“No, it’s just that your forced, overly-logical explanation to justify having absolutely no friends makes me think you are actually a little cute.”
“But I’m still a little curious…
If you just look at your appearance, Yukinoshita-san, you don’t look like someone who would be a loner…”
Finding her reaction amusing, Kato Jun naturally opened up the chat box to tease her.
“Yes, I have been excessively pretty and cute since I was a child.”
“But because of that, the girls were fiercely jealous of me, and all the men who approached me only harbored superficial crushes based entirely on my looks…”
“Those aren’t real friends…
they just wanted to be near me because I’m cute…”
Yukinoshita Yukino remembered the painful times in elementary school when her indoor shoes were constantly stolen and hidden by jealous classmates, and her face gradually became colder.
“Yukinoshita-san, you really don’t hold back on the self-praise, do you…”
However, speaking of how cute she thinks she is, this girl is actually incredibly narcissistic.
It really is kind of cute, though.
Kato Jun smiled softly in the dark and shook his head.
“Hmph, it’s incredibly impolite to talk so casually to a woman you’ve known for less than three hours.
Does Kato-san actually have many friends?”
Yukinoshita Yukino snorted in icy disapproval, immediately turning the attack back on him.
“Well, I suppose there are many people I get along with, but compared to my sister, those friends are completely unimportant…”
Kato Jun rested his chin in his hand, thinking seriously for a while before answering.
“Sis-con!
How utterly disgusting!”
Yukinoshita mercilessly despised Kato Jun, who had just suddenly made a bold declaration of absolute sister-complex devotion.
“The term ‘sis-con’ is just a derogatory word invented by jealous people who don’t have cute younger sisters.”
“Besides, isn’t it only natural that an older brother fiercely loves and protects his younger sister?
How can that possibly be disgusting?”
Kato Jun hurriedly explained his righteous philosophy, but Yukinoshita Yukino, who was lying on the palm leaves behind him, had already turned her back to him.
It seemed that the cold girl had completely lost interest in continuing this ridiculous conversation with him tonight.
“Are you already asleep?”
Although their future on this deserted island was still terrifyingly unknown, Kato Jun forced himself to close his eyes and ignore the cold.
Only by maintaining a good spirit and resting his body would he have the strength to search the island for his sister tomorrow.
…
At the same time, somewhere deep in the middle of the dense jungle on the island.
There was a massive group of savages wearing crude animal skins, adorned with necklaces of animal teeth, sharp horns, and bone decorations.
They were dancing a frantic, unknown, and terrifying dance around a roaring bonfire.
Their faces and chests were rubbed with thick plant sap of various colors, and this frenzied ritual of dancing around the fire was clearly a dark tradition of these natives.
“It’s so stinky…”
In a crude wooden barn within the savage camp, two young girls locked inside a bamboo cage were violently pinching their noses and fanning the foul air away from their faces.
There were more than ten tightly woven bamboo cages in this dark wooden fence, treating human beings exactly like imprisoned livestock.
Every single cage contained at least two terrified humans.
There were men and women among them; judging from their sluggish, despairing looks and clothes torn by jungle branches, these people were all survivors from the plane crash.
They had miraculously survived the ocean, only to be dragged into this nightmare.
They just didn’t know why they had all been hunted down and caught by these terrifying savages.
“…Senior, what do those savages want to do with us?”
Hearing the savages’ excited, bloodcurdling roars from not far away, Sora Ginko asked the older girl locked in the same cage as her, her face deathly pale.
“Kasumigaoka…
Kasumigaoka Utaha is my name…
as for the purpose of those savages arresting us…
maybe…”
As a highly qualified and imaginative light novel writer, Kasumigaoka Utaha had quickly figured out the grim purpose of these savages.
“What is it?
Kasumigaoka-senpai knows?
Um…
the seniors at my school call me Ginko.
My name is Sora Ginko.”
Sora Ginko reached out with trembling hands and tightly grabbed Kasumigaoka’s uniform sleeve; only in this way would her intense inner unease ease even a little bit. This story is hosted at g.com.
The guttural screams and chanting of the savages outside were so weird and demonic that she couldn’t help shivering in absolute terror.
“I actually know who you are.
The ‘Snow White of Naniwa’…
I have seen your pictures in shogi magazines.”
Kasumigaoka Utaha reluctantly forced a comforting smile at the terrified Sora Ginko.
It turns out that this cynical senior also pays attention to the professional shogi world?
Sora Ginko tugged nervously at the bamboo cage that enclosed the two of them, carefully watching the savage figures dancing wildly not far away through the gaps in the wood.
“These savages…
if my deduction is right, they are dancing around that massive fire doing some kind of traditional ritual…”
“What kind of ceremony?”
Kasumigaoka Utaha swallowed hard, her eyes filled with dark despair.
“A ritual before cannibalism.”
As soon as Kasumigaoka finished speaking her terrifying theory, the heavy bamboo gate of the holding pen was violently kicked open by two massive savages.
The two savages stomped over, grunting to each other, and then picked up a nearby cage and began dragging it away toward the roaring fire.
“Hey!
Who are you people?!
Let me out!
I can give you a lot of money, or whatever else you want!”
The two potbellied, middle-aged businessmen locked in that particular cage began to howl and thrash frantically.
They screamed exactly like fat pigs before being dragged to the slaughterhouse.
But the savages obviously couldn’t understand a single word the two middle-aged men were saying, simply laughing gutturally at their panicked squeals.
“Eat people!?
No way…
this can’t be real!”
Sora Ginko couldn’t believe it, but after watching the two savages drag the screaming men toward the bonfire, she instantly believed what Kasumigaoka Utaha had said.
Not only the two girls, but every other survivor locked in the cages had the exact same horrifying realization after seeing the men dragged away.
TO BE CONTINUE