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 5: "The Uncrowned Demon King, or The Night of Harvest"
One
When July arrived, the humid dampness that had blanketed the city gave way in an instant to a violent heat that scorched the asphalt directly. Even past midnight, the heat lingered in the back alleys lined with mixed-use buildings, and warm air expelled from cheap outdoor units carried the stench of rotted garbage in thick, sticky waves.
Sakaki Yui stood, as always, partway up the narrow emergency stairs leading down to the waiting room below. Her gaze was fixed on a crack in the asphalt several meters ahead. Within it writhed a glutinous mass that seemed to be a mixture of rust and mud tinged with red-black.
Though roughly the size of a large dog overall, it had no fixed contours. From its surface, unholy fragments reminiscent of fallen human fingernails and hair continuously rose and sank, dripping a murky, viscous bodily fluid. It was a malformed creature born from the noise of an overcrowded metropolis—what antiquity had called "yōkai" or "forbidden sorcery."
"Gee, gee...!"
The creature writhed madly at the dense scent of life emanating from Yui's slender form—the distinctive odor of a complete adapter. It lashed out with sharp mucous membranes, staking its claim to territory.
Had this been the Yui of before, she would have seized its neck in a blur of motion and smashed it against the concrete wall to turn it to "dust." If she consumed it entirely and converted it to energy through the black threads beneath her skin, there wouldn't even be cleanup to manage. That had been the entirety of her previous housekeeping—patrol—extremely rational and matter-of-fact.
But her recent experience domesticating Tominaga, a major figure in the underworld, as a "self-generating feed box that regularly produces exquisite madness," had imparted new wisdom to Yui's uneducated mind.
(*...It would be wasteful to consume it all.*)
Yui made no move to evade the approaching tentacles. Her extended, slender arm reached out with precision, grasping deeply into the densest "core" at the creature's center. A sharp *tock* echoed out.
The creature trembled in terror, convulsing violently in its attempt to escape. But Yui's fingertips held it fixed like a vise, not moving an inch.
Ah, that transcendent ecstasy drawn up from the very marrow of her bones. As Yui's fingers applied force and she inhaled the murky demonic power dwelling within the creature's flesh into her lungs, her throat's mucous membrane grew moist like lustful secretions, contracting in feverish rapture. The inhuman beast coiled in the depths of her lower abdomen released hot breath and cried out in joy like draining the finest broth. Her nipples hardened in hypersensitivity, and Yui's body arched slightly at the supreme pleasure. There, predator and prey dissolved into one another in a sordid exchange of desire—abominable yet overwhelmingly seductive, an intercourse altogether inhuman.
Once Yui had drained ninety percent of the creature's power, she relaxed her grip.
The creature shriveled, desiccated to less than half its original size, and tumbled pathetically onto the asphalt. It was not dead. Yet before Yui—the absolute apex predator—its survival instinct was completely broken.
"Listen, if you don't want to die, do as I say."
Yui's face remained expressionless as she looked down at the withered mass at her feet. In the depths of her eyes, a golden ring at the boundary of her irises flickered with cruel beauty in the darkness.
"It's a hassle having to clean up things that interfere with my patrols every night. So... collect delicious things for me instead to keep my hunger at bay. Gather up the dirty feelings of humans in the city, lots of them, and bring them here."
The creature, bound by the "price of survival" Yui had imposed—an absolute shackle—trembled fiercely as if prostrating before her. Stripped of its fangs and with its brain burned out by overwhelming fear and the pleasure of consumption, defying Yui's orders was now impossible at the cellular level.
The mass crawled away, disappearing quietly into the depths of night.
Two
For Yui, it was merely an extremely modest and practical attempt at efficiency—domesticating pests to spare herself the trouble of daily cleaning. Yet in the ecosystem of the inhuman, the consequences of her actions were dramatic.
The lower-rank yōkai that Yui had spared (or rather, kept alive) and imprinted with the commands of an absolute master returned to its brethren and "infected" them with terror of that overwhelming predator. For creatures of limited intellect, Yui became a new and singular absolute law of the night streets: "Disobey and your very existence will be annihilated; obey and you will be permitted meager survival."
Within days, the behavioral patterns of the creatures lurking in Shinjuku's back alleys, in the shadows of neon signs, and wandering through late-night Kabukichō underwent a complete transformation.
They became "hunting dogs," efficiently collecting "negative human emotions" hidden in the dense noise of the metropolis to fulfill Yui's orders.
Behind the backs of salarymen spewing curses at colleagues' promotions in late-night izakayas.
At the fingertips of youth typing viscous jealousy toward strangers into internet message boards.
In the gaps between parents smoldering with naked enmity in a coldness-filled room after domestic violence.
The creatures extended sticky tentacles from clothing seams and asphalt shadows, drawing up these madnesses, passions, violent impulses, and envies—the "sediment of the spirit"—like through a straw. Humans returned home as hollow shells, never knowing why their hearts had suddenly lightened (or why they could no longer summon the energy to be angry).
And as night deepened, the yōkai—steeped in power and saturated with murky emotional mist—crawled silently toward the area surrounding the mixed-use building where Yui resided, unseen by any eye.
"Gee, gee...!"
"Shuu...!"
At ten p.m. before her shift, when Yui began her usual routine walk around the building, the landscape of the alleys had become extraordinary.
Countless creatures lay in wait in the gaps between buildings, behind trash cans, in narrow spaces beside vending machines. Upon recognizing Yui, they cowered and simultaneously lowered their heads. Then they released all at once into the alley's air the finest grade of murky "negative human emotion" they had accumulated—a dense, invisible purple mist—and offered it to her.
Yui, her face expressionless, inhaled the mist deeply into her lungs.
(*...Ah, this is so easy. I don't even need to go looking for it myself.*)
The parched burning at the back of her throat was automatically and perfectly relieved. With each step, fresh "nourishment" gathered from throughout the city flowed directly into her cells, and the black threads beneath her skin settled contentedly.
For Yui, it had begun as a mere life hack born from a personal preference—not wanting her favorite resting place soiled. Yet in consequence, without moving an inch, she had assumed her place at the apex of an invisible, enormous system of exploitation that completely governed the darkness of an entire city.
Three
Kusei Reiji, an occultist of the underworld conducting continuous observation, sat in his office staring at the spiritual energy observation data displayed in real-time on his tablet, rendered completely speechless.
"Impossible... The orientation of negative emotional energy—*energy*—across the entirety of Shinjuku is converging toward that mixed-use building...!?"
The fountain pen in Kusei's hand snapped in two with a definitive crack, and dense black ink stained his desk, but he took no notice.
His spiritual sight revealed countless black lines of consciousness extending from the neon shadows throughout the city, connected like a massive spider's web to the underground sex establishment where Yui resided.
"Test Subject No. 72, Sakaki Yui. Was she not satisfied with merely making the serial killer Tominaga her puppet? Now she has completely subdued all the yōkai in the city and enslaved them as her own limbs. What's more, she has single-handedly constructed a massive spiritual dominion system that efficiently exploits the passions and malice generated by the city itself..."
In Kusei's mind, Yui had transcended far beyond the level of some failed experimental subject of the organization.
An uncrowned demon king who commanded her own armies, drawing energy from both humans and creatures alike, reigning silently over the underside of the night city. That seventeen-year-old, taciturn, pallid girl sat without a care upon the throne of darkness—something the underworld had failed to achieve across centuries. A cold, irrepressible shudder ran down Kusei's spine.
Meanwhile, the "demon king" in question sat quietly in a pipe chair in the underground waiting room, sipping from a cold green tea bottle she had been given.
"Hey, Yui. You've really been on a roll lately. The air around the private rooms you use feels lighter somehow, and all the yakuza clients become strangely obedient around you. The shop manager's started calling you the shop's 'guardian deity.'"
To the coarse yet sincere voice of the staff member, Yui replied curtly, "I see."
Her fingers scrolled aimlessly across her smartphone screen.
Thanks to the system that automatically siphoned off the yōkai's ill will, she had not been tormented by that ravenous hunger for days now. The fever that had made her unsteady had subsided, and her body felt remarkably satisfied.
Her clothes remained unsoiled. She was no longer pursued by the tedious post-battle concealment work of cleanup.
Perhaps this could work.
I don't want luxury or to control anyone. I simply want a quiet peace in this dim underground shop—to go unnoticed, to keep my head down, and to greet tomorrow calmly.
Yui hugged her knees and smiled contentedly. Yet in the depths of her eyes, the golden ring glimmered deeper and more eerily, commanding all the darkness of the night city—the very opposite of her modest desire.
(*"The Corpse Flower Blooms at Night" Episode Five: "The Uncrowned Demon King, or The Night of Harvest"—End*)
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