“Hey Kuuya, let’s go to the arcade today!”

A guy with freckled cheeks, Tamagin, sits on the desk unreservedly as he speaks.

“Sure, I’m free today.”

Kuuya glances at the students leaving the classroom in their newly formed cliques, and sits back up from his lazy posture. His phone vibrates as it receives a message.

“Heck yeah! With this guy around, maybe the girls will approach us this time.”

“Tamagin, I can’t believe this is possible but, I actually feel sad for you.”

“Fuck off Tomo, you don’t understand how painful it feels to be single for 17 years.”

The bald-head Tomo smirks and points at the boy staring at his phone with an amused expression.

“If you wanna pick up girls, you gotta have looks like that, and that cool demeanor. Girls appreciate someone who listens. Listen to yourself, can you speak in a different language apart from virginity?”

“And you’re saying you get girls with that hairstyle? Who’re you picking up, Shaolin warrior?”

“Hey fuck off!”

“Oh, that was a good joke? The girls laughed.”

“They’re laughing at your stupidity, dumbass.”

 

<Friends. Shopping>

<Don’t stay too late>

<Okay, mom>

<(◔_◔)> 

<(˙ ͜つ˙ )╭∩╮>

<mango ice-cream>

<...I’ll be back by 6pm>

<good girl>

<piss off>

“Done texting your girlfriend?” Tomo pats on his friend’s shoulder, and grins.

“She’s my sister, you idiot.” Kuuya chuckles, and leaves with his new group of friends for the promised after-school activities.

…

…

 

The world is peaceful. Kuuya laughs alongside his friends, as he keeps his vibrating phone back into his pocket.

 

---

 

...

...

“God damn, I lost again! How?!” Tamagin, who slammed his hands onto the steering wheel, cried in disbelief.

It was the fourth match of the racing game “Speed Track IV”. Kuuya smirks as he leans on his own steering wheel, watching his friend pull out his wallet as if ready to exchange for more tokens.

“What was the bet again? Loser buys everyone a meal at McRonald’s? Are you sure you have enough for a ticket back?”

“Aahhhh! Damn it. Shit. Shit! You said it was your first time playing!”

“It is though.”

“I don’t freaking believe it! How the hell did you drift perfectly at every turn?! You literally broke the high score on the machine!”

“Hey, hate the game, not the player~”

A girl approached Kuuya with the push of her friends. 

“Ah, hey there. Eh, my number? Ah… sure, why not.” After exchanging numbers, she quickly left with a blush as her friends cooed her from behind.

“Life is so frickin’ unfair?!”

Watching Tamagin cry out tears of blood at that interaction, Tomo grins.

“Well let’s settle for some grub before we end it here? This guy’s about to explode from jealousy if we keep playing.”

“Damn it, we’ll settle this another day! I won’t forget this!”

“Somehow… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize! ...Khhh… Ahhhhhhh! My savings for my future dates with my future girlfriend… to think I’m spending it on guys. This is the worst day of my life.”

Listening to his babble, Tomo the baldhead shakes his head in exasperation.

“This guy really has a talent for pissing people off since he was a wee little boy.”

“Fuck you, I can hear that!”

“Yeah? Well, maybe I wanted you to hear it.”

“Let’s get going guys~”

“Yeah stop being a child and let’s go.”

“Fuck you. Ahhh… I wanna get a girlfriend.”

The three took an escalator down to the fast-food restaurant. Quite a few students from Yuujin were having their meals and having lively conversations. Most of them seemed to be girls.

“Lucky~ We got empty seats beside good-looking girls.”

“...Dude. You’re embarrassing me.” Tomo covered half of his face as he sighs.

“Oh shut up. I live my life proudly in this free country.“

“As a virgin? Damn. Can’t believe proud and virgin can be used together.”

“That’s getting old. Shaolin warrior, what’s your order?”

“Something non-virgin please.”

“So a happy meal. Got it. W-Wai…Gaaah! Alright, alright stop choking me!”

Kuuya smirks, thinking that the relationship between those two were very similar to him and Mei. Even before entering high school, it seems that Tomo and Tamagin had been childhood friends. 

“You guys aren’t children anymore…”

Tomo notices girls looking in their direction in light laughter, and lowered his head with a red face.

“...Hey, speaking of children.”

“Hmm?” 

“You know that kid over there?”

“What kid?”

“That girl. She’s been following us around for a while now.”

“O-Oh… she must be lost? Her parents will probably claim her once they realize she’s missing.”

“Eh? …But she’s pointing at you now.”

“...”

“...Kuuya?”

“This reminds me. Drats, no wonder I felt like I was forgetting something. Had to be home for dinner today. Tomo, Tamagin, I’ll see you two in school tomorrow…”

“Eh? But…”

“One less order? Sweet.”

Tomo gave his childhood friend a look, to which he fell a little more quiet.

“Alright look. Don’t worry about it, we have plenty more opportunities to hang out. We’re already friends, aren’t we?”

Kuuya nods.

“...Sorry about this…” 

“Nah, really. It’s family after all. Get home safe, alright?”

Kuuya nods, not correcting the misunderstanding, and picks up his stuff ready to leave. He turns to where his friend had told him, but there was no one there. His footsteps became a little quicker.

 

---

 

Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

Kuuya came to a deserted place.

 

The footsteps behind him paused once he had stopped walking. He had been surrounded.

There was no one in sight, but he had a feeling that『Map』wasn’t giving him wrong information.

At first it was just one. 

One turned to three. 

Three turned ten.

Before he realized it, the boy was standing amidst a sea of red dots.

 

“...Ah you’re driving me nuts.”

He closed his eyes. And when he reopened them, he was surrounded by numerous children with eyes without pupils. Their eyes were completely white.

“...So who are you really? Some kind of ghost?” 

Kuuya pretended to keep his calm, but he was on the verge of a breakdown. These children had been in the corner of his eyes since he met the first one last night. Even in school as he had his lunch, as he walked along the corridors, as he left the school gates.

 

They were watching.

They kept watching him.

“I’m warning you guys. Don’t come closer. I acknowledge your presence, now let me go.”

The children cackled.

“I’m warning you. I have a really big sword.”

The children cackled with inhuman crescent smiles, until they sounded like the corners of their mouths would tear, and their throats bleed and dry into a cacophony of cries.

Some of them were saying something else.

“”“Evare’non, Sinthia!”“”
“”“Evare’non, Sinthia!”“”

“”“Evare’non, Sinthia!”“”

“...What the hell?! You're not making any sense!”

“”“Evare’non, Sinthia!”“”

As they drew closer and closer, Kuuya could feel the open hostility prickling his skin.

His hands slowly moved into his Item Box, feeling a surge of cold sweat.

“Evare’...non… SINTHIAAAAAA!”

A little girl with a disfigured face and no eyes lunged towards him. 

“You gotta be kidding me?!” His eyes instinctively close in fear.

 

…

…

…

“A-aAAaa… aaah?”

Kuuya opens his eyes again, realizing nothing had happened.

No…

The girl before him was wrapped in murky black chains, speaking incoherently.

 

“Aa…aah. H..Hel—”

—Splat.

That was the last thing she spoke, before the chains crushed her entire body into pieces.

Kuuya’s eyes widened in shock and disgust, as a putrid smell began to waft.

What came out of her body was neither blood nor intestines, but splotches of black mud. Several centipedes could be seen squirming around it, but they quickly stopped moving as if they were being suffocated in the open. The corpse slowly melted into the ground… and returned to the shadow cast behind him.

The red dots began to clear the path, as if making way for a higher being.

His eyes did not deceive him.

A red… nauseatingly crimson red dot slowly approached him. It was accompanied by an orange entity. The shadow behind him moved erratically with countless tendrils. It didn’t look like a human. The shadow was joined by another one much shorter than itself, as if they were holding hands.

Unable to hold the tension any longer, the boy attempted to turn his body to—

 

 

—Sinthia. 

A feminine voice layered with many other voices rang in his ears.

His body froze by the literal meaning of the word.

It felt like there was a vice grip on his spine, forcing him not to look.

It’s the incarnation of death behind him.

The end of the River Styx.

It is all that is not living, one that seeks void.

It is death itself.

What would happen, if a living person were to cast their gaze on such an entity?

Warning bells resounded in his head, making his senses turn colder each second. If he dared to look, perhaps the next person to pop from existence would be him.

 

…Gulp.

Ion vel. Asth thu’ noctal.

That sounded like a question. Was he supposed to answer it?

“Evare’non, Sinthia. Hartm’ahs, Ert-enkoth hase’ nin velth.”

Oh… 

Rhast’ghaht, Unthu.

Every pronunciation of that strange language seemed to come alive and reverberate within his mind. It felt like a human was not supposed to listen to it. This language was not meant to be understood.

“...Sefilh’.”

The orange dot is conversing well with the really red one. She doesn’t sound like she wants to harm me.

Hase… hase… Sinthia, …thol’kos.

The dangerous voice sounded a little weak that time…?

A few seconds pass, and soon the feeling of death disappeared.

 

But the map was still showing the voice as a red dot.

Why? Was it still not convinced somehow?

The shadows had returned to the form of two human figures.

 

“Ssss-ssss-sh..hu..huss…human. Tss…sss…t-t…s…”

Mergen’sil.

“Sa’leia…”

The entity began to speak in its place.

H..u..an. Hu…man.

It forms the first word with a deep, murky voice.

Turn ar…ound.

I’m turning around.

Ah. The pink-haired little girl from back then.

The entity next to her… is she… eh?

 

Do… rec…ogniz…e me?

What he saw before him, was neither a monster, nor a little girl.

Draped in a gothic Victorian dress, her body stood as tall as a runway model.

Ashen white hair, and bright red eyes. 

With two horns growing out of her head.

Pale white skin, as if she were a vampire. 

The woman stared down at Kuuya with an indifferent gaze.

 

As the words “I do not” were about to leave his mouth, Kuuya was forced to bite down on his tongue. She shakes her head with narrowed eyes.

Hel. 

…Serval.

Those are names.

Hel speaks concisely with those two names, as if she’d been used to saying it many times before.

 

Soul. Agreement… 

In a flash, everything began to click together in place.

Serval… owes… me.

Kuuya’s mind began to process those words rapidly, and came to a very sickening conclusion.

The worst outcome possible.

Serval you bastard.

Liars. …Die.

You ungrateful little bastard! I shouldn't have sent you to that place?!

 

…It seems that the clone had cheated death.