Cold rain poured over the narrow alley, drenching the spiderwebs that clung thick across every surface, soaking the moss that crept up the stone steps.
Ahead, neon light spilled in. Mahito and Junpei walked with their backs to the glow.
The light split the alley in two. The rear half was pure darkness—moss and cobwebs. The front half was blinding white, so harsh that stepping too close would bring stinging tears. And in between lay a thin band of color where light and shadow interleaved, like ink bleeding into water on a palette.
Junpei stood in that middle ground. Rain streamed down his body. He watched Mahito ahead.
"Junpei—do you think the body came first, or the soul?"
Mahito cradled the back of his own head in his hands, ambling forward with an easy sway.
"I don't know."
Junpei didn't know how to answer. He didn't even know why he was following this strange man. Right now, nothing mattered to him.
"Do humans really deserve something like a soul?"
"Oh, they have them."
Mahito turned back, grinning lazily. "On this point alone, I know better than anyone."
"Humans possess souls, but they don't have 'hearts.'"
His voice was light and careless, brimming with a childlike innocence:
"The body is nothing but a vessel for the soul, and the soul itself is just another commonplace thing—like a stream, or the sea, or a hill. Humans have no 'hearts.' They're no different from anything else."
Mahito turned to face Junpei fully, his tone suddenly solemn. "That's why we can do whatever we want. Someone rubs you the wrong way? Kill them. Something offends you? Destroy it."
"I'll affirm everything about you, Junpei!"
Junpei's heart lurched violently.
The street was deathly silent. Only rain striking brick. No summer insects chirped, no frogs croaked. Neon light carved the street into two distinct zones. The humid air hung thick and suffocating.
Kill the people who rub me the wrong way... destroy the things that offend me... those teachers who think they understand me, those stupid, ignorant classmates, the ones who killed my mother—just kill them. Just destroy it all.
No more mediocrity. No more fear. Do whatever I want... this bland, nauseating, hypocritical daily life—tear it all apart...
Joy swelled in Junpei's chest, wild enough to burst free. He wanted to take one step forward, to follow Mahito deeper—but his legs wouldn't move. A despised phrase surfaced unbidden in his mind:
It's precisely because life is ordinary that you should live it earnestly—meticulously, without cutting corners.
He pulled back half a step on reflex.
That half-step saved him.
BOOM—
The explosion was silent and terrifying. Junpei stared, frozen, as the air in front of him detonated, ripping open a bizarre vacuum band. Wind pressure rushed in from all sides to fill the void.
The gale swept the rain sideways, screaming past his ears.
He saw a spray of blood. He saw, across that vacuum band, what looked like Mahito's body blasted in half—blood jetting from the clean-cut edge, splattering directly onto his face. In an instant, the entire world turned red.
He heard wind being sliced. He glimpsed a blurred silhouette, fists raining down on Mahito in an overwhelming barrage.
Mahito's body contracted, flattening himself into a sheet of paper. Killer Queen's fist passed through the gap at the paper's edge.
Mahito peered through narrowed, amused eyes, meeting the crimson cat-pupils head-on.
"Interesting. That really hurt. I didn't expect you could actually blow apart a soul."
"I can blow apart that disgusting body of yours, too—as easily as flushing a toilet."
A calm, familiar voice spoke from beside him. As if all of this were perfectly natural. As if nothing could alter his will.
"Interesting."
The paper burst open on both sides. Two enormous wings of flesh sprouted, carrying Mahito skyward and away from Killer Queen in a flash.
At the same time, several tiny scraps of flesh—no bigger than erasers—were spat from his mouth and dropped to the ground.
They burst open. Grew wildly.
In an instant, massive tumors of meat ballooned outward. The flesh erupted like floodwater, filling Junpei's vision, crushing the street, smashing through houses, breaking through walls. Worm-like things, each several meters in diameter, coiled before them—flesh-colored and enormous. They looked like earthworms but bore human faces, weeping in agony.
They dove at Kira.
Sheer Heart Attack, already deployed, slammed into the first one head-on. The tiny tank, only centimeters across, collided with the writhing worm, dozens of meters long, and the creature shattered on impact—fragmenting, disintegrating.
Sheer Heart Attack plowed straight through, punching from mouth to tail in a heartbeat.
Meanwhile, several more giant worms closed in on Kira from every direction, swarming around him, diving in unison.
Kira's expression didn't change. He watched it all with the same quiet calm.
Killer Queen appeared before him. A black skull-gauntlet touched the first worm lightly; as it detonated and came apart, Killer Queen spun half a turn around the blast, flicked a hand, and was already facing the second. Another shift of footing—
Junpei could no longer track what was happening. All he saw was a pale pink figure flickering through the mass of worms. All he saw was fire, everywhere. All he saw was shattered corpses. All he heard were the worms' wailing cries—like the screams of infants.
Finally, everything stopped. The alley fell quiet again.
Every last giant worm had vanished.
Kira looked toward the horizon with mild regret. Mahito had escaped long ago.
But Kira knew Mahito wasn't feeling great right now. The air bombs from Stray Cat—a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit—combined with his shikigami Killer Queen could shatter even a soul.
What satisfied him were the corpses on the ground—the ones he'd deliberately left intact instead of reducing to ash.
That should be enough to get the school off my back.
He thought.
But what no one knew was that high above, the paper-thin face with its two wings of flesh wore a smile of pure delight.