Murderer in the Flower of Death (25 page)
If I’m passing the three years with these girls, they’ll probably fly by faster than I expected.
That’s what Kyousuke thought.
The middle of the night, two
AM
—the lights were out, the room was dark.
The girl looked up at the night sky, perched on the edge of a bed that was missing its occupant. Soft silver light streamed through the clean windowpane, where the curtain had been left open.
“…Big brother.” Her frail voice slipped out through bone-dry lips. Tear streaks ran every direction across her pallid, hollow cheeks. Reflecting the gray sky, her eyes were apathetic and inhuman. It was as if the tears had carried all emotion out of her with them.
“…I miss you,” she mumbled in an exhausted voice. And then her eyes lit up once more, and the tears overflowed. Her sorrow ran deep at having a beloved family member suddenly snatched away, and she felt as if her tears would never dry for all eternity.
“Noooooooooooo…” Moaning, she buried her face in the towel and inhaled deeply.
Her brother’s scent still lingered there faintly, so she pressed the soft cloth into her nose and sniffed it greedily. She sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed and she sniffed.
She filled her lungs with the lingering scent of her beloved older brother, trying to fill her heart as well. But it wasn’t enough. It was completely insufficient. There’s no way it could have been enough.
She wanted everything. Her brother’s scent, and his warmth, and his words, and his smiling face, and his kindness, all of it.
This remnant couldn’t come close to satisfying her. As long as she didn’t have her big brother by her side, every second of every minute was truly intolerable. The instant the last traces of him faded from this room and from the house, just as his scent faded from the towel, she was sure she would die of sorrow. Like a fish without water, or a human without oxygen, or a junkie without drugs, her life would surely fall apart.
—That’s why…
“…I can’t just wait for you!”
She removed her face from the towel and again looked up at the sky. The moon, a cleanly sliced crescent, looked down on her—on Ayaka coldly. A faint smile began to creep across her face, illuminated by the pale light.
Staring entranced at the night sky, she spoke to herself in a gentle tone.
“Hey, big brother… I wonder if you’re looking up at this same sky wherever you are? I don’t even know where that is… But wait for me? I’m coming soon.
I’m going to follow you
— No matter what it takes, I absolutely will.”
A light came into Ayaka’s wide eyes that had not been there before. Dwelling behind her dark orbs was an incredible determination. This
dreadful determination
that Ayaka harbored in her chest was something her big brother Kyousuke knew nothing about.
Not yet, anyway…
Psycome 1: Murderer in the Flower of Death / The End
Master of Ceremonies
Thank you very much for picking up this book among the many others available to you.
Nice to meet you, my name is Mizuki Mizushiro. Please accept this, my debut work, which won the Award of Excellence in the fourteenth Enterbrain Entertainment Awards, in lieu of a business card.
It’s an airheaded book written on the premise, “what if someone’s classmates were all murderers?” but the genre of the story is love comedy. For that reason, I tried to keep the stench of blood to a reasonable level, so that the sweet scent of girls could waft over it. At least, for now… Heh-heh.
The setting is crazy to begin with, so I’m planning to do lots of things that can’t be done in a normal school love comedy. There will be prison school campouts, fatal final exams, and calamitous culture festivals, among other events.
…Well, then. From this point, I have a torrent of thanks to offer. To the person in charge, Ms. Gibu; the illustrator Namanie; the designers at musikagographics; the PR team; the selection committee members; my friends; my family; all of my relatives; my former partners; and everybody who had anything to do with the publication of this book—thank you all very much.
I had to lump everyone together for the sake of brevity, but I would like to express my feelings of gratitude directly to each and every one of you at a later date. And more than anyone else—
To you, who have chosen this book. Truly, I thank you!
Mizuki Mizushiro
~Written while listening to Slipknot~
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PSYCOME, Vol. 1: Murderer in the Flower of Death
MIZUKI MIZUSHIRO
Translation by Nicole Wilder
Cover art by Namanie
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
PSYCOME
©2013 Mizuki Mizushiro
All rights reserved.
First published in Japan in 2013 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION ENTERBRAIN
English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION ENTERBRAIN through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
English translation © 2016 by Yen Press, LLC
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ISBN: 978-0-316-39828-2
E3-20160527-JV-PC