Pulse of the Prisoners
KILLING PRACTICE: LOUD PARK
TRACK ONE
“Welcome to the other side, our condolences. 
”
Female students in maid costumes greeted the guests of Café Hades thus.
It was Purgatorium Remedial Academy’s Nineteenth Annual Purgatory Festival, and the Maid Café Hades set up by Kyousuke and his class had seen constant traffic throughout the morning.
The students had been told that all the guests were members of the bloody criminal underground, but their outward appearances were not so different from normal, upstanding citizens. Men and women of all ages came one after another to their establishment.
A third of the classroom had been partitioned off by a curtain to serve as the café’s kitchen, and it was incredibly busy. The girls took orders from the customers, and the boys prepared the sweets and juices.
“……Here.”
Eiri returned with an order. She tore the page from her memo pad, which she was using as a sales book, and lined it up with the other orders on the desktop. Her exhausted voice and expression were just like a zombie’s.
“Table five, two-top, they need two Gray Matter Cream Puffs and two tomato juices, plus a game of Burning Infatuation Inferno Rock-Paper-Scissors and a Café Hades Souvenir Photo Shoot…haa.” A long sigh escaped Eiri’s mouth like a soul escaping into the afterlife.
As he poured tomato juice into paper cups, Kyousuke smiled and said, “Good work out there. More orders from the special menu, huh? It’s really popular.”
“…I’m not happy about it. They should all just die.” Eiri glared at him as she fixed the placement of her headdress. It seemed like putting on a professional smile and an ingratiating voice was really beginning to wear on her.
Oonogi, who was preparing the cream puffs, laughed lightheartedly. “Ha-ha-ha! Eiri acting sociable is something we almost never see, right? The first time I watched her play rock-paper-scissors, it was so cutesy I thought I would die of love!”
“Burning. Love. Rock. Paper. Scissors. One, two, three. …Hee-hee-hee.” As Usami imitated the words and motions of the Burning Infatuation Inferno game, Eiri’s face flushed before their eyes…
“Sh-shut up! Do you want me to send the two of you to hell for real?!”
“C’mon, Eiri, try to control yourself,” Kyousuke offered, keeping Eiri from grabbing the two boys. “You only have to put up with it for a little bit longer.” He directed his gaze toward the clock on the wall.
The time was 10:20—their shift ended at 10:30, so these would probably be her last customers. Eiri clicked her tongue a little bit and picked up the tray bearing sweets and juice. “…That’s right. I want to break free already.” She turned on her heel. Her short skirt, fourteen inches above the knee, swished as she spun.
“Eiri,” Kyousuke said behind her.
“……What?”
“The maid outfit really suits you! It’s obvious why you’re so popular.”
“Eh—” Eiri stiffened, at a loss for words over the compliment. Kyousuke, for his part, had been holding on to the thought for some time. However, she soon had her sour look back. “…H-huh? Wh-what are you saying all of a sudden? St…stupid idiot!!”
She turned around and strode away. Before long—
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Here are your Gray Matter Cream Puffs and fresh blood squeezed from sinners. ”
The voice they could hear from the customers’ table was bright and lively, without the slightest hint of its previous sullenness. Popping a misappropriated cream puff into his mouth, Oonogi muttered pensively, “She’s hard to understand, that Eiri…”
“A lowly bastard is killed by a demon of death, and it is a great sin not to kill someone of the same low rank!”
Each carrying a program emblazoned with this incomprehensible maxim, Kyousuke and Eiri navigated the crowds of Purgatory Festival attendees. The colorfully decorated school building was boisterous with festive merrymaking.
Still dressed in her maid costume as she walked the halls, Eiri turned and asked, “…Is there any place you want to go?”
Kyousuke opened up his pamphlet. “Let’s see…there are places I definitely don’t want to go, like the Snuff Film Screening and Bloody Torture Experience and Hangman’s Bungee Jump, but…if I have to pick, maybe the Black Market Flea Market? I’d like to see what kind of things they’re selling.”
“Hmm. Where is that, anyway?” Moving alongside Kyousuke, Eiri peered at her own pamphlet. “…Ah, it looks like it’s outside. Since we’re already here, do you want to look around inside first? I’m interested in the Cursed Doll Show. And the nearby Shadow of Death Fortune-Telling seems—”
“Ah, um…Eiri?”
“What?”
“N-nothing…just that, um…”
—She was close. Ridiculously close. At a distance where their cheeks were nearly touching. Her silky rust-red hair was tickling Kyousuke’s nostrils and had a sweet scent like candy.
Eiri snorted. “Hmph, what are you getting flustered for? You’ve gotten close to that girl Renko’s various parts plenty of times…doing all kinds of things.”
“Uh—”
Her scornful eyes turned on him at point-blank range, and Kyousuke was hard-pressed for an answer. After glaring silently at him for a short while, Eiri pouted. “…Hmmm? So you don’t deny it. You sex fiend! Pervert! Corrupted youth!”
“Guh?! N-no comment…”
Eiri pulled away and grabbed Kyousuke’s right wrist. “Come with me.”
“Eh—”
Pulling the perplexed young man along by the hand, Eiri led them from the third floor of the A wing up to the fourth floor. After they had gotten away from the crowds, they turned toward the closed door to the roof.
“H-hey…”
“It’s fine.”
Eiri easily picked the lock with a bit of wire she pulled from her pocket. She opened the iron door with the words NO ENTRY painted in red. Kyousuke closed the door behind them as he followed Eiri onto the roof.
“Hey…” In an instant, the girl nimbly spun around and closed the distance between them. “…Are you an idiot?”
She peered into his face as she spit out the words. Her rust-red, upturned eyes were as sharp as knives. Eiri continued speaking in a quiet tone as Kyousuke listened, unable to respond.
“If you and Renko fall in love, she’ll kill you, right? Knowing that, why—” Eiri’s voice was trembling, and she bit her lip as if to try to control it. “What are you flirting with her for?!”
—Bam! The yakuza kick that accompanied Eiri’s desperate shout grazed Kyousuke’s left side before smashing into the iron door. He reflexively tried to back away, but the door kept him from going anywhere.
Still pressing her right foot into the iron slab, Eiri groaned. “…Kyousuke, do you want to die?”
Her question was as direct as her gaze.
Daunted by the menacing demeanor, Kyousuke let his averted eyes wander. “N-no…uh, ummm…that’s…well…”
“……”
“O-of course I don’t want to die…but…”
“……”
“Th-there’s a good reason—”
“Like?”
“W-well—”
“Like?”
Kyousuke was stumped in the face of Eiri’s silent pressure and the persistent repetition of her question.
She didn’t know about Renko’s condition—how Renko’s life span as an artificial life-form was so short, how she couldn’t live as long as Kyousuke and the others, how she had sacrificed so much of her life to save his own, how she was likely to die so soon…
As he ruminated on the secrets of the Murder Maids, Kyousuke recalled that Reiko had said, “Not a word to anyone.” He clenched his jaw hard.
Eiri’s piercing red eyes narrowed. “You can’t say?”
“……Sorry.”
“Tch—” Letting her gaze fall, Eiri lowered her right leg. However, the moment Kyousuke began to relax— “I see. If it’s like that, I have no choice… I’ll have to use my full ability.”
—Bam! This time her palm thrust forth, grazing Kyousuke’s right cheek as it slammed into the iron monolith. Deeply furrowing her brow, Eiri brought her face close to his without hesitation.
“Wha…?!”
Kyousuke tried to step back but found he had nowhere to go. He was blocked from behind by the iron door and from the front by Eiri’s body, and any retreat to the right was blocked by the girl’s left arm.
“I won’t let you escape.”
—Bam!
The moment he glanced left, Eiri cut him off with her other arm.
Now completely surrounded on all four sides, Kyousuke began to tremble. Feeling Eiri’s strong gaze on his cheek, he slowly turned his head, and…
“Hey, Kyousuke…Renko did all kinds of things with you, right? In that case, I’ll have you do them with me, too! You want to, right?! If you’re falling for her extreme sex appeal and about to give in, then…I-I can’t just stay silent, can I? I have to mount a full attack and, the circumstances being what they are, make you forget all about her!” Though her face was flushed, Eiri’s eyes were as resolute as her shout.
I-I’m going to be eaten alive! Kyousuke’s body stiffened instinctively with the sense of impending danger.
They were so close that their breaths mingled. Eiri’s sweet scent traveled through his nostrils and excited him to his core, making his mind dizzy.
“
?!”
Unable to stand it, Kyousuke found himself holding his breath. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest, and his face quickly grew hot. When he hung his head, unable to look straight at her with his wet, blurry eyes, his gaze passed over the girl’s long, supple legs, stretching down from the short skirt of the maid costume…
Even though she had said, “I’m not changing the length of the skirt,” she had in fact cut the skirt in question two inches shorter. He believed that by doing so, Eiri had revealed something of her true feelings. She had altered the skirt to show off her beautiful, sleek legs…
“…D-do as you… Do whatever you like…!”
“Huh?”
As she followed Kyousuke’s gaze, Eiri’s voice grew vanishingly small. Both of her hands were still pressed against the iron door, and she fidgeted bashfully, moving her dazzlingly white thighs back and forth—framed in the gap between the black skirt and her knee socks.
“D-do as you p-please, I said! I-I won’t get angry, so…the th-things you do with Renko—no, more than you do with her—d-do them with me, too, you creep! If you don’t, I’ll—”
She took her right hand off of the door and moved it over the doorknob.
—Kachink. After locking the door, she placed both forearms against it, bringing her body even closer. The distance between them vanished, and her chest pressed against him. It was soft.
“……?!”
Deliberately, Eiri placed her chin on Kyousuke’s shoulder and rubbed her cheek on his. Kyousuke’s breath caught in his throat as she whispered nervously into his ear, “I’ll have you do those things, and…I’ll do more with you than Renko has.”
“E-Eiri—”
All the thoughts swirling in Kyousuke’s mind were blasted away in an instant. Eiri’s hot breath, her seductive voice, her soft body, her sweet scent, her innocent feelings—all those things came together as one to overwhelm him and burst the bounds of his reason.
“Kyah?!”
Almost unconsciously, Kyousuke embraced Eiri’s body and pulled her close.
“Noooooooooooo
?!”
Suddenly, a lascivious voice filled the air. It came from right above Kyousuke and Eiri.
“Eh?”
Separating their lips just before they could touch, the two of them looked upward in confusion, only to see—
“No, no, you tried so hard to contain yourself, but your voice slipped out! Damn, damn, stupid! Kurisu, you idioooooot! If you had just watched them in secret, they definitely would have started, but…now you’ve ruined it, FUCK! Seriously FUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
On top of the doorway, peering down at them from an unexpected vantage point, was a female student who looked like she was about to tear out her brightly dyed hair in frustration.
“Geh?! Aren’t you—?”
It was the third-year student who had been in charge of broadcasting at the athletic festival, Kurisu Arisugawa.
When she noticed Kyousuke and Eiri looking at her, Kurisu snapped back to her senses and quickly stiffened. “Huh?!” For a moment, she said nothing, glancing back and forth awkwardly. “D-don’t mind me!”
“We do mind!” “Yeah, we do!”
Kyousuke and Eiri shot back at their upperclassman, who was grinning like a fool while trying to win them over.
“Ahh…” Kurisu, clearly at something of a loss, started frantically trying to explain the situation. “How should I put this, um…sorry? I wasn’t planning to get in your way? I just wanted to hide from the teachers and Public Morals Committee and take a nap…and when I heard signs of people and then your voices talking, I thought Shit! and jumped up here. And then I secretly watched you to see what was up—”
She narrowed her lazy, catlike eyes and continued talking in an ever more excited voice. “And it turned out to be two underclassmen having a secret rendezvous! What’s more, I felt like there was something even more suspicious going on, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it… So I thought to myself that it would be too good to miss and decided to hide.”
…So that was it. She had been playing hooky from the festival and just coincidentally happened to be up on the roof.
Kurisu smiled, satisfied, at the pair below, who said nothing. Then her gaze fixed on Eiri, who was hanging her head in silence. “Whaaa, HA-HA-HA-HA! Excuse me, underclassman, but aren’t you the bitch with the beautiful legs? That was some magnificent seduction—even I was getting embarrassed over here… It’s dangerous stuff! Don’t worry—he’ll fall for it. He’ll give in for sure. Was that the carnivorous style that’s been popular lately? I tell ya, if I was a man, I’d’ve nailed you in an instant…especially when you said, ‘Do as you please’—that was dan-ger-ous! Coming at him with a strong offense, and then flipping the table at the last moment… What a technique!! How many people did you have to do to learn that? And by ‘do’ I certainly do not mean ‘kill,’ if you catch my drift—”
“……I’ll kill you,” Eiri growled, interrupting Kurisu’s frantic chatter.
“—Pardon?”
Looking up at Kurisu, who was playing dumb, Eiri pulled a small dagger out from who knew where. “After witnessing a scene like that, there’s nothing to do but make sure to keep your lips sealed… If you want something to blame, blame your own laziness for leading you to play hooky in a place like this…”
“Fwah?! Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, waitress!” Kurisu panicked at the palpable bloodlust. “I’ll seriously keep it a secret… I absolutely won’t tell anyone! Not even Kamiya’s girlfriend—that gas mask girl. I’ll keep quiet about you trying to steal him from her—”
“Just die already!”
Eiri finally lost it. She clambered up after Kurisu with the dagger gripped between her teeth.
“Eeeeee?! I’m gonna die, killed by this bitch!”
“I’m not a bitch!” Eiri brandished the dagger as Kurisu retreated.
Barely avoiding the blade, their elder jumped down in a rush and brushed aside Kyousuke, who was still standing in front of the iron door. “Later, freshie. See ya in the mosh pit!”
“Ah?!”
Kurisu quickly unlocked the door and scrambled through it, escaping the scene. Eiri chased after her, yelling, “Wait, you!”
Left behind all alone, Kyousuke stood still for a moment, then let out a long sigh. As the tension left his shoulders, he sank down to the ground.
“I-I’m saved…”
“Chocolate bananaaas! Treat yourself to a nice, dark, thick, looong chocolate banana! Bananas so big they put black gentlemen to sha— Ah, Miss Arisugawa? You’re looking rather out of breath—whatever could have happened?”
“Ohh?! Public Morals Committee Chair, it was awful! Truly awful! The state of public morality at this school has really gone out the window!! Listen here, just now I was relaxing and taking a nap upstairs, when two underclassmen showed up—”
“……A nap? You were taking a nap?”
“Ah, yeah! I was gonna play hooky from the festival and take a nap, so I went up to the roof—guah?!”
“Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho, Miss Arisugawa…it seems you really want to be disciplined, hm? Ho-ho, I understand. I’ll take this chocolate banana and use it to violate your impertinent mouth! And not just the mouth up here, either…oh-ho-ho-ho!”
“Mbwah—ah?!”
Kurisu was quickly restrained by the Public Morals Committee chair—Saki Shamaya, who had been selling chocolate bananas as she patrolled the school—and was promptly dragged off down the corridor.
Eiri, hiding in the shadows nearby, clicked her tongue—“…Tch”—and put her dagger away. “I missed my chance to kill her, but she’d better not go mouthing off about anything.”
“Eiri…”
“…What?” Eiri whipped around, voice still thick with bloodlust.
Under her withering, half-lidded glare, Kyousuke averted his gaze. “Nothing… What should I say, um…sorry? I—”
“It’s fine.”
“…Huh?”
“I said it’s fine! You don’t need to make a point of bringing it up again—it’s fine!” Eiri shouted, bright red all the way out to her ears. “I-it was stupid of me… How I feel about you…ah…aaaaaargh!! What am I doinggg, grrraaaaaaaaagh?!” She doubled over, holding her head in apparent agony. “Wh…when I think about it, I’m so embarrassed I want to die… Please, Kyousuke, forget all about what just happened? Forget iiiiiit!”
“O-oh…” Kyousuke scratched at the side of his face as if he was stumped by Eiri’s desperate pleas.
If Kurisu hadn’t interfered, what might he have done to Eiri…? As he imagined it, guilt filled his chest. And not just guilt toward Eiri but also toward Renko, who truly always had him in her thoughts—
“Ah, big brother!”
A bright, bouncy voice called out just as Kyousuke fell into dark musings. He looked up to see a girl in pigtails leaving the nearby bathroom, smiling and waving at him.
“Ayaka…”
“Tee-hee. What a coincidence, big brother…,” she said as she scampered over to him. “…And, Eiri, what are you doing?”
Eiri, who was still clawing frantically at her hair, looked up and blinked her red eyes in confusion. “Huh?!” Quickly she regained her senses and, smoothing her hair back down, she stood up. “…N-nothing? I’m n-nnnn-not doing anything!”
“Su-spi-cious…” Ayaka’s eyes opened wide, and she stared at Eiri’s face.
“…Wh-what?” Eiri winced as Ayaka brought her nose close and sniff-sniff-sniffed her.
She frowned and grumbled. “—The smell of a female in heat.”
“Eh?” Eiri quickly stiffened.
“What were you doing with my brother?” Ayaka inquired, scowling at her with upturned eyes. “What were you doing to my big brother? Taking advantage of Ayaka’s fondness for you? Don’t tell me you were trying to take him by force—”
“Hey, Ayaka! Is your exhibit popular? It was in a classroom right around here, right?!”
“…Hm?” The girl turned her head and looked at Kyousuke. Sure enough, the light of reason had vanished from her eyes. “That’s right, it’s very close by. But before that, there’s something I want to check—”
“Heh, heh! I’m really curious about it!” Eiri added in an awkwardly loud voice. “You put so much work into it, so why don’t we go there now?!” She continued pressing Ayaka for a response. “Come to mention it, we haven’t seen it yet… Oh, I want to see it. I want you to show it to us!” Eiri was utterly transparent, her voice flat and clumsy.
Ayaka let out a heavy sigh. “…All right, I get it. I can take a hint—I won’t ask you any more now. But—” Midway through turning around, Ayaka stopped to glare at Kyousuke. She thrust her pointer finger at the tip of his nose just as he was about to relax. “Big brother. I won’t forgive you for two-timing, okay?”
The clear, bright music of a children’s chorus filled the classroom at the end of A wing’s fourth floor. As they laid eyes on Ayaka’s special exhibition for the first time, a single word filled their thoughts: incredible.
Walls, floor, ceiling, windows, doors—every surface was covered in photographs.
Kyousuke sitting in class, diligently copying down notes from the blackboard. Kyousuke dripping with sweat as he threw himself into manual labor. Kyousuke gulping down a Garbage Rice Bowl at lunch. Kyousuke sitting in a toilet stall. Kyousuke washing his body in the bath. Kyousuke sleeping soundly in bed. Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke Kyousuke—every photo was of Kyousuke.
The multitude of photographs, each one apparently taken since he had enrolled at the academy, overlapped like the scales of a fish, packed together to completely fill the inside of the classroom. The exhibit was all but deserted—perhaps Ayaka’s artistic vision was just too strange.
Turning around to face Kyousuke and Eiri, who had come to a stop near the entrance, Ayaka spread her arms out wide.
“Ta-daaa, it’s Ayaka’s ‘Little Worlllld’! Amazing, right? I arranged everything myself!”