What Grudge, What Grievance

The atmosphere was a bit heavy, thick with the phantom scent of blood and despair.

Yukino pursed her thin lips, her gaze lowered as she analyzed the situation. “We don’t know if the girl who was captured is dead or alive. So far, we’ve only found some traces she left behind. We haven’t actually encountered her yet.”

I squeezed my fingers deeper into Exusiai’s soft, pliant ones. She considerately parted her fingers slightly to let mine in, interlocking them with hers. I felt a little more at ease and said, “We’re on the third floor now. This dormitory building only has four floors. If a girl was really captured and brought here, then she should be on the top floor, the fourth floor… unless she’s in one of the locked rooms we’ve already passed.”

“By the way,” Exusiai, who was holding my hand, suddenly interjected, her crisp voice sounding quietly, “are we about to have another vision? It feels like it’s about time for the next episode.”

As soon as she finished speaking, as if in response to her, my vision suddenly went white, as if a teammate had thrown a flashbang, and I entered that sunny dormitory room again.

I could even feel the warm temperature of the sun in the vision. The room was very bright, as beautiful as a painting representing youth.

The long-haired girl with the influencer face was punching and kicking the cute girl with the round face.

The dull thuds of fists and feet hitting flesh mixed with pleas for mercy. In a pure white vase on the corner of a long table, lilies and small daisies were arranged, beautiful and pure under the sunlight, a stark contrast to the ugliness unfolding.

The small and cute round-faced girl was curled up in a corner, only daring to beg for mercy, not daring to fight back. But the influencer-faced girl showed no signs of stopping.

Perhaps feeling that the noise was disturbing the afternoon tranquility, an overexposed figure lying on a bunk picked up a phone, turned on the speaker, and played a gentle and beautiful piece of music. The music and sunlight intertwined, making the afternoon so intoxicating.

The long-haired influencer-faced girl finally stopped her assault, not out of pity or because she realized her mistake, but simply because she was tired and had no more energy. She panted heavily, looking at the cute girl curled up in the corner, sobbing silently, a contemptuous sneer on her lips.

The white light suddenly collapsed like a dying star, contracting to a single point before disappearing. My vision was once again occupied by the bone-chilling gloom and darkness.

I heard the cracking sound of knuckles. Looking towards the sound, I saw Saber clenching her fair, slender fists, her knuckles white.

Our dorm’s Big Brother, who was usually so flippant in front of us, seemed to have been enraged by the vision just now. Her beautiful face was tense, and she squeezed out an angry voice from her throat. “I hope the girl who was hitting people has already graduated. Otherwise, I can’t guarantee that if I run into her at school one day, I won’t be able to stop myself from rushing up and beating her up!”

Yukino’s expression was also a bit scary, her usual calm replaced by a cold fury. “I hate people who bully others like this the most.”

Yukino and Saber, after turning into these soft-looking appearances, had almost made me forget what hot-blooded people they used to be.

Saber, as our dorm’s Big Brother, was actually a repeating student. The boarding school she had repeated at was full of hooligans and delinquents. The number of fights she got into each day was probably more than the number of meals she ate. Her tough-guy personality was also developed during this period.

Yukino looked gentle and refined, a kind literary youth, but the high school she went to wasn’t exactly a good one either. In three years, she had made friends with many rough-and-tumble guys from society, and she herself was no pushover.

The common point between Saber and Yukino was that you couldn’t tell anything from their usual appearance. One was a silent tough guy, the other was a polite literary youth. Neither of them would actively bully others. But if they were bullied, faced danger, or saw something that angered them happening right in front of them, both would transform and become far more ferocious than the original aggressor.

Except for me, there was no one easy to mess with in our dorm. Even Exusiai, who was only interested in picking up girls, had been in fights in high school. She had told us that she had been in a total of three fights in her three years of high school, one each year, and all against the same person.

…What kind of deep-seated hatred is that?!! That’s a fated rivalry!

Getting back to the topic, Yukino and Saber, thoroughly enraged by the vision, were determined to get to the bottom of it, to find out who this girl who was always bullying others was, and to let her have a taste of being punched and kicked herself.

Yukino and Saber took the lead, rushing out of the room without stopping, wanting to go to the top floor to uncover all the hidden secrets.

But just as we stepped out of the room, a bright flashlight beam shone on us from the far end of the corridor.

My leg, which had just stepped out of the room, instantly froze. My hand, holding Exusiai’s, also tightened, and my heart started pounding.

Besides us, the only other person in this abandoned dormitory building was that homeless man.

I could feel Saber and Yukino immediately assume an offensive stance, seemingly ready to rush forward, capture this homeless man, and pry out the bad things he had done and what he might know about the visions.

However, the homeless man, who was quite a distance from us, spoke first. His rough voice echoed emptily in the corridor. “Have you found anything?”

He called out to us from afar.

His words stunned all of us.

…Have we found anything?

What could we possibly find that you, the culprit, wouldn’t know?? Why are you even asking us?

Do you actually mean, “Have you seen my masterpieces? They’re great, aren’t they!”? If so, this guy is a complete and utter pervert!

The homeless man at the far end of the corridor, seeing that we didn’t respond, shouted again, “I’m the uncle you met at the entrance of this building! I figured my warning probably wouldn’t work and you’d still break in. And I was right. You have to be careful, there might be something dangerous hiding in here!”

His words left us completely bewildered. After a pause to catch his breath, he continued to shout, “I’m looking for my daughter. Someone told me my daughter is in this building!”

Daughter?

I was shocked. Could our previous judgment have been wrong? The “daughter” this middle-aged man was talking about was obviously the girl who had left her hair, fingernails, and teeth in the trash cans, the girl who was imprisoned here. Could he just be a father who had painstakingly tracked his missing daughter here?

Yukino’s expression remained unchanged, not letting her guard down in the slightest. She asked in her snow-like voice, “What proof do you have that we can believe you?”

“Proof?” The uncle on the other side was a little surprised, clearly not expecting that he would need to prove himself.

Just then, a series of thump-thump-thump footsteps suddenly erupted from the darkness above our heads.