She stood there quietly, her gaze sweeping over the three girls before her.
In their eyes, Asuna saw the same thing.
The same endless hollowness as her own. Souls drained away.
They were the same kind of being.
Kaguya and Ai Hayasaka only glanced indifferently at this new "companion," then turned their eyes away.
They had long since gone numb. The addition of one more member to the harem could not stir up a single emotion in them.
Only Chika Fujiwara, in the instant she saw Asuna, had a faint, barely perceptible ripple pass through her hollow eyes.
It was... pity.
Because, in this beautiful new transfer student, she saw the version of herself from a few days ago, the one betrayed by her family.
"All right. The four of you have introduced yourselves, I suppose."
Seiji Fujiwara was very satisfied with this scene of "collectible display" before him. He lounged back on the sofa and snapped his fingers.
"Asuna."
"Yes." Asuna answered at once, her voice steady, without a hint of waver.
"You are my First Secretary." Seiji pointed at the coffee cup on the table. "Pour me a cup of coffee."
"Yes."
Without the slightest hesitation, Asuna walked to the coffee machine off to the side and began to perform her duties as a "secretary."
"Kaguya."
"Yes."
"Come here. My legs are a little sore."
Kaguya walked silently over to him, knelt down, and extended those slender hands that had once been used only to practice kyudo and ikebana to massage his calves.
"Chika."
"...Yes."
"What are you standing around for? Go open the window and let in some air."
Chika, too, turned like a robot following a set program and went to open the window.
The entire Student Council Room formed a picture both surreal and harmonious.
Four top-class beauties, each viewed by the outside world as a darling of heaven and utterly unreachable, were at this moment, like the most well-trained maids, attending to their sole sovereign, each in her assigned role.
[Ding!]
[Congratulations, Host, on successfully conquering 'Asuna Yuuki.']
[Received Reward: Passive Skill 'Virtual Godhood.' Within any FullDive world that you control, you will possess the highest authority, equivalent to that of a creator-god. You may freely modify the rules of the world, create or destroy anything at will. Your will alone is the sole law of the virtual world.]
A vast torrent of information about data and world-building poured into Seiji's mind.
He closed his eyes and savored this supreme new power, enough to make him a "god."
The conquest of the real world had begun to leave him feeling a touch jaded.
Whether toppling politicians or swallowing corporations, it was all just a repetitive, novelty-free game to him.
But now...
He opened his eyes, and his gaze fell on the chestnut-haired girl pouring his coffee.
On the girl who, in the virtual world, had been called "Lightning Flash," the strongest of all players.
A grand "performance" plan, full of malicious taste, began to take shape in his mind.
He had a brand-new stage that would amuse him while pushing the despair of these caged birds to a new peak.
Reality and the virtual. A dual stage.
He looked at the room full of his "collectibles," and the smile at the corner of his mouth turned more cruel, more anticipatory.
...
...
Afternoon. The Student Council Room.
This was Seiji Fujiwara's throne room.
He sat reclined against the broad leather sofa, legs crossed, posture lazy. Sunlight came through the enormous floor-to-ceiling window and cast warm patches of light over him.
The air was filled with the aroma of expensive coffee.
Asuna Yuuki was meticulously picking out, from the ground coffee beans, any whose shape or color showed the slightest flaw.
Not far behind her, Kaguya Shinomiya was holding a thick original-edition German book and reading its contents aloud to him in a tone devoid of all emotion.
In another corner of the room, Ai Hayasaka was wiping down the rare vintage wines in the cabinet, which had been spotless to begin with.
And Chika Fujiwara was holding a small pair of pruning shears, carefully trimming a prized orchid on the windowsill.
It was... a perfect, tranquil picture, like a classical oil painting.
But Seiji felt a thin sense of tedium.
Too quiet.
Too obedient.
The pleasure of conquest had been worn away in the day-after-day rhythm of being served.
These once-lofty darlings of heaven were now like top-tier dolls following a pre-set program. They would execute every one of his commands perfectly, with no resistance, no struggle, not even the faintest superfluous expression.
Their "tranquil degradation" was complete.
And once a work of art has been fully completed, for the "connoisseur," its appeal will inevitably begin to... decline.
Seiji needed a new "game."
He needed something more stimulating, more capable of stirring his "malicious taste." A brand-new mode of play.
He picked up the tablet from the table and casually swiped through it. The president he had elevated by accepting Kei Shirogane as tribute, his trusted aide, had just gathered for him some "indecent" underground reading material.
His finger came to rest on the cover of an art album.
It was an exquisitely produced doujinshi.
On the cover, a black-haired, red-eyed girl who looked just like Kaguya Shinomiya, dressed in a tight, lewdly-modified maid outfit, was kneeling on the floor, scrubbing what looked like a classroom floor with a small rag.
The doujinshi's title, in a pink font full of suggestion, read:
After School! The Student Council's Secret Service Activities!
Seiji flipped through it with great interest.
The artist's skill was very high. The girls in the pictures were rendered with lifelike precision and possessed a peculiar charm.
And the storylines inside were filled with every kind of forbidden, audacious fantasy.
His gaze settled at last on one of the classic chapters: The Special Big Cleanup of the Third Art Preparation Room.
In the panels, the girls of the student council, wearing various sparse-fabric "cleaning outfits," were forced to perform every kind of humiliating "cleaning" activity in a dim room piled with easels and plaster busts.
A smile of malicious taste slowly curled at the corner of Seiji's mouth.
This was it.
He had found his new game.
To "replicate," in reality, exactly as it appeared, this filthy book of fantasy filled with humanity's most primal desires.
To appreciate the magnificent expressions of shame these real-world darlings of heaven would wear on their faces when forced to play the "roles" from the book.
And this drama needed an "audience."
A perfect "audience" who could push the dramatic tension of the whole performance to its very climax.
His gaze fell on the pink-haired girl carefully pruning the orchid.
Chika Fujiwara.
He remembered now. The intelligence reports had mentioned that Chika Fujiwara had a younger sister still in the middle school division, a sweet, innocent thing.
That sister was named Moeha Fujiwara.
A naive little flower raised in a greenhouse, who utterly worshipped her "perfect" older sister.
Seiji's smile grew even more pleased.
He could already picture it. When that innocent little girl saw, with her own eyes, her most-worshipped sister, dressed in the shameful outfit from the book, performing a "special service" before him like a slave girl...
The instant her faith collapsed.
...
At the same time, at Shuchiin Academy, the middle school division.
The bell signaling the end of classes had just rung.
Moeha Fujiwara, a girl with the same short pink hair as her older sister but a more naive, lovable air, was cheerfully tucking a beautifully wrapped lunch box into her schoolbag.
"Moeha, are you going to the high school division to find your sister today?" the companion beside her asked curiously.
"Yes!"
Moeha nodded vigorously, a brilliant smile spreading across her face. "I made Sister's favorite Strawberry Daifuku! Sister has been working so hard in the student council lately, so I'm going to surprise her!"
In her mind, her sister Chika Fujiwara was the best older sister in the world.
Her family was illustrious. She was the beloved daughter of the Prime Minister. Her grades were excellent. She was the secretary of the Shuchiin high school division student council. She was kind and lovely, had friends all over the world, the cheerful spark everyone adored.
Her sister was her pride, her aspiration, the flawless idol in her heart.
She knew nothing of her sister's true situation in the student council.
She shouldered her schoolbag, humming a tuneless little melody, and made her way with a light step toward the high school division's building.
...
...
At the same time.
The door of the changing room slowly opened.
Four girls, heads bowed like sacrifices about to be sent to an altar, walked out.
When their figures came fully into the open air, the temperature inside the Student Council Room seemed to plunge to freezing.
What they wore could not be called "uniforms" at all. They were, in every sense, costumes meant to gratify lewd taste.
There was pitifully little fabric on Kaguya. Black lace barely managed to cover the critical points, and great swaths of snow-white skin lay exposed. The contrast was aggressively obscene.
The young lady of the Shinomiya Family, ordinarily wrapped in a buttoned-up school uniform and untouchably sacrosanct, was at this moment wearing what amounted to the lewd costume of a cheap brothel.
Her hands were pressed protectively in front of her chest, but they could not hide the indecently short hem below or the leather thigh band, biting into the flesh, that connected to her garter stockings.
Ai Hayasaka's costume was even more "functional."
It was a standard "French maid" variant, stripped of all dignity, leaving only naked seduction.
The back was a completely open design, with a few thin straps crisscrossing the spine, the part of the body that should have been protected.
Her face was expressionless, but the flush rising along her neck betrayed the violent turmoil in her heart.
Asuna's situation was the worst.
She wore a white, latex-like full-body suit that clung tightly to the perfect figure she had honed in the virtual world. Every curve was traced out completely, the shame amplified by orders of magnitude.
She felt like a lamb skinned alive, with nowhere to hide.
And Chika Fujiwara... she wore a specially-made pink lace-up outfit with "pet" elements, with even a bell-collar hanging at her neck. Every time she moved, the bell rang out with a clear, sharp sound.
A faint ding of the bell.
In the dead-silent room, the sound was as piercing as a thunderclap.
"Very fitting." Seiji surveyed the four beautiful, trembling bodies before him and nodded with satisfaction. "Absolutely perfect. This is what the Shuchiin Student Council should look like."
He turned and walked toward the doorway.
"Keep up. Don't let us be late for our 'big cleanup.'"
The four girls froze in place, their legs as heavy as lead.
Walk out that door?
Wearing these clothes... walk out of the Student Council Room?
This meant not only humiliation, but the very real risk of Social Death.
Even though classes had let out, even though there were few people left on the school grounds, it would take only one person, whether a teacher working late or a student returning late from club activities, only one person to see them in their current state...
And their lives as "Kaguya Shinomiya," "Chika Fujiwara," "Ai Hayasaka," and "Asuna Yuuki" would be utterly finished.
"Well?" Seiji halted, looking back, a thin, cold mockery in his eyes. "Do you need me to lead you along with a chain?"
That one sentence shattered the last of their hesitation.
Compared to being led along like pets, they would rather preserve this last sliver of, however negligible, human dignity.
Kaguya bit her lip and was the first to step forward.
The high heels struck the floor with a crisp tap, tap.
Ai Hayasaka followed close behind.
Then Asuna, and last, Chika, who was already on the verge of tears.
The procession walked out through the doors of the Student Council Room like that.
The corridor was empty.
The last light of the setting sun spilled in through the windows, dyeing the floor a blood-orange red.
It was supposed to be a warm color, but cast across their bodies it only struck them with a chill that cut to the bone.
Every step was torture.
Kaguya felt her heart was about to pound out of her chest.
Her eyes fixed on Seiji's back, not daring to glance to either side.
Afraid of seeing her reflection in any window. Afraid of seeing this debased version of herself.
Asuna held her arms tightly around herself, trying to block sightlines that weren't even there.
A draft passed through the corridor, and the chill seeped through her exposed skin and into her marrow, raising layer upon layer of shameful goosebumps.
She looked at Chika's back ahead of her, the bell swaying along with her steps, and a powerful sense of absurdity welled up.
So this... was reality?
Compared to the virtual world where a single swing of a sword could cut through anything, this reality was truly too cruel, too filthy.
They passed one classroom after another.
Every time they passed a classroom door, they instinctively held their breath, terrified a student who had forgotten something might suddenly step out.
Reason told them that at this hour, the building was almost entirely empty.
But the feeling of being on the verge of exposure at any moment, like thorns pressed against their backs, clung to them and would not let go.
They exchanged a glance with one another.
Kaguya saw the numbness in Hayasaka's eyes; Hayasaka saw the despair in Asuna's eyes; Asuna saw the breakdown in Chika's eyes.
They were companions, accomplices, and witnesses to each other's shame.
In this long corridor, their independent personhood as "people" was being stripped away piece by piece, until all that remained was the instinct of "subordinate property."
At last.
They reached the end of the corridor.
It was the room located in the corner of the old school building, sealed shut all year round. The Third Art Preparation Room.
Seiji pushed open the heavy wooden door.
The aged door hinge let out a teeth-grating screech.
A wave of air rushed out, thick with the smells of dust, paint, and old paper.
The room was dim, with only a few strands of sunset spilling through the dust-covered windows, falling on the scattered piles of plaster busts.
A Venus with broken arms. A David with a fearsome face. Shattered geometric solids.
These white plaster figures, in the dim light, were like a crowd of silent ghosts watching the uninvited guests.
Seiji walked straight to the center of the room.
There, a high-backed chair had been placed.
"All right. Begin."
Seiji sat down, crossed one leg over the other, and pointed at the dust-covered floor around them.
"With your bodies... clean this place spotless."
The four girls stood in the doorway, looking at this scene that was the doujinshi storyline made flesh, and could not stop their bodies from trembling.
There were no cleaning tools at all.
No broom. No mop. Not even a single rag.
The meaning was clear. The "tools" were themselves.
This... is just a cleaning task... Kaguya repeated to herself frantically in her heart. Once it's done, it'll be over... there's no one else here... only us...
As long as no outsider saw them.
This final line, like a strand of spider's silk about to snap, suspended the precarious sanity they had left.
...
At the same time.
Shuchiin Academy. The front gate.
A girl with short pink hair and a cute backpack on her shoulders was standing at the school gates, rising onto her tiptoes to peer inside.
Moeha Fujiwara.
In her hand was an exquisite lunch box, packed with the Strawberry Daifuku she had made with her own hands.