"Is this really a journal?" Hiyori asked as it was hard for her to believe it. Reading it was like hearing Yukari retelling the events she had gone through, analyzing her inner thoughts thoroughly in the process. Not only was it vivid, but it evoked feelings in both of them to a degree that shouldn't have been possible.

"No, not really," Everlong answered. "Don't forget where we are. I am pretty sure this journal did not exist in the real world. What we are reading here is nothing else but her psyche manifesting itself." He explained patiently, turning the page once again.

On the left side, it was a very detailed panorama drawing of herself, naked, sitting on her knees. She was holding the puller of a zipper between her fingers, resting on her thighs, and she already dragged it down. What she was opening, though, was not cloth but her own skin, tearing it off right down to her navel. Her brightly colored muscles and flesh were exposed below it as she was grotesquely grinning at them.

"Ugh…" Hiyori shuddered, feeling disturbed by the way too detailed drawing, even smelling the blood and hearing skin separating from the flesh.

On the right, it wasn't much better. There were multiple columns of text, all describing the utter disappointment she felt about being in school. At first, she was so excited that she was finally out of homeschooling. Her parents were forced by the state to send her to a regular high school... Yet all of her dreams were quickly squashed. She failed to make friends and soon realized she was the odd one out amidst everyone else. The way she dressed and spoke was like that of a village girl from the past century who had dropped into a modern city, making a fool of herself at every moment. Not to mention, she had no real common topic with anyone in the class; she was unfamiliar with all the trends and hobbies they had and soon found herself as an outcast, failing to make even one friend.

It was quickly transforming all that excitement into pure resentment. Hatred towards her parents, towards her classmates, towards everybody. Especially when she laid her eyes on her first love, every young teenage girl's idol in the school, Suzuki Tsutomu. She never felt something like this, so she kept it to herself. Yet, that feeling alone was more potent than anything she had come across before. It did not take long before she started to discover her own body, thinking about him and coming across the feelings that her parents always labeled as pure sin.

Realizing it was not the truth, not at all, as something being this good, this joyful, how could it be sinful? She was, by then, convinced that her parents were trying to keep every good thing away from her. Her classmates were casting her to the sidelines because they were envious of her... Why would they be jealous? The answer was simple: They were afraid Suzuoki would fall for HER. From that point onwards, she started to make sure she and Suzuoki met as much as possible.

"I find it hard to think she would approach him…" Hiyori murmured as Everlong flipped to the next page.

"They did not speak. Not once. Look…" he pointed at the following rows of writings, and all of them made Hiyori twitch her mouth.

"12th April, Friday. Met at the corridor leading towards the sports fields! We passed each other, and we almost brushed our hands!

16th April, Tuesday. We spent a lovely three hours together! Just the two of us, silently enjoying each other's company in the library!

22nd April, Monday. We came to school together... I was watching his sturdy back as he passed the gates… I had to spend the remaining free time in the bathroom before the first class!" Hiyori mumbled as she read out some of the dates written down for Everlong, picking randomly from the dozens of entries before flipping the pages once again.

"So, spending time together like today? Just sitting behind him for hours?" Hiyori looked up at him, taking a deep breath. "Oh boy…"

"Yeah." Everlong nodded, "Even worse, she started to see herself as the only girl he was interested in, as they met every day. And by meeting, I mean she walked past him in the corridors. Watched him eat in the cafeteria. Doing rounds in PE class, passing by where his class was. She was making up scenarios in her head, and she was feeling, no, she began believing that those did happen and were real." he shook his head, flipping more and more pages forward. Looking out the window, Hiyori saw that the outside world was changing at the same time as Everlong was turning the pages. It was not just days but weeks and months passing with every page being turned, something that seemingly Everlong was very aware of. "It also landed her in more and more trouble with her parents. Frequent beatings or, should I say, floggings. Just check out the images." He pointed at some of them, "They get more and more violent, depicting self-mutilation almost constantly. Finally, turning into ritualistic suicides..." he tapped at the gruesome pictures where she was depicting herself being cut to pieces, burned alive, or ground into meat paste. Weirdly, in every picture, she had a smile on her face. If she still had anything resembling a human face at all.

"O-okay… ugh…" Hiyori turned her head away, unable to look at the way too vivid, almost moving images for too long, holding her mouth, gulping back everything that almost crawled up through her throat.

"Her situation easily influenced her mind." Everlong stated calmly, "She was not a strong-willed girl from the start; twisting her was easy. Whatever had her in its grasp was turning her. By now, she was a pig, ready for slaughter. Her parents constantly reminded her of the so-called love she had never experienced, of their God, his light and benevolence. Everything they were telling her about, day after day, while beating her until she bled… All of it was feeding her new Master as she twisted the teachings. Her fate was sealed by then." Everlong sighed, slowly reaching towards the last pages of the 'journal.'

"Tsk… but why?" Hiyori asked, unable to see the point in this at all, avoiding looking at the diary and the more and more insane scribblings showing up in it.

"For fun."

"Huh?" She flinched, thinking this was some kind of dark joke, but Everlong's face did not smile at all.

"For fun." he repeated, looking into her eyes, "A demon's main drive is to get as powerful as it can be. It wants to live by its own rules, pursuing its own desires. A demon's main goal is to get so strong that others cannot order it while still having fun. Usually, that happens at others' expense, of course. See how it is a never-ending cycle for them because of this? This is how the image of Ouroboros came to be. You can find it in almost every civilization's past."

"There is always a stronger demon, huh? Who has fun on their expenses…"

"Yep." Everlong nodded. "They are called demons because they are not bound by conventional rules or morals. Whatever accomplishes their wishes is good to go in their eyes. If it screws you over, who cares! The demons of Leviathan mostly embody the particular feeling of jealousy. Reading her thoughts, Yukari was mostly envious of the other students' normal lives as she was unable to fit into it herself. As to the demon that was influencing her and the family… I could only guess, but for it, this is the same as sex, and the climax is when Yukari ends her own life."

"And nine months later, another demon is born…" she murmured with anger mixed in her voice.

"Not always. But yes, this time, it did result in a soul remaining behind and deciding she was going to become one, too."

"But… why?" Hiyori asked, taking a deep breath, calming herself down, and trying to look at it with a clear head, not letting her feelings overwhelm her.

"..." Everlong closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and pointing at the last page, which was written in surprisingly clear handwriting.

"He cheated on me… I could barely believe it! We were supposed to meet… yet when I showed up at the usual place, he was with a girl! Someone who was even clearly older than him! Holding hands! Going into the movies together! That bitch… seducing him from me!? This is my worth to you? Am I just used flesh to cast aside right after I am about to move? Not even trying to work it out?! Already finding my substitute? Then why am I even still here?"

"That's… it?" Hiyori blinked her eyes in disbelief. "The guy was dating someone outside of school… really… He did not even know Yukari existed!" She muttered while she hissed between her teeth.

"Not everything has to be grandiose." Everlong patted her head with a soft smile. "Sometimes, things we could swear meant the world to us were completely inconsequential in the big picture. Sometimes, the most vile thing is done because of something... trivial. Anyway... This is the last page… and this is the last image." he pointed at the left side, where a drawing of the city was, just as it could be seen from the roof of the school. "Probably as soon as she saw him, she went and did it. Without thinking, acting in the moment."

"I may have pitied her… feel sorry for her… if not for what she did to MY parents and to ME!" Hiyori sneered, breathing heavily, closing the 'journal,' her mood already in great turmoil. "This still does not explain why she did it at all!"

"It does not." Everlong nodded, placing a hand on her shoulder, "But reading it drew out her remaining human consciousness… so let's ask her directly." He continued, turning around with the chair, and when Hiyori looked up, she saw Yukari standing there. She was wearing her old school uniform, soaked in blood, and her head was missing chunks from the back of it, where it hit the concrete, landing on the ground after jumping off. They were no longer in Yukari's room but at the top of the school as everything was dark, the wind slowly picking up, and now she was facing Hiyori not as a black mass of tentacles but as a human soul... maybe as the last fragments of her past self.