Her steps fell light, silent by habit, weaving around jagged stone and rusted rebar. She was already rehearsing how to break the news about leaving, and her pace quickened with the eagerness to see her friend.
Lost in those thoughts, she almost missed the sound that cut across the ruins. Boots hitting rubble fast, and a man's voice barking orders.
"She's up ahead. You two cut her off. Don't let her get away."
Cold and cruel, the words carried clean to Konatsu's ears, thick with malice and impatience and something underneath that sounded close to excitement.
"Yes, Captain!"
Two lower voices answered.
Her body locked. The smile slid off her face, replaced by wide-eyed tension.
She stopped, held her breath, made no sound at all, then slipped behind a discarded metal drum and curled up small.
The 39th Area ran on chaos. Fights, beatings, the strong grinding down the weak. She'd been taught from the beginning that strangers meant danger, and danger meant hide.
So she hid, and watched.
Being a Cursed Child gave her little strength and no fighting ability, but it had given her one thing of her own.
She could melt into her surroundings like a chameleon, thinning her presence until eyes slid past her. That trick had kept her alive in these ruins this long.
Pressed tight behind the drum, she edged her head out and looked toward the voices.
Three men in crisp uniforms moved fast through the wreckage, footfalls hard and disciplined, bodies trained and quick.
They fanned apart as they ran, closing into a net around whatever lay ahead, eyes cold and fixed forward like men chasing something valuable.
Konatsu studied them.
Clean clothes. Clean faces. Nobody who lived out here looked like that.
People in the 39th Area wore sun and wind on their skin and rags on their backs, faces gray with dust and hardship. These three had tidy uniforms, pale complexions, hands without a single working scar. Comfortable lives. Little hard labor, little weather.
What frightened her more were the black pistols in their hands.
Down here, almost everyone, even the gang types, could scrape together nothing better than a chipped kitchen knife, a rusted iron bar, some crude thing hammered out of salvage.
Guns were beyond their reach entirely.
Who are they?
Her heart hammered, palms slick, fear and curiosity twisting together.
She had no idea what these men were doing here, what they hunted, or what those guns were meant for.
Leaning out for a better view, she looked past them into the distance, and her eyes shrank.
A small figure she didn't recognize stumbled through the rubble, running hard. Her legs wobbled with exhaustion, terror and hopelessness written across her face, and she kept twisting to glance back over her shoulder.
Konatsu had never seen the girl before, didn't know her name, but she saw those crimson eyes clearly and understood at once.
The mark of a Cursed Child. The brand carried by everyone the world had thrown away, burned in too deep to ever scrub out.
They were hunting one of her own.
"Cut her off! Don't let her run!"
That cold voice again, impatience and malice sharper now, cruelty humming through it.
"I'm finishing this stray mongrel myself. I need to blow off some steam."
Ice ran up Konatsu's spine from her heels to the crown of her head.
She clapped both hands over her mouth to stop any sound escaping, terror welling up.
People had bullied her before. Chased her off, spat at her.
Never had she watched anyone hunt one of her own kind with a gun, hunt her for sport, promising to kill her personally.
Malice that open, life valued at nothing at all, frightened her down to the bone.
Curled behind the drum, she didn't dare move, speak, or breathe deep. All she could do was watch the strange girl flee across the broken ground, watch three uniformed men close in behind her, watch black muzzles track that small shape.
Only when the footsteps and shouting faded off into the far end of the ruins did her shaking begin to settle.
She peeked out, scanned in every direction, made certain they'd gone and nothing waited nearby, then let her hands fall and dragged air into her lungs in ragged gulps, sweat beading cold across her forehead.
The memory alone filled her with dread.
Staying here was impossible. Those men were dangerous. If they came back, if they spotted her, the ending wasn't worth imagining.
More than that, Elder Matsuzaki had to know. So did the others. They needed warning that men with guns were out there hunting Cursed Children for pleasure.
She scrambled out from behind the drum, slapped the dust off, gathered the clothes and the little cup against her chest, and ran for the sewers.
Fast, frantic, one thought driving her: get back, tell everyone, get them ready to protect themselves.
She didn't pause once along the way, threading carefully through the wreckage and skirting anything that might hide a threat, that scene replaying itself over and over behind her eyes.
Before long she stumbled back into the tunnels, gasping, hair wild, face streaked with sweat and grime, chest heaving from the run.
"Elder!"
"Elder, something terrible's happened!"
She flew toward Matsuzaki, shouting as she came, fear and urgency cracking her voice, a sob caught in it.
The children packing their things stopped mid-motion and looked up, confusion and worry spreading across their faces.
Matsuzaki set down what he was holding and hurried to meet her, concern tightening his features.
"What is it, Konatsu? What happened? Why are you running like that?"
Watching her gasp, still white with shock, he knew something dreadful had happened.
"Outside... outside..."
The words came apart in her mouth, breath and panic breaking them into pieces, tears swimming and ready to spill.
"There are people outside hunting Cursed Children, and they have guns! It was awful!"
She forced it out with everything she had, and the tears came the moment she finished.
The other children crowded in, smiles gone, replaced by open fear. A few clutched at the girl nearest them, trembling.
Guns terrified them. A weapon that could take a life without effort, something none of them had ever seen, something they'd never imagined would be turned on Cursed Children deliberately.
"Take your time, Konatsu. Don't be frightened. Tell us everything you saw, slowly."
Matsuzaki's face had gone grave, brows drawn tight. He rested a hand on her back and rubbed gentle circles, patience in every word, coaxing her calm enough to speak.
Leaning into his warmth, some of the fear loosened its grip. She breathed a few times, steadied herself, and laid out everything she'd witnessed in the ruins.
She described all three men in their uniforms, repeated the words that had chilled her, and with each sentence her body shuddered and the dread on her face deepened.
Matsuzaki listened, his expression darkening by the moment.
This went far past ordinary trouble. Armed men hunting Cursed Children, working inside the 39th Area. For everyone living down here that meant lethal danger with one wrong step.
They had no way to fight back and nothing to shield them. Run into those men and there'd be nothing to do but die.
Once she finished, Matsuzaki pulled his phone from his pocket without hesitation, fingers unsteady as he dialed Satoru. Only one person could protect them now.
The line connected after a few rings.
"Satoru, I'm sorry to call you at a time like this, and to disturb you. Something bad has happened here and we have no means of handling it ourselves. All I can do is tell you and hope you'll come. Please help us, and help those Cursed Children being hunted."
Satoru's voice came back level, asking what had happened, and Matsuzaki hurried through everything Konatsu had seen, urgency pressing at every word.
When the call ended he let out a long breath. The weight on his face eased a little, though the worry in his eyes stayed. Holding Konatsu close, he soothed her and the children around her, telling them Satoru would arrive soon and everything would be all right.
Meanwhile, in a room across central Tokyo, Betty sat through a reading lesson that a bored Sumire had decided to give her. Watching Satoru hang up, she saw his easy expression sink, and frowned.
"Satoru, what is it? What's happened? Your face has gone awful."
She sat at the table with a battered primer open in front of her, one finger moving clumsily along the characters, concentration written on her face.