Biiiiiiiiing, boooooong…

Baaaaaang, boooooong…

A normal chime rang out from an undamaged speaker.

At the sound of that electronic tone, reminiscent of normal school life, Kyousuke stopped working and raised his head to look at the clock hanging on the clean, graffiti-free wall. It was 12:50—third period was over, and it was time for lunch to start.

“……”

However, no class had been held. Their bored-looking homeroom teacher, Hijiri Kurumiya, had one elbow up on the lectern and was tapping her shoulder with an iron pipe as her irritated gaze swept around the classroom.

“Miss Kurumiya! We finished the picture to hang on the blackboard. The theme is ‘Hell Screen’! It shows us, the students of first-year Class A, wantonly slaughtering men and women of all ages. Heh-heh.”

“You’re in it, too, Miss Kurumiya—look here, as King Enma! We drew you up like the demon king watching over the devilish murderers, see? It’s a total masterpiece, if you ask me… What do you think, ma’am? Is it okay to do it like this?”

“…Sure. Don’t bother checking with me. Do whatever you want, piggies!” Coldly shooing away two students who had approached the lectern, Kurumiya stood up and, without saying another word, left the room.

Shinji and Tomomi stared at each other.

“Yo, has Miss Kurumiya, like, totally lost her motivation or what?”

“Seems that way… Well, this isn’t like the athletic festival—it’s not a competition. Since we can do it however we please, let’s do just that!”

With that, the two of them returned to their stations. In the spacious classroom on the second floor of the new school building’s A wing, their jersey-clad classmates were scattered about, working in noisy groups.

Some were cutting stage settings out of cardboard, some were adorning the walls with finished decorations, some were spreading skull-patterned tablecloths over groups of desks that had been pushed together…and so on.

Normal classes had been suspended due to an upcoming annual event, and all the students in every class were being pressed into service to make the preliminary arrangements.

The Nineteenth Purgatorium Remedial Academy Purgatory Festival.

Held at the end of October, the event was a kind of culture festival. A festival where the murderous students would entertain dangerous attendees: killers and assassins, gangsters and fixers who pulled the world’s strings from the shadows, and more—all guests from the criminal underworld.

Such guests would be more than capable of wiping out any person or thing that might offend them, so the reputation of the academy itself was on the line. For that reason, the students had been allowed to spend a whole two weeks planning and prepping in their class groups.

…Only one person, the unmanageable problem child Mohawk, had been locked away alone in the dungeon the day the preparations had started. Apparently he was to be strictly confined, forbidden from taking even a single step outside his prison until the Purgatory Festival had safely concluded.

Truly, no one had seen Mohawk for the past four days, and there was no way to contact him. Could Kurumiya’s recent lack of ambition be somehow connected…?

“Kyousuke, do you want to take a little break and go to lunch soon?” Maina interrupted his thoughts. She had put down her pen and stood, stretching.

Kyousuke, who had been making a menu board out of paper pasted onto a cardboard cutout, also stood up from the floor. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed. “That’s good work, Eiri. You wanna come eat with us?”

“……Mm.” Eiri, who was working at a desk in the corner, glanced up at the two of them. “…I’m at a good spot right now. Go ahead without me,” she answered nonchalantly and then resumed stitching with thread and needle. One completed costume was already casually strewn out before her.

“Whoa!” Maina let out a shout of admiration. She rushed over and picked up the finished costume, her big eyes sparkling. “You finished it already?! Wowww, how cute… That’s our Eiri!”

“Wow, I can’t believe it’s handmade! That’s amazing, Eiri.”

“…Eh, not really. Something like this is no big deal.” The unanimous praise didn’t seem to annoy Eiri as much as one would expect.

The black-and-white costume was supposed to be some kind of maid outfit. It featured plenty of lace and frills, and it was adorned with a crimson bow on the chest. Only on closer inspection were the more gruesome details apparent—the buttons were fashioned like eyeballs, for example, and the apron was decorated with bloody polka dots. The costume incorporated many grotesque touches.

Eiri, who had handled everything from the design to the actual sewing by herself, was obviously proud. “An ordinary maid outfit would be boring, right? Since I’m going to all the trouble, I tried to come up with a few clever touches… Isn’t it perfect for the Maid Café Hades?”

—The Maid Café Hades. A cosplay café combining two themes (maids and the underworld) was first-year Class A’s festival project. They were decorating their classroom to look like an infernal hellscape.

Oonogi, who was working on making a “Bloody Pool of Damnation” out of a plastic kiddie pool, looked up and raised his hand. “Yo, Eiri! I think the skirt oughta be shorter!”

“Hee, hee-hee-hee…,” Usami chimed in. “At twelve inches above the knee, the chances of a panty flash go up substantially…hee, hee-hee…”

“…Just die already!” Eiri quickly shut them down before deliberately recrossing her legs. Rather than a tracksuit, Eiri was wearing her regular uniform, the skirt of which looked to be shorter than twelve inches above the knee…

“Say, Eiri—”

“What? I’m not changing the skirt length.”

“No, no…we’re going to lunch, is that all right?”

“Yeah. I’ll go when I get to a stopping point. And don’t forget to visit your sister, all right?”

“Sure. Though she seems pretty busy herself… I’ll peek in on her just in case.”

In addition to the class programs, the Purgatory Festival would include many other voluntary projects. Ayaka had come up with an idea of her own and had been given one of the classrooms in the new school building to pursue it. She hadn’t told them what kind of exhibition she was planning, but it was probably hard work setting it up alone.

Maina finished looking over the completed costume and began to fold it up. “Um, won’t you be lonely by yourself?” she timidly inquired. “Maybe you should come with us—”

“Uh-uh. I’m fine… I have him.” Eiri smiled.

—Right, Pooh Bear? On the desk facing Eiri sat an enormous teddy bear. It was Eiri’s prized possession, brought over from her dorm room.

“Poo-poo…Pooh Bear, poo-poo-poo!” Shinji burst out laughing, but a single bloody glare from Eiri quickly shut him up.

Three days ago, when Eiri had first brought Pooh Bear over, she had sent every boy who had laughed at him to the infirmary. The so-called Bloody Plushy Incident was still fresh in everyone’s mind.

Kyousuke took a moment to shake off the image of the classroom painted in bright red blood before speaking. “All right, later then. We’re headed to the cafeteria.”

“Good luck with your costume making, Eiri!” Maina announced. “I’m looking forward to seeing the finished products.”

“…Yeah, okay.” Eiri waved them off.

Turning away from their friend, Kyousuke and Maina moved to leave the classroom when—

“Kksshh?! What the heck is this interior design?! It’s super elaborate, wow! Our Purgatory-Style Massage Parlor is just beds lined up!”

—at the room’s rear, a student from another class threw the door open and appeared in the doorway.

Wearing a thin blue hoodie, a tank top, oversized headphones, and a sinister-looking gas mask, the girl looked around the classroom with exaggerated surprise.

“Kyousukeeeeee!”

It scarcely took her a moment to identify Kyousuke’s figure and run straight for him, leaping on him in a full-body embrace. In the process, she trod on the picture that Shinji and his group were working on, completely ignoring their screams of protest.

“I wanted to see you, Kyousukeeeeee!” she squealed, squeezing him tightly with both arms. “I’ve been busy with preparations, too, so I couldn’t come see you for a while… I’m sorry! I’m sooo sorry I neglected you for more than half a day! Ohhh, I was getting so Kyousuke deficient that I was dangerously close to death…so I thought I’d better hurry up and replenish my Kyousuke supply! Hey, come on—you can also replenish yourself fully. —Ah, but in your case, you don’t store it up; you have to get it out, right? Kksshh…!”

“Wha?! H-hey, Renko—”

“Eh-heh-heh. Are my hands okay? Or would you prefer my boobs? I can’t use my mouth, because the mask is in the way, so I guess we should go with boobs. Okay, get your pants off!”

“Absolutely nooooootttttt!” Kyousuke shouted in panic as Renko continued fawning over him with no regard for their audience. Desperately defending his drawers, the young man looked around at the crowd of classmates staring at the two of them with exasperated looks and grumbling, “This again?”

One month had passed since the athletic festival. Renko had awoken after two days in a coma, and every day since then had been like this: her flirting with Kyousuke, regardless of the situation.

It was fine during breaks and after school, but she had even begun barging in on him in the dorms and in the bath, pouring all her energy into her romantic pursuit. Renko’s goal was not—as it had been up until this point—to seduce Kyousuke. Rather, she was simply using her whole body and soul to express her rampant joy.

Perhaps it was because he had finally declared his true feelings for her. As lukewarm as he’d felt in the men’s bath during the Summer Death Camp, he couldn’t deny that there was a certain thrill to what she’d done there that was extremely appealing. Honestly, it was not all bad, but…

“D-dummy…think a little bit about where you are! Don’t you care about people staring?! Are you into public humiliation now? If you have to do this, do it where there aren’t many people—”

“…Hmm? A place without many people you say, hmmm?”

“Eh?! Ah, no…th-that’s not what I—”

“Insolent! Impure! Shameleeeeeess!”

Eiri glared at him coldly, and Maina swatted at him with every accusation. Kyousuke felt as if he were being pressed down onto a bed of nails.

“Kyousuke, you’re too easily embarrassed!” Renko cooed. “When we’re alone together, you’re so passionate. Earlier in bed, when you went inside, you were so—uaah?!”

Flustered, Kyousuke tried to hold Renko back as she chattered away about unsavory subjects. He tried to cover her mouth with both hands, but of course the gas mask was in the way, so all he ended up doing was hugging her head.

Renko let out an enraptured sigh. “Oh, Kyousuke…” She hugged him back with all her might.

Kyousuke’s classmates started jeering “Ohhh!” as they watched the farce play out.

BANG!

—Suddenly, there was the sound of a chair falling over.

“Wahh?! Ei-Eiri—”

“……”

Dropping the costume that she’d been stitching, Eiri furiously clambered to her feet. She walked around to the other side of the desk and grabbed Pooh Bear from his chair. Gripping his collar in her left hand, she pressed him up against the wall, pulled back her right hand in a tight fist, and…

—Boff! Boff! Boff!

Without a word, Eiri began ramming her fist into the stuffed animal’s soft belly.

Taking note of this strange behavior, Renko pulled away from her obsession and laughed a triumphant “Kksshh!”—and then immediately made her next outrageous move.

“Aah?! No, don’t, Kyousuke, not heeere!” She grabbed both of Kyousuke’s wrists and pressed his hands forcefully against her own breasts.

“Aah?!” she gasped again, melodramatically. “Kyousuke, you’re so intense—aaaaaahn?! Oh, when you rub them like thaaat— I know my melons are attractive, but…ah, ah, aaah!”

“Stooop!! Hey, what do you think you’re doing, Perv Mask?! Don’t just move people’s hands however you liiiiiiiike! Seriously, sto—”

“You can say what you like, but your face gives you away, doesn’t it? I only moved your hands, didn’t I? So why are your fingers massaging me?”

“…Huh? I’m not moving them—”

“Just fucking die!” Eiri, who had taken this act seriously, gripped Pooh Bear with both hands and smashed him with a flying knee strike.

“…Kyousuke,” Maina muttered disapprovingly.

“N-no…that’s not right! I’m innocent—it’s a false accusation!”

“Eh, is that really so, Kyousuke? This part seems to be telling the truth.”

“Heeey?! Y-y-you idiot, watch where you’re grabbing—!”

“What’s this? So you are backed up after all…kksshh. There’s no way around it—I’ll put you at ease. Wait just a second, okay? I’ll be ready soon—”

“No, stoooooop!” Kyousuke shouted at Renko, who wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to anyone around them. Grabbing and holding down the kink master before she could remove her bra in public, he sighed heavily. “…Geez. You’re so intense.”

It was hard to believe that she’d slept for two full days after the athletic festival. As he watched the young woman’s oblivious frolicking, Kyousuke couldn’t help feeling that there must have been a mistake in what Reiko had said that day.

“Sometime in the near future, probably sometime very soon, Renko is going to die.”

Renko’s true age was three years old, and she had shortened her already short life expectancy by using her Over Drive power during the athletic festival. She was not supposed to have long. There was no time to waste.

That was why—

I’ve got to quit doing this and prepare myself…

Renko had nearly thrown away her life for Kyousuke’s sake, and Kyousuke was determined to put his own life on the line and repay her.