Teacher Ando turned his head to look at Amamiya Rin, the expression on his face deeply complicated — gratitude, confusion, and, above all, complete bewilderment.
"Ultraseven... All right, Mr. Ultraseven."
Teacher Ando weighed his words and lowered his voice.
"Tonight, this... what on earth happened here tonight? That... Slit-Mouthed Woman, is she really dead? And that... Miss Leo..."
He couldn't help but glance once more at the pool of blood and the seemingly stone-dead figure slumped against the far corner of the wall, the corner of his eye twitching a few times.
"The police and the ambulance will be here any moment now. I... what am I supposed to tell them?"
Amamiya Rin coughed twice and said, succinct and to the point, "Whatever you saw — say what you saw."
"Huh?"
Teacher Ando blinked, stunned.
"The Slit-Mouthed Woman attacked the school, you got trapped, somebody passing by stepped in to help — that's it. You don't need to make up any details, just tell it straight."
Amamiya Rin said it flatly.
Teacher Ando opened his mouth, on the verge of saying something, but as he looked at the calm Ultraseven mask on Amamiya Rin's face and then glanced again at the horrifying corpse of the Slit-Mouthed Woman on the floor, he ended up swallowing his questions back down.
He nodded, his expression heavy.
"I understand. I'll just say... that a masked Good Samaritan showed up, killed the monster, and then left. Will that do?"
"However you like — so long as you tell it straight, there's nothing to worry about."
Amamiya Rin could see that Teacher Ando still had a few reservations — after all, "two people in children's masks suddenly turned up and wiped out the Slit-Mouthed Woman" was the kind of story that sounded absurd no matter how you told it.
He looked back over his shoulder at Tomie at the end of the corridor. After they had stalled for so long, her injuries too had healed up considerably, and she had at least recovered the ability to move.
Amamiya Rin gave Teacher Ando a nod and turned to walk toward Tomie.
"Ultraseven! Where are you going?"
The elementary schoolers lifted their feet to chase after him, but Teacher Ando was quick on his feet — each of his hands seized one schoolkid by the back of the collar, while his raised leg blocked off two more, leaving none of them able to make it past.
Amamiya Rin didn't turn around — keeping his back to them, he gave a casual wave with the hand that wasn't holding the cane.
"This big brother of yours has got monsters to fight in other places too, you know — gotta keep the peace of the world."
The elementary schoolers immediately let out exclamations that mingled admiration with reluctance, their eyes glued tight to Amamiya Rin's receding back.
Only Yusuke, the middle schooler — watching Amamiya Rin walk past him, one hand keeping hold of Michina — wore an expression that suggested he didn't know what to say.
Could Ultraman actually exist for real? An Ultraman like this was way too cheap, wasn't it? What was the point of just a mask? At the very least, throw on a rubber suit!
Already in his third year of middle school and past his chuunibyou phase, Yusuke's heart was brimming with the urge to roast the guy.
And yet, even so, looking at the marks of battle along the corridor and the Slit-Mouthed Woman lying dead in the distance, he couldn't help but wonder whether Ultraman really did exist somewhere out in the world after all.
Amamiya Rin walked over to Tomie, gripped the handle of the large pair of scissors still buried in her body, and yanked it out with force.
With a soft "shhk," the scissors slid free, drawing out a small spurt of dark, foamy blood.
Then he extended his right hand.
Under the disbelieving eyes of Teacher Ando and Yusuke, the "Leo" lying on the ground — who had appeared to be utterly dead — actually lifted her arm, seized Amamiya Rin's hand, and used the leverage to pull herself upright.
Her movements were somewhat stiff, but she stood rock-solid steady, as if that disemboweling wound from moments before had been nothing more than an illusion.
Amamiya Rin's gaze swept across the splatters of blood — Tomie's blood — strewn across the floor and the walls, and his brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.
Tomie's blood... or rather, Tomie's cells... absolutely could not be left behind here.
"Take off your jacket."
He said it to Tomie in a low voice.
At his words, Tomie deftly stripped off the jacket, revealing the form-fitting sports tank top underneath.
The perfect lines of her muscles and her bloodstained skin held a strange, alluring beauty in the dim light.
Amamiya Rin took the soaking-wet jacket, threw it to the floor to blanket the pool of blood, then turned and dug through the instrument case, pulling out two glass bottles whose mouths had been sealed with strips of cloth, a translucent liquid sloshing around inside them.
He produced a lighter, brought it close to the cloth strip, lit it, then flicked his wrist — the Molotov cocktail traced out an arc through the air and landed on the blood-soaked jacket.
"Whoosh!"
Fierce flames surged upward, orange-red tongues of fire greedily licking at the fabric and the bloodstains underneath, giving off thin crackling sounds. A smoke mingling burnt odor with something otherworldly billowed out, swiftly enveloping that small patch of ground.
Amamiya Rin didn't stop there. He unscrewed the second Molotov and splashed the gasoline inside it around the perimeter — over the blood that Tomie had dripped and spattered along the way, both when the Slit-Mouthed Woman had pinned her against the wall and when the blast had struck her.
The flames spread along the ground, greedily lapping at every inch of flooring that had been stained with blood.
Teacher Ando and Yusuke watched the scene wide-eyed and slack-jawed. They didn't understand why Amamiya Rin was doing this, nor had they any way to ask.
Because the two of them had already gone down the stairs and quickly left that battlefield behind.
A short while later, Amamiya Rin and Tomie were walking along a secluded little path with hardly any lighting.
Only now did he have the time to take out his phone and see who it was that had called him so inopportunely a moment ago.
[Fujino Terumi]
"Hm?"
Seeing the missed-call notification, Amamiya Rin's brow gave a twitch.
If it were anybody else, they might call him over something inconsequential.
But not Fujino Terumi!
Why?
Because of the suggestion he had planted in Fujino Terumi a while back — unless something out of the ordinary had happened, Fujino Terumi would not contact him.
Amamiya Rin raised his head to glance at the murky night sky, his expression growing noticeably more grave.
A sudden call at this hour — it left him no choice but to wonder whether Fujino Terumi had somehow run into some kind of paranormal incident.
That couldn't really be the case, could it?
She wasn't an unlucky soul like himself, with a paranormal-prone constitution that drew in all sorts of urban-legend curses.
Even as he was thinking this, Amamiya Rin didn't hesitate — he immediately rang her back.
"Hehehe, you really don't mind the trouble, do you?"
Tomie, beside him, shot Amamiya Rin a glance and gave him a smile that said she couldn't care less.
Amamiya Rin didn't bother to answer, because the call connected very quickly — as if Fujino Terumi had been holding her phone the whole time, waiting for him to call her back.
"Fujino..."
"Rin-kun! Please, hurry over to my place — it looks like I've run into some kind of yokai again!"
Before Amamiya Rin had even finished speaking, urgent cries for help came pouring through the phone.
"Calm down! What happened? Since you were able to wait for me to call you back, and you're still at your apartment, the situation can't be that critical. Take a moment and lay it out clearly."
Amamiya Rin said evenly.
"I — I don't know either, I don't know what kind of yokai it is! It's not a Vampire — it's that creature that's been making me uneasy for some time now, but it isn't a Vampire. I don't know what she is either, but she's been hanging around outside my apartment this whole time, and she can even speak — she's trying to lure me into going outside."
Fujino Terumi still sounded a touch frantic, and her words came out a little jumbled.
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🔥 New history: Path of Elation in Warhammer 40K
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