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 6: "Iron Discipline, or the Demon King's Sermon"
One
Three in the morning. After the city's clamor had volatilized like poison, the asphalt released a harsh smell of cold concrete. Murky rainwater dripped from the gaps in the rusted emergency stairs, spreading small ripples in the puddles of the alley before disappearing. For Sakaki Yui, the world remained as it always was—wrapped in colorless silence.
Having finished her shift at the underground shop and completed her usual patrol around the building's perimeter, she walked down the desolate night road toward her home. Thanks to the city's spirit creatures obeying her commands and efficiently gathering "human negative emotions," the hunger that once gnawed at her stomach had completely subsided.
All that remained was to return to her run-down apartment where no one visited, and sleep quietly. She harbored no desire for luxury or dramatic salvation. Simply to go unnoticed, to hold her breath and greet tomorrow. That bare minimum of peace should have been preserved tonight as well.
But the machinery of fate inserted irrational noise into her field of vision once again.
Suddenly, the surrounding air warped as if scratched by sharp blades against glass.
Invisible special mystical symbols positioned at four points around the alley activated, severing the space itself from the outside world. A sealing barrier—the absolute domain for capture and elimination deployed by the elite unit of "Division Nine," the state-sanctioned supernatural enforcement agency.
Those who continuously monitored the "distortions" writhing in the shadow of the modern city had discovered that the negative energy spreading across Shinjuku was constructing a perfect ecosystem centered on a single girl. To them, Yui was an "unknown demon lord manifested in the material world," the worst calamity that had to be eliminated immediately for her urban-scale corruption.
From the darkness emerged six men and women clad in black spell-conducting armor, their footsteps soundless.
In their hands were special firearms with high-output exorcism lasers and carbon fiber blades inscribed with techniques that severed molecular structures in space. Pride gleamed in their glassy, cold eyes—the pride of having slain countless high-level spirits and protected human dignity.
"Target confirmed. Unidentified spirit entity No. 0874. Proceeding to complete elimination."
The commander's voice was curt and mechanical as he reported through the wireless.
Yui stopped and gazed at the six armed figures surrounding her with flat, expressionless eyes. With pain receptors and fear paralyzed to inhuman levels, this scene was nothing more than a mundane and slightly bothersome situation—being suddenly blocked by strange people on a night road.
Two
The battle never even took the form of combat from the beginning.
At the commander's signal, two operatives rushed in from left and right, swinging blades inscribed with space-severing techniques mercilessly at Yui's neck. Super-heated rays scorched the air, and fiery spell power turned the alley crimson.
But the inhuman factor residing in Yui's body had already completed interception stance at a speed far faster than her retinas could perceive—cold and mechanical.
A sharp, hard sound rang out in the darkness.
Yui had simply caught the advancing operatives' blade directly in her outstretched bare hand. The carbon fiber blade, possessing strength far exceeding titanium, crumbled like a crisp wafer in the grasp of her slender fingers.
"Wh——"
The operatives barely had time to gasp. Yui, following the laws of inertia, seized the two men lunging forward by their chests and slammed them to the concrete ground with a dry motion, as if placing decorative objects back on a marble floor.
A heavy, wet sound of impact echoed, and the spell-conducting armor deformed unnaturally along with the flesh beneath it. The grinding sound of bone marrow sent shivers through the sealed space.
"Scatter! Fall back!"
The commander's roar rang out, but Yui's movements rendered all his orders obsolete.
From beneath her skin, countless black thread-like strands oozed and writhed, spreading into tentacles in the air. They swallowed the exorcism lasers' flashes directly, neutralized the heat, and precisely pierced through the chests of the spell-casters maintaining the barrier at four points, flinging them away.
With a sound like transparent glass shattering, the mystical symbols maintaining the spatial seal crumbled to dust in an instant.
Mere seconds.
The nation's elite armed unit, unable to land even a single counterattack, lay sprawled across the ground cradling their broken limbs. All that remained after the violent metallic clashing was the gasping sounds of blood-tinged breath from the operatives' lungs.
Yui examined her own unblemished hands and confirmed that not a single drop of blood stained her clothing. She exhaled softly.
The instinctive rule "never waste food" flickered through her mind, but her flat rationality judged that completely consuming them to erase all traces had become highly "inefficient" since the Tominaga incident. If she killed them, these people would simply send new "strange people" into her peaceful daily life. That was the situation Yui most wanted to avoid—anything that would make her stand out.
Expressionless, Yui walked before the motionless commander and squatted down on the dirty asphalt.
Three
"Um, I don't think this kind of violence is good."
What emerged from Yui's mouth was a flat "sermon" entirely out of place for a back alley in the dead of night—as if reciting directly from a middle schooler's ethics textbook.
The commander, who had been gasping blood onto the ground, felt his mind begin to rage wildly the instant he heard those words.
Mere seconds ago, he and his team had been crushed like trash by the overwhelming incarnation of violence—a demon lord. And now that monster, with utter seriousness, was explaining ethics to them like one lecturing a child. His spirit was seized by intense confusion and terror at this absolute and irrational "discontinuity" in values.
"When people are rough with each other, everyone feels sad. If you get hurt, it hurts, and your clothes get dirty."
Yui recited these lines steadily but flatly, recalling the unreasonable violence she herself had received from her home environment and the hoodlums at the train station.
"Violence doesn't create anything good. Even the news on television says so. That's why you shouldn't suddenly hit people or shine strange lights on them at night. If you just live quietly and normally, the police won't be angry with you."
Something within the elite operatives' minds crumbled with an audible crack, and simultaneously began to rebuild.
Fear—that was certainly there. A monster that could toy with their lives with a single finger was standing before them, speaking quietly. But beneath that fear, an indescribable "awe" and strange "emotion" began to violently destroy their psyche.
(What is this existence...?)
While possessing the power to exterminate them like insects, she showed no intent to take their lives. More than that, in this bloody night at the bottom of the abyss, with eyes like those of a lost child, she appealed to an almost impossibly pure and simple "correct order of the world."
To their eyes, Yui transformed simultaneously into a cold "demon lord" commanding the city's darkness and spirits, and a miraculous "saint" blooming from the mud of the vile underworld. Her words were not brainwashing techniques. They were "absolute truth" presented upon the overwhelming reality of her power—a form of mental contamination.
"Hii... ah..."
One operative rubbed his face, smeared with blood and tears, against the asphalt like carpet, his voice hoarse. His heart was filled with deep remorse for his past violence and something close to fanatical reverence for the inhuman lord before him. The very premises of their world had been completely inverted.
Four
"Don't do bad things anymore. Go home and live a normal life, please."
With those words, Yui rose quietly from the ground.
Just as she had done with Tominaga, she impressed her inhuman will directly into the deepest layer of their survival instincts like a wedge.
"Also, it's forbidden to interfere with the shop or tell anyone what happened here. Please... keep this promise."
In the instant Yui's golden eyes flickered eerily in the darkness, an absolute law of "absolute secrecy" and "forbidden interference" was branded into the operatives' minds—an indelible iron seal. They would never be able to report accurately about Yui to their organization, nor would their bodies allow them to formulate any operations that would threaten her peace.
"...Y-yes."
The commander's response came, squeezed from the back of his throat.
As Yui said "see you" and walked quietly into the depths of the night, the fallen elite operatives gazed after her with eyes full of awe and emotion—like pilgrims seeing off the back of a god.
Their bones had been broken, yet their minds had been perfectly brainwashed by the "demon lord's ethics," and they withdrew quietly, embracing a sense of salvation-like rapture. They could never return to fighting in the underworld again. Following Yui's commands, they had no choice but to return to normal life as harmless sheep.
The next day, Kuseibe Reiji, who had observed the faint echoes of this "elite unit's miserable defeat and the subsequent abnormal mental subjugation" through remote magical channels, sat at her office desk with her head in her hands, reaching the depths of despair.
"The nation's highest fighting force was not only physically destroyed but had their minds instantly transformed into puppets through 'lectures'—a form of mental contamination. Sakaki Yui... that woman isn't trying to dominate the world through force. She's attempting to repaint the world itself with her twisted 'order'!"
Black ink flowing from her broken fountain pen slowly stained the report bearing her photograph. In Kuseibe's mind, the deification and misunderstanding of demon lord Sakaki Yui had finally been elevated to an absolute threat that would shake the nation itself.
Meanwhile, in the dim waiting room underground.
Yui sat deeply in her usual pipe chair, scrolling aimlessly through her smartphone screen. The shop was safe today, and her peaceful daily life was preserved. She felt only a flat satisfaction at this.
No matter how greatly the schemes around her swelled, or how much the shadows of the world feared her as a demon lord, her concerns remained mundane and trapped in her own personal loop.
(I'll get hungry again eventually... I wonder who will bring me something delicious next time...)
Yui gently rubbed her stomach and waited quietly in the stagnant underground air for the next harvest night.
(The Corpse Flower Blooms at Night - Episode Six: "The Iron Doctrine, or the Demon Lord's Sermon" - End)
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