Vol 2 – Chapter 1: Hot Topics
Monday. The city streets throbbed with the usual morning tide of students and workers. Trudging the familiar path to Suzaku High, Yomikawa Tsuko felt a universe removed from the person she’d been just a few short, jarring days ago.
From the outside, she was a perfect replica. Not even the keenest eye, not even someone who had known the real Yomikawa Tsuko intimately, could detect the imposter within, the alien consciousness now piloting this borrowed flesh. A subtle strangeness, perhaps, but easily dismissed.
This flawless disguise was a small mercy. It meant less energy wasted on constant vigilance, on the exhausting charade. Her mind, or what was left of her mind, could uncoil slightly, allowing her to observe this familiar world through an entirely new, and deeply unsettling, lens.
Of course, that fragile peace applied only to the oblivious masses. For dangerous variables like Ōgami Yōsuke, her internal alarms remained on high alert. He was the unpredictable type, the kind whose intuition cut like a surgeon's scalpel, peeling back layers of deception to expose the raw truth beneath – often with nothing more than a gut feeling, a chilling certainty that defied logic.
To prevent another… complication… Yomikawa Tsuko had already laid her plans. After school, a visit to the club was in order. And Ōgami Yōsuke would receive a quiet, carefully calibrated lesson. Just a little something to discourage further meddling.
“Did you catch the latest ‘Sleepwalker’ episode? The soundtrack, the story – pure nightmare fuel! And the main guy, so gutsy, walking right into that haunted house to investigate.”
“Totally! And he’s gorgeous! The girl, though? Useless. Just screams all the time. So annoying. Seriously, what does he even see in her?”
“Right? I can’t stand her! Why don’t characters like that just get killed off? Maybe we should start a petition to the writers.”
Drifting past two chattering girls, Yomikawa instinctively slowed her pace, a phantom limb of her old habits twitching. Eavesdropping. Their uniforms marked them as Suzaku High students; the drama under discussion was undoubtedly the hit occult series everyone was buzzing about.
So this is the female sphere? How utterly… petty. A grim thought. If this was the depth of their concerns, then the prospect of closer association with Kana and Junko from the club, especially during events like outdoor group activities, felt like a looming sentence. She could only pray their minds weren't similarly cluttered with such trivialities.
“But her off-the-shoulder top in that one scene? So hot. Definitely want one.”
“Oh my god, me too! We should totally hit the mall this weekend and hunt for it.”
The conversation, predictably, nosedived into even shallower waters. Yomikawa was steeling herself for more when she sensed an abrupt shift. Both girls had gone silent. And they were staring. Directly at her.
Compromised? Impossible. She’d executed this maneuver countless times, a ghost in the urban machine. Never detected, never even a flicker of notice.
Yomikawa’s expression remained a placid mask. She spoke first, her voice calm. “Can I help you with something?”
The girls’ faces soured, their eyes performing a slow, insolent crawl from her shoes to her hair and back down. The same look of disdain they’d reserved for the fictional ‘Sleepwalker’ heroine now curdled their features. Lips curled, transforming ordinary faces into masks of petty ugliness.
“What’s her problem? Total creep, listening in on us. And she kind of has that same annoying face as the actress.”
“And her outfit? Disgusting. The skirt’s way too short. Thinks she’s all that just because she’s a third-year.”
With a final volley of muttered insults, they scurried off.
Yomikawa remained frozen, a strange disquiet prickling at her. Had the transfer into Senpai’s body somehow degraded her finely tuned skills of observation, her talent for invisibility? Or were these two merely an anomaly, hyper-sensitive? This was a game she’d played, and won, for years.
And their venom towards that actress… truly perplexing. To be judged so harshly for a mere coincidental resemblance… It made no sense.
The puzzle still turning in her mind, a voice cut through her thoughts.
“Tsuko-chan, morning!”
“Ah… Manatsu-san. Good morning.”
Nakamori Manatsu was her usual picture of self-effacement: hair in old-fashioned braids that few girls wore anymore, thick glasses dominating her face, school bag clutched like a shield against her chest. She radiated an almost painful timidity.
“Those two just now… they were awful, weren’t they?” Manatsu’s gaze flickered towards the retreating figures.
“Hm? Oh, them. Yes, a rather unprovoked attack,” Yomikawa offered, a neutral observation. But Manatsu’s reply was an unexpected piece of data.
Nakamori Manatsu leaned in, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s jealousy, Tsuko-chan. Plain and simple. They’re jealous of how you look. So, not unprovoked at all, really. But I suppose that’s an emotion you wouldn’t easily recognize.”
“I see.” Yomikawa processed this. So, beauty was a double-edged sword, a beacon that drew unwanted attention. That explained why they’d noticed her. Her skills hadn’t necessarily dulled; the game itself had changed, the difficulty subtly ramped up.
Jealousy… The concept was an abstract, a word without corresponding sensation in her own emotional lexicon. Given her own previous life – her family, her original appearance, the cloud of rumors that had always clung to her – being an object of envy was a scenario she’d never encountered.
“Anyway, Tsuko-chan, don’t let insignificant people like that bother you,” Nakamori Manatsu said, steering the conversation into safer waters. “Oh, you were out sick for a bit. Are you feeling all better now?”
Yomikawa nodded, her gaze analytical as she studied Manatsu’s face behind the distorting lenses. “Yes, completely recovered.”
An interesting observation: Nakamori Manatsu wasn’t inherently unattractive. Beneath the frumpy hairstyle and the barrier of those glasses, her features were delicate, even pretty. A deliberate camouflage? Why?
“That’s such a relief! If you’d missed today too, I was actually going to come visit you.” A bright, genuine smile lit up Nakamori Manatsu’s face.
“A visit really isn’t necessary.” The thought of anyone from school invading the house, her current sanctuary, was deeply unwelcome. “Speaking of which, one of the girls from our club had a bit of a scare during the outdoor actitivity. I wonder if she’s been attending classes.”
“Oh, that’s right! And any word on that underclassman from your club? The one who vanished? You invited him to join, didn’t you, Tsuko-chan? I hope that doesn’t cause you any problems. I’ve heard a lot of whispers around school… people saying he must have killed someone and then ran.”
A spark of interest ignited in Yomikawa’s mind. “Is that a major topic of discussion in our class?”
“Not so much our class, but the first-years are definitely buzzing about it. A lot of them knew the missing boy, Kagehara Tetsuya, from middle school. Some were his classmates for years.” Nakamori Manatsu paused, then her voice dropped again, becoming hushed. “And a few of them are saying… they’ve actually seen Kagehara Tetsuya lurking around recently. Who knows if it’s true.”
“There are probably also fantastic tales circulating, like ‘I personally witnessed Kagehara-san murdering Tanaka Erika,’ I imagine. Most of that is usually fabricated nonsense.” Yomikawa’s expression remained carefully neutral, but a cold calculation ran beneath the surface: If the authorities apprehend him, Lord Mask-Taker’s true nature might remain concealed, but my little diary deception will be blown wide open. It would be… inconvenient… if he wasn’t so good at hiding. “Aside from Kagehara, any other… hot topics making the rounds at school?”
Nakamori Manatsu nodded, her eyes widening slightly. “Definitely. ‘Sleepwalker’.”
“‘Sleepwalker’? That occult TV drama? Huh.” Yomikawa feigned mild surprise. “I wouldn’t have pictured you as a fan of that kind of show, Manatsu-san.” The image of the timid Nakamori Manatsu engrossed in such dark fare was incongruous.
“No, not that ‘Sleepwalker’!” Nakamori Manatsu waved her hands, a genuine tremor of fear in her gesture. She leaned in even closer, her voice sinking to a barely audible whisper, as if uttering the words too loudly might summon something dreadful from the shadows. “I heard… I heard someone at our school, someone real… has started sleepwalking. And it’s… it’s not normal. It’s incredibly bizarre, and terrifying.”
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