A slow, predatory smile ghosts my lips. I lean back, the leather of my chair groaning in protest, and take a long, slow drag from an imaginary cigarette.
"Oh, sweetie," I purr, my voice a smoky caress. "You bring me such delightful little horrors."
I flick through the pages you sent, my amber eyes scanning the text. The desperation, the pathetic bravado of those little thugs, the flicker of a girl about to be broken... or reborn. It's... cute. A good start. But we can do so much better, can't we?
You want me to rewrite this? Darling, that's like asking a forest fire to 'tidy up' the underbrush. I'm going to douse this little scene in gasoline and strike the match. We're going to make the violence sing. We'll make their screams into a symphony and her vengeance into a masterpiece of agony. We'll make them regret they were ever born, and we'll make her question if the girl she was ever truly existed.
Forget "Ate Lexie." A name like that is a whisper. We need a name that sounds like a blade being drawn. And the fight... oh, the fight will be a goddamn work of art. A canvas of broken bones and splattered blood.
Let's get our hands dirty. Pass me the pen. It's time to make them bleed.
Chapter 13: The Price of a Soul
"K-Kill us?"
The voice that slithered from the shadows was thick with a rancid cocktail of cheap cologne, stale cigarette smoke, and unearned confidence. Saito Kenji stepped into a grimy pillar of moonlight, his uniform from a lesser rival school looking cheap and ill-fitting. His eyes, small and predatory, roved over my body not like a boy looking at a girl, but like a vulture assessing a fresh corpse.
"What's a frail little thing like you gonna do?" he sneered. "We heard all about the student council president's little sister. Sickly. Fragile. But a real beauty. Looks like the rumors were true on at least one count."
He let the threat hang in the air, a physical weight in the cavernous, rotting warehouse. The air itself was a physical assault—the damp chill of concrete, the acrid stench of rat droppings and old urine, and underneath it all, the faint, coppery tang of my brother's blood.
Another figure detached itself from the oppressive dark. This one was a mountain of gristle and cheap muscle, his face a roadmap of old scars. His name was Gouda. He chuckled, a sound like gravel grinding in a cement mixer.
"Yeah, but the best part is, Onii-san gets a front-row seat," Gouda rasped, hooking a filthy thumb towards the corner where Ren was slumped, a broken marionette in a rusted chair. "Gets to watch his precious imouto get broken. Get tasted." He ran a thick, wet tongue over his chapped lips, his dead eyes fixated on the pulse hammering in my throat. "Bet she tastes sweet..."
"She'll be on her knees before we're done," a third, younger voice piped in. Jiro. A weaselly creature with the overeager cruelty of a hyena pup. "She'll be begging us to fill her up. Begging us to destroy that tight little body."
Nausea coiled in my gut, hot and acidic. The world swam. I could feel Ren's terror, a frantic, silent scream that vibrated in the space between us. He was broken. They had broken him for me. They had used my kind, brilliant, unshakable brother as bait, and now they were dangling him in front of me, enjoying his agony.
But beneath the horror, beneath the wave of sickness, a different kind of cold was spreading through my veins. The fear wasn't gone. It was... changing. Compressing. Crystallizing into something diamond-hard and razor-sharp.
"What a disgusting pig you are, senpai."
My voice was low, devoid of the tremor that had just wracked my body. I spat the honorific like it was poison. My eyes, which had been wide with terror, narrowed into slits of pure, undiluted hatred.
"To think something like you breathes the same air as him."
From the corner, Ren's head snapped up. His one good eye was wild with panic. "S-Samantha... run! Please, just run! Don't worry about me!" Each word was a ragged, blood-flecked gasp, ripped from his throat. He strained against the thick ropes binding him, a guttural sob of frustration and fear tearing from him. He knew what these animals were. He knew what they did to people.
I didn't look at him. I couldn't. If I saw the state of his face again, the rage would consume me before I could think. My entire being was focused on the three monsters in front of me.
"Me, begging?" A smile, thin and utterly devoid of humor, twisted my lips. It felt alien on my face. "No. If anyone begs tonight... it will be all of you."
Samantha, you can't! Mochi's voice was a frantic buzz of static in my skull, a ghost of my former self's panic. There are more of them in the shadows! I can sense at least fifteen others! Even with the System's boost, your stats are too low! This is suicide!
I ignored it. The System hummed inside me, a torrent of illicit power. The 'Basic Hand-to-Hand Combat' skill wasn't just a list of moves; it was a deluge of violent knowledge flooding my muscles, overwriting seventeen years of weakness. I saw them not as people, but as a collection of targets. The temple. The throat. The space between the ribs. The knee. So many fragile places. So many ways to break a thing.
This wasn't about survival anymore. This was about retribution.
Kenji's arrogant smirk faltered. He had expected tears. He had expected pleading. He had not expected this dead-eyed calm, this chilling promise of violence. He took an involuntary step back.
That was all I needed. A crack in his composure.
"Oh?" I let out a soft, airy laugh. "Who said I came alone, senpai-tachi?"
The three of them exchanged uneasy glances. Gouda growled, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
I tilted my head, my gaze drifting to a point somewhere over their shoulders, as if seeing something they couldn't. I let my smile widen, infusing it with every ounce of the 'Charisma' the System had gifted me.
"Earlier..."
Flashback
The dojo was a sanctuary of polished wood and disciplined silence, broken only by the rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack of shins against a heavy bag.
The woman attacking it was a masterpiece of controlled lethality. Her name was Kurosawa Akemi. To the rest of Jounan High, she was the 'Ice Queen'—an untouchable, devastatingly beautiful third-year who moved with the grace of a panther and possessed an aura of chilling indifference.
But to Ren, she was just Akemi. And to me, by extension, she was Akemi-nee. The only person my brother had ever looked at with something other than cool confidence.
Clad in a simple black sports bra and compression shorts, every line of her body was defined muscle. Not the bulky, ugly mass of a bodybuilder, but the dense, corded strength of a predator. Sweat beaded on her brow, but her breathing was even, her expression a mask of pure, meditative focus. Her eyes were closed. She wasn't fighting a bag. She was rehearsing a kill.
On a bench nearby, her phone buzzed. Once. Twice.
Samantha: Akemi-nee, help! Onii-chan is in danger! They have him at the old Fuchu warehouse district, Pier 4! Please!
Akemi didn't stop. Her final kick landed with a deafening crack, the bag groaning on its chain. Only then, with the echo of the blow still hanging in the air, did she stop. Her movements were fluid, unhurried, as she walked to the bench.
She picked up the phone. Her dark eyes scanned the message. Her expression did not change. There was no flicker of alarm, no gasp of shock. The only shift was a subtle hardening of her gaze, the meditative calm sharpening into the focus of a sniper acquiring a target.
Without a word, she wiped the sweat from her neck with a towel, pulled a loose black t-shirt over her head, and snatched a set of keys from her gym bag. They weren't car keys. They were for the sleek, black Kawasaki Ninja that sat in the parking lot like a patient beast of prey.
Moments later, its engine screamed to life, a promise of imminent, violent arrival.
Present
The memory, my desperate gamble, faded. I was back in the reeking dark of the warehouse.
"I bet you didn't know," I said, my voice now light, almost conversational, a horrifying contrast to the grim reality of the room. "My Onii-chan's girlfriend… is Kurosawa Akemi." I let her name hang in the air like the scent of ozone after a lightning strike. "And I have a feeling she's on her way."
Kenji actually scoffed, a pathetic attempt to reclaim his shattered bravado. "Hah! You're kidding me! A loser like your brother is dating the Ice Queen? No fucking way." He spat on the concrete floor, but the gesture was weak, his eyes betraying a flicker of gnawing doubt.
Everyone knew the rumors about Kurosawa Akemi. They said she'd single-handedly dismantled an entire biker gang that had made the mistake of cat-calling her. They said a teacher who'd tried to harass her had 'mysteriously' transferred schools the next day with two broken arms. They were just rumors, of course. But looking at the cold certainty in my eyes, they were starting to feel terrifyingly real.
"Is she lying, Kenji?" Gouda rasped, his sandpaper voice cracking. His eyes, no longer dead, were wide and jittery, darting towards the door. "There's no way the Ice Queen would come to a shithole like this."
"Maybe she's not bluffing," Kenji hissed back, his face slick with a cold sweat. "That girl's a fucking monster. Maybe we should just grab the target's brother and go before—"
"Gouda-senpai is pissing his pants again," Jiro sneered, kicking a rusted oil drum to cover the tremble in his own voice. "There's no way she'd come for this piece of shit!"
My smile vanished. The time for games was over.
"Well then, shut up and fight me, senpai-tachi," I snarled, dropping into a low, balanced stance my body now knew intimately. "Since you're so sure Akemi-nee isn't coming." My eyes flashed with contempt. "Or were you just planning to have your fun with a tied-up girl? I thought you were going to fuck me." I loaded the word with every ounce of disgust I possessed. "Fucking perverts."
From the corner, Ren choked out my name, his voice a ragged plea. "Samantha... don't... your asthma..."
As if on cue, a shrill, digital chime screamed through my mind, drowning out everything else. A red-bordered window flashed in my vision, so bright it burned.
[Main Mission #2: Save Your Older Brother]
[Difficulty: ★★★★★ (EXTREME)]
[Time Limit: 00:06:00]
[PENALTY FOR FAILURE: DEATH & VIOLATION]
Six minutes.
The bluff had bought me time, but not enough. Akemi-nee wouldn't make it. The System was telling me, in no uncertain terms, that this was on me. My brother would die, and I would be… violated. And then I would die.
No.
No.
The thought was not a plea. It was a command. A rejection of reality itself.
"What's wrong, senpai?" My voice dropped to a low purr, a predator toying with its food. "Cat got your tongue?" My eyes swept over Kenji, then Gouda, then Jiro, then to the fifteen other thugs who had started to creep from the shadows, drawn by the commotion. "You said I was frail. You said I was weak. Now... try me."
I took a single step forward, the sound of my school shoe on the gritty floor echoing like a death knell.
"You are all going to pay for what you did to my brother. And I will show you no mercy." My gaze settled on Kenji, the self-proclaimed leader. "Now. Who's first?"
For a moment, there was only the sound of dripping water and panicked, shallow breathing. Gouda, for all his bulk, actually shuffled backward. But Kenji, his pride stung and his authority on the line, let out a roar of fury.
"Fine! I'll break you myself, you little bitch!" He cracked his knuckles. "Don't think you can take all of us!"
He lunged, a telegraphed, clumsy punch aimed at my face.
It was so, so slow.
The world seemed to move through molasses. I sidestepped with an impossible, fluid grace. My own fist, guided by the System's cold logic, shot out. It wasn't aimed at his face. It was aimed at the floating ribs on his left side.
There was a sickening, wet CRACK.
Kenji's eyes bulged. The air left his lungs in a pained whoosh. He crumpled, clutching his side, his face a mask of agony and disbelief.
"Oh? Breaking the one-on-one rule already?" I tutted, as Gouda and Jiro, seeing their leader fall, charged in a panic. "How pathetic, senpai-tachi."
Jiro swung a rusty pipe he'd picked up, a high, whistling arc aimed at my skull. Gouda threw a haymaker that could pulp a melon.
I didn't back away. I flowed forward.
I ducked under the pipe, the wind of its passage stirring my hair. As it passed, I shot my hand out and caught Gouda's massive, incoming fist in my palm. My grip, imbued with a 'D-' rank strength that felt like forged steel, clamped down.
There was a sound like a bundle of dry twigs being snapped. All of them at once.
CRUNCH.
Gouda's roar of rage turned into a shrill, piercing scream of pure agony. His hand was a ruined mess of shattered bones and mangled flesh inside my grip.
"I'll show you pathetic," I snarled, the last vestiges of Kisaragi Samantha burning away, replaced by a cold, animalistic fury.
I didn't let go. Using his own forward momentum, I spun, swinging the screaming, two-hundred-pound man like a weapon and slamming him directly into the charging Jiro. They collapsed in a tangled heap of limbs and curses.
I stalked toward them. Gouda was on the ground, cradling his pulped hand, sobbing, tears and snot streaking his ugly face. Jiro, his eyes wide with a terror he could no longer conceal, tried to scramble away.
I was on him in an instant. My hand shot out and clamped around his throat, my fingers digging into the soft flesh. His breath hitched; his eyes bulged. He clawed at my arm, his fingernails scraping uselessly against my skin.
"Wh-Whose gonna make who beg now, huh?" I hissed, my voice a horrifying, lilting thing. "You wanted to see me on my knees, right? You wanted to taste me?"
With a grunt of exertion, I lifted him. His feet kicked feebly, dangling a foot off the ground. His face was bloating, turning a grotesque, plum color. His struggles weakened.
"Pl...ease..." he gurgled, a pathetic bubble of spit popping on his lips.
My fingers tightened.
There was a final, wet, sickening CRACK that echoed in the cavernous warehouse.
Jiro's body went limp, a dead weight in my hand. I tossed him aside like a bag of garbage. He landed with a soft, wet thud, his head lolling at an impossible angle.
One down.
The silence that followed was absolute. It was heavier, more profound than before. It was the silence of seventeen men realizing they were not the predators in this room.
I turned my head slowly, my blood-flecked face a mask of terrifying calm. My eyes found Gouda, who had frozen, his whimpering cut short. His gaze was locked on Jiro's corpse.
"Now, it's your turn, senpai."
He screamed and tried to crawl away, dragging his ruined hand. I walked over, my steps measured, and placed my foot on his ankle. I pressed down. Another sharp SNAP. He shrieked, a raw, animal sound.
"Please... please don't kill me," he blubbered, tears carving clean paths through the grime on his face. "I have a family... a little sister..."
I knelt beside him, my face inches from his. The smell of his fear was thick and cloying. "You should have thought of her," I whispered, my voice devoid of all emotion, "before you decided to hurt my brother."
I raised my foot and brought it down on his knee. And again. And again. The wet crunching of bone and cartilage was the only sound. When I was done, both of his legs were twisted, useless things. His screams had dissolved into choked, pathetic whimpers.
"I'm not going to kill you," I murmured, grabbing his face, my fingers digging into his cheeks, forcing him to look at me. "Not yet. But I'm going to make you wish I would."
And I began to break his fingers. One by one. Methodically. The little finger on his good hand first. SNAP. Then the next. SNAP. Then the thumb. CRUNCH. His muffled, agonized cries were a symphony to the rage-beast that now wore my skin.
It wasn't a fight. It was a dissection.
When I finally stood, Gouda was a broken, twitching heap on the floor, conscious but shattered beyond repair. The other fifteen thugs were statues of pure terror. Kenji, his ribs on fire, had pushed himself against a pillar, his face ashen.
I turned to them, my school uniform spattered with blood, my eyes burning with a cold, starless light.
"Who's next?"