Chapter 41 - Junko ShirogetsuHollow Night By the time I noticed my difficulty in breathing, it felt like the world had flipped on its axis.

  “Careful!” someone warned. A firm but gentle pressure settled on my upper back. “J-Just breathe, okay?”

  I tried to heed the advice, but only panicked, involuntary gasps escaped me, as if a valve inside was blocked. I closed my eyes and forced myself to inhale deeply, gradually feeling life return to my bones.

  “Thanks, Cunningham…” I whispered as he set me upright. He nodded but didn’t reply, his eyes glued to the screen. I followed suit, both of us knowing what was coming next.

  “Inversely, for the pairing at the bottom, I am saddened to say that your chances of being selected as the target are doubled compared to your peers. May luck be on your side; I fear you will need it.”

  There it was – the final nail in the coffin. I couldn’t trust in the slim chance that someone else would be picked. I knew that, as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow for the rest of the world, either Arthur or I would be marked for death.

  This is what Mizuko was trying to warn me about. She knew that, one way or another, our st-pce standing would come back to bite us – and in this case, that bite was a death sentence.

  I gnced at Mizuko. While she looked back at me, her eyes held no recognition or awareness. A vacant lifelessness clouded her face as though she were somewhere else entirely.

  I turned back to the screen, steadying my breaths as I awaited the confirmation.

  “Without further dey, I will now reveal the identity of the hunted.”

  Juno’s image vanished, repced by a dispy with the fields ‘Name’ and a square border underneath, likely for a picture. Within seconds, the previously bnk space began to cycle rapidly through names and images.

  Arthur’s name and picture fshed by, followed by Hoshino, Kozuki, and more. The speed at which the options cycled gradually slowed. I couldn’t bear to watch anymore.

  I closed my eyes, biting my bottom lip until the taste of iron filled my mouth.

  The cycling sounds suddenly stopped, followed by a collective gasp.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes to take in the horrifying sight.

  I turned to Arthur, whose face was eerily pale. He was frozen in a mix of shock and anger, still processing what his eyes were telling him.

  Rusuban, from a distance, frowned but didn’t look away from the screen. I couldn’t see Kozuki’s face from where I stood, though she remained rigid and completely still.

  Finally – finally – I turned to look at my older sister.

  A sudden impact struck the back of my head, and my vision faded to bck.

  The air was colder when I came to, the terrain beneath me smooth and unfamiliar. My head pounded. As my faculties returned, so did my recollection of the st events I had witnessed.

  H-Had I been captured already?!

  Wasting no time to survey my surroundings, I leapt to my feet, gripping my odachi’s handle. I quickly released it.

  “S-Sis?” I muttered, confusion clouding my thoughts. “What just happened? One second I was watching the selection and then…”

  She leaned against the railing of the high-rise building we were on, arms folded, eyeing me without a flicker of anxiety. I knew that look. Contrary to appearances, this was the most stressed I’d seen her in a long while.

  The wind whispered against her jacket, swaying it softly. The sky was so clear up here, it almost alleviated the deep uneasiness I felt, as if the moon itself was watching me.

  “I had to make sure you would comply this time,” she said nonchantly. “Your life depended on it, after all.”

  She’d knocked me out! Anger surged in my stomach but dissipated immediately upon hearing the tter half of her sentence. She was right. I saw whose name was on that screen.

  I swallowed my anger and focused on the urgent matters at hand.

  “Where is he?” I asked. Her eyes darted to a spot just behind me, at my four o’clock. I followed her gaze.

  Arthur’s broad, suited back was turned to us, his fur sashaying with the breeze. He stood deathly still.

  I gnced back at Mizuko, who nodded in Arthur’s direction as if to say, “Make it quick. We need to move.”

  Sighing, I trudged over to Arthur’s side, ying a hand on the railing. I looked up at him to see that he was closing his eyes, his chest rising and falling steadily. I couldn’t help but envy how peaceful he looked, given the circumstances.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed eventually. “You didn’t deserve it.”

  His eyes remained closed. For a moment, I thought he either hadn’t heard me or was ignoring me.

  “If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else,” he responded coolly. “None of us deserve to die. We’re all victims here. Remember that.”

  I sensed unspoken words, but there was no time to explore further. We were being hunted, after all.

  I heard Mizuko’s footsteps before her voice. When I turned, she was standing with her arms folded, looking directly at us. Cunningham still hadn’t moved a muscle from his meditative stance.

  “Let’s move. It isn’t safe to stay in one spot for too long.”

  Arthur and I nodded in agreement. Now that we were being hunted, nowhere was safe. We had to keep moving. But ‘hunted’ was such a broad term; what exactly were we up against?

  “Sis.”

  I called her just as she raised a foot onto the railing, gazing down into the barren nighttime avenues. No doubt she had already charted a course for us. Running would only get us so far, though.

  “Did Juno say anything about what type of enemies are after us? What kind of attacks can we expect?”

  She stared at me wordlessly for a few moments, then returned her gaze to the streets below.

  “Nothing,” she said quietly, as if she’d asked herself those questions a thousand times. “Once they confirmed Arthur was the target, they left us to our own devices. We fled right after that.”

  I shook my head but said no more. We were up against an enemy who likely knew everything about us, and yet we knew next to nothing about them. An enemy who could strike hard, fast, and ruthlessly before we ever realized they were there.

  The more I heard, the more I was convinced we were in over our heads.

  “..Hey, why don’t we get the others?” I suggested tentatively.

  Mizuko grew still as a statue. An inexplicable feeling that I’d annoyed her punched my heart, and like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar, I began to babble inanely.

  “W-We’ve survived by sticking together so far, right?” I ventured shakily, my eyes drifting elsewhere. “I know we’re st on the leaderboard right now, but if we ask Rusuban and Kozuki, maybe even Hoshino for help, they w-wouldn’t…they wouldn’t leave us to die, right?”

  I heard her before I saw her. The rapid tip-tap of footsteps against the floor seized my attention, and by the time my eyes caught up, Mizuko was sprinting toward me at full speed, an arm outstretched in panic.

  Oh god, what was—

  A heavy, unstoppable force smmed into my back just as a deafening BANG resounded through the air.

  For the second time that night, I had been caught off-guard and practically manhandled. As I scrambled to my feet, I vowed there wouldn’t be a third time.

  The saying had some truth after all – if you hear the bullet, it wasn’t meant for you.

  Regaining my composure, I saw our environment had been flipped on its head.

  Arthur, panting hard and gring upwards, had just saved me from something. Following his gaze, I recognized where we were: the rooftop of Vegelovers. I’d only been here once, dragged by Emiko and some friends trying a fad diet.

  As we left that day, my purse lighter and my stomach unimpressed, I thought, If I ever step foot near here again, it’ll be too soon. I couldn’t have known how right I was.

  There was one more thing. So subtle and slight, you had to squint to see it: a red light coming from the top of Towa Records across the road. I’d always imagined the view from a building that tall, but as understanding dawned on me, I prayed my imaginings were incorrect.

  “I thought I felt a subtle pulse in EXS nearby!” Arthur cried, springing to his feet and rushing toward me. A red dot, like a ser pointer, snaked across the ground in his wake. “It’s got some kind of long-range projectile weapon, and it’s perched way up there! We need to find cover!”

  Before he finished his sentence, Mizuko took the lead. With no time to judge our upgraded physical abilities in this world, we leapt over the railing just as another powerful shot burst through the air, ricocheting off the floor with a cng.

  As we descended in free-fall, we slid down the building walls before leaping off, nding on another rooftop nearby. From there, we scampered over ceilings, jumped over alleyways, slid under water towers, and even swung off traffic lights in a desperate attempt to maintain our momentum with shots ever-present on our tail.

  If not for the life-threatening danger, I might have enjoyed the increasing fluidity of our movement through the ndscape.

  By the time we passed Cadul City, even our upgraded physiques struggled to keep up with the constant vigorous movements. As if on cue, Mizuko performed an armingly swift right turn into Usumizu Street.

  I now had a good idea of where we were headed, and we were so, so close – if not for the nightmarish spectacle that awaited us just before the finish line.

  Usumizu Street was in fmes. The intensity of the fire formed a wall, blocking the path like a barricade. A fire of this magnitude on asphalt, which had little votile compound content, was impossible. But as, this was no ordinary fire.

  In the infernal scene, the fire was an impermeable pitch bck.

  I saw him there at the hellfire’s base, sitting on a toppled-over feline-esque creature as it made pained, twitchy movements.

  We locked eyes.

  “End of the road,” Katoru decred gravely.

  And just like that, the three of us knew we’d escaped the frying pan only to tumble into hell itself.