Hayashi Naoko's eyelid twitched. Her hands balled into fists at her sides, and the look she fixed on Kawakami Tomie was naked with anger.
"Ms. Kawakami — did no one ever teach you what manners are?"
A cold pressure settled over Kawakami Tomie's body, invisible but unmistakable.
"Ha. Ha ha ha — someone capable of teaching me..."
Kawakami Tomie raised the back of her hand in front of her face, her laughter dripping with imperious contempt.
(Right here!)
A resolute surge of will hammered into Kawakami Tomie's mind, cutting her off mid-sentence.
The arrogant words died in her throat. Those beautiful eyes, brimming with mockery and disdain, went suddenly blank — her pupils losing focus for just a moment.
In the gym, Amamiya Rin's body trembled faintly beneath the torture device. Cold sweat soaked through his clothes. But deep within those half-closed eyes, a small, unextinguished ember of will still burned.
In the midst of that absolute agony, Amamiya Rin marshaled every last fragment of his concentration, moving through the stages one by one — counting the breath, following the breath, stillness, insight — descending step by step into [Dhyana], until he reached the state of [Contemplative Sight] and reasserted his will over Kawakami Tomie's consciousness.
In the café, Kawakami Tomie sat with her head bowed, her shoulders rising and falling in harsh, ragged surges. A full ten-odd seconds passed before the convulsive trembling slowly subsided.
When she raised her head again, Hayashi Naoko felt her heart lurch.
It was the same face — breathtaking, devastatingly beautiful — but the feeling it gave off had changed entirely.
The rose-like quality of before, that sharp, wounding glamour and arrogance, had vanished without a trace. In its place was something inward and composed — a calm, settled stillness.
She lowered the hand she had been resting her chin on and straightened her posture. Her gaze settled on Hayashi Naoko.
The coquettishness and mockery in her eyes had been swept clean away. That gaze was quiet and intent, the kind that seemed to lift you out of the background of the world — to make you the only thing in the room.
The bell above the door, the sunlight through the window — all of it seemed to dim in that instant. The woman's entire world appeared to contain only her.
"I apologize — that was rude of me. Please, go on. I'll listen carefully. What changes did Ms. Kawahara Miyuki undergo after the courage test show?"
She leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, fingers laced together beneath her chin.
Sunlight fell through the window and cast a soft halo along the perfect line of her profile. The beauty was still there, still devastating — but it had settled, like water running clear over stone. It was no longer aggressive. Instead it gave off a contradictory magnetism, a charm that transcended gender.
"Ah... um..."
Staring at the young woman across from her, Hayashi Naoko found the fire of her anger dissolving, strangely and almost against her will. She averted her eyes on instinct, unable to hold that too-direct gaze, and felt her heartbeat skip inexplicably.
She raised a hand and rubbed her right eye. The odd fluttering in her chest faded. Only then did Hayashi Naoko gather herself and find her words again.
"After that, Miyuki became... strange. She'd start murmuring things no one could understand — muttering to herself at odd moments. A few times I found a knife in her bag. Once, just before filming was about to start, she suddenly left the set. I followed her. She went back to the abandoned building they'd used for the paranormal show, and I watched — with my own eyes — as she killed someone. She drained every drop of blood from the body and smeared it all over herself. The person standing there wasn't Miyuki anymore. That expression on her face — that look of madness — it burned itself into my eyes. I don't think I'll ever forget that day, not for as long as I live."
She said it all in one breath, then let out a long, weary sigh and rubbed her eye again.
"Elizabeth?"
Amamiya Rin murmured, thoughtful.
What Hayashi Naoko was describing was almost certainly the truth. Smearing oneself in the blood of victims — that was the particular infamy of a certain famous vampire.
The Blood Countess. Elizabeth Báthory. The legendary Hungarian noblewoman of the sixteenth century, who, according to tradition, murdered vast numbers of young women and bathed in their blood to preserve her eternal youth.
Kawahara Miyuki was obviously no Elizabeth Báthory — but the vampiric nature of her behavior made one thing clear: Hayashi Naoko, whatever she might be concealing, was without question someone in the know.
"I reported it to the police afterward. I reached out to other people too. But no one believed me. No one was going to believe that Kawahara Miyuki — the people's sweetheart, the national singing idol — was a serial killer who imitated vampires."
Hayashi Naoko looked up at Amamiya Rin. Her eyes seemed to be asking: Will you believe me?
There were holes in Hayashi Naoko's story.
Amamiya Rin had already spotted the inconsistency.
This wasn't simply a matter of being believed or not. A serial murder case of this magnitude — even if the police were skeptical, they would still investigate. And any investigation would turn up leads.
So why not go to the police?
He didn't ask. There was no point — he wouldn't get a truthful answer.
"So Kawahara Miyuki was perfectly normal before that paranormal show... People really have no sense of self-preservation."
Amamiya Rin let out a quiet sigh. Kawahara Miyuki was like this. Harase Kyoko had been the same way. These paranormal shows — always running headlong toward whatever was most dangerous. Why were people so enthusiastic about courting their own destruction?
"Let's go to the scene. Whatever happened, I need to see it with my own eyes before I can say anything definitive."
Amamiya Rin rose to his feet and said it plainly.
Tracking down clues wasn't his strong suit. His main body was still under the rack, and he had at least two more hours before any break — he couldn't spare the attention to contact Kazumi Junya and have him come take a look.
Still, so much time had already passed since the first killing. He wasn't particularly worried that his amateur approach would contaminate whatever evidence remained.
Hayashi Naoko had been waiting for exactly those words. She rose quickly, fell into step beside Amamiya Rin, and led the way out of the café.
Amamiya Rin sharpened his focus. He followed Hayashi Naoko's movements while simultaneously keeping a sliver of attention fixed on Kawakami Tomie across the connection.
Meanwhile, in the rural distillery, Tomie stepped over the bodies of the loading workers and walked straight toward the main building.
She pushed open the unlatched iron door. A wave of sweetness rushed out to meet her, and before her stretched a wide fermentation workshop.
Twenty enormous wooden vats stood in rows across the floor. Beside them ran two lines of wooden racks with planks laid across them as walkways, and a dozen or so workers stood atop those walkways, gripping long poles, stirring the fermenting mash inside the vats with steady, rhythmic effort.
Everyone was hard at work. No one noticed her come in.
"Well — these ones should be fine, shouldn't they?"
Tomie raised her head, swept her gaze over the workers laboring away, and gave a small, self-satisfied nod.
Stirring her blood and flesh every single day — it would be stranger if they hadn't gone mad.
She climbed the creaking wooden steps and moved silently up behind one of the distillery workers. She didn't make a move on him yet. Instead, she looked down into the great wooden vat below.
Inside the vat, the surface of the murky liquid was sheened with an oily film, the color of turbid, pinkish flesh.
You could even make out several fragmented faces drifting on the surface — eyelashes still perfectly intact on their lids, eyeballs strung beneath them, gazing upward through the pink liquid. When the stirring pole swept through, those eyeballs would tremble faintly, as though still alive.
Deeper down, chunks of flesh in various sizes had settled to the bottom — dark tissue that resembled internal organs, mixed together with rice koji. Occasionally a bubble would rise from the depths, carrying with it fragments of muscle fiber that tumbled through the liquid and, for a brief moment, revealed the grain and texture of living meat.
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