The Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad, the assassination unit directly under Fujiwara.
Blades who could not receive a name of devoted martyrdom and had to live in the darkness.
The girl received a new name there.
Even if one had no name, there was still some label people used to tell them apart.
The girl, who had been called "the fourth one" or "the youngest" by her family, and "Black Silkworm" by the thugs of the night streets, became "Roku (6)" here.
A number given because she had stood sixth among more than a dozen children lined up there, children who did not even count as names.
Even while receiving cold stares that saw her as nothing more than a convenient meat shield or lackey, Roku felt an unnamed sense of relief.
Maybe because it was the first time someone had called her by a name, the first time she had found a nest to lean her body against.
The threshold of the Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad was merciless.
As befitting a group tasked with all manner of filthy work like covert surveillance, assassination, and espionage, the first things new recruits were taught were things like "how to quickly kill yourself without leaking information" and "how to resist intense interrogation."
Once the psychological training, which was close to brainwashing, ended, the useless stock was weeded out.
Thud! Thud!
By the next day, half the group was gone in one stroke.
No one cared about the deaths of the new children, most of whom had no one to claim them.
A few children who still had some humanity left cried over the deaths of their comrades, but every time they did, the instructors’ abuse and kicks came flying in.
Roku, who cried inwardly without showing it, bit her lip hard when she saw that.
After that, it was nothing but training.
Stealth, hand-to-hand combat, jujutsu reinforcement, and more. Almost every day brought another exam to assess the abilities needed for missions, and children who fell behind were discarded without mercy.
Among them were monstrous things like forbidding food and water and locking them in a sealed room for three days to test the limits of their mental strength.
Of course, there was no way a child’s body could endure training that even adults would struggle with.
Filtered out, and filtered out again. When six months of training ended, only three children survived, Roku included.
For a moment, she felt relief at having survived hell, but Roku and the two comrades from her cohort were immediately thrown into real missions.
The target was an organization that had been rapidly growing in strength under the hostile faction of the "family."
As soon as night fell, they pulled on masks and infiltrated the residence, beginning to eliminate the enemy members who were still half-asleep.
Roku’s mind, moving mechanically as she had been trained to do, felt a little confused.
She had killed people a few times before, but most of those were in self-defense.
It had always been a situation where she had no choice but to kill in order to survive.
And yet what am I doing right now?
She drove a knife into the throat of an unguarded person.
Looking back over the path she had taken, there was a scene of carnage strewn with blood, entrails, and chunks of flesh.
Over that sight, the family members who had been devoured by curses while screaming at the top of their lungs seemed to overlap.
The girl who had only wanted to survive had, before she knew it, become closer to the curse with its maw gaping open than to the back of the jujutsushi she had once admired.
It was then that the leader, left alone and struggling desperately, aimed for Roku’s back.
"Roku!"
Thud!
Her body, sensing death, was shoved hard by someone and drenched in splashed blood.
The red that smelled horribly of death was not hers.
She hurriedly finished off the enemy with the dagger in her hand, but it was too late.
"Hachi (8)... why the hell...?"
"You have to... live.... live and... climb to the very top..."
It was a child she had barely spoken to even a few times in half a year.
She could not understand why he would throw away his own life just to save her.
Held in the frozen embrace of Roku, Hachi tearfully delivered his final request to her.
He said she had talent.
That she was the one most likely to survive, so she should become the peak in everyone’s place.
When Roku could not say a word and only nodded, Hachi gave her a sad smile and breathed his last.
Before she knew it, the other comrade was dead too.
Roku, carrying the bodies of her two friends, quickly left the place.
The reason she bothered to carry the bodies was not because she wanted to recover their remains, but because she could not leave evidence behind.
That made her unbearably sad.
After stepping over countless corpses that tripped at her feet, she emerged onto the night streets and saw a sky full of stars.
It was a beautiful sight, but to Roku it was no different from hell.
The cold, heavy lump of flesh dangling from her shoulder kept calling her back to reality from time to time, and by the time she reached the base, she could no longer tell whether she was alive or had already died and fallen into the abyss.
As she buried the bodies of the two children, Roku cried bitterly.
It was the first time she had shed tears since her family died when she was five.
Even the fierce instructors that day pretended not to see her crying and let it pass.
Once her grief had faded and she had buried her two friends in her heart, she was assigned to the Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad, First Unit.
The only girl to survive from a cohort that had been driven harder than ever before.
She heard that some "important person" had been pleased with the raw gem of talent they had personally unearthed and had granted a reward, but it did not matter to her.
Alone again, the girl made a vow in the desolate lodging where she was left by herself.
She vowed that she would survive this hellish place no matter what.
"Hah...!"
With a short scream, Takako Uro woke from sleep.
Because of the nightmare she had not had in a long time, her back was soaked with sweat.
'Why am I remembering this now?'
That unpleasant childhood had long since been shoved far away.
It was deeply irritating that, with her mind under pressure, all those bad memories were surfacing again.
Clutching her throbbing head, she suddenly realized she was wearing clothes she had never seen before.
"What is this...?"
Something not in her memory.
Looking around, she saw that this was not her usual base but an unfamiliar room.
A soft bed, a clean hotel room with luxurious interior decor everywhere. Someone had clearly moved her here after she lost consciousness.
As she carefully stepped down from the bed, her whole body protested with a dull ache.
"Ugh...."
Frowning, she used [Cursed technique reversal] to repair her wrecked body.
The bruises left between the bandages someone had carefully wrapped around her faded away, making it much easier to move.
Once her body returned to normal, Uro sat on the bed and traced her last memories.
'Unfamiliar room. Yoshino. Higuruma.....'
At the last moment, when she thought she was definitely going to die, Higuruma had intervened.
With his heart pierced through, he delivered some incomprehensible final request and then died on the spot.
And after that... she could not remember.
'This is probably Shinjuku. A business hotel Yoshino is using as a base.'
It was not hard to reach that conclusion.
Yoshino had brought her here after she fainted.
For some reason, he had accepted Higuruma’s request and chosen to keep her alive instead of killing her.
"Crazy bastard. I don’t get it."
Why had he left her alive?
He wanted help accepting death? Was he really planning to honor that stupid request?
Who dies because they want to die? People who commit suicide probably do not truly want to die. They are simply fleeing into death because they are afraid of something worse than death, the pain that leads to it.
If he thought she would go along quietly, he was mistaken.
'Should I run?'
There also seemed to be only one person watching her, and Yoshino’s presence was too far away to detect.
Uro stared out the window for a while, then soon gave up on the idea of escaping.
In fact, the loose guard was what tied her feet down. The fact that they had not even posted a person to watch her, and had put her in a room blocked only by this wide-open glass window, was proof that they were confident they could catch her no matter where she ran.
They would not kill her right away, but if she ran and got caught, there was no telling how their attitude would change.
"Damn it, seriously.."
In the end, she had no choice.
Just like when she had been selected as a trainee for the Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad.
With a sigh, Uro got up from the bed and trudged toward the door.
Since she had been caught anyway. She did not want to look any more pathetic. For now, she would have to meet Yoshino and see if she could learn anything.
Click
"Huh? You were... awake?"
When she opened the door, a woman she had never seen before appeared.
Uro watched the woman closely as she wiped drool from her mouth, as if she had been dozing off.
Aside from the fact that her hair was tied in a scorpion-tail shape, she did not seem worth any special attention.
As Uro’s inverted eyes swept up and down over her, the woman shivered and gave an awkward smile.
"Who are you?"
"I’m... no, I mean, I work under Yoshino."
"Yoshino’s subordinate?"
"Yes."
"He put you here, so he must have told you to let him know when I woke up. What are you doing right now?"
"Huh? Ah! I need to contact Yoshino!"
"......"
What kind of idiot woman was this?
Thinking that this was the person they had assigned to watch her made Uro’s pride sting a little.
No matter how much she had been beaten by a guy whose technique had been sealed, she was still a ranked fighter....
"Uh, Yoshino. She’s awake now. She doesn’t seem hurt or anything.... I think she’s fine? Uh... yeah. Yeah. What? You’re asking why I didn’t report it sooner? Haha, well, I was just a li~ttle short on sleep yesterday... beauties need their sleep, you know...? Eh. Aah! Don’t slap me! I know I messed up! Don’t ban snacks too! Aaaah!!!"
The woman, who had been throwing a one-woman fit while contacting someone presumably Yoshino over a radio, let out a sigh deep enough to sink into the ground when the transmission cut off.
Judging from the conversation, she must have been caught slacking off and was about to be punished.
Thinking it was her own fault, Uro snorted.
"Hey. Yoshino says to come up to the 42nd floor together."
"Lead the way."
"O-okay."
The intimidated woman led Uro to the elevator with dragging steps.
As they pressed the button and rode up to the target floor, the woman kept sneaking glances at Uro.
"Do you have something to say?"
"Um, hello? We don’t exactly not know each other... right? Uro Takako, you’re famous. I-I’m called Kazama Remi. Hehe."
"So what?"
"If you could put in a good word for me with Yoshino....."
"Why would I? Handle your own business yourself."
"......"
When Uro coldly refused, the woman shut her mouth.
She had already disliked the woman’s servile attitude. If she kept making noise, Uro might have thrown her out altogether.
In the brief silence, Uro ignored the woman, Remi, and irritably tugged at the clothes constricting her neck while waiting for their arrival.
Ding
When the doors opened, what lay beyond was a luxurious restaurant.
A famous spot that had been well known even before the Shibuya Incident broke out, and a place preserved with great care by Ishigori and Junpei.
As a good smell drifted over from beyond the open kitchen, Uro’s freshly awakened stomach protested with pain.
'What the hell. That Ishigori bastard... eating this alone...'
She thought that was a little unfair.
Suppressing the saliva that had almost come flooding out of her mouth, Uro followed Remi’s lead.
"You’re here?"
"....."
The center table of the restaurant.
There, a neatly arranged meal had been set before Yoshino Junpei, who sat alone.
One set for Junpei, and another presumably for Uro.
"I-I?"
"You go eat instant noodles by yourself."
"Hiiing. Aww."
"Want to get hit?"
"I’m sorry, sir."
Remi, who had been scolded, launched into a disgusting barrage of cutesy behavior, but Junpei quickly put her down.
Possessed by the embodiment of patriarchy, Junpei once again preserved the peace at the table today, and unlike how he had treated Remi, he used [Coffin] to pull a chair out in front of Uro.
It was gentleness she could never have imagined from the past version of him who had beaten her down without mercy.
"Sit down first and eat. You must be hungry."
Uro answered that gentleness in her own way.
Bang!
At her kick, the table toppled and the plates flew into the air.
But Junpei had already expected her to come at him this violently.
With superhuman reaction speed, Junpei extended the tendrils of [Akasha Yurayura] and, like a scene from Spider-Man, caught the food with acrobatic flair while showing off his control over jujutsu.
Tap, tap, tap!
"Whew. My breakfast."
'Is he insane?'
At that bizarre display, Uro’s mouth fell open and refused to close.
Junpei slurped down the still-hot soup, and his eyes gleamed viciously.
"If you’re done throwing your tantrum, will you sit down now?"
-I don’t really like people who don’t have table manners.
"....."
Uro quietly pulled out a chair and sat down.
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