Sakaki Yui, seventeen years old. Her only wish was to greet each tomorrow quietly, without ever being hurt by anyone. However, her daily life—corroded by domestic violence and isolation at school—is completely trampled by the trap of a human trafficking organization, and her body is sold into an illegal underground pleasure district. Amidst violence, drugs, and endless exploitation, Yui's heart disconnects from emotion to protect itself, transforming the very act of "living" into mere instinctua
The Corpse Flower Blooms at Night - "Corpse Flower Blooms at Night" Episode 13: "The Freeloader's Anomaly, or the Distortion of the Family"
One
The iron door of the cheap six-tatami apartment had always fit poorly, and every time it opened or closed it let out a rusty scream. When Yui Sakaki returned from work, feeling the cold of the Meiji Essel Super Cup in a plastic bag against her palm as she inserted the key into the lock, she noticed the door wasn't locked from the inside. When she turned the knob, the air in the room was different from usual. Mixed with the smell of mold and cheap detergent was a faint burnt odor, and something oddly sweet—the distinctive lingering scent of "otherblood," the mark of a creature that was not human.
She stepped into the dim interior. The perpetually unmade futon was strangely bulging, and from beneath it peeked an unnaturally white coat of fur—the crown of a white-haired girl's head. The girl stayed wrapped in the futon, not as though she had been waiting for Yui to come home, but simply moving her small jaw.
When Yui cast a dry glance around the room, she saw that the door of the small refrigerator was slightly ajar. The family-size pack of bargain vanilla ice cream she had bought yesterday with part of the tip she'd received from a member of the Ginsei-kai had been tossed carelessly onto the kotatsu. It was already empty.
"Eating someone else's ice cream without permission makes you a thief. Thieves get caught by the police, and I think that's a very bad thing."
Yui's tone was flat and without inflection, like a homeroom teacher pointing out a rule violation.
The futon flew up, and the girl who emerged from it—Naru—stared at Yui with white cream smeared around her mouth. Deep in those eyes, the same thin golden ring as Yui's shimmered distortedly.
"Shut up...! You think I'm eating this cheap crap—this thin lump of milky oil—because I want to be satisfied with it?! But my throat burns. My insides are hot all the time, and if I don't stuff something in, I feel like I'm going to disappear!"
Naru's naked hostility, and the desperate cry of hunger that contradicted it. It was the afterimage of the very madness Yui herself had once felt in the basement of that mixed-use building, terrified of her own transformation, as though her organs were being clawed at by bare hands. Naru's slender fingertips scratched at the sheets, her nails tearing through the fibers. The inhuman curse-power leaking from her entire body physically distorted the air in the six-tatami space, making the window glass vibrate faintly.
Yui gently set the convenience store bag she'd been holding on the floor. She didn't get angry, didn't sympathize. Her thinking had always functioned with extreme pragmatism on a single point: how to maintain her own daily life without disruption.
"...Eating a whole human being is a lot of trouble to clean up after. Clothes and bones—making them disappear neatly is exhausting. So please help me with my work. As for food, plenty gets sent to the shop."
"Eh...?"
Ignoring Naru's deflated voice, Yui peeled the lid off a new ice cream that had begun to melt and stuck a wooden spoon into it.
Two
Eleven-thirty at night. The basement of a mixed-use building in Shinjuku—a place that had once been the waiting room of a sex shop—had now been remodeled by the Ginsei-kai into a "supreme sanctuary." The moldy smell was gone, and an air purifier hummed with a quiet motor sound.
Sitting across the sofa was a man brought by Kito, the young boss of the Ginsei-kai, for "thinning"—a delinquent gang member who had violated the organization's discipline. The man had pressed his forehead to the floor in a posture of total submission, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. Behind Yui stood Naru, unable to grasp the situation, her eyes bloodshot with hunger.
"Naru-san. Purple haze is coming out of that person's head over there. You suck it out a little at a time. If you suck it all out, that person will stop moving, and cleaning up will be a big hassle."
Before Yui's businesslike instructions had even finished, Naru's rationality, which had reached its limit, was blown away.
"A... aah...!"
Naru kicked off the floor with animal agility and straddled the back of the prostrate man. Suddenly, the air in the room transformed completely. It was the raw scent of desire emitted by inhuman beasts—something that far transcended the realm of the "dry task" Yui had maintained until now.
Naru's white fingertips sank into the man's thick neck with the sharpness of broken porcelain. From here, the scene transformed into a bewitching, grotesque, and beautiful orgy—one that seemed to peer into the abyss of flesh itself. From Naru's throat escaped a muffled yet moist breath. The moment her slender body felt the man's horrific fear on her skin, she began to tremble with lewd ecstasy, like an overripe fruit bursting open.
"Nn... ah, ua...!"
The girl's lips pressed against the skin of the man's nape. In that instant, the fangs visible in her mouth turned a translucent golden color and pierced deep, deep into the man's flesh—directly caressing his spiritual marrow.
The boiled-over malice and torrent of life overflowing from the man's body slid down Naru's parched throat as hot honey.
"Haa... nn, nnuu... delicious... this is amazing...!"
Naru's back arched dramatically like a bow. Her white hair clung to her forehead with the man's sweat and her own lewd saliva, and her golden eyes had melted into a depth of pleasure completely out of focus. Beneath her skin, countless white threads undulated, and the speed of her absorption exploded upward as she tried to devour the man's terror, his despair, down to the very root.
The man was not even permitted to scream; he was trapped in the illusion of being transformed into a muddy lump of flesh before the supreme caress pregnant with death that Naru's body brought. The movement of Naru's hips was less predation and more a thick, carnal coupling mediated by blood and flesh, and the entire room was filled with the sweet, fleshy heat she emitted.
Three
"...Stop. I told you to moderate yourself."
The instant Naru tried to drain the man's soul completely and reduce him to an empty husk—a corpse—Yui's cold, piercing voice rang out.
But the words did not reach Naru's ears, lost as she was in the peak of pleasure.
"Shut up...! Don't interfere, this is mine...!"
Still gripping the man's neck, Naru swung her other claw sharply down at Yui. The wind pressure from her inhuman strength tore through the newly reupholstered wall covering for several meters.
But the next moment, Naru's vision was slammed into the floor with an impact that turned heaven and earth upside down.
"Gah...!?"
Naru's brain could not comprehend what had happened.
Yui had merely taken a single step forward. She had not even bothered to dodge Naru's ultra-high-speed claw strike—she had grabbed its trajectory head-on with her bare hand and redirected it.
Yui's palm covered Naru's face from the front.
Creak, creak—Naru's sturdy skull groaned under the pressure of a human girl's palm, as though caught in an invisible vise.
"A... a, a..."
All strength drained from Naru's body in an instant.
What was there was an overwhelming difference in "rank"—a gap between entirely different dimensions.
Naru too was one of the "success cases" who had survived Kuse's experiment—one of only a handful in the world, or so there should have been—and she had prided herself on having destructive power comparable to a tactical weapon. She had the power to curse-kill the nation's sorcerers and devour the demons of the city.
But before the monster named Yui Sakaki standing before her, all of that power scattered like the prattling of an infant.
The golden ring deep in Yui's eyes neither intensified its glow nor wavered—it simply lay calm, like a lake at night. There was no fighting spirit there, no anger, not even pride. There was only violence as pure transfer of mass—"moving an obstructive obstacle out of the way."
The moment Naru's white threads, writhing beneath her body, sensed the presence of the "black threads" beneath Yui's skin, she trembled from the very root of her soul. The absolute fact that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of black thorns could at any moment crush her cells, her very genes, and turn her into livestock meat was transmitted directly into her brain matter without the mediation of words.
An opponent beyond reach. The options of fighting, fleeing, or begging for one's life could only exist if both parties stood on the same plane. To Naru, the current Yui was a natural disaster incarnate. Just as one cannot stop Mount Fuji from erupting with individual violence, if the girl before her closed her hand, Naru's existence would be completely erased from this world the very next moment. That desperate helplessness crumbled Naru's steel pride into dry sand in an instant.
"Hi... hii, aa..."
Hot tears of terror overflowed from Naru's eyes, wetting Yui's palm. Holding Naru's face pinned to the floor, Yui began her usual flat lecture, like a moral education textbook.
"Livestock must be used according to plan. If you eat it all at once, there won't be any food starting tomorrow. The shop manager will be troubled, and more than anything, cleaning up corpses is truly a hassle. Do you understand?"
"Y-yes...! I understand...! I'm sorry...!"
It was the moment the Demon King's "discipline"—one that had made even great yokai prostrate themselves—was driven into the deepest part of Naru's survival instinct as an indelible wedge.
Four
Two mornings later, the sound of a broom being moved clumsily and stiffly echoed through the six-tatami apartment.
"...The mold smell is still there. Please sweep more seriously."
Yui sat in the kotatsu, vaguely watching a news program on TV, issuing instructions to the white-haired girl behind her.
Naru, wearing an apron with tears in her eyes, was desperately wiping the floor with a rag. Since that day, her brain had been thoroughly burned by Yui's overwhelming charisma and the cold difference in rank during predation, and she had willingly settled into the position of a "little sister"—a name for an unpaid housekeeper in servitude.
"I-I know that...! I'm doing it properly!"
Even as she talked back, Naru's hands were trembling. Just a glance from Yui was enough to make the white threads beneath her skin shrivel in terror.
Yui quietly scraped vanilla Super Cup with her wooden spoon and brought it to her mouth. The room had gotten a little smaller, and the ice cream disappeared faster now. But thanks to Naru taking over most of the housework, the burden of Yui "playing an ordinary human girl" had definitely decreased.
No matter how much the world fell apart, no matter how much the newly intruded kindred monstrosity made noise in the room—Yui Sakaki's stomach was calm, and the peace befitting her station that she desired would now, in this distorted six-tatami daily life, continue to be protected completely, without anyone noticing.
(End of "The Corpse Flower Blooms at Night," Episode 13: "The Freeloader's Monstrosity, or the Distortion of a Household")
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