Looking out the car window at Ayani Kika standing not far away, Kotomi Izumi opened her mouth as if to say something.
But in the next second, the jeep suddenly roared forward with a burst of acceleration. By the time the vehicle settled into a steady pace, the street across from the hotel was already out of sight.
"Whoa... this jeep really packs a punch. That acceleration's way stronger than my little sedan. Ugh, if I didn't still have a loan on that car, I'd seriously consider saving up for a jeep. Gotta do my part for Kyoto's auto economy. Huh? Kotomi, what's with that expression?"
Eiren Kanagawa was still marveling at the jeep's horsepower, but as she got used to the handling and smoothly cruised down the road toward the station, she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Kotomi sitting in the backseat looking glum.
Did I do something wrong? Eiren wondered.
Kotomi, clutching a bottle of mineral water, drank as if it were a bitter brew, pain flickering across her face. She muttered in a resentful whisper:
"With that one stomp on the gas, you sent my love away. Not peacefully, either."
Eiren stared, dumbfounded. She didn't get it!
Ding-ling—
A text notification chimed.
Kotomi looked at her phone and saw a message from Ayani Kika. They hadn't contacted each other since exchanging numbers.
The message was brief:
[Safe travels.]
Just one simple sentence.
[Thank you.]
Kotomi replied with a similarly short message. She didn't ask why Ayani had been standing across the street watching her just now.
She had only told Ayani that she would be leaving Kyoto today, but never mentioned the specific time.
Ayani's perfectly timed appearance, standing across from the hotel, made it feel like she had known the exact moment Kotomi would leave.
Kotomi was curious—but she wouldn't ask.
Unless Ayani said so herself.
[I came early today, no special reason—just wanted to see you off. But I didn't know when you'd leave, so I came to the café across the street at 5 a.m. and sat by the window where I could see the hotel entrance. Kinda weird, huh? I forgot to tell you: that café, Bright Moon, it's open 24 hours. I really like that about it.]
After reading the message, Kotomi looked at the time on her phone—10:00 a.m. sharp. She was speechless. She didn't even know how to reply—maybe she couldn't.
They had only met a few times. And yet Ayani Kika had waited nearly five hours, just to watch her from afar.
Kotomi had once taken a five-hour bus ride, phone out of battery the whole time. It was absolute torture.
Thinking about it from that perspective, Kotomi scratched her head, overwhelmed. Waited five hours—just to catch a glimpse of her?
Right now, Kotomi really wanted to run back, grab Ayani by the shoulders, and demand to know what she truly felt in her heart.
Ayani Kika was like a drifting feather that had floated into Kotomi's world without warning. When Kotomi tried to reach out and catch it, it slipped through her fingers. The feather's soft bristles tickled her skin—then kept circling, hovering nearby, waiting for her to try again.
Next time, would the feather slip away once more, or would she finally hold it in her hand?
Kotomi's feelings toward Ayani were unclear, muddled.
After a moment of silence, as the car approached the final intersection before the station, Kotomi took a deep breath and quickly typed a message:
[Next time I come to Kyoto, will you spend the whole day with me? When that time comes, I'll ask you properly—what it is you really feel when you look at me.]
[I hope you won't say no.]
After sending the two texts, Kotomi looked out the window and let out a long, silent sigh.
To be honest, she felt an inexplicable impatience toward Ayani Kika. She was desperate to understand—what did Ayani really mean by all of this?
Kotomi even had the impulse to kidnap Ayani and drag her somewhere deserted just to force the answers out of her.
She quickly snapped out of it and shook that thought from her mind.
Another malicious thought again...
After the string of serial murders ended, she thought everything had settled. But ever since she nearly beat Shika to death, Kotomi had fully experienced what it felt like to crush a person to the brink of death with her own hands. It was like some twisted switch had been flipped.
The malice that had always slumbered deep inside her had started to stir.
If she let her guard down even slightly, that malice would bubble up like petals nourished by veins on a lonely island of flesh floating above a bottomless sea of blood. The petals treated her skin as soil, slowly blooming into vibrant blood-colored flowers.
These brilliant red petals harbored the darkness in her heart. Like blossoming nightmares, they began to cover Kotomi's body, petal by petal, threatening to weigh her down—drag her into silence, suffocate her beneath a blood-soaked sea.
Everyone has a flower of evil growing inside them.
Kotomi had once said this to Kazumi. In a way, whenever she needed to talk about her feelings, Kazumi—being a system—was often the best listener.
There were many things she couldn't say to anyone else, but she could tell Kazumi.
Back then, after hearing her describe these feelings, Kazumi didn't say a word for a long time. She just reached out, pulled Kotomi into her arms, and gently stroked her hair, whispering like in a dream:
"All malice is born from my heart... I'll find a way to deal with it. You're a kind, gentle girl. You're my angel. Just sitting there, you bring warmth and healing."
When Kazumi embraced her and said those words, her tone was so soft and dreamy that Kotomi felt like she was drifting in and out of a dream—yet still grounded by a thread of reality.
And then, in Kazumi's arms, she peacefully fell asleep.
But the sudden surfacing of malice hadn't gone away. Every so often, like now, it would rise from deep inside her again.
Kotomi didn't know what to do. She had no choice but to calm her expression and pretend—pretend like nothing had happened.
She had been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn't looked at her phone. Now, glancing down, she saw two replies from Ayani Kika.
[Alright. Next time you come to Kyoto, make sure to call me ahead of time. I'll be ready and waiting for you—from morning till noon, noon till afternoon, and all the way into the night. I'll stay with you the whole time.]
[Take care on the road. Goodbye. Keep in touch with me, okay?]
Looking at Ayani's reply, Kotomi felt that the restlessness inside her had receded like a tide. But there was no sense of peace—only a hollow emptiness.
With that feeling lingering in her heart, Kotomi boarded the Shinkansen back to Chiba City.
...
As soon as Kotomi sat down in her seat on the Shinkansen, a wave of drowsiness washed over her.
She didn't even think about continuing her writing—her little head tilted slightly to the right, and she quickly fell asleep, her breathing steady and peaceful.
One of the train attendants was pushing a cart through the aisle, asking if anyone wanted a drink.
But when she saw Kotomi asleep, she gently bent down and whispered to Mashiro Shiina:
"Excuse me, do you know her?"
Mashiro, who wasn't used to interacting with people, wasn't sure why the attendant suddenly asked this. She simply answered truthfully:
"Yes, she's my girlfriend."
The attendant's eyes widened in surprise. It was the first time she'd heard a girl openly and confidently say that another girl was her girlfriend. Just how much courage did that take?
An entire hundred-thousand-word yuri romance novel beautifully unfolded in the attendant's mind.
Suppressing the auntie-smile creeping up on her lips, the attendant tried to keep her voice neutral as she continued:
"Would you like a blanket and eye mask for the lady next to you?"
That's when Mashiro realized why she had been asked that, and nodded in agreement.
After receiving the blanket and eye mask, Mashiro said, "I'll cover her myself."
"Alright. I wish you both a pleasant journey," the attendant said softly before pushing her cart onward.
Mashiro looked at the blanket and eye mask in her hands, her breathing growing just a bit quicker.
It's worth noting that the seats Kotomi and Mashiro had were a two-person row, and as usual, Kotomi preferred the seat by the window. When she fell asleep earlier, her head had naturally tilted toward the right—toward the window.
Mashiro glanced around, making sure no one was looking, then gently cupped Kotomi's head with both hands. As carefully and quietly as possible, she shifted her head from the right side to the left.
She had been jealous. That's right—jealous of the window. Because when Kotomi fell asleep, her head had leaned toward it instead of toward her.
"I'm not doing this out of selfishness at all. I just think she'll sleep more comfortably this way."
Mashiro whispered as she worked. Finally, she tilted Kotomi's head toward her, gently nestling it onto her shoulder.
Success!
She didn't say a word, but her slightly flushed cheeks and the excited sparkle in her eyes made it obvious—Mashiro was thrilled.
As for what she planned to do next...
Mashiro carefully arranged the blanket and eye mask she had received earlier.
She started with the blanket, wanting to make sure Kotomi wouldn't catch a chill while sleeping on the train.
Mashiro didn't know that Kotomi had a Queen of All Females-level constitution—wearing a bikini in winter wouldn't give her a cold. She assumed Kotomi's body was just like hers, prone to catching colds if not careful.
The blankets provided to Green Car passengers on the Shinkansen were designed for maximum comfort—essentially the size of a proper quilt.
After all, the Green Car seats were two-person rows, and spaced widely apart so passengers could recline all the way and sleep as if they were in a bed, without worrying about bumping into others.
If you're lying down without a blanket, your sleep quality might suffer. That's why the Shinkansen provided these generously sized blankets, so anyone, regardless of body size, could use one like a full-coverage comforter.
If Kotomi lowered her seat back and lay flat as if in bed, the blanket could serve as a proper single-person quilt.
Kotomi had fallen asleep too quickly to recline her seat, dozing off while sitting upright. The blanket wasn't able to fully spread out that way, so Mashiro draped it sideways across Kotomi, covering herself with the extra length.
Those three days in Kyoto had made Mashiro completely fall in love with the feeling of sharing a blanket with Kotomi.
Back in Chiba, it would no longer be possible to sleep together every night under the same blanket—or even, at times, on the same pillow—as they had in Kyoto.
So before returning to Chiba, Mashiro wanted to savor the feeling of sharing a blanket one last time, even if it was just on the Shinkansen ride home.
Once both of them were snug under the blanket, Mashiro felt an inexplicable sense of calm. Drowsiness tugged at her too.
She looked at the eye mask still in her hand, swallowed nervously, and carefully placed it over Kotomi's sleeping face.
Seeing Kotomi now with the soft black sleep mask on, Mashiro's heart suddenly pounded harder. Her mouth felt dry. A new thought—unspeakable and impulsive—bubbled up from deep inside her.
Her XP system had just updated.
When Kotomi opened her eyes again, the train had already entered Chiba. In less than twenty minutes, they would arrive at the station in Tokyo.
"That was such a good nap..."
Kotomi let out a satisfied sigh. Sleeping from Kyoto all the way to Chiba had left her feeling refreshed in both body and mind. She stretched lazily like a cat—only to pause when she felt a weight on her arm.
???
Three question marks popped above Kotomi's head. But when she saw Mashiro peacefully sleeping with her head resting on her shoulder, the confusion on her face melted into gentle tenderness. She stayed still, quietly waiting for Mashiro to wake up.
She rang the bell and asked a staff member for a cup of iced orange juice. After drinking it, she felt even more refreshed.
Leaning back into the seat, Kotomi mused:
Megumi and the others should've received my heartfelt little gifts and letters by now... I really wonder how each of them reacted when they saw them?
Kotomi really wished she could see it with her own eyes.
She had no worries about any mishaps. Before mailing the packages, she had checked and double-checked them carefully. There was virtually no chance of any leaks or mistakes.
With everything so solid, Kotomi felt invincible. Not even a typhoon could flip her plan now!
Feeling cheerful—and slightly hungry—she patted her stomach and looked forward with eager anticipation:
"I sent Mom a message before we left. She hasn't replied yet, but I know she saw it. She loves me so much—she's probably already preparing all kinds of delicious food at home. I can't wait to see what Mom's cooking for me~"
It had only been three days since she'd last had her mother's cooking, but Kotomi's tummy already wasn't used to going without it.
No matter how many delicacies you eat while away from home, you'll always crave the taste of home.
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