Vol 1 Chapter 5 (1/2)

Chapter 5 - Fro

(1)

A snow, the two stood out with their vivid colour

A bewitchingly voluptuous woirl

Both were clad in beguiling ki an umbrella, to shi+eld the woman from the snow

At first glance, they looked like sisters The woant chrysanthemum— they had vastly different airs about them, but their facial features had some similarities

“This is it, isn’t it?”

Co to a halt in front of a certain estate, they passed through the blackened door

It looked like there had been a fire The estate had been co it a mere shadow of its former self The sround was covered in a thin layer of soot

In the midst of it all, there was a lone boy

The cold in the air was enough to sting bare flesh, yet the boy had stripped to the waist, ers like ascroll was unfurled before hiy and poured it into the wooden puppet in front of him

Shakily, like a newborn infant learning to walk for the first time, the puppet took unsteady steps forward

The boy wasthe puppet move His whole body was drenched in sweat He was concentrating so hard it looked like he was about to pop a vein, but disproportionate to his efforts the wooden puppet only moved a little

With wild, ragged breaths, he gritted his teeth hard enough to crack them as he pounded on the floor in irritation with his clenched fists

His face looked terrible His cheeks were hollow, and his eyes were sunken in However his pupils shone with a fierce light, hastly He looked like he was on the verge of dying at any moment

The boy looked through the scroll with bloodshot eyes, before an to store energy at a point below his navel, and then—

He spewed out blood with a terrible sounding cough

Racked with coughs, he fell down on his back and stopped

—This was a suitable tiirl was holding, and walked towards the boy

“That was quite the effort, boy”

“… I am not ‘boy’”

The boy replied in a hoarse voice He was still conscious His physical endurance was surprising

“That’s right You have a name, and it is Raishi+n”

A wary look crept into his eyes The woh,

“I know a lot about you, boy You’re the sole survivor of the Akabane clan”

“… Who are you?”

“You’re not very diligent, are you boy? You were born into a house of puppeteers, and yet you don’t knoho I am”

Turning to the girl, she beckoned her over

The girl seemed to understand what to do Without any particular instruction from the woman, she stopped in front of the boy, turned her back to him and removed her kimono

The boy was startled, but he no longer had the strength to cover his eyes

The girl’s skin was exquisitely beautiful With neither mark nor blemish on it, it was a smooth as a field of snow

At the lower left of her beautiful back, above her hipbone, an inscription had been carved into it

Karyuusai, it read

That nahout the world Even the ed her as the eeneration

So— this girl was an automaton?

The boy’s eyes opened slightly wider He was shocked by the vibrancy of her complexion The feel of her skin was exactly like that of a hu

“She’s pretty, isn’t she? This is one of the Setsugetsuka trifecta, Yaya of the Moon”

“…!?”

He had only heard of their existence before, Karyuusai’s prized treasure, the Setsugetsuka

They had never been revealed to the world before No irl was, there was no way she could have owned one

Therefore, at this present point in tietsuka would be the creator himself

His blood soaked face contorted as he let out a weak laugh

“You gotta be kidding me… Karyuusai is… a heavy drinker, fond of woes in the pleasures of life…”

“Oh, so you do know me after all Yes, that is all true I do love wine, wo”

“That means you’re the one who… created the Imperial Guard’s… Oborofuji…”

The wo tedious, and spoke in an oddly depressed tone

“That thing was a failure”

‘A failure…!? That ed… the entire landscape of the Fuji training grounds…?”

“It wasn’t beautiful at all”

The boy was rendered speechless The wo

“In this fleeting world however, nothing is useless— thanks to that failure, uess you could call st the arher-ups”

She laughed violently, and stared into the boy’s eyes

“Enough influence to grant you your wish, boy”

“My… wish…?”

“Yes I can help you find the person you hate so much that you want to kill him”

“—“

“To go up against him, I’ll even lend you the world’s best automaton”

The boyonto the beautiful girl standing next to the woman

If the Setsugetsuka were exactly what the rumours said they were, then it was possible—

“Say, boy Become mine”

It was a piercing gaze The woently touched the boy’s cheek

The boy’s body stiffened It was like a dangerous wild beast was staring at him

What surfaced in the boy’s eyes was the e completely unknown; instinctive fear

However at the same time, he was charmed by her

The intensity of her entire existence captivated hi both poison and antidote

“The road lying before you forks into two paths, boy You can either choose to freeze to death here, or you can—“

(2)

Raishi+n stared at the unexpected visitor, struck dumb by her sudden appearance

There was no way he could bebeauty was exactly as it hen she first appeared in front of hio In no way inferior to the dolls she created, she was as dazzlingly beautiful as any of them Also, the voluptuous breasts that had mesmerized Raishi+n were as sensual as ever

Like that night, there was a beautiful girl accoht as well Her face looked like Yaya’s, but she had silver hair and her eyes were nified Also, she was a little taller

“Shouko, why are you…”

She put her finger to her lips

“Raishi+n Is so?”

The pretty boarding master peeked out of the office with a doubtful look on his face Raishi+n thought “oh crap”, but ed to say,

“Nothing Everything’s fine”

The boarding master withdrew his head

— She can’t see them?

“Let’s go to your room”

Shouko whispered into his ear The faint s master to frown suspiciously, but not even in his wildest dreauessed that was such a peerless beauty standing there

AYaya’s sister machine, Komurasaki, was skilled at

Having understood the situation, Raishi+n feigned an air of ignorance towards the boarding master as he retreated back to his room

If he was honest though, all he wanted to do at the one out of her way to come visit him, she wasn’t someone he could brush off

Returning to his room, barely had Yaya jumped up towards him when she stopped in surprise

“Shouko!”

Shouko looked at her in the way a mother looked at her child,

“You seeh, Yaya”

“Yes Yaya’s functions are perfectly normal”

“If you’re perfectly normal, why are there traces of tears on your face?”

So behind Shouko reprimanded Yaya

Yaya took a step back, her wariness on full display

“… Since ere you there, big sis Irori?”

“Oh? Are you out of it that you cannot even count the nuone bad? Are they just there for show?”

“That was just sarcasm Yaya is totally focused”

“With an attitude like that, surely you have been causing nothing but problems to Raishi+n, haven’t you?”

“T-that’s not true at all…”

“So you haven’t been having wild delusions over Raishi+n and resenting hiuided suspicions, crying, losing your tees?”

“N-n-n-no, I h-h-haven’t…”

“Really now, you should learn fro siet lose herself within delusions of love, and just works hard to fulfil her duty In the first place, you—“

“Uu… Sis is always so mean to me…”

Ignoring the two sisters, Raishi+n held out a chair for Shouko and poured some tea

“So Shouko, why are you at the academy?”

Needless to say, the acade in with an auto in was covered by a high level ic art that killed off their presence

“I couldn’t sit still because I orried about you, boy”

She flashed hiether and the nape of her neck was tantalisingly visible, causing Raishi+n to clutch his nose

A cold killing intent fro his blood to freeze

“Don’t teasehere, isn’t there?”

“Cannibal Candy ht”

“—!”

It appeared she had gotten hold of sohter instinctively, Raishi+n waited for her to continue However, Shouko caled the subject, to his irritation

“That was quite the reckless stunt you pulled, boy I heard you got into a scuffle with ten automata”

“… It was a one on one at first”

“And then you ended up destroying none”

“I did destroy some Half was Charl’s handiwork, but all ten ended up as scrap—“

The lens buried inside the eyepatch flashed He felt the eye stare at him from deep within like it was buried in a botto halfway

“Do not misunderstand, boy Puppets aren’t humans”

Those were sharp words Yaya’s shoulders stiffened at her cutting remark

“Your naivety borders on hubris Until you stop the heart, an automaton will not die Your act of compassion then could return to stab in the back one day The ambition you harbour is not so easy that you can achieve it without staining your hands Take that sentimentality and cast it away into the deepest pits of the earth”

“… I cannot follow that order”

He kneas being childish, but Raishi+n still stubbornly refused

“Automata have a sense of self They can feel pain and they can feel pleasure They even have hearts How does that make them any different from humans?”

“Foolish child… You still do not understand anything, boy”

With a hint of pity in her voice, Shouko coldly spoke

“If you kill a human, the law classifies it as murder— If you destroy an autoe to property It matters not what you think, boy Open your eyes to reality There is a chas the two”

“Even so, to me, automata are human as well If you stop an auto a hu a puppeteer means to me”

“… It’s only going to get worse, you know?”

“I am prepared for it”

“I see In that case, try as much as you can to stick to your optimistic principles”

Although she was blunt, a faint but unexpectedly gentle smile surfaced on her lips

Raishi+n was captivated by it Of all the s faces he had seen up till now, this was by far the prettiest

“About Cannibal Candy”

Sipping her tea, she returned back to the topic at hand

“It’s a far bigger eneht it was, boy”

“Bigger…?”

“The ht provide a clue to narrowing down the true identity of Cannibal Candy Naturally, they proation into the victims However—”

“— They couldn’t be found”

“Exactly Over twenty boys and girls just upped and vanished fro dolls; he’s doing aith the owners— or possibly their corpses Because of that it’s looking like he really does eat them”

Hiding a corpse require a back-breaking ae nu the bodies of their victi up the bodies would leave massive a the bodies alone would be tough Keeping theht be an easier option—

Nevertheless, they were talking about a large number of people For an individual to be able to confine so many was unthinkable

Was that why she referred to the eneer?

“The acadeovernment may be involved in some way”

“… You’re suspecting the acade in cahoots with Cannibal Candy?”

“Doesn’t it seem that way to you? The academy is policed by both security and the disciplinary co, the two layers of protection would clamp down on them immediately”

However, the reality was that Cannibal Candy was still at large

Also, so many students had vanished and the cause behind their disappearance was still unknown

If the acades behind the whole affair though, then the disappointing lack of results would suddenly make a lot of sense

But that would mean the disciplinary co faculty all were the enemy— wouldn’t it?

“It’s not too late for you to wash your hands off the matter, you know?”

For a brief ly tempted by that course of action

If he pretended not to have noticed anything strange— It wasn’t as if the acadenorance At most, the student council would just exploit him

Raishi+n had a goal An enemy he had to defeat at all costs

If he were to involve hi, then the only person he could blame was himself

Even so

“… There’s someone I can’t abandon”

Having realised so, Raishi+n muttered it out aloud

“She’s hopelessly rash, barbaric, short-tempered, and always alone by herself Even so, she isn’t a bad person”

His words cahts

“For so after Cannibal Candy Or possibly, that could have been her goal from the very start… at least I think so Furtherated to her in soh, dammit, what a pain!”

Ruffling his hair, Raishi+n raised his head up

Looking straight into Shouko’s face, he told her

“I want to help her”

“… Did you forget our wager? You bet your life, boy If you were to selfishly go off and die a dog’s death soive you”

Raishi+n ground his teeth Shouko was right Just as she said, he couldn’t go off and die like that on his own Needlessly charging headfirst into danger was soivable However—

He couldn’t just abandon Charl either

Seeing Raishi+n’s frustration, Shouko sighed

It wasn’t a sigh of resignation, it wasn’t a sigh to h

“Yaya, come over here”

Yaya trotted over Shouko placed her hand on her chest

Moh Yaya’s body

Raishi+n had no clue as to what had just happened Nevertheless, Yaya’s eyes started spinning and she started to fall backwards

“Yaya! Are you ok!?”

He hurriedly caught hold of her Yaya’s eyes were still spinning, but she wasn’t visibly injured

Without giving hi information onto him

“Yaya’s Kongouriki is peerless under heaven— but even then, there are soainst For exaic circuit Gram”

“Sight?”

“That’s not the ht is the result When the atht is produced

“Do you knohat kind of ic circuit that is?”

“I can roughly guess It’s a secret formula that is closely related to how the universe works Because of that, there is no counter-measure for it No matter how hard the object, or how ic art Basically, as long as it has form, it will be annihilated If Yaya were to be hit by that head on, she would die

Raishi+n felt Yaya stir slightly in his arms

“OneYaya’s natural enemies are wind and water”

“Fluid states…?”

“Yes Nowith no shape Be careful when you encounter opponents with no physical bodies”

“… Alright”

Seeing the both of them nod, Shouko was satisfied

“Well then, sorry for keeping you so long Be careful”

“Yeah Let’s go, Yaya”

“Roger!”

Aftersure that Yaya was in a proper condition, Raishi+n dashed out of his room

(3)

As Raishi+n and Yaya departed, Yaya’s elder sister— Irori watched thes inside her

“Raishi+n has calmed down quite a bit Back then, he was like a ravenous ”

Shouko took a puff out of her pipe, before languidly replying

“The passing of tier”

“Still, for that Raishi+n to throw hier for someone else’s sake—“

“That boy would happily get the short end of the stick if it meant someone else would benefit”

“… I always thought Raishi+n was ruthless and motivated by self-interest That he would be fine with others getting hurt if it were in the interests of his goal”

“ Fufu… Then that means you’re even less focused than Yaya I don’t re your eyes to be that bad, Irori”

Harsh words spoken with a gentle tone, Shouko lightly rebuked Irori

“The boy isn’t ruthless, but the circuht up in certainly were Fate dealt him a cruel hand You see him as motivated by self-interest, but his current conduct is inning of the beginning, the boy was already like that; someone ould show compassion to even the most bitter of foes”

“Are you referring to hi consideration for his enemy’s circumstances?”

Shouko didn’t answer She just continued s her pipe serenely

Irori quickly grew uneasy

“Mistress Was it a good idea to let Raishi+n go off like that? Like you said earlier, Raishi+n will be going up against a formidable foe…”

“Are you worried about Yaya? You always did dote on her a lot”

“Wha—!? T-there’s no way I’d let s…”

Her white skin turned scarlet, and she waved her hands frantically about in denial

“There’s no cause for concern I’ve removed Yaya’s restriction”

Irori grew even more worried as she piled on more questions

“… Will Raishi+n be fine? What if he gets completely consumed by Yaya…”

“The boy is not so weak”

“Are you sure? Raishi+n has barely been a puppeteer for a few years— if I may be frank, he’s like a baby bird that hasn’t learnt to fly yet I’m sure if you properly explained the situation to him, he would know that he isn’t at the required level just yet”