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Tsukasa couldn’t tear her eyes away from the girl sitting across from her.
If it were because Karen was just that cute, that would have been fine. (She was cute. Just not can’t-look-away-from-her level cute.) But Tsukasa was afraid. When she tried to relax, the image surged back into her mind of Karen—the other one, not this girl and her gentle smile—holding a knife or a shard of glass to her throat before she could do a single thing. Or worse, she might decide somebody else, some uninvolved bystander, would make for a better victim.
Were another member of 31A here, they could distract Karen-chan. They could help. Tsukasa wasn’t confident that she, alone, could do enough.
I’m pathetic, aren’t I? I made a promise to her, and now I don’t know if I can keep it, Tsukasa thought.
“Tsukasa?” The voice jolted her out of her reverie. She realized with a chill that if anyone had wanted her dead at that moment, nothing would stop them. But there was only Karerin, as Ruka called her, with a concerned look on her face. The chatter of the others beyond her, through the open doors of the cafeteria. A gray, blobby nawia bouncing along the pavement in the very corner of her eye. She didn’t dare turn her head to look.
Tsukasa forced a smile. “What is it, Karen?” she asked.
Karen tilted her head slightly. “It’s just that you’ve been looking at me for a while now,” she pointed out. “Your food’s going to get cold.”
Right. They’d been eating outside, up until Megumi had stalked off in one of her moods and Tama had chased after her, their meals abandoned at the table with little more than a few bites missing. Tsukasa hadn’t gotten much further with her own pasta dish. She’d been busy sizing up whether she could fend off Karen-chan with the fork she was gripping, white-knuckled, in her hand. Less unlikely than chopsticks, at least.
“I just don’t like pasta,” Tsukasa said. It was a lie, and she realized what an obvious one it was as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
Karen looked puzzled. “Then you could have asked for something else,” she pointed out. “You know, lunch wouldn’t taste good for anyone when they’re as on edge as you are. You really should get some food in you before the operation.” The brunette smiled a strained smile. “Unless you like field rations better than pasta.”
“You’re right,” Tsukasa admitted. She forced her eyes closed, and channeled the tension out of her body with a deep sigh. Some of it. As she opened her eyes, looked down and twirled her fork in her pasta, her other hand twitched, ready to dart for the pendant around her neck at any moment.
“Go ahead. Do it,” a voice growled fiercely.
Tomato sauce splattered on Tsukasa’s uniform. Her hand seized her pendant as if her life depended on it, which seemed like a distinct possibility. With a metallic clatter, the fork that she’d held so desperately fell to the ground, well out of her reach. Soothing confidence filled her nonetheless.
She lifted her head and gazed coolly at Karen-chan, who glowered back at her in silence. The other girl made no move. For now. Tsukasa sized up what weapons she might use, deciding the water glass within Karen’s easy reach was the most likely, though she might try to smash her plate into something sharp-edged and deadly instead.
Negative emotions tend to bring Karen-chan out, and I did quite a fine job upsetting her, didn’t I? Wonderful. I can handle her, but this is not a pleasant lunch break.
The stillness continued.
“Aren’t you going to do anything?” Tsukasa asked.
“What’s the point?” Karen-chan muttered. “You’d stop me. You always have some trick to get the better of me when you’re like this.”
“And yet you gave me warning,” Tsukasa said. “You gave me time to grasp my pendant and wake up.” She let her hand fall away; it wasn’t necessary any longer. She would stay like this for a while. Confident in her ability to manage Karen-chan no matter what the killer did, Tsukasa let her eyes wander. A few people had glanced their way when she’d dropped her fork, but they were already losing interest, unable to comprehend what was going on. Their only audience was a pair of nawie, their four beady eyes turned toward them from the greenery on the other side of the avenue.
“If I did do something, there wouldn’t be any sport in it,” Karen-chan said. She swiped her sandwich off her plate, aggressively, and took a large bite from it as if she were ripping meat from a bone. Tsukasa couldn’t recall having seen her eat in the past—it was uncommon that she came out at mealtimes—but before she’d switched personalities, Karerin had only picked at her lunch. That was doubtless Tsukasa’s own fault.
Or, well… the other her’s fault.
“Sport,” Tsukasa mused. “That’s what this is about to you.” She reached out and took the fork that had been Tama’s, making headway on her own meal as she thought in silence. Karen-chan quickly devoured her sandwich, then reached out and grabbed a handful of Tama’s pasta, shoving that into her mouth as well. It looked disturbingly natural for the killer to have her hands and the sides of her mouth splattered with tomato sauce.
“You said once that you took pride in killing, Karen-chan,” Tsukasa continued. “Do you think someone can take pride in cowardice?”
“Mph,” Karen-chan replied, her cheeks bulging until she chewed and swallowed. “Damn right you can.” It had taken the other girl a few seconds to answer, but Tsukasa could tell she hadn’t needed to think about it.
“Why do you think that?” Tsukasa asked.
“’Cause if there weren’t decent cowards out there, it wouldn’t be fun for killers like me,” Karen-chan declared. “It’d just be about whoever is stronger. No surprises. No excitement.”
“You don’t seem to be keen on that excitement right now,” Tsukasa said, reaching for her water and taking a sip from it. She felt calm enough to close her eyes as she did. Somehow, despite Karen-chan being right before her and as unpredictable as ever, the killer didn’t feel like a threat.
“Too hungry,” Karen-chan said. “And now I feel all sluggish. And I’ll get to kill Cancers in a few hours. So I’ll just stew in boredom here until Asakura feels like coming back.” She gazed sullenly at Tsukasa, the red smear that ringed her mouth slowly fading to brown as it dried. “Are you really proud to be a coward, Tsukasa?” she asked.
“I never thought of it that way until now, but I suppose I am,” Tsukasa replied. “I thought I was proud that I’m still alive, despite everything that’s happened. Even if it was another me who was so desperate to survive, and she failed, so many years ago.” She shook her head. “I feel glad to have... carried on her will, I suppose. To have faced danger like she did and lived through it. And yet maybe the brave thing to do would have been to die and to stay dead. When I was still human.”
Karen-chan, uncharacteristically, seemed to think for a while. Tsukasa could sense the other girl’s mood growing more and more sour, though it was never exactly bright—not unless they were fighting Cancers. She cast her eyes around, evaluating her options if Karen-chan decided she was no longer too busy digesting to attempt murder.
“If you’re gonna play with words like that, then killers are cowards, too!” the other girl shouted furiously. Heads turned their way, though they were the least of Tsukasa’s concerns at the moment. “We want to survive, too! Human or not! Asakura made me in the first place because she wanted to survive! If I just decided to stop killing, for some dumb reason, and I get myself done in, are you telling me that’s the brave thing to do? Don’t fuck with me!”
It had been quite some time since Tsukasa, this Tsukasa, had found herself at a loss for words. She had certainly not expected it to happen on account of Karen-chan.
“We’re two of a kind, so don’t call me a coward!” Karen-chan screamed at her. “We’re survivors, and you damn well better be proud of that!”
“Two of a kind,” Tsukasa repeated, her thoughts percolating more slowly than she was used to. It was as if the memories of her old life, the confidence they’d given her, had already faded—and yet she knew they hadn’t, though her time was running short.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Karen-chan growled. “So don’t go and bravely get yourself killed by some monster too dumb to even enjoy it, or all I’ll have around here is pathetically easy pickings. If you die on me, I’ll kill you. Got that?”
Tsukasa felt a smile rise to her face. “I do,” she replied, warmth in her voice. “...Thank you, Karen-chan.” The girl glared back at her sullenly, unappreciative. “Whatever,” she muttered through her ringed mouth.
Impulsively, Tsukasa took up the napkin by the side of her plate, dipping it into her water. She reached out towards Karen-chan.
“Don’t you dare,” said the killer.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Tsukasa reminded her, her smile widening. She dabbed at Karen-chan’s mouth, and despite her words, the girl did nothing to resist except for flinching at the cold of the damp cloth. “You’re here so that Asakura Karen can be happy, right? So let me help you.”
Karen-chan looked no happier to hear this, even as she allowed Tsukasa to wipe the pasta sauce from her face. “The next time I see the other you, I’m scaring the daylights out of her,” she retorted.
“You do that,” Tsukasa said. “It keeps things exciting.”
After she’d cleaned off Karen’s mouth, she sat back in her chair. Looking down at her half-finished pasta, Tsukasa picked up her fork (Tama’s fork, once) and started upon it again. It was utterly cold by now, but she’d been no stranger to cold meals, decades ago. In a way, it felt nostalgic. So did the silence; the bustling in the background had ceased, with most of the people in the cafeteria having elected to put a distance between themselves and Karen-chan once the girl had started shouting.
“Oh, gosh,” a soft, yet clearly chagrined voice said after a time. “I—she made a mess, didn’t she?” Tsukasa lifted her head to meet Karerin’s embarrassed eyes. She set down her fork, and pushed her plate aside, laying her hands on the table before her. She’d spent enough time in the past, remembering all those cold meals in silence. Here, she wasn’t alone.
“It’s just pasta sauce,” Tsukasa replied. “Things could have been much worse.”
Though still blushing slightly, Karen smiled. “And they weren’t, thanks to you, Tsukasa,” she said, reaching forward and squeezing Tsukasa’s hands with her own.
“Don’t mention it. We’re two of a kind,” Tsukasa said. She’d barely finished the words when suddenly the world began to blur, lighten, darken. A sharp pain erupted inside her head, like a knife piercing through her skull.
Seems it’s time for the other me to take the reins again. I hope Karen-chan isn’t too mean to her.
Tsukasa stood up from her chair. “I’m—“ she tried to say, but got no further before she swayed unsteadily on her feet, the world fading away from her eyes as the headache grew fiercer. Dimly, she heard a chair pushing aside, and swift footsteps. She felt someone’s body supporting her, keeping her upright.
“I’m here, Tsukasa,” Karen told her in a warm voice.
That’s right. They don’t need me any longer. Not right now.
Filled with a sudden feeling of peace despite the throbbing in her head, Tsukasa stopped resisting, and let her time run out.