The Truth of the Prophetic Dream…

【My heart aches so, so much at this moment.】

…

【I love you so much, so why must you do these things?】

…

【You’ve changed.】

…

【And so, I can only use my love to purify you.】

…

【Don’t you worry. I have much, much more love to give.】

…

【Accept my love.】

…

【My dear Young Master Ewan.】

…

“Hah… hah…”

Ewan jolted awake from the nightmare, gasping for breath like a drowning man, the phantom words still echoing in his skull.

“Was I… dreaming again?”

“No, wait. This was that dream. The prophetic one.”

“The person in the dream… her voice was clearer this time. I think she was…”

“Who was she?”

He shook his head, trying desperately to grasp the fleeting image. He felt like he was on the very precipice of knowing, that the identity of the person who would one day give him the death of a thousand cuts was just within his reach, but it remained stubbornly, maddeningly obscured.

“Damn it, my head hurts.”

As he struggled to think, a wave of memories, accompanied by a sharp, throbbing pain at the back of his head, flooded his mind.

“That’s right… what happened before…”

“I remember… Anne. She was trying to drug me.”

“But I saw through her plan.”

“And so… she resorted to force… and knocked me out?”

The intense, throbbing pain and the jarring sensation of his memories returning made Ewan break out in a cold sweat. He instinctively tried to curl up, to struggle against the lingering fog in his mind.

Clang.

A sharp, metallic sound echoed in the room. His movement was cut short, replaced by a cold, sharp pain in his wrists and ankles.

“This is…”

Ewan looked to his sides.

Cold, heavy iron shackles were clamped around his wrists and ankles, chaining him to the wall and restricting his movement, forcing him into a spread-eagled position, like a martyr on a cross. His captor had at least shown him the small mercy of allowing him to sit on the floor, so that the imprisonment wasn’t a constant, moment-to-moment torture.

“But being imprisoned is the torture!”

Ewan rattled his chains, his voice a furious roar that echoed in the small, dim room. “Who did this?! Let me go! Do you have any idea who I am?!”

“Oh, my. You’re awake, Young Master.”

A familiar, gentle voice spoke from in front of him.

“Seeing you so full of energy is a great relief to my heart.”

“You… Anne?”

Ewan looked up and saw Anne, still in her prim and proper maid’s uniform, her expression as serene as ever. In an instant, the bitterness of betrayal and the white-hot fury of his imprisonment surged through him, and he began to struggle with renewed, desperate violence.

“Why did you do this, Anne?!”

“Why did you betray me?! Why did you lock me up?!”

“Did someone put you up to this? Or have you been a spy in this household all along?!”

“Betrayal? Coercion? A spy?” Anne looked at him, a flicker of genuine, innocent confusion in her eyes. “What are you talking about, Young Master? How could I possibly betray you? I am, and always will be, your loyal and devoted personal maid.”

“Nonsense! Does a loyal and devoted maid knock out her own master and chain him to a wall?!”

“Did I not explain before? This could not be helped. If you had not been so clever at that moment, Young Master, and had just obediently drunk your tea, you would not have had to suffer so.”

“And be drugged and then imprisoned by you?” Ewan sneered.

“Mm, the end result would have been much the same. But as for your other wild theories—betrayal, coercion, being a spy—I assure you, none of them are true. I have always been your personal maid. From the moment I came to your side ten years ago, when you were just a boy of eight, it has always been this way. I exist only for you, Young Master.”

“Then why?!”

“Ah, have you already forgotten what I said?”

“What did you say?”

“Just before I knocked you out…”

Anne suddenly knelt before him, her soft, pliant body pressing against his in an intimate, possessive embrace. A faint floral scent filled the air, and the exquisite sensation of her touch made Ewan’s mind go blank for a dizzying moment.

She leaned in close, her breath warm and sweet against his ear as she whispered, “I said… that everything I am doing is to put you back on the right track.”

“What… what ‘right track’?”

“Why, of course…”

Slurp—

Anne suddenly extended her small, pink tongue and drew a slow, deliberate line up his cheek. The sudden, wet, and shockingly intimate sensation made Ewan instinctively try to pull back, but he was chained, cornered, with absolutely nowhere to run.

“…the right track where you, my dear Young Master, belong to me,” she whispered, her prim and proper face now flushed with a deep crimson blush, like a shy young girl confessing to her one true love. “Forever, and completely. From the inside out, from head to toe, from your body to your soul. Every strand of your hair, every drop of your blood, every scent you exude… all of it, mine.”

But the meaning behind her sweet, honeyed words was anything but.

“What—”

Ewan’s mind went completely blank. The last few minutes had been a sensory and psychological overload, and his brain had short-circuited, entering a state of total system failure.

Just then, that faint floral scent wafted into his nostrils again, jolting his senses and pulling him back to a reality he desperately wished he could escape.

Because he remembered that scent.

“Why didn’t I realize it sooner?”

In that prophetic dream, the killer who was going to give him the death of a thousand cuts… her voice and her face had been a blur, a distorted nightmare. But one thing had remained constant.

The mysterious, cloying floral scent that had clung to her.

And that scent… was identical to the one coming from Anne right now.

The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. He slowly, mechanically, turned his head to look at the girl who was clinging to him so tightly.

Anne, who had always presented herself as the very picture of prim and proper decorum, was now greedily, desperately inhaling his scent. Every so often, she would lick his cheek or his neck, a look of blissful, almost orgasmic satisfaction on her face, as if she were savoring the most delicious meal of her life. The pathological, feverish blush on her cheeks had not faded for a single moment.

And now, Ewan finally, truly understood. The emotion hidden deep within her eyes, the one that was now leaking out, unable to be contained any longer…

…It was a possessiveness as deep, as dark, and as all-consuming as the Abyss itself.

“So… that’s what this was?” he whispered, his voice trembling.

“The truth of the prophetic dream.”

“Anne, my personal maid, the one who has been by my side day and night… is a yandere?”

As all the terrifying pieces clicked into place, Ewan felt his teeth begin to chatter. Plenty of people enjoyed yandere characters in novels and anime. But enjoying them from a safe distance and actually being the object of their terrifying, obsessive affection were two completely different, and infinitely more dangerous, things. Especially an ultimate-level yandere who would knock you out and chain you to a wall at a moment’s notice. This was a genuinely life-threatening situation! The ghost of Makoto Itou’s severed head was looking down on him from the heavens and nodding grimly!

“But this is wrong! This is all wrong!” his mind screamed.

“Shouldn’t this kind of insane, yandere plotline happen to the protagonist?!”

“I’m just a disposable, run-of-the-mill blond villain! What have I possibly done to deserve this?! This is a flag for the main character, not for me!”

“Protagonist?! Where is the protagonist?! Somebody, please, save me!”