want to wheedle that old hag!” Sakura puffed up.
The bottom-spanking from last time was still on the account, and the time before, and the time before that, and the time before that.
“Maa-maa, you and Senior Touko really are close, aren’t you.” Ignoring the bristling milk-cat that was Sakura, Azaka Kokutou kept ruffling her hair.
She cast a glance at Yumizuka Satsuki’s arm—the blood there already crusting over—and sighed softly.
“Come to my room.
You can shower there.”
“Mm.” Yumizuka Satsuki, watching Azaka Kokutou’s hand on Sakura’s head with no small envy, nodded.
The girls walked slowly down through the stairwell.
Sakura rubbed at the back of her neck with vague discomfort.
Just then, there had been a faint sting there.
Neither of them noticed—at the nape of Sakura’s slender neck—
A cyan crow-shaped mark gently spread its wings.
(Kokutou Azaka, blazing fist-dance)