“Where am I now?”
A woman with a saintly appearance opened her eyes quietly as she stared at the white ceiling.
She placed a hand on her throbbing forehead and examined the last memories to surface in her mind.
From the memory of successfully confining the girl who wouldn’t even give her a second glance and taking joy in it,
to the memory of being defeated in an instant by a beast—whether it was a bodyguard sent by someone or that someone themself who had stepped in—before she could even force anything upon that girl.
‘Yes, it was practically a beast.’
The boldness of striking her head the moment the people she summoned uttered a single word, as if it had accounted for the possibility of her calling reinforcements from the very beginning.
She could tell simply from how it drew out the power of the “chain” it showed next to obstruct her own strength.
If it had used that power from the very beginning, knowing she would come, it would have fled entirely to a place without that beast rather than forcibly calling for people to protect her.
Making her believe that she could win if only she did a little better, then seizing victory in an instant.
In a country where the law prevented killing by superpowers, and where most were unaccustomed to fighting with them, the way it claimed victory so naturally—like a beast that had survived by fighting and winning ceaselessly.
‘In the end, though it was a beast, I was perfectly defeated without even posing a threat to it, so this place must be a prison rather than heaven or hell. One filled with substances that suppress superpowers.’
The woman raised herself from the bed and tried to use her ability as usual, but she felt no sense that her ability would succeed.
Most likely, this room itself was specially designed to prevent the use of abilities.
The room—all white, from the curtains drawn over the window to the ballpoint pen on the desk, visible throughout her field of vision—was evocative of a psychiatric ward.
Having ignored Kim Haneul’s “warning” and gone outside the school only to suffer ultimate defeat, they had shown mercy simply by not burying her quietly on some back mountain.
Thus the woman struggled to accept her defeat. And the fact that she would have to spend the rest of her life in solitude in this room.
There was a computer, but of course it would be set so that most of the internet didn’t work, and through the curtains, bars were faintly visible.
Thinking so, the woman embraced the cold and squishy thing quietly bulging atop the blanket on the bed—the thing left behind by the beast that had locked her in this room, either to create a “prison”-like atmosphere or as a final mercy.
It was probably a doll. The very fact that this sole squishy thing was cold enough to pierce through the blanket and convey a chill was likely the reason this place, which looked like an ordinary room in a home, was a prison, but Gang Yuri couldn’t throw away the doll.
She had hated that girl, who didn’t even treat her like a human, enough to want to trample her—and yet, just as she had eagerly anticipated how lasciviously that girl would cry,
this doll, cold yet squishy, squirming to escape her arms, reminded her of Erica.
In the way that she wanted to throw it away because it was so cold, yet kept embracing it because she liked that squishy texture.
“...Huh?”
...It squirmed? It would be impossible unless it was a doll animated by superpowers, and there was no reason to place a squirming doll in a mere prison.
Feelling puzzled, the woman relaxed her arms, and before long the blanket shook violently as a girl with white hair burst out, panting heavily.
Perhaps because she hadn’t been breathing properly beneath the blanket, rather than showing dissatisfaction toward Gang Yuri, who had nearly suffocated her, the girl was simply doing her best to breathe against the sudden disaster that had struck while she had been asleep.
That girl—no, the girl better suited to the name Erica than the label “that girl.” And the girl Gang Yuri had wanted so badly that she broke the promise she had made with Kim Haneul.
“What, you? Don’t tell me you were hiding under the blanket because you wanted me to hold you? Or did you suddenly feel like submitting to me and come find me?”
Since waking to the thought that she would be here forever, Gang Yuri’s face, which had been sunken in gloom, began to show a strange vitality.
The prediction that Gang Yuri would be trapped here to rot forever didn’t change simply because Erica was here,
but the fact that Erica—whom she had wanted to break and was just as interested in—had appeared beside her as she lay in bed was enough to delight her.
“Hmm~. What should I do? I don’t want to do what you want~. Though if you strip and do a dogeza, I might listen.”
“What do you mean, dogeza? This room is one of the rooms I use, so it’s only natural that I sleep here. I let you sleep next to me because I didn’t want to put you elsewhere. It would’ve been a bit much to sleep on the floor too. Though I didn’t expect you to repay kindness with enmity.”
Despite Erica’s cold gaze, the woman with the nothing-if-not-saintly appearance smiled innocently.
Yes, because she couldn’t feel in that cold gaze the emotion of disregard—the contemptuous indifference that wouldn’t even deign to anger itself over something lower than trash, no matter what it did.
Naturally, since Erica wasn’t disregarding her, neither did she act with the near-hysteria she had shown before.
“What~? You liked me so much you didn’t want to sleep elsewhere? If you wanted to submit to me that badly, you should’ve said so.”
Provocation was another matter entirely.
Because doing so alone allowed Gang Yuri to feel amusement even in a situation where she had been defeated.
Erica twitched her lips as if to say something out of irritation, but ultimately closed her mouth.
To Gang Yuri, who wanted to forget that she had been kidnapped and enjoy this situation a little longer, it was a regrettable thing.
—for with her closing her mouth, it was now time to get to the main point.
“So, enough wordplay. Am I supposed to be locked up here forever now? I wouldn’t particularly mind if you were my warden.”
“Warden? I have no intention of keeping you trapped in my room. Leave on your own by tomorrow morning. Just promise you won’t touch me or the people around me from now on. I don’t want to be responsible for you for life.”
“Then if I just don’t promise, I can live here for life? That sounds like quite a good condition—”
Though she spoke like that, the thought that Erica was ignoring her existence once again naturally made Gang Yuri calculate the odds of what she wanted to do.
Erica was the possessor of a weak body that would lose even to an ordinary person, let alone a superpower user.
She was the type to overcome the limitations of that body with superpowers on a different level from ordinary ones, but this room appeared to be specially manufactured to suppress all superpowers.
The intruder who had defeated her might be waiting outside the door, but if she subdued Erica without giving her a chance to make a sound, then perhaps—
Of course, sound would inevitably escape during the “act,” so the intruder would burst in, and the chances of ending with this negligent suppression that was no suppression were slim, but.
Gang Yuri’s dark emotions toward Erica began to squirm. Rather than promising not to touch her in the future, it might be better to commit an act she wouldn’t expect right here.
“...is what I’d like to say, but I heard that if you leave this house, you have nowhere to go unless you abuse your superpowers like before. If you’re going to live elsewhere anyway, live with me.”
Words that came at a timing as if to restrain Gang Yuri’s desires. The woman, who had been tensing her body naturally as she watched for a chance to strike, relaxed slightly.
Living together would present more chances to strike, so there was no need to attack now, but more than that, she wouldn’t ask someone she treated like a microbe to live with her.
She seemed not to treat her like a human, yet said things one wouldn’t say to an ordinary acquaintance. Gang Yuri’s heart wavered back and forth, but all things had to be certain.
“But where did you hear that? That I don’t have a home. Few people know my true appearance, so the fact that I’m homeless isn’t information one could normally know.”
Gang Yuri, who could transform into any appearance. Even the name Gang Yuri could be false, and her current saintly appearance was closer to a disguise to maximize her ability.
As rare as someone who could tell what was true and false, knowing where she slept was nearly impossible—with one exception.
The Student Council President. In the end, Gang Yuri’s question was essentially this: whether she had borrowed the power of the Student Council President, whom she supposedly didn’t get along with, to ask about her.
“I don’t want to talk about my ability.”
“So it is about your ability?”
Gang Yuri persistently approached Erica, who was trying to step back, and asked. Even knowing wouldn’t change their relationship.
To Erica, Gang Yuri was still someone who had tried to commit school violence.
Though the violence suffered before losing her “memories” hadn’t remained, and what happened afterward had ended with Gang Yuri being captured before inflicting proper wounds, the fact that she had tried to torment Erica was something they both knew.
However, Gang Yuri was curious why Erica had wanted to know about “her” enough to ask the Student Council President she disliked. Only by knowing that could she decide, at the very least, what she wanted to do with Erica.
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
She would not speak.
Before the eyes of Erica, who maintained that attitude, there appeared not Gang Yuri disguised as a platinum blonde, but the retreating figure of the woman who had told her about Gang Yuri and advised her that she had to make her her ally before leaving.
A woman who resembled the night sky destined to vanish when the sun rose. A woman who seemed to be hiding many things, yet had left without revealing even a fraction of them.