Murder Princess and the Summer Death Camp Page 3

  “Maaan, this gas mask is such a hindrance. Oof, come on…!” Renko, who had tossed aside her rucksack, was carefully removing her clothes. She placed both hands on the hem of her jersey, and without hesitation lifted it up.

  “……”

  What the hell is she doing all of a sudden?

  With Kyousuke and the others looking on in astonishment, Renko finished removing her top. Turning her back to the sparkling water, she threw out her chest with pride.

  “Ta-daaaaaa! How do you like my sexy bathing suit form?!”

  Renko, clad in a black bikini, struck a cheerful pose.

  Her porcelain skin shone under the rays of the summer sun. Her long legs drew elegant lines, her narrow waist was accented by her charming navel, and more eye-catching than anything else, her voluptuous bosom looked as though it might spill out at any moment. The valley formed between her breasts was deep and inviting, and though only a small part of the overall picture, it was truly the best part.

  “Kksshh. You’re all gaping. Could it be that my boobs are too amazing, and you’ve been instantly bewitched? Oh nooo, these are certainly frightening weapons, if I say so myself!” Bubbling with pride, Renko placed her hands on her breasts.

  Looking directly at her, Kyousuke mumbled:

  “…If only the gas mask wasn’t there.”

  The moment his eyes moved from Renko’s tantalizing body to the ominous gas mask covering her face, the passion raging through his own body rapidly cooled.

  “Whaa?!” Renko complained as Kyousuke relaxed, released from various types of “stiffening.”

  In an effort to emphasize her boobs, she leaned forward into a photogravure pose.

  “Loook, boobs! Boooooobs! Big, huge boobies!”

  One after another, she assumed a series of sexy poses: She folded her arms behind her head, she pushed her boobs together with both hands, she shook her captivating bust like jelly…

  “”

  “…Kksshh…kksshh…Wh-why…why in the world aren’t you enchanted by meeeeeee?! I’m trying so hard, too, it’s so mean of you…sniffle.” Faced with an absolute stonewall from her companions, Renko sank to her knees, crestfallen.

  Kyousuke gently laid a hand on her slightly trembling shoulder. “It’s because you’re…you’re wearing the gas mask.”

  As soon as Kyousuke murmured this, Renko’s trembling came to an abrupt stop. Placing both hands on the stream bank, she hung her head deeply, falling into silence with a hollow “Kksshh…”

  “Oh, dear. Uh, umm… Don’t worry about it, Renko!”

  “How pathetic, you worthless pair of boobs! That bust you’re so proud of amounts to nothing after all.”

  Maina tried her best to comfort Renko while Eiri took the opportunity to gloat.

  Kyousuke, faced with this unfortunate situation, cleared his throat. “…Ahem. Well, the thing is…of course I think your breasts are amazing! They’re not just big, they’ve got a lovely shape, and they’re soft, but still pert… They’re ridiculously attractive, and I want to do ridiculous things with them! They’re the kind of rack that drives a person crazy! So cheer up, Renko—okay?”

  “Weirdo.” “What a perv!” “A perrrrrrv!”

  “Huh?” Kyousuke’s attempt to lift Renko’s spirits had only drawn the ire of the three girls. Eiri’s glare was particularly icy even for her, readily chilling him to the bone.

  “Is that how you really feel? Disgusting! Allow me to scorn you from the bottom of my heart.”

  “……”

  —Several minutes had passed. Kyousuke sat on the stream bank with his arms around his knees, stuffing his mouth with rice balls. He wiped at his damp eyes between relishing bites of salty rice.

  * * *

  “How about some dessert?”

  “—Wha?!”

  Suddenly, a pair of huge breasts, barely covered by a black bikini, filled his vision. Kyousuke spat and sputtered in surprise, showering the abundant twin peaks with small grains of rice.

  “A-a lot…came out, didn’t it?”

  “Don’t say weird things while you’re squirming around like that! What do you want, anyway?” Kyousuke, whose emotional scars had not yet healed, wiped his mouth and stared at the black gas mask in irritation.

  Renko scratched her cheek with a “kksshh” and sat down next to him. “Sorry, sorry. I just thought you might be feeling down. I’m really sorry about before, okay? To tell you the truth, I was really happy about what you said, but I just picked up on the mood of the situation and tried to join in with everyone making fun of you.”

  “…What kind of mood? Thanks to you I’m eating lunch alone, you jerk.”

  Maina and Eiri were happily eating together at a spot quite a distance from the rock where Kyousuke sat. As he looked over, his eyes met with Eiri’s, but she quickly turned away, spurning him.

  “Oh my…” Renko smiled bitterly. “Looks like everyone hates you now, doesn’t it, Kyousuke?”

  “And whose fault is that…? Really, what am I supposed to do now?” Kyousuke held his forehead and groaned. Renko drew her body closer to him.

  “What are you supposed to do…? What do you want to do, Kyousuke?”

  “…Huh?”

  “Earlier, you said it yourself, didn’t you? You want to do ridiculous things with me… That’s what you said. —And you can! I want you to do them to me…! I want to be driven crazy by your hands, and drive you crazy, too.”

  “What? No, come on… Wait, Renko! All of a sudden, what are you—?”

  “‘What’? Whatever I want, of course. Kksshh. As long as it’s something you want, I’ll do anything.” Moving around from beside him to right in front of him, Renko straddled Kyousuke’s knees. She bent forward, pressing in on him even as he tried to back away.

  “…Oh, come to think of it, my chest is still covered in rice, isn’t it? You’re the one who got me dirty, so you clean me up, Kyousuke… Won’t you take responsibility?” Placing her hands on Kyousuke’s shoulders, she waved her breasts, indeed covered in sticky grains of rice, right before his eyes.

  The gas mask was out of his field of vision, so the sight was pure bliss—the destructive force of it was extraordinary. “E-even if you tell me to, I… H-how would I even do that?”

  “Do it however you like! You could brush it off with your hands…or pick up the grains with your fingers…or lick them up with your tongue. It’s even okay if you get lost in the moment and end up doing this…and that…”

  “……”

  “Well, what are you gonna do? No one’s watching. I won’t kill you even if you touch my boobs. ‘When she sets a meal before you…’ How does it go? ‘…You can taste to your heart’s content’!”

  Faced with Renko’s sweet seduction, Kyousuke gulped, hard. Surely just touching her chest didn’t count as “falling in love”… And since she was trying so hard, just a little… If it was just a little bit, while he was removing the rice—

  “…Oh? This is a great spot!”

  A familiar voice, soft and feminine, filled the air.

  Kyousuke, who had extended a hand toward Renko’s breasts, snapped out of his trance and looked toward the source of the voice: the animal trail leading to the stream bed. At the head of it was—

  “If only we had found this earlier, we could have taken our meal here at our leisure… It’s got plenty of green space, and the refreshing sound of water. Here, even my pure heart may be washed cleaner.”

  A female student with honey-colored hair stood in the sunlight. She was a shapely, beautiful girl with outstanding style who somehow reminded Kyousuke of both Eiri and Renko at once, as though she were a sort of impossible combination of the two. On her graceful arm, she wore a yellow armband.

  “Public Morals Committee chair…Saki Shamaya…”

  As if in response to the words that had slipped thoughtlessly from Kyousuke’s mouth, the female student—Shamaya—turned toward him. Her typically downcast eyes opened wide as she took in Renko,
dressed in a bikini and gas mask, and Kyousuke, who was frozen in place with his hand still extended toward her chest.

  In an instant, Shamaya’s previously gentle eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Whatever are you two doing in such a place?”

  “U-um… This is, well, uhhh—”

  “We thought we’d do some of this, some of that, and a bit of the other thing, too!”

  “Oh yeah, that’s totally it! For dessert, I thought I’d have some of her delicious ‘maskmelons’… Noooooot!”

  “”

  Renko saluted energetically. Kyousuke, caught up in her enthusiasm, took the opportunity for a quick jab. Opposite them, Shamaya was expressionless. Her doll-like beauty made it extremely unnerving. Fixed under her unpleasant gaze, Kyousuke began to sweat from every pore.

  “That’s not it… See, well… There was a stream nearby, and we thought that while we were having breakfast we might play in the water, um…to wash off the sweat from running, and refresh…ha-ha-ha!” As Kyousuke scrambled to explain the situation, Shamaya closed her eyes.

  She took a breath, raising her eyes to scrutinize Kyousuke again. “What’s this, oh-ho-ho…! So it was like that, was it? I thought for sure that you were trying to meet secretly and turn your basest carnal desires on this gas mask–wearing girl’s breasts as you pleased, rubbing them and kneading them, XXXing, and XXing, and Xing her XXX! I’m so glad I was mistaken…so glad. I do beg your pardon! Oh-ho-ho-ho.” After firing off a rapid succession of profanity in her elegant, aristocratic voice, she brought her hand to her lips and smiled.

  “……”

  Kyousuke and Renko were both speechless, staring at Shamaya, who stood grinning at them, clad in an aura of grace and innocence—the offensive stench of suspicion that hung around her must have been Kyousuke’s imagination.

  “…Oh? It’s just about time. We must not be late for our scheduled departure. The itinerary of the prison camping trip is planned down to the minute, so…please comply! Well, then, I’ll be going now. Another time, when we have the leeway, I would like to speak with you at leisure, first-year Class A Kyousuke Kamiya. Adieu.”

  “……?!”

  He had never introduced himself, but she had addressed him by his full name when she curtsied. His gaze fixed on her elegant retreating figure, Kyousuke found himself entirely unable to move.

  Beside him, Renko folded her arms. “Kksshh. Geez, come on! Will you cut it out already, Kyousuke? How popular can you be with girls? If the field is full of love rivals, the game won’t be any fun… Though, that’s all the more reason to make you fall for me, isn’t it? I’m so looking forward to this three-day, two-night prison camping trip! Ka-kksshh.”

  After the break, they continued running nonstop for about two hours. From the forest path they turned onto a steep mountain trail, and at last, they reached the House of Limbo, a small campsite standing quietly in the middle of nature.

  After taking a group photo at the training plaza, everyone moved in groups to the detention center.

  When they finished the simple imprisonment ceremony, the students received their luggage, packed with changes of clothes and other essentials, and went to their respective rooms—or rather, to their cells. There were shared cells and single-person cells; Kyousuke had been assigned a single.

  In a sparsely furnished room that was largely identical to the ones in the student dorms, Kyousuke settled onto a simple pipe-frame bed and flipped through the prison camping guidebook. Staring at the open pages, on which the plans for the next three days were written, a grimace spread across his face.

  “After this is lunch and…‘Seven Deadly Sins Atonement Orienteering’? What the heck is that? Followed by ‘Inferno Campfire,’ ‘Hell of Boiling Water,’ ‘Heart Attack/Test of Courage,’ ‘Hellfire Barbecue,’ and—Okay, that’s enough. I’m getting depressed just reading it.”

  He closed the guidebook and threw himself down on the bed. His body was exhausted from nonstop running over rugged trails, and he was just about to fall asleep…

  “Pardon me, but might this be Mr. Kyousuke Kamiya’s room?”

  Just as Kyousuke’s consciousness was about to cut out, a supple and somewhat familiar voice blew away any chance of sleep.

  “……?!”

  He sprang up quickly, looking at the door. Standing between him and the dark gray iron bars was the person he had feared it might be—Saki Shamaya.

  Her emerald eyes, fringed with long eyelashes, met Kyousuke’s.

  A moment passed, and then: “Ex…e-e-e-exhibitionisssttt!! Shameleeeeeesss!” Shamaya screamed, her cheeks flushing brilliant red.

  “Wha?! N-no way! I just, my jersey was soaked in sweat, so—”

  “That’s no excuse! Please, clothe yourself! Quickly! My eyes have been defiled!”

  “Uh…s-sure…sorry.”

  Hurt by Shamaya’s choice of words, Kyousuke hastily searched for his jacket. Since it was soaked with sweat from a long period of running, he had flung off the top of his tracksuit and was naked above the waist. He pulled his school uniform shirt out of his gym bag at the side of the bed, and slipped it on instead.

  As he finished fastening all of his shirt buttons from top to bottom, Kyousuke spoke up. “…I put on a shirt. Sorry for defiling your eyes.”

  Peering from between fingers spread over her eyes, Shamaya sighed. “…Th-that was certainly an unexpected surprise… Really, as soon as we meet, you’re trying to give me a heart attack! R-repulsive… I could well be on my deathbed from the shock, you know!!”

  “S-sorry… I’ll be careful from now on, seriously.” Kyousuke had done nothing but apologize from the start, and still she didn’t seem quite satisfied. Though, no matter the circumstance, isn’t it going a little too far to say things like “defiling my eyes” and “repulsive”…? “Anyway, you seem to know all about me. I don’t remember introducing myself, though.”

  “Hm? Oh, beg your pardon… I have been hearing stories about you for quite some time now. I understand that after you locked twelve girls up in an abandoned warehouse, you used a variety of methods to kill every single one of them, and then went on to engage in necrophili—”

  “I never did that! The ones I killed were all guys! Men!” Of course, he hadn’t killed twelve men, either, but he couldn’t let an even worse rumor spread.

  At his protests, Shamaya relaxed her stiff facial expression. “What’s that, so your opponents were men… Wait, men? Ah—you…d-did that to members of your own sex?! Y-you’re a h-h-homosexuaaaaaal?!”

  “Noooooo! That’s not what I meeaannnttt!!” Kyousuke roared. Shamaya had gone pale and was trembling. —What is her deal? She’s got a screw loose, or maybe you could say she’s soft in the head. He was more than a little tired of being insulted so soon after meeting.

  Pulling himself together, Kyousuke asked, “Anyway, what’s the matter? You took the trouble to come to my room.”

  “…Hm? Oh, well, I didn’t particularly have any business with you. I just wanted to talk with you…with the person who has killed more people than any other freshman.”

  “Ah, yeah…I am number one after all.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve heard. A butcher who’s killed as many as twelve people is incredibly rare. When I first heard it, I doubted my own ears.”

  “Oh, totallyyy. Because there are like no people who have killed that many, right?” Kyousuke asked, sarcastically. Except the one right in front of me now. The Murder Princess, who murdered twenty-one, nearly twice my number. Holding back his biting retort, Kyousuke only mumbled to himself, “Twenty-one people, huh…”

  In truth, among Kyousuke and the other first-year students, a psycho killer who had butchered hundreds of people was lurking, someone against whom Shamaya and others could not possibly be compared.

  Earlier, when he had asked the killer herself, it had seemed that, publicly at least, she would only say, “I only killed one person.” But then, she was a very peculiar, very special creature, so that wa
s not really much of a surprise.

  As he sat lost in thought, Shamaya, who had already invaded his room, took Kyousuke’s hand. Drawing her face up close enough to touch the tip of his nose with her own, she began speaking passionately: “Mr. Kamiya…I want to rehabilitate you, no matter what! Certainly, I think that as you are now, you are inhumanly heinous, brutally sadistic, relentlessly cruel, obscenely debauched, fucking shit-waste lower-than-garbage scum… So was I, and so was everyone else.”

  That’s going a bit far. And yet, that is how she used to be. Scary.

  “—How. Ev. Er! It’s not too late. Just as I was born again as a virginal lady, chastely pure, flawlessly upright, magnificently lovely…”

  You’re exaggerating too much. How much can one person like herself?

  “…You, too, can undoubtedly be reborn! It would be difficult on your own, but at the academy you have the members of the Public Morals Committee, as well as the fantastic teachers, to help. Surely we can rehabilitate your warped nature… That is what I believe!” Shamaya’s dazzlingly beautiful eyes twinkled, as if to emphasize her point.

  What a pain; she sure put it bluntly. But there was no malice in what Shamaya had said, and she truly seemed to be offering well-intentioned advice.

  However, Kyousuke had been falsely accused and was really an ordinary guy who had never killed even a single person. There was nothing warped in his nature to rehabilitate. Her concern was entirely misplaced. Be that as it may, I can’t possibly tell her that…

  “Ah, yeah…y-you’re right! Wooow. I, too, want to quickly become a pure and upright citizen like yooou, Miss Shamaya! Ha-ha-ha…” Kyousuke’s face twitched only slightly as he forced a laugh.

  “Oh…is that really so? Oh-ho-ho. A ‘pure and upright citizen,’ you embarrass me. A ‘pure and upright citizen,’ really. Oh-ho-ho-ho.” Perhaps because she was pleased by Kyousuke’s words, Shamaya brought her hand to her cheek and wriggled her body bashfully.

  Kyousuke continued to laugh in harmony with her, even as he cursed his luck.

  Great, I’ve gotten involved with yet another crazy girl—looks like I’m in for more trouble.