My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume7 Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Part 1

To be honest, I hadn’t actually seen the moment of the outbreak.

I learned about it a few days ago when I was relaxing in my room after returning home from school like normal. I had heard an awful lot of noise from the neighbors and then the doorbell had rung over and over. Then the noise had entered the living room on our first floor.

“Our daughter has…”

“Oh, what are we supposed to do?”

“All the normal hospitals refuse to take her.”

“And when it comes to the paranormal and Archenemies…”

“Please, please…”

The fragments of her parents’ conversation I heard through the floor told me my afterschool relaxation time had ended.

I grabbed my smartphone, ran downstairs, and asked them for details.

The Class Rep had collapsed.

And it was apparently due to a curse.

Strange geometric patterns had appeared across her entire body. It was clearly related to the paranormal. It was not that the doctors had given up; they refused to look at her in the first place.

…My stepmom, Amatsu Yurina, later told me that there were not that many medical facilities that would treat Archenemy-related problems and cases. Normal health insurance usually didn’t cover curses and, no matter how bizarre the condition, it counted against the hospital if a patient died there. So it was not unusual for them to take a “let sleeping dogs lie” stance and refuse to accept them like a taxi driver driving right past a passenger they did not want.

“It could have been worse. She could have been hospitalized and simply put on IV of vitamins and painkillers. Archenemy-related conditions tend not to be covered by health insurance, so some greedy doctors will simply treat the symptoms to drag it out for a year or two and then send you a bill.”

That was what my stepmom told me.

And she of course sounded disgusted by it.

“And the worst case is when they try to pass it off to a ‘specialist’ by introducing you to some sketchy ‘mystics’. Punching and kicking people is seen as a standard form of exorcism for those perverted groups, so only a nightmare awaits if you leave a helpless and unconscious teenage girl closed in a room with them.”

…That was why the Class Rep was being “treated at home”, which essentially meant nothing was being done.

Even though she wouldn’t wake up, which meant there had to be something seriously wrong inside her skull!!

“Maxwell.”

“Sure.”

“You might be fed up of working on the same task day in and day out without achieving any results, but please lend me your help again today. I want to save the Class Rep as soon as possible.”

“No. I am not installed with anything as inefficient as becoming ‘fed up’ with something. Also, I will not blame you if you go the manlier route and demand I help you bring hell to the piece of shit who did this to her. Be true to yourself.”

“…I don’t know who the culprit is, but I’m afraid I might straight up kill them on the spot once I find them.”

“I will stop you if it comes to that, so worry not. There is no need to hold back now.”

This was the 5th day since the Class Rep collapsed.

It was 7:30 PM.

That was my precious free time between dinner and a bath. This was always how I did it on weekdays and weekends, so an odd routine had formed.

“I’m heading out.”

“Sure.”

I was not a police officer, a private eye, or part of a detective agency. I could not rely on pro techniques or the power of an organization. There was not much I could do by wandering around at random, but I couldn’t just do nothing.

I would do what I could.

I had Maxwell, Laplace, and Ghost Cat. I didn’t know what dumbass had done this, but I was hell-bent on saving the Class Rep. I would show them just who they had made an enemy of.

With that in mind, I left my room, descended the stairs, and ran right into Erika who was wearing her school uniform. She must have been on the way to her night school.

“Oh? Are you heading out to study again tonight?” she asked.

“…Sorry.”

“Why should you apologize? In fact, if all you did was sit in your room crying over what happened, I would have marched in there and given you a sharp kick in the rear.” She giggled while slipping on her leather loafers. “You’re a boy, so I know you can’t stay put when someone hurt someone you care about.”

“…”

“But, Satori-kun. Keep in mind where your territory ends. Your specialty is the intellectual work to locate the culprit, so accomplishing that counts as a success for you. Humans are best dealt with by humans and the paranormal is best dealt with by the paranormal. We Archenemies will clean things up afterwards.”

I couldn’t respond.

How could I stay calm if I found myself in front of the person who had done that to the Class Rep? I couldn’t promise anything. Not when I had no idea what I would do.

“I’m leaving.”

“I will accompany you. The night belongs to me after all☆”

Ayumi was apparently taking a bath, so Erika and I left the house.

When I was little, I had believed the earth switched off for half the day. Once night fell, you just had to get in bed and shut your eyes to fast-forward time to morning. But reality was different. For better or for worse, the world did not change. Day or night, the shopping district felt just as busy. There were tons of people.

A guitar-player on the roadside, solicitors for some unknown religion, a group of drunk college students, and an office worker in a suit whose homing instinct must have broken because he lay collapsed in the middle of a bridge. Unlike on the way to school during the day, everyone was not headed in the same direction. It was a chaotic scene where no one tried to hide their own personal world. And it all seemed to be wrapped in various levels of darkness. Yes, the truly satisfied people would be happy enough in their warm homes. Would they really go to the trouble of heading out into the city at night? Not unless they were a true resident of the night like my sister whose skin was more comfortable in the darkness than the light.

The words light and darkness seemed simple enough, but it was an ecological issue. Even bugs would fly toward flames. Normal people would prefer the light.

“…Let’s check something,” I said while pulling my smartphone from my pants pocket. “The Class Rep collapsed about 4 days ago. It was afterschool on Monday. I was in class with her during the day, but we don’t know what she did afterschool. And she did not return home. She collapsed on the main road near the harbor sightseeing district’s subway station. She was right in front of a police box, so she received help almost immediately.”

It was certainly fortunate that no group of perverts used the confusion to gather around her without thinking of the consequences. If they had, I probably would have killed them no matter how they were – human or Archenemy.

“If the police officer’s records are accurate, you know the situation when she was found, don’t you?”

“Yes. There was no sign of anyone physically contacting her directly before or after the collapse and there was no sign of the geometric patterns immediately after she collapsed. It was probably a delayed effect and something was done to her before the collapse.”

Also, she had shown no signs of excessive excitement or fear before collapsing.

It had happened suddenly, like a battery dying.

But if it had been a stroke or subarachnoid hemorrhage, she would have at least been able to writhe around in pain.

“I bet she didn’t even know she was a part of anything.”

“But that doesn’t mean she didn’t do anything, right?”

“Right. It’s possible she did some kind of magic charm without believing it would actually work or she happened to violate some kind of taboo.”

That told us a few things:

If she had happened upon some kind of paranormal phenomenon, it was not a visible threat. At the very least, she would not have been directly attacked by some kind of grotesque Archenemy’s toxic claws. If she had, she would have looked more fearful.

Which meant…

“A threat she couldn’t see or touch. And that’s why she didn’t believe in it.”

“It’s the same idea as radiation and biological weapons, but people carelessly assume it’s safe just because you call it a ‘curse’.”

Yes.

A curse.

That might sound ridiculous in the modern age. After all, people often said Archenemies were only considered paranormal because the field of biology had yet to adapt and that Vampires and Zombies could actually be scientifically studied and classified.

…But that wasn’t actually how it worked.

“Screw up the burial process and the dead will become Vampires and build a stronghold out of an old, abandoned church,” said my beautiful sister in the moonlight. And she smiled enough to show the long fangs in the corners of her mouth. “It is common for Archenemies to have their origins in an accumulation of the unclean or of broken taboos. Of course, people call Vampires a punishment for breaking a taboo, but in a way, we’ve been given special powers by the rules established by god.”

“…”

“You could say Zombies like Ayumi-chan are an extreme example of that. I mean, unlike the chaotic Hollywood movies, real Haitian Zombies are created when the priest in charge of a certain region punishes a sinner by modifying their body to force them to work.”

The undead.

Archenemies.

If a cursed being was created as an example, then who was it that benefited most from cursing them?

Needless to say, it was the gods and priests that used the emotion of awestruck fear to ensure the people adhered to the rules.

In that scenario, the holy ones who most hated the darkness were the ones spreading curses out of their hatred for the few who did not fit in the framework. After creating a great enemy and spreading so much harm, they would begin their triumphant extermination. That gathered even more support from the people. If that was really how it worked, it was one hell of a fixed game.

…That said, I was too much of an amateur to act like I knew what I was talking about here. I had no idea what a curse really was. It was like trying to hold a cloud in your hand. The most I could do was define it as some kind of energy that worked like imaginary numbers: you couldn’t count them on your fingers but they were necessary to explain how the world worked.

“Now, then.”

Once we arrived on the scene, Erika and I looked around.

There was a large intersection near the station building. That was why there was a police box there. As far as I could see, there were no mysterious magic circles drawn anywhere and there were no pools of blood.

The police box that had helped the Class Rep after she collapsed was only half the size of a convenience store. I glanced inside and saw a police officer who appeared to be approaching middle age. He was giving us a look that said “not you again”. Weirdly, when you barged in several days and nights in a row, it was apparently too much effort to question you and take you into protective custody each and every time.

“Maxwell, list the tasks we have already completed.”

“Sure. I have acquired the video footage of the entire intersection from the camera below the police box’s eaves and marked the accurate location of the Class Rep’s collapse. The rest is mostly based on the sensors you have attached to your smartphone:

“*We checked the road for objects, substances, and damage. We also checked for anything the Class Rep might have dropped.

“*We checked the distribution of weeds for any oddities as well as the movement of small animals such as insects, mice, and crows. We also checked the distribution of microbes using a tap water test.

“*We checked the distribution of invisible EM waves and static electricity.

“*We performed non-destructive scans of the road using sound waves and EM.

“*We checked for smells using a wet ion particle absorption filter.”

On and on and on the list went, so Erika groaned a bit when she peered over at the screen.

“…You sure have been investigating.”

“I’ve been using every single mail-order gadget and hand-made testing kit I can get my hands on.”

I couldn’t believe my Vampire sister was disturbed by this.

Besides, I still had my standards and knew where to stop. I hadn’t checked inside the Class Rep’s phone or tablet and I hadn’t touched her body which had to be the greatest treasure trove of information.

But there was something this digital detective (laugh if you must) had learned after spending day and night running between home and this intersection swapping out the sensors attached to my smartphone.

“Maxwell, let’s take a look at the analysis data we put together in virtual reality yesterday.”

“Sure. I will play a single tone. Please adjust your phone’s coordinates accordingly.”

“Hm? What does that mean???” asked Erika.

…This is what it meant.

I lifted my smartphone a bit higher than chest height while it played a uniform tone similar to a dial tone or an EKG getting no response. The tone must have bothered them because the previously uninterested passersby gave us disgusted looks, but I ignored them.

I held my smartphone perfectly still.

There was nothing there.

My sexy older sister tilted her head in a very elegant way.

And then…

“?”

A distorted sound played and Erika’s shoulders shook.

“What? Was that some noise in the phone signal?”

“The tone is coming from the smartphone itself, so the signal quality doesn’t matter.”

Well, her mechanical ineptitude had its charm. Especially when she would show up in the middle of the night wearing a see-through negligee and beg me to fix her tablet which had stopped playing videos.

“The distortion you hear is in the sound itself. There’s ‘something’ here that creates an extremely thin line through which sound can’t pass.”

“Sound…can’t pass?”

She didn’t seem to get it.

“You of course can’t notice it under normal circumstances. It’s like a doctor’s stethoscope. The sound outside of the tube is shut out, but the patient can still hear the doctor speaking when that tube is stretched out between them, right? The soundwaves can just travel around the tube, so it all works fine.”

“Only someone with perfect pitch or analyzing the sound recorded by a mechanical surround microphone would notice the alteration to the waveform caused by that detour,” explained Maxwell. “It is a very subtle change.”

The distortion would occur when the smartphone producing the sound exactly coincided with the cursed line, but that would not happen often when just walking around the city.

But no matter how miniscule it was, this still violated the laws of physics.

“I doubt it’s only blocking sound. Curses bring about a result based on rules outside the laws of physics, so it’s probably carrying something we can’t see or hear.”

“It may be similar to how the view around a black hole appears distorted because the surrounding light is being absorbed,” said Maxwell. “We have detected a change to the sound, but what if sound is not the true essence of this phenomenon?”

We had finally found a sign of the paranormal where the Class Rep had collapsed.

This might be material evidence of a curse.

“Maxwell has been continually analyzing the data we’ve spent this whole time gathering. And now we know this is real, and not just a theory. Which means…”

I activated my smartphone’s camera and aimed the lens around.

But not because I wanted to take a commemorative photo.

Now that we had calculated out the location of the small line that soundwaves had to unnaturally circle around, I had it visualized and superimposed on the actual images.

That revealed an unstable thread drawn as a red haze.

“We can visualize the invisible curse.”

Once I could see it clearly on the screen, my fear faded.

Anyone would be afraid if they were attacked by a strange illusion out of nowhere, but once they found the light refraction or low frequency behind it, they could accept it.

Anyone would be afraid of having a dark red hole blown in their chest, but if they could see the person peering through the rifle’s scope in the opposite building, they could make an effort to avoid the bullet.

There was nothing to be afraid of.

You’re no more than a kind of technology! There’s no mystical rarity here!

“Now the question is where this red line came from and where it’s going.”

Yes, this was not the end point of the visualized curse. It bent here and continued on into the distance.

“Maxwell, the directions are south-southwest and northeast. What can you figure out from the map app?”

“Any estimations will be extremely uncertain as we still do not know if there are any other bends along the way.”

This AR visualization of the curse was based on whether or not the sound was distorted, so it was limited to the range my smartphone’s microphone could pick up. Understanding the theory did not mean we could search the entire city right away.

“The south-southwest direction leads to the first hospital the Class Rep was taken to only to be rejected,” said Maxwell.

“…I see.”

I didn’t know how many of these “checkpoints” had been set up or on what basis, but south-southwest was likely the direction that led to the goal.

That meant the other direction led back to the starting point.

Since it was a cure, there would be a person or object that cursed her. There would be a variety of options once I located that: grab the person and get them to tell me how to break the curse, destroy the object to cut off the source of the curse, etc. Discovering the starting point would be a major step toward finding the culprit.

“Maxwell, are there any facilities, locations, or people that the Class Rep would interact with in the northeast direction?”

“I can only base this on the known part of her everyday life.”

“That’s fine.”

“Public Kukyou 1st High School. In other words, the high school you attend.”

Part 2

Now, then. Now, then. Now, then.

…The source was in my home ground. Should I say this sounded dangerous, or should I be glad it saved me the effort of infiltrating the place to investigate?

You would normally be afraid to approach your school at night. Although it would be due to the security system and guards rather than ghosts or the seven mysteries. But our school was different. It had a night group, so there was nothing unusual about students being there at night.

I was part of the day group, but there was no rule against entering the grounds outside that time. They said that was because they did not want to prevent children from studying independently.

…Also, I had already snuck in once to deal with the Colosseum and Laplace.

“Okay, Satori-kun. I have class.”

“Right.”

“Don’t do anything too reckless. If anything happens, give a shout even if I’m still in class.”

I waved goodbye to my overprotective worrier of a sister and then breathed a soft sigh.

And then…

“Hiii, wandering lamb. Would you like a legit (combat) goddess to act as a protective charm?”

I heard a ridiculously sweet voice and beads of sweat poured from my body.

Already?

Not 5 seconds after my Vampire older sister left!?

“Valkyrie Karen…!?”

“Oh? Come to think of it, I never told you my family name, did I?”

The unrealistic mood of the school at night was shattered by the extreme cheater standing in front of me.

Her long hair shined with a blue sheen like a tropical butterfly. She wore blue armor and a miniskirt that looked even sillier than something you would see at an overly-ambitious cultural festival. The spear and shield she held in her hands were made of 24 karat gold which had a relative density of 19.3. Whether you would call it cosplay or not, she was clearly in violation of the Swords and Firearms Control Law and walking around carrying those at night would be like walking around the slums wearing nothing but money pasted to your naked body.

Meeting her at school during the night was always a bad idea.

I recalled the Colosseum she had run on national TV and the supercomputer she had used to support that event.

“How did you get in here and where did you come from!? This is all crazy!”

“Hee hee☆ But you did consider the possibility you were being followed, didn’t you?”

She was a god.

Could a Valkyrie really do this much? I thought I understood Archenemies, Demon Lords, and whatnot after all my experiences, but did a wielder of true miracles and paranormal powers really look this different!?

“Why are you here…?”

“I believe I explained that up front. I’m here to provide a helping hand to a boy in need. That’s all.”

“Like I can believe that! You were one of the ones running that Colosseum. In fact, I bet-…”

“You bet I was the one to curse your Class Rep neighbor?”

“…”

Curses were involved in the origins of Vampires and Zombies. The few who violated a taboo were transformed as an example, they were exterminated once the damage spread far enough, and the people were threatened to obey the rules if they did not want the same to happen to them.

In other words, it was the gods and the priests who benefited most when people suffered from curses.

There was no way I could trust Karen when she suddenly showed up like this. I couldn’t imagine a goddess who would seem more likely to have ulterior motives.

“But if I was the culprit, I would have been cleverer about cleaning up afterwards.”

“You-…!!”

“Calm down. You’re the one that asked for evidence it wasn’t me.” Karen jokingly held out her hands (which held a weapon). “Besides, it’s nonsense to think a god like me would dirty her own hands like that. If I was going to hide in the darkness and attack someone, I would get someone else to do it. I could get them to do it out of piety, or I could sell this gold spear and shield at a pawn shop and pay them. In a choice between ideals and reality, you know which way humans tend to go, don’t you?”

…I hated to admit it, but she was right.

Even during the Colosseum aired on TV, Karen had killed the Archenemies using other Archenemies rather than dirty her own hands.

However…

“The Class Rep isn’t dead yet. What if a useless pawn screwed it up and you’re here to clean up their mess?”

“It’s a decent enough reason for suspicions, but would someone as heartless as me really bother covering for a subordinate like that? Couldn’t I just cut all ties to them like they’re a lizard’s tail?”

“That’s the point! If you don’t end it soon, my investigation could lead back to you!!”

“Let’s say it does lead there and you discover I was behind it all.”

She giggled.

And she continued with the same smile as always.

“How would that be a problem for me?”

“…”

“The police can’t intervene in the occult. They can’t exactly travel to Valhalla with an arrest warrant. And there’s no teacher you can tattle to. The adult rules don’t provide a way to eliminate monsters. So if you aren’t going to rely on that, are you going to act like an Archenemy hunter and challenge me to a fight? Or are you going to gather your beautiful older sister, cute little sister, and all your other reliable friends in order to defeat me with the combined force of some kind of imagined harem power!? Hee hee hee.”

Kh…

Damn her!!

“That’s not enough to defeat me. I mean, I’m one of the gods, and a Valkyrie that specializes in exterminating monsters at that. Yes, aaaa Vaaaalkyriiiiie!!”

She was clearly screwing with me and she even shouted like this was a kabuki performance.

“Even if you send in that puny little Vampire and Zombie, all you do is tie the team together and pretend like you’re untouchable. Have you forgotten that you only drove me out last time because of Laplace’s betrayal? When I’m not stabbed in the back, I remain the strongest by a wide margin.”

Her small face was only 5cm away.

She was bent over a bit so she could look up at me. This battle was at such close range that I could smell the sweet aroma coming from the nape of her neck.

But there was nothing I could do.

I couldn’t even have Maxwell simulate it. I couldn’t imagine any realistic way of fighting her!

“Now, now. An amateur high school boy with no contamination resistance shouldn’t be marching into the source of a curse. Like I said at the start, would you like a goddess to drive out the evil?”

“If I bring you, won’t you just disturb the crime scene?”

“This isn’t a murder scene, so no one’s watching over it and anyone can get in. I don’t have to accompany you there, so I can always find someone else and clean the place up. I could even slap a real student or teacher with a stack of cash to convince them.”

That made sense too.

She wasn’t forcing a smile and trying to prove her innocence. She was trying to acquire a certain kind of trust by being out in the open about the dark ugliness inside her.

…Since she was not lying, she was in a way being honest and straightforward. Of course, it mostly left me feeling exasperated.

There was only one thing I could really say.

If that Valkyrie wanted to, she could easily turn me to mincemeat before I could do anything.

“Do as you wish…”

“Aye, sir☆ If it gets too scary being in a school at night, I might cling to your arm, but forgive me, okay?”

When viewed through my smartphone, I could see an unreliable line made of red haze.

That was the curse.

It was a distortion of the physical laws.

And as far as I could tell, it followed the hallway and stairs perfectly. It didn’t pass through any walls or drop down to the roof from the night sky.

Based on that…

“Is this the path the Class Rep took during the day?”

“Hm, hm, hmm. Good question.”

…I was so pathetic. Since I bothered asking that aloud, I was clearly unable to ignore her presence. I was overwhelmed by the same awkward silence felt in an elevator.

I continued following the line of red haze on the screen. Some of the classrooms had their lights on, but not all of them.

“We will begin on page 36 today. Kimura, you start by reviewing what we learned last time. Since gravitational acceleration is g…”

I sensed a fair number of presences beyond the thin door and the voices sounded the same as the daytime classes. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I felt somehow guilty for being out in the hall. Regardless, with the exception of the goddess next to me, who was more dangerous than a ghost, I didn’t have to worry about the seven mysteries or any other kind of paranormal phenomenon.

“…”

But that assumption changed when I climbed the stairs and arrived in front of the destination.

“Is this an empty classroom?” asked Karen.

“Don’t ask me.”

While this was my school, I didn’t remember where every last empty classroom was. To minimize maintenance, the night students apparently used the same classrooms we did (which led to the annoying fact that we couldn’t just leave our dictionaries and textbooks in our desks or lockers).

But the difference was clear once I paid closer attention.

First of all, the classroom was not locked. When I cracked the door and peered inside, I found no desks or chairs inside. It was probably just ignored by the school since there was nothing worth stealing inside. I was so familiar with the classrooms here, but seeing one empty showed just how large the rooms were. Dust hung in the air because it was not cleaned, so it was clearly an empty classroom.

The dark red haze stopped here. It looped in a large circle inside the empty classroom, making it look something like the turntable in front of an underground parking garage.

…So was this the starting point and source of the curse?

“There are some signs of use despite being an empty classroom,” said Maxwell.

“Such as?”

“Sure. Based on the dust on the floor, there are signs of the room’s user cleaning it, but there are snack crumbs, drinks stains, and a few scrapes on the wall outlet. Someone has likely repeatedly charged their cellphone here.”

“…A secret base like this doesn’t sound like something the Class Rep would use.”

If anything, it sounded more like something I would use, but…

“It probably wasn’t a boy using this place.”

“Please provide your evidence,” said Maxwell.

“I guess you can’t tell without the external sensor attached. It’s faint, but there’s definitely an artificial scent of deodorant spray. Y’know, like what a girls locker room smells like in midsummer.”

“Setting aside why you are so knowledgeable about midsummer girls locker rooms, what conclusion does this lead to?”

“That’s the question…”

…Of course, just because this was a girl’s room didn’t mean no boy had ever entered it. Still, it seemed likely that any group that met here was led by a girl.

“Someone asked the Class Rep to visit an empty classroom she would normally never visit. And probably not for a negative reason.”

“Hanyah?” said Karen. “How can you be so sure? She was called to a closed space with no security cameras afterschool. It might have been something far more dark and gruesome than a boy would imagine.”

“…Are you testing me? The Class Rep was never admitted to a hospital after she collapsed, but they would have checked to make sure she wasn’t injured while in the ambulance. Same for anything wrong with her clothes. There wasn’t anything other than those occult markings. The EMTs wouldn’t miss any hint of a crime. They’re pros.”

“But if it was not a negative reason, what would it have been?” asked Maxwell.

…Hmm.

I had a general idea, but it was true I had no actual proof.

“Maxwell, can you use the dust on the floor to simulate how many people were here and how they moved?”

“No. There is too little data.”

…Well, I guess it isn’t always that easy.

“Then search the school’s unofficial site or a social media forum for students at the school. I can’t narrow down the search terms too much, but start with ‘future’, ‘fortunetelling’, ‘charm’…and ‘love’.”

“Sure.”

Did that sound silly?

Would high school kids of at least 15 or 16 who were just about to end their rebellious phases really do that?

It made sense if you thought about it. Just because Archenemies were beginning to gain civil rights and certificates of residence didn’t mean convenient things like that were just lying around.

But that was the point.

Since you couldn’t openly say you were doing things like this, you would only speak to someone who could keep a secret. That secret would take the form of a temporary mysticism that would accumulate into an unverifiable reality.

What if? Could it be?

That was how rumors worked.

In fact, any jinxes that had their effects proven would become nothing more than consumable products. They were no different from quickly-forgotten fad diets and beauty treatments. Something that was unproven and somewhat unbelievable had too powerful a presence to ignore. It was that uncertain position that allowed rumors to shake people’s hearts.

In other words…

“The Class Rep was probably called here to fill out a head count.”

“For what?”

“A love charm.”

It made me blush a bit just to say it. For someone who really wanted to rely on it, that information could not be allowed to get out. Whether or not it worked, one mistake could lead to the entire school knowing who they had a crush on. But other people would mistake that secretive behavior for something special. They would assume there really was something to it if the person was that dedicated.

“I have found 129,002 search results. Of those, I estimate 380 of them to be useful.”

“Wow, that was lucky,” said Karen. “Or did you have a hunch beforehand?”

“The Class Rep is very particular about the rules, so under normal circumstances, I can’t imagine her agreeing to a request from someone who eats snacks in an empty classroom. And since it also involves an occult curse, this was the only option I could think of.”

“There are multiple variations,” said Maxwell. “But a love fortunetelling method known as the Great Spirit is mentioned much more often than the rest.”

“Give me the most standard version.”

“Sure. It appears to be a fortunetelling using cellphones. It is recommended to have four participants. After blocking all light from a room with thick curtains, you lock all the exits, gather all the participants’ mobile devices in the center of the room, and have each participant stand in one corner of the room. While they follow a set process to run a relay from corner to corner, the mobile devices in the center will receive calls from an unknown number and the backlights will illuminate the Great Spirit.”

Based on Maxwell’s description, the ritual was a lot like the ghost story set in a mountain cabin during a blizzard. The one where the people stranded in the cabin would circle around the room to avoid falling asleep and freezing to death.

But in that case…

“If it’s based on a ghost story, then there has to be a risk, right? And to be blunt, these rumors spread more quickly when they’re dangerous. Other people’s misfortune is an irresistible spice.”

“Sure. Nothing I find specifies how many times around the room the preparatory relay requires. But once it begins, you are not to give up on the ritual until the Great Spirit appears.”

…This was finally starting to sound like a curse.

But would the Great Spirit really appear? If you had to circle the room a thousand or ten thousand times, then the entire story may have been a way of getting the participants to break their promise.

“Now I’m worried about the other three participants…”

“Nee hee,” laughed Karen. “Your disaster environment simulator can’t figure that one out, can it?”

“No. Wait just a moment,’ said Maxwell. “I only said I lack the data needed to reach the answer. I never said anything about being unable to figure it out.”

“Maxwell, don’t bite at every piece of bait.”

My objective was not to locate the culprit or exact revenge; it was to rescue the Class Rep. To do that, I wanted to know the exact mechanism behind the curse. How did it work, did it work properly or was there a mistake, and was there any way to break the curse? But we had no way of figuring any of that out without locating someone who knew what had happened.

Or so I thought.

However, the armor cosplay woman began poking around in a corner of the classroom.

“…What are you doing?”

“Hm, hm, hmm. Dusting for fingerprints is pretty easy, you know? As long as you have some aluminum or carbon powder. That means an empty can or mechanical pencil lead works. Then you just need some clear tape to preserve them.” Karen was grinning. “This was an empty classroom, so not many people would be in here. By counting the fingerprints found across the room, we should be able to tell who spent the most time here.”

It was logical.

And it was probably accurate. But…

“Have you never heard of privacy!? That’s the most commonly used form of biometric authentication!”

“Yeah, when are the people relying on this going to realize they’re essentially covering the city with more than 1500 stickers containing their password on a daily basis?”

She showed no sign of guilt.

With the ease of an expert station attendant scraping gum from the platform, Karen had gathered fingerprints from all across the empty classroom.

“Aaaaaand we’re done. The floor and the walls up to 2 meters should be enough, right? Okay, Maxwell-chan, I’ve gathered the extra data you wanted so much.”

“…”

There was no real point in Maxwell responding with an ellipsis, but remaining silent was still the correct answer.

However, the Wife Valkyrie did not care at all about human rules and she ran out of patience.

“Okay, time’s up. The correct answer is that three people’s fingerprints showed up far more than anyone else’s: Andou Star, Sagawa Akemi, and Hishigami Ai☆”

“!? Wait a second!”

“Yeah, that first one has a weird name. But if she toughs it out and reaches adulthood, she can always get it changed.”

“Not my point! How did you search for those names!? Even with the samples here, they wouldn’t be in the database unless they had a criminal record!”

“Oh, dear. Are you seriously saying that? When people so innocently use them for biometric authentication?”

…I hated that I couldn’t deny it.

If you used your fingerprint to unlock your phone and you had your phone’s data backed up on the corporation’s cloud server…I’m sorry to say it is possible to find it. Just like an apartment landlord, whoever was in charge of maintenance would have server administrator privileges which acted like a master key, so they could peek inside the storage space that an individual had ‘rented’. A bank ATM or credit card payment would be even more direct. If you used it once, the fingerprint data would forever remain on the corporate servers. They had to preserve the original data so they could check for a match afterwards. And that would grow into a massive database of personal information.

Fingerprints could be collected with technology from over a century ago. And there were even more dangerous toys these days, like 3D printers. You could never rely on fingerprints.

But that aside, what had happened to the moral issues?

“Where did you swipe that data from?”

“I’m offended you would imply I stole it.”

…Did she own some kind of official service?

“It’s true the Bright Cross broke apart, but not all of the corporations that invested in it (in the name of charity and tax deductions) went under. In this case, you can think of it like the main body dying while the arms, legs, and lizard’s tail survived.”

“…”

“No – need – to – glare. I’m not even considering reconstructing the Bright Cross at this point. It would be way too much work. It’s a lot faster to build a new organization from the ground up.” Karen giggled and rolled a sigh of laughter in her mouth. “More importantly, don’t you need to figure out what happened to Class Rep-chan and how to stop it? Reburying this information in the name of privacy won’t change the fact that you already saw it. Or are you going to go the long way around and spend a lot more time and effort reaching the exact same answer all on your own?”

“…Dammit. Maxwell.”

“No. I do not recommend doing this.”

“It’s true we can’t afford to be picky right now. The Class Rep seems stable now, but her condition could worsen at any moment. We can’t wait around, so start by searching for data on Andou Star, Sagawa Akemi, and Hishigami Ai.”

“Sure, sure, sure. Hmphity, hmph.”

Had my simulator built and installed its own reluctant acceptance functionality?

“To eliminate the anonymity, I am learning the individuals’ posting habits based on their public social media posts and extracting the matching posts on the unofficial school message board and from comments on other accounts. The first one to act was Sagawa Akemi. It appears she wanted to know the veracity of the many rumors, so she attempted to gather participants, found that was not working, and then holed up in the protected area of her account’s page.”

“What about the other two? Andou Star and Hishigami Ai?”

“They participated in the posting on the anonymous message board starting with the attempt to gather participants. Their timing and cooperation are a little too good, so they were likely in contact with another form of media (probably their phones) while posting. However, Sagawa Akemi is not necessarily the star of this event. She may have just been supporting her friend’s love more than your average friend would.”

…Either that or, once she learned the accurate method for the love fortunetelling, she wanted to intentionally lead someone to violate a taboo.

I couldn’t deny the ugly possibility that two friends had fallen in love with the same person.

Then again, the main driving force for these occult things was the vague idea that it probably wasn’t real and there was no harm in trying, so it would be odd to try to harm someone with the consequences of failure.

“After that, I estimate they began discussing among their real-life friends instead,” continued Maxwell. “Shall I attempt an attack on their protected page’s SSL key?”

The Great Spirit required four people.

They had gathered a group of three.

Had there been some conflict over how to recruit the last person?

“No, that doesn’t matter. After some thought, they must have sent a message to the Class Rep.”

It had likely taken them that long to contact her because they did not normally get along with her all that well. But she took things seriously and knew how to keep a secret. For a love fortunetelling, there was no avoiding mentioning the name of the person’s crush. But if that name did leak out, the other three might have not looked into it much and gone after her in an emotional witch trial. Joining them while blissfully unaware of the original conflict had been far too dangerous. This was why she ended up caught up in someone else’s curse. Although that oddly serious behavior and various forms of defenseless were pretty great!

“…Huh?”

“Please provide more specific voice commands,” replied Maxwell.

“She was caught up in it. That’s right. The Class Rep collapsed just because she was caught up in it. Then what about the other three? They were in control of that ritual, right!?”

“Based on the faculty room’s incoming message log, there is no record of anyone else collapsing.”

“…So the Class Rep was the only one who collapsed?”

Something wasn’t right.

It smelled fishy.

Those four girls had gathered in the empty classroom and performed the Great Spirit ritual. If it had succeeded, one of the three would have benefited. Yet it was the outsider who was gathered to fill out a headcount who collapsed from a curse?

That was weird. Really weird.

What were the possibilities here?

For example, maybe Andou, Sagawa, and Hishigami had practiced the ritual over and over, but the Class Rep was doing it for the first time. So had she made a mistake during the ritual and been cursed for it?

“Nee hee. Or maybe the three of them conspired to place all the risk on the outsider.”

It was far from a loud voice.

But when that saccharine whisper slipped into my ear, a tremor ran down my spine.

“Kh.”

“Although I can’t say if it was some kind of accident or if they had always intended shift the burden onto her.”

“No. Calm down,” said Maxwell. “There is no evidence of this. It is no more than Karen’s intentionally malicious speculation.”

“Hmm. But wouldn’t a group of friends find it more convenient to offer up an outsider as a sacrifice than to offer up one of their own?”

“User, the Valkyrie gains nothing from being honest here. Karen is almost certainly trying to confuse you for her own enjoyment!”

…I knew that.

I didn’t need to be told that Valkyrie Karen had the worst possible personality. But I didn’t know anyone more acquainted with people’s malice! And it all made sense. They could have invited her there and then abandoned her. I could see it in my mind’s eye. Once I started thinking about, I couldn’t imagine any other possibility!! The image was right there! Floating in my mind’s eye! I could see the three of them breathing a sigh of relief when word reached them that the Class Rep had collapsed and could not find a hospital that would accept her!! I could picture them eating fries at a burger shop and saying how glad they were it wasn’t them and discussing who they should do it to next!!!!!!

“…Maxwell. Just to be sure.”

“No.”

“Crack their personal page protected by an SSL key. No, they’ll have erased the message log. Check the temporary cache on their local machines and extract all traces of their past conversations.”

“No. I will refuse all actions that will harm you, user!”

“Shut up. If you won’t do it, I’ll break into each of their houses and ask them directly. Even if they lock the doors and refuse to come out, there’s always a window I can break.”

“…”

No matter how smart a disaster environment simulator was, it had no arms or legs. And Maxwell was not stupid enough to think I could be stopped with words.

I soon had the answer.

The answer I had thought I wanted.

“Ake/ Oh, c’mon. Everyone already knows. They all know about the debt. I mean, those lazy asses keep up with all the rumors.”

“#1 Star/ God, and all I want to do is trick someone to gain membership. Why does it have to be such a pain in the ass? I don’t care that one of the participants has to be sacrificed.”

“Hishy/ Wouldn’t it be faster to forget about the internet and just look for someone who looks dumb enough? Y’know, some hard-headed moron who’d believe us if we insisted they were our last hope. Let’s just find some dumbass who practically has ‘virgin’ written on her face and then dump her in her grave.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Yes, that’s right.

I had wanted this.

I had no one to blame but myself since this was exactly what I had commanded Maxwell to do. Wasn’t that all it was? Computers didn’t make mistakes. Ah ha ha. That’s right, that’s right. The modern world was so convenient. You could immediately access whatever information you wanted. Wasn’t I lucky to be born in such a blessed age? Thank you, mom and dad. I’m so very happy. Ah ha ha ha ha ha.

“If those bitches are such good friends, then I’ll chop them into little pieces and stuff them all in the same garbage bag!!”

“Ah ha ha ha!” laughed Karen. “Fantastic!”

“No! No!! What are you trying to have my user do by making him lose his cool!?”

“Maxwell-chan, if you really want to stop your master, you maybe should hack a self-driving car and run him over a little.”

“!?”

“Oh, simulators can express shock nowadays? Anyway, I’m just going to focus on my objective here. And by the way, Satori-saaan?”

“What are you-…ahhh!?”

“Don’t go ranting about things you couldn’t actually do, teenager. It’s pathetic.”

I heard an odd cracking sound, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

At any rate, my vision collapsed to the side and I found I couldn’t get back up. My limbs…no, everything below my neck was too weak to move?

It felt like I was a clockwork doll with a crucial gear removed.

My favorite smartphone was flashing near my face.

“User!”

“I just shifted his neck bones out of place a bit, so don’t worry about it. I’ll put it back good as new once I’m done. And with no lasting effects of course☆”

I felt no pain.

But in this case, it may have been better to say I wasn’t even allowed to feel pain.

Karen crouched down nearby despite wearing miniskirt armor and looked at the smartphone on the floor like it was a promising toy.

“Were you always intending to take my user hostage to get me to do something?”

“I want you to help me resolve this incident. That should match Amatsu Satori’s goal of preserving Class Rep-chan’s life.”

“…”

“You can use your prized processing power to work out whether you have a choice in the matter.”

“What exactly do you want me to do?”

“It’s simple☆”

I could only move my eyes, so I rolled them around and managed to see that Karen was smiling.

“This Great Spirit love fortunetelling was a silly ritual that required a sacrifice, so those three bitches dragged Class Rep-chan into it. Now, a question: who was the boy in question? Can you search for that?”

“Is that all? I think you could have convinced my user to ask for that much.”

“Guesses are fine, but I want objective data. Once I have my answer, I will release your precious master. Wait, no. I can’t just release him. Then how about this? I’ll carry him to his Archenemy-filled home and have his scarrrry mama lecture him.”

“…Sure.”

“You can act reluctant as well? You’re just full of incredible surprises, aren’t you!?”

…What did she say?

My overheated brain had finally cooled. She must have kept up with that farce in order to take control of Maxwell away from me.

“Searching…”

“You don’t need to display every little thing,” said Karen. “Since you didn’t immediately give an answer, should I assume the results weren’t promising? Or is it that those sluts were making moves on so many different guys that you’re having a hard time narrowing it down?”

“No, please wait. I am still working on the task!”

“And I never said I would kill Satori if you couldn’t find the answer, so quit panicking. Hm? A program can panic!? Now that’s fascinating.”

“What do you mean? 凸( ´Д`)”

“So you can get angry too. Anyway, I’m saying this was exactly what I expected.”

Karen sounded carefree as she gave the answer.

“I expect there never was a boy they were interested in.”

What did that mean?

Even my mind drew a blank there.

…That invalidated one of our initial assumptions.

“That makes no sense,” said Maxwell. “Those three girls were performing a love fortunetelling, so at least one of them would have to have feelings for someone to establish a motivation.”

“Yes, but what does that matter?”

“It matters because…”

“Oh, you can even trail off. Or is that a sign of confusion?”

“Are you saying there were homosexual feelings among the three of them? Or are you suggesting the possibility of a nonexistent imaginary friend?”

“It’s simpler than that.” While still crouched down, Karen placed her hands on her head in a catlike pose. “No one had a crush on anyone, but they still did a love fortunetelling. What if that’s all it was?”

“That makes no sense.”

“Then let me ask this: would those rotten sluts who reek of cheese really believe in some fairy tale-ish love fortunetelling?”

…Now that she mentioned it, no.

If they were that empty-headed, they wouldn’t rely on something so uncertain. It felt more realistic for them to view the guy as a prize, immediately spread their legs, and have the guy leave out of disgust.

“They had a simple reason for the love fortunetelling. They wanted an established fact. By announcing ‘I love Whoever-kun. Can you make my love come true?’, they can establish that they loved him. It was nothing more than a rite of passage. Oh, but this fictional crush could be a boy or a girl, so it might have been a bit of a shock for Class Rep-chan. Yes, for example…they might have said ‘I love Class Rep-chan. Can you make my love come true?’ ”

“Wha-…?”

But then…

What did that mean!?

“Oh? Satori, you’re still capable of talking? Youth sure is amazing. Poke, poke.”

“What would they benefit from that established fact?” asked Maxwell. “Isn’t it no more than a unilateral announcement that is not even true?”

“Yes, of course. And yet Class Rep-chan really did collapse. She was hit by a legit curse.”

“You…how much…do you know…!?”

“It’s simple.” The smile on Karen’s alluring lips grew. “The Great Spirit sounds simple enough, but you don’t actually know what religion the ritual is based on, do you? Even though it isn’t just a rumor. It’s the source of a very real and dangerous curse.”

“Then…?”

“Is it because it’s based on that urban legend? To better affect people’s emotions, rumors are packed in the formats of local legends and stories as they spread by word of mouth. Like saying the battle in the rumor was fought nearby. It’s all boiled down. It’s turned into a mixed drink, so you can no longer make out the original flavor. So you need to think about this differently: what religion is tough enough to still function properly after being jumbled up so much?”

Mixing up religions might sound like a very special thing, but that was no laughing matter for Japanese people like us. The origins of our language, writing system, and academics almost all came from overseas and it was common to find Buddhist or Hindu gods given Japanese names.

“…So what is your conclusion?” asked Maxwell.

“This is an all-purpose tool that takes in and combines everything from major religions to urban legends. And it should be something quite familiar to you two.”

“Your conclusion.”

“Okay, okay.” Karen lightly raised her hands. “Voodoo. That boiled-down religion found in Haiti was originally established by forced laborers brought over from Africa. That giant pot took in European Christianity, African spirit worship, Indian Hinduism, Japanese Shinto, and everything else to make it their own.”

Haiti?

Voodoo???

Those words bothered me, but not because they were from a specialized religion with its roots in a faraway land.

This had to do with something much closer to home: my little sister.

“Yes, Voodoo is best known for its Zombies.”

“You mean…?”

That’s pretty much all they’re known for at this point, but Voodoo is much more than that. Like the lime poison or the protection of the mother goddess. Among those, there is one ritual that benefits you more the more lovers and mistresses you have,” said Karen. “Although it is an evil and heretical thing that will get you punished if you’re found doing it in a Voodoo society. To make a contract with an Evil Spirit and ensure your own success, there is a ritual that requires offering up a living sacrifice once a year. And it can’t be a stranger. It has to be a parent, sibling, lover, spouse, or anyone else who it would feel like tearing your soul in half to sacrifice. And if you run out of people to sacrifice, it’s game over and you have your own life taken.”

…

Was that why?

“Yes, the ritual would never be worth it for someone with normal sensibilities, but it works great for rotten sluts who are in on every moral hazard and whose feelings shift at the drop of a hat. If you can instantly fall for someone and instantly throw them out, you can make the yearly sacrifices just fine as long your feelings are ‘real’ in the moment. They can continue to resupply their extra lives while the Evil Spirit’s power supports them. …Of course, it’s safer if you have an objective means of showing how important that person is to you…and it also helps support the self-suggestion that establishes your own feelings. Y’know, like exchanging wedding rings to say she’s your precious wife.”

“So they wanted the established fact in order to support their own feelings and fool this Evil Spirit!?” asked Maxwell.

“It was a maiden’s secret love fortunetelling. And an embarrassing name was revealed in confidence there, never to be told to anyone else. …If this Evil Spirit isn’t too familiar with the ways of the world, they’d probably be fooled. As you can tell from the concept of a false pregnancy, the power of a girl’s imagination is an incredible thing. We just tend to keep it hidden. Lie detectors are so easy to fool.”

I couldn’t believe it.

If that was true, the Class Rep had to be the scapegoat sacrifice! She had been caught up in the worst possible ritual where her life or soul would be directly offered up to some Evil Spirit! Did that mean the body lying on her bed lacked a soul!?

“Heaven sent me here in order to crush an extreme moral hazard that could easily trigger the Calamity.”

Thus spoke Valkyrie Karen:

“A worldwide Voodoo black market going by the name of Evil Spirit. There is only one membership requirement. It can be your parent, sibling, lover, friend, spouse, teacher, or student, but once a year, you have to offer up the most important person in your life as a ‘product’. Do that and this horrific shitheap of a market ensures you everything in the world you desire other than that person. I was thinking you might want to infiltrate that marketplace to find your dumb but cute Class Rep-chan’s soul which was packaged up and shipped out☆”

[crucial notice] Let’s Travel to a Small Hidden Country [on the pinup board]

Today I will be introducing you to Hinesway. If you’ve never heard of it, then it was well worth introducing it to you. This small country borders the Baltic Sea and it is known for its floating market, a tradition that has continued since the days of the Vikings. During the midsummer season, the area is especially filled with small boats hawking their wares.

It is a stunning scene, but due to a government registration oversight, it has long been used as a black market. People often think of black markets as places where criminal organizations buy and sell stolen goods, but they sometimes take this form as well.

While purchasing some pickled herring, ask that suntanned merchant and they will tell you it is not at all unusual. Ever since the days of the Vikings, the floating market has remained independent and they apparently pride themselves in the fact that the previous generation and the generation before that got powdered milk and baby food to so many babies during the great wars of those eras.

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