Collapse, the Ordinary Daily Life of the Valkyries

That monster's name is——

"...A ghost. Half-demon, half-monster, calling themselves the Yamase clan."

They are closer to gods than pure monsters, so their demonic powers are very strong. When they were young, Tengu heard their parents tell stories about how powerful demons were in the past.

However, the demon clan should have stopped interacting with humans a long time ago and chose a path of quiet destruction. This is not only what I and the Tengu clan think, but almost all monsters should think so.

Over the past fifty or sixty years, that clan's numbers have dwindled dramatically due to a declining birthrate and an aging population. The remaining ghosts have secluded themselves in their settlements, the Ghost Village, and no longer venture into human society.

And my grandfather also said that there hasn’t been a single ghost seen in the past thirty years.

"Those guys were probably very powerful in the past, but they're said to be on the verge of extinction now. They're probably trying to get Misao as a last-ditch effort."

Needless to say, I had to fight those demons. I wonder how scared Misao would be if I didn't save her.

No matter how strong those guys are, I have received the energy of Misao through kissing and hugging, and my strength is far greater than theirs.

Moreover, the overall demonic power of their clan has weakened to the point of being on the verge of extinction.

There is no way I can't beat them. No, I have to beat them.

Once I decided to fight the demons and rescue Misao, my anger became stronger than my anxiety. If you dare, just let Misao get hurt even a little bit, I won't let those guys go!

Misao, wait. No, I don't want you to wait. Even a second earlier is better. I want to rush over as soon as possible.

I went to my room to change my clothes.

Black kosode with black hakama, a black mask, a sword at the waist, and black wings spread. This is the battle attire of a Tengu. Once the suppressed power of daily life is released and fills the body, the vision changes color.

The fiery red eyes——the eyes opened.

Tengu's normal vision is already far superior to that of humans. Once transformed into a Hikari-gan, no creature in the world can match it in both visual field and dynamic vision. Not only can it make swift movements, imperceptible to the human eye, appear still, but it can also detect distant locations that require high-powered telescopes to see. Its already exceptional hearing is further enhanced.

This is Tengu.

The Ghost Village is located in a different world isolated from human society.

In contrast, the Tengu's homeland was merely deep in the mountains, within easy reach of human villages. While the ghost village in this otherworldly realm might be considered extremely remote, a certain path could bring it within easy reach of human settlements. That path was a dark, secret passage shrouded in shadows, invisible to the human eye. It felt like traversing a pitch-black cavern.

"Misao!"

When I flapped my wings, a whirlwind blew through the courtyard, and the dead branches of winter rustled.

I soared up into the cold, clear sky.

The nearest secret passageway entrance is located in the vast green space near the central part of the city, near the Guanting Street. That's where we're headed.

◆ ◆ ◆

*** Harada Misao

——Seeing the man getting close to my lips, I mustered up the courage to give him a headbutt.

it hurts……

Dizzy, he pressed his forehead where it had collided with mine and sighed deeply.

"Never mind. You'll probably change your mind soon."

"Who, who would change their mind?!"

"It depends on how long you can keep your mouth shut. Even if you crawl and beg for mercy, I might just pretend I don't know, okay?"

How could this person be so confident... Sigh, perhaps all monsters are like this. There are too many signs to suggest this.

"Who asked you to? I don't know where you came from, but there's no way you can win."

The man looked at me coldly.

"Master Xianguo, since you don't know, I will tell you. Our name is the Yamase clan, and people used to call us 'ghosts'."

"…………ghost?"

................

...............................

Miscellaneous: I need another leave. Sorry, I'm in the hospital.

The pigeon is dead.

Its motionless appearance resembled an exquisite wooden carving; however, it was as if red droplets were squeezed out after digging countless small holes, sticking the gray feathers together, and its whole body, as if withered and bones removed, looked more like a tattered rag than a corpse.

The pigeon was stuffed inside a box. The girl remembered the box—it was beautifully emblazoned with the shop's logo, from a renowned handmade bakery in the city. Normally, even if she wasn't a girl, simply peeling back the emerald string and opening the box with the logo would send a wave of sweetness straight from her brain to her mouth. Raspberry mousse, pear tart, eclairs, opera cakes—each one of them was the shop's pride and joy; yet, what she saw before her was none of them.

If the pigeon had been found dead on the roadside, the girl wouldn't have noticed anything unusual! However, the corpse stuffed into the box held a sense of humor and gore she had never encountered before. The cardboard box, the string, and the bag with the same logo—the more fairy-tale-like the packaging, the more it heightened the overall sense of strangeness; like a child playing house mistakenly playing with a dead baby as a doll.

The woman who opened the box froze in front of the girl. Her eyes, overwhelmed with surprise, became as empty as the pigeons in the box. Just seconds before, she and the girl had shared their anticipation for the cake; that anticipation had become a twitching smile, like solidified cement, lingering on the corners of her mouth.

Perhaps to stifle the scream that was about to burst out, she covered her mouth with her hands, as hard as if she were slapping herself. However, a second later, a siren-like blare filled the room.

The girl stared at her, her attention completely shifting from the pigeon costume in the box to the woman in front of her.

The woman is the girl's tutor, a graduate of a women's university, and is currently training to be a bride.

That said, she had no plans to marry or work, simply living a carefree life. She was introduced to the young girl by an acquaintance. As a wealthy daughter, she wasn't attracted by the high salary; she simply thought it was a good way to pass the time.

Of course, the girl didn't understand the adults' considerations, nor did they matter. For her, the most important thing was that she would be accompanying her in place of her family, and whether she liked her or not. The girl liked her, and could even be said to adore her.

When they were first introduced, her beauty took the girl's breath away. Her first thought wasn't astonishment that such a stunning beauty existed, but disbelief that she existed in the same three-dimensional space as herself. Her clear voice, kind smile, and refined demeanor all belonged to another, noble world unknown to the girl.

In the girl's eyes, she was as loving and kind as a mother, yet without the reality of a mother, as if she were a being beyond the constraints of flesh and blood. Initially, when interacting with her, the girl even felt a certain shyness bordering on fear. Only recently, had she found the energy to celebrate the opportunity to converse with this goddess-like, perfect being and savor the joy of it.

Of course, the girl only knew her when she was with him. She had no idea that her willful and spoiled nature made her shunned by her peers as a moody and fickle rich girl; nor did she know that the men attracted to her beauty secretly complained that she was easy to get along with when she was in a good mood, but difficult to deal with when she was angry.

To the young girl, she was an all-knowing teacher who could always answer her simple questions without any hindrance; but in the eyes of the adults who knew her, she was an ignorant woman who lacked common sense.

A young girl naturally couldn't imagine the vast gap between her own perceptions and the world's. To her, she was a beautiful, mature woman; even if she grew up, she would never be able to achieve such an elegant and refined perfection. She was a pure object of admiration.

Yet, now she was in a state of extreme disarray. The corpse in the box had thrown her into panic, and although her features remained unchanged, her confusion had distorted them horribly. For the young girl, this was the first time she had ever seen herself in such an ugly state.

The dead pigeon in the box was indeed extremely ugly, but for the girl, it was not as shocking as the drastic change in the object of her worship. It was simply curiosity. She was completely different from her usual self, right in front of her -

...What on earth was going on? Like watching a special effect movie where the sea swallows up the mountains, the girl was captivated by her expression.

She always appeared graceful and beautiful when she was with the children, but now was the moment when her ordinary childish face was revealed. Of course, the girl did not understand this; to her, her ordinary appearance was the most unusual, and she could only stare blankly at this strange scene.

—What are you looking at…?

She seemed to calm down slightly, and after noticing the girl's gaze, she spoke. No, "spoken" isn't quite the right word; to the girl's ears, it didn't sound like human speech, but rather the threatening cry of a ferocious beast. Just a few seconds ago—before she untied the emerald ribbon and opened the paper box—the woman with the human voice was gone. (I bought some cake, let's share...)

—What's that look in your eyes? Do you think I did this?

She roared as she stood up and swept the dead pigeon and the paper box from the table to the ground. Her action was so rough that it was hard to believe that she had been trembling over the same corpse just now.

Her own utterly awful appearance seemed even more humiliating, but the men who usually surrounded her, on whom she vented her anger, were no longer there, so she immediately assumed the girl before her was responsible. Her eyes bulged with hatred and anger, her gums visible; she naively misunderstood that the girl was mocking and laughing at her own ugliness, and so she blew away her rationality to release her anger.

The girl was too young to understand that her gaze had been misinterpreted by immature adults as meaning adult; and she was too frightened, terrified that the goddess in her mind had transformed into a monster she had never seen before.

The monster's hand flashed by, and a crisp slap echoed throughout the room. It happened so suddenly that the girl didn't even have time to realize she had been slapped.

——This idiot!

The monster shouted, seemingly unable to decide whether to slap the girl again, and unable to control his excitement, so he kept stamping his feet.

—Idiot, you're such an idiot! I've always thought this, and I can't stand it! That's why I hate kids...Ah! Seriously, why? Why do I have to accompany such an idiotic brat? I'm so fed up! I quit this kind of job!

The girl couldn't understand even half of her reaction; when she finally realized that she seemed angry about something, she had already left the room with a step that almost stomped through the floor.

The girl was left alone, with a dead pigeon that had fallen out of the box next to her.

Her cheek, which had been slapped, finally began to feel hot; she had no strength left to hold back the pain and could only continue crying. Although she vaguely understood that she had been treated extremely unfairly, she could not understand the meaning of the tears that continued to flow down her warm, swollen cheeks.

The crumbling images swept over her like a tsunami; her every move, the happy times they shared, which had always been treasures in the girl's heart, were now all swallowed up, knocked down, and snatched away by the huge waves.

The girl struggled to salvage the fragments of the treasure, but they all drifted away, as if mocking her efforts. Faced with a spiritual transformation she was powerless to reverse, the girl could only panic and fear.

Everything was ruined. The things that were shining just now were completely destroyed and turned into bloody corpses.

Just like the dead pigeon on the ground... no, just like the girl herself who was weeping aimlessly.

SCENE1

"Why didn't anyone notice?" Shirajikage Gen'emon suddenly shouted. He had decades of experience intimidating people and knew exactly when to shock them. "You can't blame anyone for being accused of poor oversight! How are you going to take responsibility?"

As he expected, the four middle-aged men and women gathered in the study all jumped several centimeters from the floor, even his second son-in-law, who had just stood at the window with a nonchalant expression, gazing across the terrace. Beyond the terrace lay a vast garden, a sea of ​​trees, unbelievably located in the heart of the city. Countless garden lights dotted the garden, a sight that always left one sighing with longing. But the current atmosphere didn't allow him to leisurely admire the view.

"That's what you say, Dad." After an impatient glance at her husband, who looked like he'd swallowed a stick, the eldest daughter finally gathered her composure. "But Xiaoling shouldn't be under our jurisdiction..."

"Fools!" Gen'emon roared, rising to his feet. Compared to the children, he wasn't tall, but his upright posture, un-old-looking, and the demeanor and gaze he exuded cast an incomparable sense of oppression. "You're like her mother, what are you saying? It's because of your behavior that this misfortune has happened! Mikio!"

"Ah!" Seeing the spearhead pointed at him sooner than expected, the son-in-law, Kanfu, forced a smile on his tearful face. "Yes... yes!"

"You've raised your grandchildren so well, but you haven't raised your wife well!"

"Shame..." Although he knew that admitting his mistake would upset his wife, Jun Jiang, he couldn't help but bow his head. "I'm so ashamed, President."

"But, Dad." Compared to Jun Jiang, who was born with an angry face, the second daughter, who always seemed to have a crying face, tried to smooth things over.

"Maybe we deserve to be scolded, but Xiaoling is already an adult..."

"You're only 22 years old, how can you call yourself an adult? You're still a little girl, you can't tell right from wrong, you don't even know what you're doing!"

Gen'emon had eight grandchildren, including four children from Kimie and his wife, his second daughter, Huang Dan, and three children from Taiye and his wife. Three of these children had already married and had children, so he also had two great-grandchildren. However, he doted on his eighth granddaughter, Shirashika Morei, more than his beloved great-grandchildren.

Rei was the precious child of Gen'emon's youngest daughter, Eri. Eri and her husband died in a plane crash when Rei was two years old, and Gen'emon raised her as his own daughter. His doting on Rei was a reaction to his regret and pity for his deceased youngest daughter.

"The bottom line is, sending her to that rural university was a mistake in the first place! Why is no one objecting?"

"But..." Taiye's husband, Huang Dan, muttered to himself after receiving a glare from Gen'emon, "At least it's a national university."

He recalled that when Ling decided to enter Kochi University, his father-in-law had asked sarcastically, "Is that a university on the main island?"

"I don't remember asking her to go to a public university. A private one would be fine. There are plenty of women's universities in Tokyo."

Despite this sigh, Gen'emon himself couldn't bring himself to say anything when he saw Ling, who was so excited about college life. When he was accused of objecting, he even smiled and offered to give her a commemorative gift and asked her what she would like. Both couples were itching to point this out, but they only exchanged restraining glances, and in the end, neither of them said anything.

"You don't need to force yourself to find a job! Take your time, you can start with a bridal apprenticeship, why bother looking for work in a place like that? Besides, when you come back here, you can get a job in any of my companies without any problem—"

This is exactly what Gen'emon described as "unfortunate," and what he was furious about: Rei, who was set to graduate from Kochi University in March, had actually applied for an administrative position at the Municipal Women's Technical College, which had just opened in Kochi the previous year, and had been hired. No one had dreamed that Rei would seek a job in what Gen'emon called "a place where no one lays eggs."

"It's fine to spend your student years in the countryside, and I understand wanting to leave home; but why are you looking for a job in such a remote place? If it were ancient times, a place like Kochi would have been a place of exile! It's like being exiled to an island!"

"Boss," Hiroshima native Mikio said, no longer able to remain silent. "Kochi isn't that remote these days. The city center is pretty much the same as Tokyo—"

"Who's talking to you about this?" He slammed his slam on the desk, almost snapping it in half. "Anyway, find a way to stop her from thinking about this! I won't let her work, especially administrative work! Stop kidding, bring her back! As soon as she graduates—"

"Huh? Bring her back...who's going to convince her?"

"What are you talking about?" He stared at Jun Jiang, who shrugged in dissatisfaction. "Of course it's you! Idiots! How are you going to explain to Eri if you can't even be a surrogate mother?"

"I think, why don't you just go and convince her, Dad?"

"What?"

"Think about it, will Xiaoling listen to us? She appears to be very well-behaved, nodding and agreeing with a smile. But everything goes in one ear and out the other, like beating cotton with force or hammering tofu with a nail. She may be as gentle as a nun, but she won't change her mind, right? How can we convince her to come back? I don't have the confidence to do so. Frankly, it's a waste of effort. If Dad insists it's worth it, then please go and convince her yourself! I'm not being sarcastic; this is truly the only way left."

Miscellaneous: Random Thoughts

"Who is Harada? Did the teacher get the wrong class?"

"That seat is empty."

I approached the seat where Shisha was sitting, where the host was not present.

"Teacher, there's no room!"

"Everyone is here."

"It's freezing cold, but we still come to math class early in the morning!"

The whole classroom erupted in laughter. ...

"Norisui, you have to cheer up and stop falling asleep."

"Did you do too much with women last night?"

Hearing the male classmate's teasing, the female classmate, who uttered a coquettish "Hateful," looked at my left ring finger. I hid the ring as if nothing had happened.

Normally, I'd be fine showing off, but I'm not in the mood right now. I have a bad feeling, and a cold sweat breaks out on my back.

Something was wrong with the student. His eyes and expressions remained the same, but the atmosphere was different, a chilling chill.

The class roll call list did have Misao's name on it.