Vol. 3 Chapter 5.1

Translated by SoundDestiny Edited by SoundDestiny

Fumio Kijima’s attacks

I wonder what happened..一ow

Today, Kurosawa-san was acting very strangely.

She always comes to Fujiwara-san’s desk during break time and it seems like she’s glancing at me while they’re talking about something trivial.

No, no, that can’t be it. I thought I was just being self-conscious……but Fujiwara-san also seemed to have noticed somehow, and during lunchtime, when we were eating our lunches──

“Today, Misuzu is acting kind of weird, isn’t she?　It’s like she’s conscious of Fu–min somehow……Did she finally realise how attractive Fu–min is?”

She tilted her head as she said this.

“Attractive….?

There is no such thing, if I may say so myself.

Considering the current relationship between Kurosawa-san and I, she is probably plotting what kind of harassment she’s going to give me. It still feels better to think of it that way.

Finally, during recess after the fifth period, Misuzu Kurosawa began to harass me.

She suddenly said,[Janken!] and waved her hand in front of me. I was wary of the situation. I’ll  at least try to play along.

[Rock, paper, scissors!]

Kurosawa-san is bad at playing rock-paper-scissors. Although she had a tendency to harass me, she’s quite bad.

However, she never stopped, no matter how many times she lost.

When she finally won after the ninth time, she let out a relieved exhale and then poked her finger at the tip of my nose.

“I won. Then you shall receive a penalty.”

“…..Hmm?”

Apparently, her eighth-inning loss was not counted.

‘What’s with her? Is she buggy?’

It’s pretty pointless, since Fujiwara-san, who is usually unintelligible, is also puzzled.

I thought she was going to say, [Go buy some coffee milk], but for some reason she said, [You should take the long way home from the back gate today].

‘Subtle. What a subtle way to harass me. Just make me go the long way round or something……’

I replied [O,okay I understand] but of course I had no intention of obeying her.

In the first place, I can’t use the back gate. Kurosawa-san has no way of knowing this, but the forest road is now a hotspot for police investigations at the moment. If I go there, I could be perceived as 『the culprit returns to the scene of the crime』.

‘……No, perhaps it’s because I watched too many cop dramas.’

After school, I watched Kurosawa-san and Fujiwara-san leave the classroom and waited for a while before heading to the main gate as usual.

The number of media in front of the main gate is much smaller than last week. There were no TV cameras at all, and only a few people who looked like journalists with cameras around their necks, whether for newspapers or magazines, I don’t know. They were leaning against the gate, chatting away.

It was a little after five o’clock.

The sun is still high in the sky and the clarity of the sky reminds me that summer is near. As I brush the swarms of winged insects peculiar to this season away from my face, I turn my feet towards my usual route to school, towards the residential area.

Especially in this new residential area, people don’t seem to get to know each other very well, and there are no housewives having friendly discussions on the street.

And just when I was about to go down the hill, with the children’s park where I witnessed Masaki-chan confessing her feelings for Kasuya-kun…

“Ouch! Tsutsu……!”

Suddenly, there was a violent shock at the back of my head.

A dull thud travels through my skull and shakes my eardrums. I’d heard the expression stars scattering in front of your eyes before, but this time it was true. I’m not sure if it was a star or a spark, but it flew directly in front of my eyes.

‘w-what is this……? It hurts?’

I groan in dull pain and crouches down, holding my head. Throbbing sensations on fingertips, the smell of rusty iron poking my nose.

‘Shit…I’m bleeding!’

The next thing I knew, I was grabbed by the collar and dragged into the park.

I was thrown out onto the grassy knoll, and my nose fell on the bald grass. The ground was warm and smelled of dirt after a day of exposure to the grass, dirt and direct sunlight.

“Ugehh!!…u..Guaa!!”

As I tried to raise myself up in a panic, one after another someone kicked at my body.

As I rolled on the ground to escape the pain, a cloud of dry earth drifted up.

I don’t know what is happening. My thoughts are not catching up with me at all.

I look up, my face contorted in pain and see a group of men, their faces hidden by masks and knitted hats, looking down at me as I remain slumped over.

There are six of them. They were wearing school uniforms, so they seemed to be students at our school, but they were not wearing school badges or yearbooks, and there was nothing to indicate who they were at a glance.

One of them is holding what looks like a wooden sword. Apparently, I was hit on the head with that.

‘Seriously……I could have died if you hit me with that thing’.

They may not be the kind of people who are used to fighting. But because they don’t know how to take it easy, I’m more afraid of them.

“W-what are you doing!”

“Ow, that hurts! Ugh……!”

I curled myself up like a beetle larva and endured, but each kick was absurdly heavy and hurt beyond recognition.

After the masked men had kicked me in a scattered manner, one of them stomped on my side and raised his voice.

Excited scruffy voice. But it sounds a little juvenile somehow.

“Bastard! Where’d you hide Rin-chan! Aaan!!?”

“U,uuu…wha,what are you…talking about?”

“Don’t be stupid! You’re the one who took her! Aaan!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking……about. Uuu… you’ve got the wrong …… person.”

“Shut up!”

The guy with the wooden sword in his hand shouted in a pissed-off manner, and then he kicked with all his might into my side.

‘They’re reckless. You could have at least broken a rib, …..’

Each blow is an all-out. Too desperate. It seems they are not used to fighting after all.

“Oi, let him stand up, we’ll take him before someone else gets through.”

“Oraa!! Get up!”

I do as I’m told and stand up.

Six against one and I’m already a wreck. The masked men have completely underestimated me. The only chance is now.

As soon as I stood up, I pretended to stagger and rammed my head between the masked men. I guess they weren’t paying attention at all. And it made them completely unable to react. So with that opportunity, I rolled out of their encirclement and ran at once.

“Wha? You bastard! Don’t let him get away!”

Of course, my slow legs are guaranteed to be slow. Even if I were to escape at a moment’s notice, it is obvious that they would soon catch up with me.

I desperately moved my legs, shook off the hand that was reaching for me,and somehow managed to run into the public toilet at the corner of the park.

A dirty Japanese-style toilet. I enter its private room and hurriedly lock the door. A beat or so later, Don !　and a kicking sound echoed through the door.

“Don’t you run away, you piece of shit!”

“He wants to stick his face in the toilet bowl!”

“There’s nowhere to run now! This is what I call a rat in a bag!”

Normally, this would be an absolute death sentence. It was as if I had jumped into my own deathtrap.

But I have that ability.

I call up the 『Door』  on the wall of a toilet room, its wall, and roll inside. Beyond that is the 『Bedroom of the Confinement King』. Around the doorway of the room, where a large canopied bed sits, I fell down on the long furred red carpet, sticking my nose into the carpet.

‘This is bad…… I’m getting dizzy’

I activate the 『periscope』 while holding the back of my head, which is dripping with blood.

In front of my eyes, the scene in the dirty toilet I had just jumped into appeared.

This is the first time I’ve used 『periscope』 and apparently it’s not very useful. The view was limited to the front of the door, and I couldn’t move from there. But I can hear the sound.

They probably think I am still there. They were kicking the toilet door hard. The door rattles and shakes in time with the loud blows.

Eventually, the door opened with a loud bang as the bolt lock bent with a cracking sound.

“Oi, he’s not here! What’s going on?”

A guy with a wooden sword in his hand is seriously peering into the toilet.

I stare at his face but I can’t make out who he is at all, just from the part of his eyes that is not hidden by the mask.

“Shit! I don’t get it! He can’t have gone far! Look for him! Look for them!”

As I watched the masked men disappear, I felt my tense body relax.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa……”

I lay sprawled out on the carpet and let out a loud sigh. Instantly I felt a throbbing head wound tingling.

‘Owow…….I’m the one who doesn’t understand what happened. Anyway, the head injury looks pretty deep and needs to be treated quickly’

“Lili!”

“What’s up, Devi……UWa!? W-what happened, Devi!?”

As soon as she appeared, Lili shouted, who dexterously jumped her body while floating in mid-air.

“It…. it’s fine, just call Torture”

×××

“Fuh…..”

After Torture’s treatment was over, I let out the breath I had been holding in.

The wound was completely closed and there was no pain at all. But still, it was a terrible thing. If it hadn’t been for Torture, who had the power to heal, I might have been in a lot of trouble.

“What the hell happened, Devi?”

Lili was surprisingly upset. She looks into my face with concern, and I smile at her and tell her what happened.

“I was attacked. I don’t know who they were, but….. about six of them. They were in uniform, so I’m pretty sure they were from my school.”

“Attacked?!! We can still chase them, Devi! I’m going to catch them and beat them to a pulp, Devi!”

‘What’s a GittanGittan……’

[Lili uses this paraphrase instead of saying it outright ‘beat them to a pulp’ hence Fumio talk to himself what ギッタンギッタン is]

I shook my head slightly while smiling at Lili, who was so excited.

“No, we don’t need to capture them. If they go missing, it will be a problem….”

“Then, let’s Freesia mark at least one of them so that she can identify them later”

“Mark?”

“Succubus’s mark, Devi. It is a mark to claim that male is theirs, Devi. Such power is only given to the Succubus Devi.”

Lili disappeared for a moment and returned less than a minute later. Perhaps she went to give instructions to Freesia–san.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Devi?”

“Yes, thanks to Torture”

Nevertheless, Lili still looked worried.

‘What this…there’s something unexpectedly cute about her’

That’s what I thought──

“But……you still have an ugly fat face,Devi.”

I take back my previous statement. I knew this guy was the devil.

“Don’t talk like that…It’s quite hurtful.”

With pursed lips, I let my thoughts wander about the people who attacked me

‘Oh, they did say something about….. Rin-chan.’

When I think about it calmly, there is a face that comes to mind by the name of Rin.

Chestnut-coloured hair up to her back, braided on either side of her head. The face of a girl with a mischievous smile that gives the impression of a cat.

“Rin Fukuda, that girl again…..”

She is a real plague. For the time being, I will take my anger out on Kyoko but she’s her own person, and I’ll have to give her a firm talking-to.

But the guys from earlier were asking, [Where did you take her?] .

The simple answer is that she’s missing and they think I’m the one who took her. ……

‘What the hell is that about? That doesn’t make any sense at all.’

×××

“It’s hot!”

As soon as I stepped out of the airport, the strong sunshine burned my eyes.

Even though it was evening, the sun was still quite high. Summer sky. Summer was here, one step earlier than in Honshu.

Then, I dragged my heavy luggage toward the cab rank at the end of a roundabout lined with blue banners that said 『Welcome to Okinawa.』

Perhaps because it was still early in the summer holidays, the airport as a whole had a somewhat deserted atmosphere.

The hotel where I’m staying is a resort hotel with a private beach, located outside the city centre.

Since it was not the on-season, I was able to make a reservation online at a reasonable price.

Of course, a spa and beauty treatment are included. However, it seems to be in an inconvenient location and the only means of transport is by car. Of course, I don’t have a licence, so I had to take a taxi.

The driver put my luggage in the boot of the car and I sat in the back seat and told him where I was going.

“To FW Paradise Hotel, please.”

The car starts to move slowly.

‘I wonder if it’s about time for that creep to get beaten up…’

With this in mind, I gazed out of the car window at the endless rows of tropical plants.

×××

“And who, in the end, was it that did that to Captain?”

“All of them, almost all of them.”

It was at the dinner table. Shima-senpai frowns with a turkey leg in her hand.

She and Takasago-senpai did not return from the breeding ground until lunchtime. It seems that they spent a lot of time interrogating the pigs.  Shima-senpai probably didn’t allow Takasago-senpai to go home, though.

“The only one who didn’t join in the lynching was Shiratori”

“Shiratori-senpai?”

That seemed very surprising to me.

“Konparu always hated Hatsu-chan, so I thought this girl must be doing it. And when I interrogated her, I just focused on her toes, and she easily vomited the truth within five strikes. She said it wasn’t just her”

“But how can they all be……doing that?”

In response to Yui-chan’s question, Shima-senpai holds up two fingers.

“The first one is because Hatsu-chan defended Amemiya yesterday and everyone was penalised”

I think I can understand that. If I had been flogged a lot and was exhausted and then I had to be whipped again, I would be very angry…..

“The other reason is because……Hatsu-chan is depraved.”

“Ha?”

“They’ve all lost their minds. After just a few days, they’re like livestock. Shallow, nasty pigs. All they can think about is how to get away from trouble. If only one of them had not fallen to the same level as them….they would be pissed off”

“That’s cruel!”

Looking at the athletics club as a whole, it can hardly be said that everyone got on well together. The relationship between Yui-chan and Amemiya-senpai is obvious.

But I couldn’t even imagine that they would band together and lynch one person. And moreover, it’s that Captain Tashiro, who was relied upon and respected by everyone……

Yui-chan squinted at Shima-senpai as she blew on her gratin.

“But don’t you have problems too? Shima-senpai.”

“What do you mean! I’d like to say that……but I think you’re right. From their perspective, we’re favouring Hatsu-chan. That’s how it is”

Shima-senpai then threw the turkey leg bone on the plate and grabbed the roast beef.

“It’s hard not being able to treat her, but for now,Takasago and I have thoroughly beaten anyone who messes with Hatsu-chan, so I think she’s safe now. ……”

‘Is that really the case ……?’

I have nothing but a bad feeling about this.

I think I remember that today, Captain threw herself on the ground to protect Saito-san from me. Tonight, too, all of them are probably being penalised.

Yui-chan glanced at me as I slumped down and shrug her shoulders.

“In the end, no one bothered to find out who the four people were….”

“Don’t talk about this as if it were someone else’s problem. You didn’t even try to find them in the first place……”

“I think it would be fine if it stayed that way.”

The atmosphere from then on was somehow heavy. In spite of the luxuriousness of the meal, the conversation was not lively.

The four of us…..but I’m not sure about Takasago-senpai and Yui-chan. At least for Shima-senpai and I feel that our minds have been worn out a lot.

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