I Became the Final Subjugation Target of That Era’s Light Novel

It was almost midnight when I returned home.

Koko was walking with big steps as if she had enjoyed her day, bouncing along.

Could she really be that happy?

Well, considering Koko’s mental age and the fact that she received a cute doll for free, it made sense.

Every time Koko took a step, the tail of the Kuro doll in her arms went up and down repeatedly. The doll had strong legs, making it feel like the two front legs draped over Koko’s arms were intentionally snuggling in.

“Did you have fun?”

“Yup!”

Koko smiled happily and nodded at my question.

I see, she had fun.

That’s all that mattered.

The friends had only been a bit flustered at first, but after that, they quickly accepted Koko, so it should be fine.

Particularly, Kaoru seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.

As we walked along the street, the plastic bag in my hand crinkled. Inside were a few breads.

These were a quick fix for breakfast the next morning. Cooking at home throughout the summer vacation just didn’t feel right.

The sound of crinkling, our footsteps, and the distant sounds of cars created a calm atmosphere.

It seemed like there were quite a few houses enduring the heat without air conditioning, as the sound of a TV came through the open window.

Today… I think I’ll be able to sleep well. I’m not too tired, nor am I overflowing with energy—it’s just the right state.

I’ll go in, wash up, dry my hair, and then lay down with the blanket.

Thinking this, I walked through the hot summer night.

“…Huh?”

Suddenly, I saw something a bit strange.

My neighborhood wasn’t the kind that could be called secluded. While it wasn’t Tokyo, Saitama is right next to it. I could take the subway and reach Minato Ward in the heart of Tokyo in just an hour.

While it may not be as affluent, most houses were quite well-maintained, giving an overall clean impression of the neighborhood.

With that impression, it wasn’t a place that would typically be noisy. There were plenty of people since there were so many houses, but the likelihood of all those people bustling out together was almost none.

Yet, for some reason, there were people gathered.

Right in front of the apartment we were about to enter.

However, it was obvious that this wasn’t just a gathering of regular people out for a stroll.

“…”

I slowly approached the crowd near my house since it was blocking our path.

They weren’t facing us but seemed to be vigilantly guarding something on the apartment side.

“Hey?”

One middle-aged man with a very short haircut turned to us upon hearing our footsteps.

He had a relatively broad forehead but didn’t seem to be bald. From that, it looked like he intentionally kept his hair like that.

There were no scars or tattoos on his face, but he had a rather menacing appearance.

“…Are you from the Yamashita family?”

“Ah, yes.”

When I spoke, the man nodded.

“Kurosawa… Yang?”

The man awkwardly added ‘Yang’ while alternating his gaze between Koko and me.

“…Is something happening at your house?”

I didn’t know who this man was, but it was clear he knew me, so it was no big issue. The Yamashita family wouldn’t harm me.

“Um, that’s…”

The man seemed confused about whether to speak formally or informally.

Am I getting treated as a pretty important person?

I didn’t say it was fine to drop the formalities.

I couldn’t just dictate the family rules from my side, and it would be troublesome if he happened to drop his politeness only to get reprimanded by a senior later.

After all, these were true Yakuza, who would indeed chop off fingers for mistakes.

Without waiting for him to answer, I looked toward the house.

“…Kagami?”

There was someone in front of my house on the second floor.

From just looking at the back… it was Kagami. The white dress and her black hair draped behind her perfectly matched my image of her.

However.

There was something a bit different.

I wasn’t sure how to explain it. Just a ‘feeling,’ you know? Perhaps it was the posture or the build, something subtly off that caught my instinctive attention.

If not that, maybe I sensed the unease from those nearby. If this was really Kagami, the Yamashita family wouldn’t need to be on guard against her. She would always come and chat with me whenever she wanted.

“…So, is everyone gathered here for a reason?”

Did she often hang around nearby? Well, after all that happened last time, Kagami probably strengthened her defenses, and maybe I just hadn’t noticed.

No, actually, there were a lot of normal-looking people among the crowd. Like a twenty-something guy in slightly shabby clothes, or a middle-aged man in a suit who looked average. It was just that the Yakuza-like people stood out too much.

“We were trying to block the way, but we don’t really know how it got that far,” the man finally decided on a formal way to speak to me.

“There were definitely kids scattered around.”

“…Did you call Kagami?”

“Yes. I think she’ll arrive shortly.”

Hmm.

I paused for a moment, looking at him.

“…Do you have a knife?”

He nodded and pulled out a folding knife from his suit jacket.

Um, are you carrying that all the time? Don’t just whip out a knife like it’s nothing. It’d be better to shout, ‘Hey, does anyone have a knife?’ and hope a lackey could fetch some cutter from a toolbox. I’m honestly a bit scared.

Gripping the rather intimidating folding knife in his right hand, I started to move forward.

I didn’t intend to stab anyone. If needed, I was thinking of just cutting my wrist to buy a little time.

No, to think that I’d cut my wrist just to buy some time, I might definitely be losing my mind. No matter how you look at it, accepting self-harm as a normal thing isn’t exactly a healthy state of mind.

I can understand why Yuka is worried.

…If only Jjapgurasu’s tastes weren’t so terrible, that would have been nice.

I sighed deeply and moved ahead.

The crowd…. well, not really the crowd, but it felt like they were tightening their encirclement toward the apartment alongside me.

Who could that be?

…I had an inkling of who it might be.

“…Wait a moment.”

As I said that, the moving people all stopped.

“…”

I could feel the gazes asking, “Why?” and took a deep breath.

“Wait, Koko.”

I held back Koko, who was about to leap forward.

“Cotone?”

She turned to me, still holding the cat doll, which seemed like she sensed something too.

Did she think of charging out before the others had a chance?

“…It might be a person.”

“Uu?”

I wasn’t certain.

But…

…My senses didn’t feel that intense.

The reason I stopped was that I felt a chill run down my spine, as if I’d encountered a Yōkai.

Considering I had passed through quite a number of people’s watchful gazes to reach before my house, it seemed reasonable to assume that there was some sort of trick at play on their side.

However, unlike the spine-chilling encounters with true Yōkais, this wasn’t quite the same.

It felt more like a ticklish feeling, as if someone were playfully brushing my back just enough to evade my awareness.

I reached out my hand toward Koko’s front, pulling her behind me, and said, “…You.”

I didn’t speak too loudly, thinking they might not have heard me at first.

The woman with long black hair cascading down her back stood blankly, staring at my door, and after a few seconds, she turned her head slightly towards me, as though realizing it was my voice calling her.

The profile I could see when her hair moved aside was Kagami’s face.

A slender and delicate facial line.

Skin so pristine with not a single blemish.

I could barely tell from afar whether her eyes were closed or open.

Slowly, and languidly, the woman turned her head and body toward me—

“…Kagami?”

Someone from the back murmured that under their breath, commenting on how similar she looked to Kagami.

“No.”

But someone rebutted that statement.

“…”

Gazing down at me from the slight lean against the corridor railing, the woman stared silently for a long time.

Finally, after a while, she spoke with a voice matching her languid looks, “To think you could just stand there like that.”

“…”

It was Kagami’s voice.

But the tone was distinctly different. Kagami never spoke in such a languid manner. Sure, she sometimes elongated her words intentionally or paused to draw out tension, but this was far from a voice that sounded like it’d start yawning any moment.

“Why are you here?”

The woman who claimed to be Kagami’s sister.

The one who supposedly waited for 15 years and finally gave up and left.

And, the one who was also Yamashita Yuu’s mother.

…She was also the one who gifted solitude to Mori.

Thinking of the stories I had heard from Kagami and her actions, she seemed to be filled with jealousy and had a rather impatient character.

“I just can’t understand.”

“…”

“Why now? Why?”

Tilting her head, she only continued to speak what she wanted.

“What are you?”

“…”

“You should have been a total clueless idiot, right? Someone who wouldn’t even know how to eat without someone feeding them. That’s how it was until last year, right?”

What? I’m not so sure about that.

I should have known if I had experienced it last year.

Besides, the storyline of [Tokyo Slayers] starts this year. Even if something from last year came up, it would have only appeared as a flashback.

Given that, I hadn’t read all the parts featuring the character Kurosawa Cotone, so I had no idea how she was depicted in the original.

I could guess she existed. That’s quite evident by my presence right now.

“…So, I’ve thought of a few things.”

The fake Kagami slowly continued speaking as she looked at me.

“Kagami painstakingly implanted knowledge into that clueless you. One by one, carefully. Honestly, I wouldn’t think Kagami would go that far, but you never know, right? You’re the result standing before me now.”

“…”

“Am I right?”

I hesitated for a moment. What should I respond?

But thinking about it, I didn’t need to strictly tell the truth.

After all, Kagami had helped me quite a bit. What I returned to her in comparison were misunderstandings, more misunderstandings, and far worse misunderstandings, but it seemed like Kagami enjoyed it or something, as she always acted without a care.

“…What if that’s true?”

“Hmmm?”

The fake Kagami tilted her head while contemplating in response to my question.

“No matter how I think about it, it seems strange~ Would Kagami really go that far? Could it be that she’s changed her mind? Decided to be a good mother?”

“You act as if you were a good mother.”

“I was a good mother.”

The fake Kagami said.

“I raised Yuu so beautifully. Even now, isn’t Yuu still longing for me?”

Yuu misses her.

Damn it, at least I couldn’t dispute that fact.

“That… if it weren’t for that strange girl, that empty seat would surely remind me of her.”

Seeing her speak with genuine sorrow and sadness, I retracted my previous thought.

…Not that I thought Mori was completely normal. No matter how you slice it, who would propose marrying someone who’s practically her father in age?

Especially when there’s a child who calls her ‘sister.’

But.

What she said implied that the seat should have reminded her of the Yamashita family, right? No matter how I looked at it, that wasn’t a normal line of thinking.

“Why are you here?”

“Of course, I came to see you at least once.”

The fake Kagami replied.

“…May I ask you something?”

Then she asked me.

“…”

Whether I wanted to answer or not didn’t seem to concern her at all as she continued speaking.

“You’re not a god, are you?”

“…”

Wait, you called me ‘you’ from the start. At the very least, Kagami even uses ‘you’ when she refers to me.

I didn’t mind if she didn’t have to use honorifics all the time, but it was a bit annoying whenever she intentionally chose such a condescending manner of speaking.

…I just thought this in my head.

I had no idea what she might do.

“Judging by your reaction, it seems I might be right.”

“What would you have done if I were a god?”

“If I had died, I would’ve accepted that easily. And I wouldn’t have felt wronged about it. If I had addressed a god with such disrespectful terms, it wouldn’t be strange if I was judged and my life took from me.”

“…Once you die, that should be the end.”

“Death is merely the beginning. At least if my death proves there is a god in this world, then what I am currently enduring becomes meaningless. So, what’s the point of living?”

“…”

That…

Isn’t that a bit too extreme?

Kagami’s thoughts can be extreme as well, but this feels even more extreme.

Well, given the situation where a truck is loaded with monsters and then crashes right into you, I guess it fits. After all, people were inside that truck too.

And this was blatantly a case where someone died, but it was pushed aside as just a traffic accident, wasn’t it?

The government in this world is terrifying. If I think that such incidents could be happening everywhere, it becomes even more daunting.

“So, if you get to see me, what then?”

“I’ve learned that I don’t need to die, and I can keep living and continue what I was supposed to do.”

The fake Kagami’s eyes shifted toward my knife.

“…”

“Oh my, I’d be scared to death if I’m here. I should probably take my leave.”

After having a bit of energy from our conversation, she said that and raised one hand into the air.

Then, she started to fiddle around with something ‘in the air.’

“Let’s go, Wetherly.”

“…”

Wetherly?

I stared at the air, but there was nothing there.

…Don’t tell me she’s conjuring something like loneliness to keep her company again?

Giving it a name and everything.

Seeing the fake Kagami slowly make her way down the stairs, I intentionally distanced myself from the stairs. The distance was already quite far; I didn’t want to end up touching the woman coming down.

And I also detested the thought of colliding with whatever transparent thing she might have.

“Uu…”

Koko behind me made a sound like a warning.

Hair brushed past me.

Though the fake Kagami completely ignored Koko’s presence. Was she that confident?

As that woman made to leave, creak, the sound of a car reaching us echoed.

A car that had rushed to a stop in the nearby alley.

From there, emerged men, all with Yakuza attire.

And then, Kagami.

“…”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

What would the nearby residents think? If they thought the apartment was a Yakuza hideout and reported, it wouldn’t be too strange.

Fortunately, I didn’t hear any police car sirens just yet.

“…”

As Kagami stepped out of the car, she paused as if rooted to the spot.

Then she glared at the fake Kagami—no, her sister. Despite her usually narrow eyes widening slightly, made her look even sharper than usual, like a blade.

However, Kagami’s sister continued on without halting her steps.

Arrogantly, as if she had no need to deal with everything present here, she simply walked past the crowd.

No one tried to block her way. Seems like everyone sensed something from her.

And I thought that was extremely wise. If someone had blocked her, she would probably have vanished without a trace.

The woman walked quite a distance before turning her body slightly toward us.

It was quite a distance, and with her half-closed eyes like Kagami, I couldn’t see where her gaze landed accurately, but—

Still, I was sure that she had seen me.

“…Are you hurt anywhere?”

Kagami approached me, her expression tense as she asked.

“I’m fine.”

I answered while sliding the knife to the side. Seeing the man who had cautiously lent me the knife take it back, I turned to Kagami.

“…Was that woman just now your sister?”

Kagami’s face hardened as she nodded.

“Have you heard of Wetherly?”

“Wetherly?”

Kagami tilted her head.

It was clear she hadn’t heard of that name. Even if it was an act, I wouldn’t know how to find out if it was true. I couldn’t torture Kagami for information.

“Just now, she spoke to someone in the air… I think she might have created something new alongside that chunk of meat.”

“…”

For a moment, Kagami fell silent, lost in thought.

“…So, that woman is Yamashita’s mom?”

Thinking back, Yamashita did radiate some similar vibes. Though she looked way more girl-like, completely normal, and even sweet.

What kind of person was she around Yamashita that made him long for her even now?

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