Ch.264If Side Story. Tokyo Slayers: Final Chapter (2)

“……Hey, what should we do?”

“Why are you asking me?”

The girls seemed somewhat flustered by Souta’s sudden interruption, poking each other in the sides as they spoke.

“Ah, it’s nothing.”

Finally, one of the three girls quickly grabbed the arm of the girl called ‘Sadako’ and pulled her.

“Hey, get up. I didn’t even push you that hard.”

“……”

“This isn’t helping.”

Though it was a quiet mutter, Souta could still hear it.

“Were you bullying her?”

“No, no.”

The girl waved her hand with a nonchalant smile in response to Souta’s question.

“How could that be? We’re all friends here. Right?”

The girl just stared blankly at the ground without giving any answer.

“That’s right. She’s just a bit slow, so we’re looking after her.”

“……I heard something about money.”

“Oh, that.”

The girl who had been pulling the other’s arm spoke.

“It’s money she borrowed. No matter what, she should pay back what she borrowed.”

“What about the other things you were saying?”

“What other things? I don’t know what you mean.”

The girl said that, then sighed deeply and let go of the arm.

Thud.

The arm fell limply like a puppet with cut strings. Though the ground was dirt, it wasn’t completely soft, so Souta thought it might have hurt a little.

“Haah, hey, fine, whatever. If you don’t want to get up, just stay there. Let’s go.”

“Is it okay to leave her like this?”

“Has she ever said anything to anyone when we left her before?”

“Well, that’s…”

“Hey, don’t meddle too much in other people’s business. Friends should be allowed to resolve things between themselves, right?”

“Wait.”

Seeing the girls about to leave, Souta moved to the side and spoke. As if they hadn’t expected him to block their way like that, the girls flinched and stopped walking.

“What? Are you trying to start something?”

“You didn’t explain anything.”

“I told you everything. We didn’t do anything. What are we supposed to do if she fell on her own?”

“……Didn’t you just say you didn’t push her that hard?”

“Haah.”

The girl at the front let out a small sigh.

She looked around, then took a step toward Souta and said:

“So?”

“What do you mean ‘so’?”

“Are you going to hit me or something? Go ahead if you want to.”

“……”

With things escalating like this, it was now Souta who had nothing to say.

No, of course he had plenty he wanted to say, but—

As Souta stood there unable to do anything, the girl smirked.

“What? Can’t do anything more here?”

The girl said, putting away her rough expression from earlier.

“Looking at you up close, hmm.”

And after muttering that,

“Or, we could treat her a bit better. But there’s a condition. For example—”

“For example?”

Everyone jumped at the voice from behind, not just the girls. Souta leaped up as well.

“For… example?”

If voices had temperature, Yuka’s voice would be so hot it would not only burn brightly but melt nearby rocks into puddles.

For a moment Souta wondered if he was seeing heat waves, when Yuka took a step forward.

“Why did you stop talking? What were you going to ask Sasaki to do?”

“Who, who are you?”

The girls took a step back at Yuka’s appearance.

No, more importantly, how did Yuka end up here anyway?

“……”

Yuka didn’t bother answering that question and took another step toward the girls.

Yuka’s height wasn’t particularly short compared to her peers, but she wasn’t overwhelmingly large either.

But why?

Why did Yuka’s presence alone seem so much bigger and stronger than all the other kids combined?

She wasn’t even holding a sword right now.

“Want to try it with me? I don’t know what you were planning to do to her, but why don’t you try doing the same to me? If you’re too scared to do that, why bother messing with people in the first place?”

At Yuka’s words, the girls looked at each other.

Then, after glaring intensely at Yuka, they quickly moved away.

Souta thought he heard some grumbling, but Yuka didn’t seem to care at all.

“……Haah.”

After they left, Yuka let out a small sigh.

Then she turned to Souta.

“What were you doing here?”

“Ah, I—”

“……Never mind. I think I can guess how this happened.”

Yuka glanced down at the girl still sitting on the ground, then looked back at Souta.

She moved close to him and asked in a small voice that only he could hear:

“What’s this about? Are you planning to look after her until graduation? She’s not even in our class.”

“No, that’s not it—”

“If you meddle unnecessarily, it’ll just make things harder for her. Do you think those girls will just coolly forget about what happened today? I definitely don’t think so.”

“……Yuka.”

“……”

Yuka closed her mouth at Souta’s words.

After staring at Souta with a stern expression for a while, Yuka let out a long sigh.

She rubbed her face once, then walked over to the fallen girl with what seemed like tired steps.

“……Can you stand up?”

Though she asked this, the girl merely raised her head to look at Yuka.

“……Huh?”

Seeing the girl’s face, Yuka tilted her head.

As if lost in thought, Yuka bent down looking at the girl’s face, then finally let out a long sigh and reached out to grab the girl’s arm.

She pulled her up.

The girl stood up unsteadily and looked at Yuka and Souta with a blank expression.

Yuka looked back at Souta.

“So, what now?”

“……”

At Yuka’s question, Souta thought for a moment, then approached the girl.

And carefully began to speak.

“Were those girls… bullying you just now?”

The eyes that had been staring up at Souta slowly lowered.

It was as if she couldn’t speak.

Souta thought about brushing aside the hair covering her face, but he couldn’t do something like that here.

The atmosphere had become strange. Just standing side by side looking at this girl made him feel like they were bullying her somehow, and Souta didn’t know what to do.

“Hey, which class are you in?”

Yuka asked.

The eyes between the strands of hair moved toward Yuka again, then slowly lowered.

“……Class B.”

At least she answered that question, which was a relief to Souta.

“Then let’s go. It’s the class next to ours anyway……”

Yuka stopped mid-sentence.

Before an awkward silence could settle in, she grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her along. Though stumbling a bit, the girl walked.

Souta thought he understood why Yuka had stopped talking.

The class next door.

It was a class that had been the subject of much talk since the beginning of last year. Of course, the homeroom teacher might have changed with the new school year, but at least Souta and Yuka were still in Class A, just as they had been in their first year.

They had just moved up one floor, but their position in the hallway remained the same.

Yuka hardly ever talked about that class.

There had been a “victim” from that class. Yuka had transferred not long after that incident, because she had determined that the serial killer was actually not human but a yokai.

According to Yuka, she had changed schools frequently until now to hunt yokai, but she had stayed at this school continuously.

Souta didn’t know the details. He had only vaguely heard from Yuka that the situation around here wasn’t very good.

That was also why Yuka was somewhat overprotective of Souta.

“……”

Yuka, though she didn’t think so herself, had a somewhat delicate personality. She always pretended to be calm when talking about people who were unjustly killed, but in reality, she was very disturbed.

As if it reminded her of people she had failed to protect.

The three of them walked in silence for a while.

Even as they came out from the corner of the building to where many other students were walking outside. Even as they passed through the corridor where many students were moving between classrooms.

None of the three said anything on the way to the classroom.

“……We’re here.”

Yuka said, placing the girl in front of the classroom door.

“……”

The girl slowly shifted her gaze between Yuka and Souta, then staggered as she turned around.

And trudged through the open door.

The students in the classroom looked toward Souta and Yuka with curious eyes. The two tried their best to ignore those gazes as they turned away.

Even as they walked to their classroom right next door, neither of them spoke.

Both Yuka and Souta were lost in thought for quite some time.