Editing CubexCursedxCurious:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 2===

By pure coincidence, Ueno Kirika met the girl in front of the cram school. After lessons ended, she walked out of the building and immediately saw her—just as she was frowning at the rain falling from the night sky as she opened her umbrella, a silver figure walked past before her.

The girl's appearance was quite strange. Still wearing her school uniform, she did not carry an umbrella and allowed her silver hair to be completely drenched. Her gaze directed towards her feet, she walked listlessly.

Even though she only took care of the girl for one day, being the class rep—no, regardless of her identity, she could not leave her alone.

She hated rain and, in particular, being drenched by it. Whenever she saw boys getting excited to see wet uniforms turning transparent, she wished she could eliminate them all from the world. Running in the rain was suicidal, but she had no choice but to abandon this principle of hers. Simply using her umbrella to prevent rain from splattering on her directly, she broke into a light run in pursuit of the figure.

"Fear-kun...! Hey, Fear-kun! What is going on? Why are you here?"

The girl did not respond to her calls and simply continued walking in a daze—judging the situation to be abnormal, Kirika forcefully pulled her into an small alley. Only then did she look up with a blank expression—

"...Ki-ri-ka<!--katakana-->...?"

"...Yes, Ueno Kirika, the class representative of Yachi's class. Didn't we meet during the day? Seriously, what happened? Walking in the rain without an umbrella, that is absolutely ridiculous! Where are you going?"

"Where am I going... Yes, I have to go where..."

She murmured with her eyes out of focus. Just as Kirika frowned in surprise—

"Oh? Hey girls, you're completely drenched!"

"Where are you girls going? How about we share umbrellas? Or why don't we simply find a place to shelter from the rain? We'll treat you!"

A bunch of frivolous men. Now was not the time to get involved with them.

"Please don't interfere, this is none of your business!"

"...Huh? We are just offering our kindness, what is with that attitude?"

Kirika's original manner of speaking was already different from most girls. Combined with her impatient tone of voice, her words sounded especially offensive. As a result, the two men's attitude instantly changed.

Troublesome things again—Kirika frowned, causing the men to be even more displeased. By this point, apologizing would only make things worse.

As Kirika began to ponder, whether it would be faster to simply run away and drag Fear along, at this moment—

"...Too noisy..."

A voice came from behind her.

"Too noisy... The only noise needed are screams... Screams...? Yes, screams..."

"Too noisy? Girl, you think we're too noisy?"

Before Kirika could interfere, one of the men reached out towards Fear.

Then Kirika saw it. The Rubik's Cube held in the silver-haired girl's hand.

The toy instantly transformed into a long-shafted tool. With merely a light sweep, Fear sent the man flying away. Smashing into the wall with a frightful sound, the man fainted.

"What...! F-Fear-kun, what on earth is this...?"

"Y-You girl... What have you done?"

As Kirika watched in shock, Fear moved past her and came before the other man. Without any pretense she made a forward thrust with the spiral weapon. The man tried to escape but slipped and fell on his butt—the spiral weapon embedded itself into the wall, mere centimeters above his head. As it dug through the steel-reinforced concrete, debris fell onto the man's head.

"Eek..?"

"Behold, Mechanism No.19 gouging type, spiral form: «Human-Perforator». This is me. Another me. This form measures 178.7cm. Number of times used: 357 or 358. In one case, a person died from shock at the very sight of this, a very young boy..."

Fear's gaze remained extremely hollow all this time. She was having a dream. A nightmare that could not be called a dream. While mutters continually came from her throat, her arm moved as if heeding the calls from a sea of darkness. Retracting her weapon from the concrete, she lowered the tip slightly, pointing it at the man sitting on the ground.

"...What is the purpose of my existence? Why do I exist? To gouge, to drill, to perforate! Hence, I-I..."

"Fear-kun! This is going too far!"

Kirika hugged Fear's arm tightly. As if she had been hoping to be restrained from the very start, the girl instantly stood motionless.

"You there—Run! Hurry and run!"

"Eh! Ah! Yaaah..."

Leaving behind his friend and umbrella, the man scrambled and scurried away.

Kirika felt a chill along her spine, even colder than the rainwater. She saw at this time that the vicious weapon had transformed back to a cube shape. Noticing Fear relaxing, Kirika let her go, but Fear began to look lifeless once again.

"Fear...-kun?"

"Ah, haha... Useless, I knew it..."

Slowly she turned her gaze up towards the dark sky, her expression obscured by the silver hair over her face.

"This is my first experience of rain. Yet all I can think about are memories from the past. Someone like me, where should I go... Haha, right, of course there is only that place. Ending things at the place I saw for the first time... Would not be bad. Not bad..."

The silver-haired girl started walking again, leaving behind Kirika who was powerless to do anything.

As the sight of her back was lost in the dark streets, her mutterings gradually faded into the distance.

Suddenly no longer hearing that weak voice, Kirika instantly became confused.

Were the girl's shoulders trembling because she was laughing, or was it—