Unlike Pocky sticks, a crepe is by nature an extremely thin pancake.
With two girls biting into it from either end like that, how was the flimsy skin supposed to hold?
As the crepe dropped, Su Yuzu felt her heart plummet right along with it.
She could already see hell yawning open in front of her.
A future in which Kujou Iruka marched her off to the supermarket.
"You've already lost~" The words lilted upward at the end.
The girl's blank disbelief seemed to taste positively delicious to Kujou Iruka.
The woman leaned in until she was nearly flat against the tabletop, and gently tipped Su Yuzu's chin up with one finger.
When had the girls of Keigunen Private Academy ever witnessed a scene like this? Before today, the only thing they might have seen was Yuzu-senpai bullying somebody else that way. They stopped in their tracks one after another, and a few of the bolder ones tried to sneak a photo.
But how could Kujou Iruka tolerate anyone else casually photographing her possession?
Even if it was a possession only in her own eyes.
Anything Kujou Iruka had set her eye on was never, under any circumstances, handed over to somebody else.
The instant the shutter clicked, the scene frozen on the screen turned, impossibly, into a wash of static.
It looked exactly like a photograph taken inside an Aberrant's erosion domain.
"I lost…" Unwilling as she was to admit it, Su Yuzu had no choice but to bow her head before absolute force.
Kujou Iruka could have leaned on being a Seventh Sequence and done whatever she pleased.
Instead, she had left Su Yuzu a way down — the small dignity of simply having lost.
How very kind of her.
The forfeit itself came as something of a surprise. For losing the Pocky game, all Kujou Iruka demanded was a maid outfit purchased from a nearby supermarket, and… that Su Yuzu change how she addressed her. To Master.
This had nothing to do with mercy on Kujou Iruka's part.
It was simply that if the things Kujou Iruka actually wanted to do were put down on the page, the result would most likely read: [This Chapter Has Failed Moderation Review].
In any case—
Little Yu~zu could barely keep herself standing. Her legs had gone soft and useless, her body was wrung out, and her nerves felt stretched to their absolute limit.
And still she had to accompany Kujou Iruka on a tour of every place Kujou Iruka had once walked.
And still she had to pour every last scrap of effort into keeping Kujou Iruka satisfied.
Fortunately, late as it was, they could still make the last train at midnight.
The car was hollow and empty, the warm yellow lighting somehow more desolate than cozy.
There was nobody aboard at all, every seat vacant — and yet Su Yuzu clung with visible difficulty to one of the hanging straps.
A small yawn escaped the girl before she could swallow it.
Normally… she'd have been asleep by this hour.
And if she weren't asleep yet, she'd be curled up around a soft, adorably squishy body pillow, drifting comfortably toward it.
Instead here she was, chasing the last train, working to keep Kujou Iruka pleased.
Behind her, Kujou Iruka — every inch the kindly older sister — offered up her shoulder, letting the girl who could hardly stand rest lightly against it.
It should have been a warm little scene.
If only—
If only Kujou Iruka hadn't strong-armed Su Yuzu out here after a full day of being run ragged. If only the car weren't utterly deserted. If only Kujou Iruka weren't deliberately hemming in the girl's position so that Su Yuzu had no way to sit down.
Drain the prey's stamina. Toy with the prey's mind.
Basic technique for any hunter worth the name.
The next stop on Su Yuzu's sightseeing route with Kujou Iruka was Imperial Capital University.
Not that she was hoping Soga Yura or Professor Tsukiyomi Fuya would come rescue her from certain doom.
Dragging either of them into this had never once crossed Su Yuzu's mind.
The real reason she brought Kujou Iruka to Imperial Capital University was simpler than that: it was Kujou Iruka's alma mater.
She didn't take her to the front gate, though.
Instead—
Su Yuzu led Kujou Iruka straight to a warehouse nearby, one that looked as though nobody had set foot in it for years.
Drowsy as the girl was, she snapped the iron padlock clean off without the slightest strain.
Inside… a statue of a woman drawing a bow stood quietly in one corner, long since buried under cobwebs and dust.
"This is…" Looking at the statue, Kujou Iruka fell abruptly silent.
"Sister Iruka's— …Master's statue."
"It used to stand at the front gate of Imperial Capital University."
"After Master Iruka—" Su Yuzu faltered over the wording. "After Master Iruka left, they moved it here."
"Do you have any idea how much trouble I went to, finding this place?" There was an unmistakable note of fishing for credit in the girl's voice.
She really had gone to enormous lengths back then to learn where that statue had been carted off to.
Just… not for Kujou Iruka's sake.
It had been to unravel the riddle surrounding Lyudmila and Saint Michael.
Though it was certainly proving useful now.
Kujou Iruka reached out and lightly touched the statue that had once been hers — that had once stood for the glory of the name Kujou Iruka.
The maiden drawing her bow, gaze steady and dauntless.
Her long hair, bound and streaming behind her, looked for all the world like the wings of a Valkyrie.
It was a past Kujou Iruka had said goodbye to a long time ago.
Except… when her fingertips lifted from the stone, they came away thick with dust.
The past, in the end, was only the past.
"Yuzu." Kujou Iruka turned and held out her hand.
But Su Yuzu was hardly a professional little cat.
Had it been Raptor, tamed by Su Yuzu into perfect obedience, she would already have bent forward of her own accord, braced both hands on her knees, and laid her chin into that outstretched palm.
Su Yuzu, on the other hand… when the hand came toward her, she resisted, twisting away.
"You really are a girl nobody could refuse."
Su Yuzu watched Kujou Iruka, and the sense of foreboding arrived all at once.
Maybe she shouldn't have brought Kujou Iruka here after all.
The glory that had once belonged to Kujou Iruka didn't seem to have stirred much nostalgia in her, nor much pleasure.
Quite the opposite—
Su Yuzu felt as though she had woken an evil spirit.
A ferocious Beast.
The existence called Kujou Iruka had been a deep and tranquil sea. Or at least a sea that looked deep and tranquil.
And now she had thrown in a single stone and raised a thousand waves.
The surge came roaring up, high enough to swallow even her.
"I really am liking you more and more."
Su Yuzu looked at the Kujou Iruka standing in front of her.
Kujou Iruka in her military uniform, set against the dauntless Valkyrie behind her, made a stark contrast indeed.
A breeze stirred.
It lifted Kujou Iruka's long, faintly curled lavender hair.
And it lifted… those dark golden vertical pupils of hers.
In the darkness, those vertical pupils burned bright and resplendent.
Like the eyes of a wild beast, breathing out a man-eating light.
The things she liked—
She would of course be bundling them up and taking them home.
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