Chapter 4: Welcome to the Mystery-Filled Kurokami Island!

Yuri walked down the curiously bright and wide hallway.

The passage had been carved out in a perfect square, from some unknown, perfectly smooth material. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling all radiated light. Each side was about five meters.

Yuri had been told that it had been a facility used by the old Japanese army, who’d done experiments here on Kurokami Island.

She didn’t know if that was true; she found the claim dubious, to be quite frank. She doubted it would be possible to make something like this in the 1940s. Even with modern-day technology, it would likely be very difficult.

As Yuri came to a dead end of the corridor, a square hole noiselessly opened in front of her. Here was something else she didn’t understand. How could a hole open up like that, in a wall with no seams?

Yuri stepped through the hole and into the room beyond.

The room was lined with cylinders made of a transparent resin.

Each cylinder was full of a cloudy liquid, and things inside the liquid that squirmed with motion. From time to time, there was a dull bang as one of the somethings knocked hard against its cylinder.

Yuri walked amongst them.

She approached one particular cylinder, and then stopped. She looked at the panel in front of it. It contained a grid of buttons.

Yuri did not recognize the symbols inscribed on the buttons. They weren’t part of any language she had ever seen.

Yuri pushed the buttons with the symbols in the order she’d been told.

The cylinder burbled as the cloudy water began to drain out of it, revealing the form of a naked young man.

“I heard it was time,” Yuri asked as the cylinder lifted, freeing the young man. “How are you feeling?”

It was Takashi Jonouchi. For a few moments, he looked around in confusion, as if he didn’t know where he was. But at last, he fixed his eyes on Yuri in a furious glare.

“You... you! What the hell was this? What are you trying to do to me?!” He seemed to show no respect to someone who was helping him out.

“What am I trying to do? Help you regain your anthromorph powers, of course.”

“Like this? Like this?!” he shouted.

“What a strange thing to say. What did you think it was going to be? Reciting chants and burning incense? Ridiculous! Did you really think something like that could make you an anthromorph?” she asked.

“That’s...”

She had explained to Takashi that the village of the Beast God faith could hold a ritual for him that would turn him into an anthromorph.

She hadn’t been lying. This was indeed a village that venerated a god of beasts, and they did indeed hold such a ritual. It was just that the ritual hadn’t been at all what Takashi was expecting.

“If... If you could truly believe in it, that method would also have worked,” she said. “But as a citizen of modern society, I doubt you put much stock in the ways people used to do things, back in the time of myth and legend. Am I right? The only way a modern man like you would swallow the idea of being turned into an anthromorph would be through the power of biotechnology.”

“Really?” he demanded. “I hardly believed it would work at all!”

“But you did think ‘perhaps,’ didn’t you? Injected with drugs, stuck in a vat... it seemed more plausible than some mysterious ritual, didn’t it?” Yuri waited for her words to sink in. She intended to use him as a henchman, but he would be useless if he were too rebellious. He needed some degree of acceptance. “It worked for you, so what’s the problem?”

“It... worked?” he asked.

“Yes. You’re in human form right now, which means it’s a success. Would you like to see a failure?” Yuri turned her eyes to the next vat over.

A bloated hand banged repeatedly on the wall of the vat. She had been told that was one of the failures.

“If you’ve recovered sufficiently, we can go above ground again,” she said. “Aiko Noro will be coming soon, it seems. I suggest we go to meet her.”

Takashi stood up and looked down at his palm. Animal fur began growing out of it. His fingernails grew and sharpened, knife-like.

He then willed it back to his normal human hand.

“It’s back... haha... the power is back!” Takashi cried joyfully, all resentment forgotten.

He certainly was self-serving, Yuri thought.

✽✽✽✽✽

Day two of the training camp was all sunny skies.

Yuichi had spent the morning getting ready for their trip to Mutsuko’s weird island. He was hauling their luggage onto the Noro family cruiser, a large cabin cruiser with two floors, and a large deck on the second floor aft. The first floor contained cabins, as well as a bathroom and shower facilities.

Once they got to Kurokami Island, they’d be camping outdoors, so he had needed to pack tents and sleeping bags and other camping tools.

“Hey, do we need this umbrella?” Yuichi asked, carrying the large paper and steel monstrosity they had used as a beach umbrella the day before.

“I thought we might need it for the beach on the other side!” Mutsuko said, she herself bringing out light things, like cooking utensils.

“Hey, can’t you have Ibaraki carry a few of the heavy things?” he complained. Given that the guy had brought a lot of the stuff to the house in the first place, it seemed only appropriate that he should.

“Oh, you didn’t know? Ibaraki is in the dungeon with Noro’s brother,” Mutsuko said.

“The dungeon?! They have one here, too? ...What happened, anyway?”

“They were peeping.”

“Ahh...” Yuichi had been right. It seemed Mutsuko really had had defenses prepared.

“You take a gamble and lose, you have to take the punishment!” Mutsuko declared.

“How did you find them out, anyway?” Yuichi asked.

“I scouted out the best peeping locations in advance, and set Wooden Men at each of them.”

“Those things?” Yuichi wrinkled his nose.

Wooden Men were humanoid figures made from logs: clockwork puppets, of a sort. She had recreated the training dolls she had seen in a kung-fu movie once. Yuichi didn’t know how they worked, but they made for seriously tough opponents. They were powerful enough that Yuichi had wondered why he bothered training when she could just send the puppets out to fight instead. She must have been using them like guard dogs. He sympathized with Ibaraki on this one, just a little bit.

“So, what? Are we leaving them behind?” he asked.

“I think we should give them a couple of days to reflect on what they did,” Mutsuko said.

Yuichi was surprised that Kyoya had participated in the peeping. Then again, he apparently did like big breasts, so maybe he’d wanted to catch a glimpse at Kanako.

“That’s a surprisingly harsh punishment, though,” Yuichi said. “I figured you didn’t mind being seen naked...”

“That’s so rude! I get embarrassed too, you know!”

“Then don’t walk around naked!”

Yuichi was referring to the night before, when she had come running out without putting on clothes after hearing Yuichi strike the tree.

“It doesn’t count when it’s you, Yu!” she said cheerfully.

“No, you should still be a little embarrassed in front of your brother,” he snorted. “It’s a basic decency thing.”

They carried one set of luggage after another as they talked. There were lots of other heavy items there besides just the umbrella.

“Is this all of it?” Yuichi asked.

It wasn’t yet noon as they finished their preparations, so they had lunch, then headed for the mysterious island in question.

Yuichi and Aiko stood on the prow-side deck, looking out at the ocean. Yuichi was wearing a shirt, jacket, and jeans, while Aiko was wearing a gray dress with frilly sleeves and a white, wide-brimmed hat.

“That hat makes you look kind of like an heiress,” Yuichi said.

“Huh? R-Really?” Aiko seemed a little delighted by the comment.

Feeling a little awkward that she was acting so pleased over a mere observation, Yuichi changed the subject: “So who is Akiko, anyway?”

Akiko was driving the boat. It was a surprising sort of thing for an ordinary civilian to have a license to do.

“I don’t know much myself...” Aiko admitted.

Akiko was a maid serving Aiko’s family, and yet Aiko didn’t seem to know much about her.

Yuichi was just thinking maybe they could take it easy until they made it to the island, when Mutsuko and Yoriko appeared, hauling a large trunk behind them.

Mutsuko was wearing a track suit; she’d apparently thought it was the best way to provide that “training camp” atmosphere.

Yoriko was dressed casually in a sleeveless shirt and hot pants. As her brother, Yuichi couldn’t help but worry that she was showing a bit too much skin.

Natsuki followed behind, not helping at all. She was wearing a white blouse and capri pants.

“Okay, Yu! Time to start training!” Mutsuko opened the trunk. It was stuffed with ring-shaped objects. They were about three centimeters thick, and of all different sizes.

Yuichi picked one up. It was very heavy. They seemed like flexible tubes filled with weights. You could get shoes or backpacks full of weights, too.

“Put them on!” she demanded.

“Yeah, yeah. I get it,” he said.

She put him through this sort of training a lot — covering his body with weights to increase resistance. She might intend for him to wear them the entire time they were on the island. Yuichi took off his jacket and obediently did as he was told.

“That’s about 100 kg in all,” Mutsuko said. “I really wanted to give you more weight, but it’s tough to put them on when you can barely move.”

“Um, Mutsuko, will he be okay with all that?” Aiko asked in concern.

“Yeah. This is nothing Yu can’t handle! He does this stuff all the time!” she proclaimed.

Indeed, Yuichi wore things like this on a more-or-less daily basis. She even had him wear more inconspicuous versions of them to school.

“But the conspicuous ones are even heavier...” Yuichi murmured. He was pretty sure he could still move, though. He experimented with lifting his hands and feet lightly.

“Now, swim in them!”

Thump! Mutsuko gave a light shove to Yuichi’s chest.

That small gesture was enough to make Yuichi lose his balance. He hit the hip-level railing, began to tip over it, and reached out a hand reflexively.

Mutsuko ran in and batted the hand away.

Helplessly, Yuichi fell.

He hit the water with a big splash, and sank into the sea. As he sank, the boat moved further and further away.

“Big Brother!” Yoriko screamed.

“Sakaki!” Aiko yelled out in chorus.

But the only one who moved was Natsuki, who dove after Yuichi immediately.

“Ah...”

Yoriko moved to go after her, but Mutsuko grabbed her shoulder to stop her.

“Sis!” Yoriko shouted.

“Don’t do it, Yori,” she said. “Any more and he’s out. If you dive in, it could kill him!”

“Huh? But...”

“With just Takeuchi, he should be able to make it. Any more than that, he could really die.”

Yoriko stopped, unable to dive in after hearing that.

“Yu! We’re heading on without you!” Mutsuko’s voice echoed out over the sea.

It was moving further away.

“G-Give me a break!” Yuichi swam with all his might and poked his face out of the water, shouting. He never dreamed she would actually push him off.

He hadn’t thought he was letting his guard down, but Mutsuko knew all of Yuichi’s bad habits. She had gotten him completely off-balance.

The first thing Yuichi saw as he surfaced was Natsuki, drowning.

“Hey! What are you doing?” he sputtered.

Her hands and feet were flailing wildly, and she was desperately spitting out the water she was swallowing. Yuichi quickly swam up to Natsuki, but Natsuki threw her arms around him and clung.

He quickly cursed his foolishness for approaching from the front.

“Hey! Wait a minute!” he protested. He couldn’t move with her arms around him like this; she was going to end up drowning her would-be savior.

Eventually, Yuichi managed to pry her off of him and got around behind her.

“Listen to me. First, you need to relax and calm down. You’ll float. You’re not wearing any weights, so you’ll float!” Yuichi strained for the breath to instruct her. He was carrying 100 cruel kilograms on his hands and feet, which were trying relentlessly to drag him to the bottom of the sea.

He hooked his right arm under Natsuki’s side to hold her up. It was in a way that crushed her breasts, but this was an emergency situation... He didn’t exactly have a choice.

First, he put her in a calming posture.

He spread his legs, and alternated kicking out one, then the other. It was an old method for treading water.

“Well? Do you feel any calmer?” he asked.

“I’m okay. Um... sorry.” Since he was behind her, he couldn’t see the expression on her face, but Natsuki’s voice sounded truly apologetic.

“I don’t think you’ve ever said that to me before,” he commented.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I should be. I even know how to swim in a suit of armor... but wow, you can’t swim, Takeuchi?”

“No.” She was being strangely forthright, perhaps because she was aware of how she’d made trouble for him.

“Why did you dive in if you can’t swim?” he asked.

“When I thought you were going to die, my body just moved on its own. Because, you know... I’m the one who’s supposed to kill you. It was sort of a ‘damn you, ocean, don’t take this from me’ feeling, you know?”

“The ocean makes for one hell of a rival...” Yuichi said. Natsuki really did seem to have absorbed a lot of influence from Mutsuko.

“What are we going to do?” Natsuki asked.

“I guess we just have to get to the island.”

“Wouldn’t it be faster to go back?” she asked.

The boat had only just left Madono Island. Going back there would be a lot easier.

“No, we’ll go on,” Yuichi said. “If we turn back now, I’ll feel like I failed.” He wouldn’t even consider taking the weights off, either. At the end of the day, Yuichi wanted to see Mutsuko’s orders through.

“Is this really the time for that?” Natsuki breathed, aghast.

“I know how it looks, but my sister doesn’t demand anything from me that I can’t handle. Which means we should be able to make it.”

Even so, it was a pretty dicey situation. It was 20 kilometers to the island. Swimming that would be tough at the best of times, and he was wearing 100 kg of weight and carrying a girl who couldn’t swim. Plus, they had no food or water.

“We don’t have a whole lot of time to decide...” Yuichi commented. He was worried about Natsuki. Would she be okay coming along with him like this? “Do you want to go back, Takeuchi?”

He could take Takeuchi back to the mainland, then head for the island himself.

“I’ll be okay,” she said. “I’ve got more stamina than a normal person; I just can’t swim.”

Yuichi was still worried about the “can’t swim” part, but he was well aware of Natsuki’s superhuman abilities. “Okay, let’s go. As fast as we can.”

Yuichi began swimming towards Kurokami Island.

✽✽✽✽✽

Kurokami Island.

The name translated to “Black God Island,” but it could also be interpreted as “Black Hair Island.”

It was a small island in the Sea of Japan, with about ten kilometers of coastline and 70 square kilometers of land. The island had been formed by a nearly circular stratovolcano that set at its center, to which the Japan Meteorological Agency had provided an activity rank of A.

Even so, it wasn’t putting out smoke all the time, and in fact, hadn’t had any noteworthy activity in the last few years.

The volcano was nearly at the center of the island, and it was about 400 meters tall. The island’s shores were nearly all sheer cliffs, meaning that all entry and exit from the island took place at one small harbor.

The residents referred to the side of the island with the harbor — the side that face the mainland — as the front, and the other side as the back.

The front was all flat fields, and was home to the local residences and their rice paddies.

The back was mostly mountains and forests, so wasn’t suited to habitation. The family that controlled the island had declared that area off limits.

Despite the island’s isolated nature, about 300 people still lived there, scraping out a living.

None of this made it sound like a very interesting place to visit, but as Mutsuko said, there were quite a few legends surrounding it.

There was a legend that foreign pirates had set up a settlement there during the Genroku period, hidden their ill-gotten gains there after years of plundering, then disappeared without a trace.

Another rumor claimed that the Japanese Imperial Army had used the island for weapons research, and that the island had been erased from the maps of the time due to its top-secret nature.

Further rumors suggested that UFOs had been seen landing on the island, and that yokai and monsters had been sighted there, as well.

A final rumor declared that the island was host to a monstrous deity, and that strange rituals were held to venerate it. The island’s residents firmly denied this, though, so it remained mere hearsay.

The only way to get to the island was by sea, but without regular ferry service, those few people who knew about the island would have to charter their own boats if they wanted to get there.

It was upon this island that the survival club — minus Yuichi and Natsuki — finally made landfall.

Their journey to Kurokami Island had taken about an hour in total. It was still early afternoon, and so the sun beat down hot upon them.

“Um, won’t it be hard to unpack everything without Sakaki here?” Aiko asked uncertainly as they stepped out onto Kurokami Island’s small harbor. The sight of the piles of luggage strewn haphazardly across the deck was extremely demotivating.

“Ahh! I never thought of that!” Mutsuko exclaimed.

Mutsuko could plan all kinds of pointless things far in advance, even while these sorts of points often slipped her mind. But she had no intention of going back for the two they’d left behind. Instead, Mutsuko, Yoriko, Aiko, and Akiko all worked together, and eventually got all of the luggage off of the boat.

Aiko looked around. The harbor was quiet, without a single person in sight.

There were two of what looked like fishing boats docked at the pier. Aiko wondered idly how it was that the residents came back and forth from the mainland without any regular ferries. Maybe they very rarely left?

“Well, we’ll haul it the rest of the way after Yu gets here,” Mutsuko said. “Thanks for all your hard work, Akiko! Could you come back and get us again at noon in three days?”

“Are you certain you wish me to go? I would not mind waiting here.” Akiko, every bit the maid, gazed in concern at Mutsuko. There were cabins on the cruiser, so she could sleep there if she had to.

“I don’t think it makes good training for Yu if we can just go back at any time!” Mutsuko proclaimed.

“Um... will Sakaki really come here? You don’t think he’ll go back to the house? It was a little unreasonable to expect him to swim this far...” Aiko asked.

“Ah...” Mutsuko froze up for a second, apparently having not considered this possibility, either.

“Don’t worry! He’s not the kind of person who would just turn back,” Yoriko said to her in a reassuring tone.

“That’s right! Yu’s a guy who sees things through!” Mutsuko cried.

Aiko wasn’t so sure. If that was what they had inflicted on him at the start, then surely even worse training was awaiting him after he arrived on the island. Anyone would try to avoid something like that.

Akiko checked once more, then went back into the cabin cruiser. They wouldn’t be able to leave this island for three days.

Aiko checked her smartphone. At least they still seemed to get reception; maybe there was a base station on this island. If worst came to worst, they could still call someone. Aiko felt a little better.

“Now, who knows what we’ll find on this island?” Mutsuko asked. “I can’t wait to see! What if there’s a resistance group fighting vampires with logs?”

“I really hope there isn’t, personally...” Aiko said.

Why logs? Aiko wondered.

“By the way, what are we going to do here?” she added.

“Put simply, it’s survival training,” Mutsuko said. “Well, for us it’ll be more like camping. We’ll be out in the mountains looking for edible plants and mushrooms and stuff, and create simple traps to catch animals and fish and stuff like that.”

“...So we’ll be doing different things from Sakaki?” Aiko asked.

“Yeah. I expect Yu to survive on the mountain by himself!”

“Without any tools?!”

“Of course! It’s all about the worst case scenario! Of course, he’ll be allowed to have his clothing, but I’m going to limit his sight!”

It occurred to Aiko that having to swim in weighted clothing might actually be preferable. Her senses were going a bit numb.

“Anyway, let’s take the minimum amount we need and look for a place to set up the tent!” Mutsuko said.

Aiko picked up some smaller things and started walking, but immediately stopped.

At some point, a boy and a girl had appeared on the pier.

Since it was an inhabited island, of course, it wasn’t surprising that there were people around. It was the identity of one of the people that surprised Aiko, though perhaps it shouldn’t have.

Yuri Konishi was standing there in a flashy summer dress, alongside a boy who looked vaguely familiar. Aiko knew Yuri somewhat, since their families socialized, but they hadn’t talked very often.

The boy, on the other hand, she couldn’t recognize immediately. Judging by his fine clothes, she thought, he may have been related to the Konishi family... but then she remembered: he was the boy Natsuki had blown off when he’d asked her out.

“Um, Konishi?” Aiko asked trepidatiously. Yuichi had told Aiko that he had come upon Yuri watching her family villa, and that she had attacked him. Aiko didn’t understand completely what that meant, but it had still been unsettling.

“Why, hello there, Noro!” Yuri said. “How are you?”

“Um, what are you doing here?” Aiko asked.

“What am I doing here? I’d love to explain, but it might take a while. Could we save it for later? Though given what’s lying in wait for you, you might not be in any state to hear it then...”

Yuri apparently had no intention of explaining. Aiko looked at the boy.

“It’s been a while, Noro,” the boy said. He sounded like he knew her, but Aiko couldn’t remember ever speaking to him.

“Um... have we met before?” she asked.

“...I’m Takashi Jonouchi. You don’t remember me?” Takashi asked, stiffening.

“Oh! From Jonouchi Pharmaceuticals? You work with my father, right?” Of course she had heard of Jonouchi Pharmaceuticals. They must know each other through the hospital her father ran.

“...You really don’t remember me?” He sighed. “I didn’t think I’d be forgotten to this degree...”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Takashi’s body pitched forward. She could see his body begin to swell with power.

His muscles bulged outwards, ripping his clothing to shreds. Then gray fur began to grow all over his body. His face transformed into that of a dog’s, reminiscent of the monsters that had attacked them at the Chinese restaurant.

Aiko was dumbstruck by Takashi’s transformation, and the next thing she knew, they were surrounded by anthromorphs.

Dogs, cats, weasels, bears, foxes... All the faces were different. The main thing they had in common was that, despite being covered by fur, they were bipedal and humanoid.

“Really, Noro, it’s nothing personal,” Yuri said cockily. “But please give up and consider this all the will of fate.”

What should she do in a situation like this?

If only Sakaki were here...

He would do something, surely. But there was no way he’d arrive soon enough.

Aiko looked at her allies.

Mutsuko was whipping her head all around, eyes shining with curiosity.

Yoriko was, naturally, frightened. She had probably never seen anything as ostentatiously strange as these beastmen before.

“In all honesty, I’d love to kill you here. But my patron has asked for you to be taken in alive, you see...” Yuri gave the sign.

The beastmen slowly sidled up to them.

“I guess we’ve just gotta get caught for now, huh? Even if we ran away, we couldn’t keep it up long,” Mutsuko said. “Well, once Yu gets here, that’s when things really kick off.”

Somehow, Mutsuko sounded like she was enjoying herself.

✽✽✽✽✽

Yuichi was using a technique known as the sidestroke. He was holding Natsuki with his right arm, but by straining every other part of his body to its limit, he was managing to make progress.

There was no time to waste. He had to reach the island while his stamina, and the light, held out.

It had been just after noon when he’d been thrown off the boat, and it was summer, so the sun wouldn’t go down until around 7:00. Which meant he had to swim 20 kilometers in seven hours. In normal circumstances, that might not have been a problem, but it would be tricky in his current condition.

The sunlight and irregular waves were slowly sapping his energy. The weights and the ocean water put a burden on his whole body.

But Yuichi had been through hard times like this before. The only thing different this time was the burden he was wearing on his arms and legs.

Silently, Yuichi continued swimming.

“Hey, Sakaki,” Natsuki said.

“What is it? Any problem?” But even if there was, there was nothing they could do until he finished swimming them to the island.

“I’m bored.”

“Come on! Is that all you have to say?” Yuichi asked.

“I’m suffering the indignity of letting you grope my chest, aren’t I? Talking to me is the least you could do.”

Now that she mentioned it, trying to pretend like he hadn’t noticed wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t help but think about the way his arm twisted and contorted Natsuki’s soft bosom each time he made a stroke.

“Don’t put it like that! But, sorry... It’s true that I haven’t been very considerate,” Yuichi said. Indeed, just swimming in silence would drive anyone out of their mind. “But I’m not sure what to talk about...”

Yuichi didn’t know much about Natsuki. They went to club meetings together, but they didn’t talk much. And even when she dropped by Yuichi’s training, all they did was fight. All Yuichi knew about Natsuki was that she was a serial killer, and that she was very strong.

“Hey, if you wanted to kill me, it would be pretty easy now, wouldn’t it?” he said. It was the only thing that came to mind. There was probably a more normal subject he could have picked, but after all his thinking, that was what he ended up with.

“If I killed you now, I’d drown,” Natsuki said. “And as I told you before, it’s not satisfying to kill someone who can’t resist.”

“About that...” he said. “It’s something I’ve never understood. Why do you have to kill people at all?”

“I was ordered to ‘devour this species,’” she said.

“Hey, that’s going around a lot lately, huh? Ibaraki quoted Parasyte, too.”

“...How humiliating. To have to share material with him...”

“Hey, don’t actually get mad about it...”

“It’s the truth, anyway,” Natsuki said. “I’ve had someone living inside me for as long as I can remember.”

“You mean... Jack the Ripper?” he asked.

Jack the Ripper. The terrible serial killer who’d terrorized London long ago. For a time, that had been the label that had hung over Natsuki’s head, for reasons he didn’t understand.

Natsuki used surgical scalpels when she fought. They were Jack the Ripper’s weapon of choice, so clearly there was a connection.

Ibaraki had suggested there were others who named themselves after famous serial killers, too. That worried Yuichi. Ever since he’d begun seeing those strange words, he’d gotten mixed up in a lot of strange incidents. There was a chance he could end up running into another of those serial killers.

“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what he seems to think of himself as... which isn’t to say that I can distinguish his thoughts from mine. His hunger is my hunger. That hunger expresses itself as the urge to kill... and it seems that’s directed at you, for the moment.”

“You make it all sound so matter-of-fact...”

“I don’t really understand it, either,” Natsuki said. “But it seems the killer inside me isn’t interested in killing anyone but you right now. So you can rest easy. I won’t kill anyone until I kill you.”

“What the hell? Does that mean I have to stay with you forever?” Yuichi felt weary. Now that he knew Natsuki, he couldn’t let her kill anyone else. Which suggested that she would be completely dependent on him from now on. He hadn’t realized it before, but it was looking like he might need to take drastic measures at some point.

Natsuki chuckled. “You’re quite confident. It’s like you don’t think it’s possible that you might just die.”

“After everything that’s happened, I can’t just let you kill me,” Yuichi said. “I’ll stay with you as long as I can.”

“Can I interpret that as a proposal?”

“Why would you?! Why would I marry someone trying to kill me? What kind of bloodthirsty marriage would that be?”

“But it’s till death do us part, isn’t it? That’s the marriage vow. For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.”

“Oh... fine, whatever,” he muttered. “Anyway, there must be some way. There’s a lot of weird things out there, so there must be some way to make you a normal person, right?”

Yuichi really wanted some way out of having to keep fighting Natsuki until he grew old and died.

“A normal person... hmm. If there was a way, I’d love to hear it...” Natsuki sounded rather sad. “It’s not as if I’m doing this because I like it. I want to have friends, too. I want to live a happy life as a normal person, just like anyone.”

“Really? You seem to treat ‘normal people’ as a different class from you. Why don’t you try to get closer to them? You build all these walls...” Yuichi had never seen Natsuki make the effort to really get along with anyone.

“In that regard, you build walls between you and me, don’t you?” she asked.

“I would be lying if I said I didn’t.” Yuichi was being honest in that respect. He couldn’t put her murdering past behind him.

“I don’t like that part of it either, but I don’t worry about it too much,” he continued. “Trying to push human legal rules onto otherworldly beings seems pretty pointless. If someone dies somewhere in the world, it’s not my problem. It’s not that different from hearing about the kids starving to death in foreign countries.”

The words seemed heartless, but in the real world, people couldn’t worry about every little thing. You couldn’t save people you’d never seen or known about.

“Also, if you were human, what you’ve got could be classified as schizophrenia, right?” he asked. “Legally, crimes committed when you’re not in your right mind don’t count.”

The 39th article of the legal code stated that the mentally ill weren’t considered culpable for their crimes. It was a controversial law.

“Thanks,” Natsuki said.

The sudden words caused Yuichi to stiffen. “Why thank me?”

“I feel like you’re trying to make me feel better. You want to protect me. I appreciate that.”

“Sh-Shut up! It’s just that I’m bored, too.”

“Tsundere?”

“There’s no ‘dere’ there!” Yuichi screamed awkwardly.

He could tell that his words had truly made Natsuki very happy. After a moment of self-consciousness, Yuichi focused on his swimming once again.

A little while passed in silence before Natsuki addressed him again. “That’s clearly unnatural, isn’t it? What do you think it is?”

“What do I think what is?” They were both facing in nearly the same direction, so he realized what she had meant at once.

There was something in the water, moving at such high speed that it kicked up a spray of water behind it.

Just like Yuichi and Natsuki, it was heading in the direction of Kurokami Island.

“You don’t think it’s... a shark, do you?” Yuichi gritted his teeth. He knew a few things about how to fight in the water, but his options would be limited as long as he was holding Natsuki. He’d need to let her go and finish it off in a single hit for them to stand any chance.

Suddenly, the thing seemed to notice Yuichi and Natsuki, and changed course to make a beeline towards them.

“A dog?” he wondered. It did look like a dog. A dog with black fur pasted to its body in a way that gave it a slightly wilted look.

Once it was close enough, Yuichi could make out the words above its head.

“Fenrir.”

He had no idea what that meant, but like “Nihao the China,” it sounded like it must be some sort of description.

For a second, Yuichi felt sure that they were in real danger. The aura it was giving off suggested extraordinary power.

Not good!

He vacillated. He’d need to make a split-second decision about how to deal with it.

The dog, however, didn’t seem to notice Yuichi’s alarm in the slightest. Once it got close enough, it matched his speed and began swimming parallel with him.

“Hey,” the dog addressed him. It looked like an anthromorph, with a canine face on top of a body that was more or less human. It was also quite large. “Is that Kurokami Island?”

The anthromorph dog-paddled with one paw while the other pointed to the land mass that was coming into view. Yuichi hadn’t realized it had gotten so close.

“I think so?” Yuichi just answered the question honestly.

“I see. Thanks a lot.” With that, the anthromorph picked up speed again and headed straight for the island.

“What the heck just happened there?” Yuichi murmured once the creature was out of sight.