Sayuri remembers the entire summer and fall spent at Anishin last year, when she was able to drink plasma four days a week and use animal blood and coffee as a meal replacement for the rest of the day.

She worked on the Little Animal Farm, tending to hundreds of chickens, milking Flora and a few other cows, and bringing milk and eggs to the kitchen before the prisoners had breakfast.

At that time, she at least helped some people, and she was not alone at all. If possible, she wants to be with Saho, Natsuki, and Yuanori for the rest of her life.

Now Sayuri wants to go back.

The bedroom was dark at night, and Sayuri walked to her mother's room. As long as she stabbed her mother, she thought, even a little guilt would allow her to be sent back to the safety hospital.

The Anxin House she longed for was secluded and secluded, where she could once again be accompanied by the children's dancing and singing, and she didn't have to suffer here.

Just once, once, Mom, it won't be too painful, it's not too intense. Sayuri walked barefoot through the lightless hallway, like walking through a large block of ice. She found that the door to her mother's apartment was not locked, which was great. She thought.

Sayuri gently pushed the door open and went in sideways, no money to set up the curtains, the windows facing the mottled façade of another building outside, pitch black. There was a thick blanket directly on the ground, and nothing else.

She fantasized about the smell of perfume on her mother's body, so she silently moved to the edge of the blanket and groped for her mother's position. She thought that what she was about to commit was a fierce sin. She hadn't felt the blade pierce through her flesh, but she was already nervous and began to plan her words when her mother found out.

Sayuri touched the darkness and didn't notice her mother's presence.

The whole quilt was empty.

Sayuri was shocked and her back was cold, and all the grotesque and terrifying things came to her mind at once, and the dark buildings outside the window seemed to be lit up, and it seemed like a face was looking at her from behind those windows. Mom! She was startled, and hurried to the door of the room and turned on the light.

Mother is indeed absent. Sayuri looked around and opened the closet in horror for fear of seeing her mother hanging inside. Fortunately, she had goosebumps all over her body, and her fragile nerves couldn't stand too many fantasies that she was scaring herself.

"Mom?" Sayuri looked around, knelt on the ground to check the gaps in the tatami mats, and then quickly opened the door and left it open so that the electric light would illuminate part of the living room so that it wouldn't be so dark. She turned on the living room light, and then every lamp in the room, until the whole house was illuminated as if it were daytime, and then she felt a little at ease.

She pressed her chest, and the electronic clock on the wall showed the time of 2:08 a.m.

Sayuri glanced up at the clock, then down at the tabletop, and found a note, which was pressed against a half-pack of plasma bags.

Sayuri picked up the note.

"Recently, there have been a lot of things in the hospital, and my mother has been working the night shift. Drink breakfast and go to school. Mom loves you forever. ”

The note left by her mother made Sayuri panic, and she slapped the sharp knife in her hand on the table. She walked to her room and began to do her homework.

……

The next day, Sayuri stuffed the keys into her schoolbag and went to school, hanging her monthly transportation card on her chest, which was too expensive for her to reissue.

New Tokyo is at a premium, and she is going to a private university for vocational training, which is located on the lowest floor of a building with only a few event venues and no open-air running tracks, so it is very gloomy. The streets outside are filthy, where all the garbage spilled from the heights is piled up, and the wealthy, who stay away from the lower roads of Neotokyo in favor of the floating corridors and the high-end light rail that runs through the city.

She took a low-rise cheap rail train to the station near the school, and it was said that Mitsuhashi wanted to sell this lifeline for the poor to the private sector. After getting out of the car, Sayuri saw some people waiting for her.

"Hey, vampire witch! Check this out! Kokomi Hirata stopped Sayuri at the school gate with a few female students, waving a dazzling silver ornament in her hand, "Will you die when you see this thing?" ”

Shikomi Hirata is a nasty schoolgirl, her eyes fierce and unsettling, with a contemptuous smile on her face, and her tone is rough, and when she speaks, it is like a burst of noise that burrows into Sayuri's heart.

They came over grinning. Sayuri deflects her gaze, not wanting to get into trouble with her mother by fighting at school.

They came up to Sayuri and punched her tentatively, which was their habit. If Sayuri resists, they will say that two taps are just a sign of friendship and nothing. But since Sayuri has no intention of fighting back now, they begin to gradually hit hard, like beating a cowardly punching bag.

Sayuri guards her schoolbag and the subway monthly card on her chest. The schoolbag contained a workbook she wrote in the middle of the night, and it cost 6,000 yen to get a monthly card.

"Using silver will scare her away—"

"It is illegal for a witch to use power against a human being."

"Try the cigarette butts, she doesn't seem to scream." Kokomi Hirata said.

They walked freely in such a vocational school, and the teachers and staff next to them passed by, which had long been regarded as a daily routine, and they did not want to attract their attention.

When she arrived at the classroom, Sayuri sat in the last row, and because of what happened on the way to school, she was in a trance and couldn't concentrate. It would be nice if you had the money to go to a witch school, or go to a more advanced school. She thought. How can money be so good in this society?

This is the lower floor area of New Tokyo, a vocational and technical school for adults, and many people who are socially idle and idle are sent here, missing out on the golden hour of education, and many are forcibly sent in.

Sayuri felt confused, the morning math class was taught by a teacher who was overwhelmed, he deliberately ignored their questions, just chanted the lesson plan endlessly, as if he was busy getting off work, and left in a hurry ten minutes before the end of class, probably he didn't want to stay in such a place to teach.

He may think that the people here are stupid, and that teaching and listening to lectures are just going through the motions. Sayuri looked down at her notebook, she tried to jot down everything she could, and since she couldn't afford the expensive cram school, she had to rely on her own brain power to understand the equations. But the more she thought about it, the more tired she felt.

When class ended, Sayuri didn't dare to leave her seat, and always had to hold her backpack because Kokomi Hirata and her sisters might come to steal.

"She'll suck blood."

"It's a shame that witches have come to us humans."

"She's so beautiful, she's so good at playing outside, and she's had a fetus several times."

"I saw her go back with several men yesterday, guess what they did?"

"Hey......

Shame, shame. Sayuri picked up her school bag. When she went to the school's counseling room, the room with the silver sign was empty, and she called the counseling hotline and found that it was empty.

She returned to the classroom and found that her seat had been taken by Kokomi Hirata and her group. In the afternoon, she sat in the corner of the classroom listening to the lectures, like a beggar, with her knees on her notepad, the words on which were written crookedly.

Sayuri is forced to run away from school before class ends, because if it's any later, maybe Kokomi Hirata and the others will block her at the door. She wanted to mobilize the magic in her body, but perhaps because of her lack of mental strength, she felt that even her magic power was weakening.

She sat on a bench at the station and studied, waiting for the evening rush hour to pass before taking a slightly deserted car.

Returning to the door of the house in a hurry, Sayuri said nothing. She heard the voices of someone talking inside, it was her mother and a strange man. Mom is back, is that her lover?

"It's hard work at the hospital...... Good thing you're here. Mother Yuki Kawauchi said.

"Hah...... It's time to relieve this fatigue. The strange man said.

"Rude, want to drink beer?" Yuki Kawauchi asked.

"Wait, this picture on the wall is ......"

"Ah, ah, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I forgot to take it off, I hope it didn't ruin your mood." Yuki Kawauchi walked around.

"Is it my husband?" The man was visibly wary.

"It's just a dead man." Yuki Kawauchi said.

Sayuri turned to leave her house and came to a nearby man-made canal. She leaned on the concrete guardrail of the bridge and looked down at the quietly flowing garbage waterway below, which was used to discharge floodwater.

As an artificial island, New Tokyo has a high demand for flood discharge, and during heavy rainstorms, the water is discharged from the top to the bottom every year, leaving the people at the bottom to bear the rapids, and some people drown in these artificial canals every year.

She watched the still water flow in the dim light of the street lights, and there was still a lot of activity around her, and some unseen businesses were carrying out activities. Sayuri thought to herself, if she could join it, lying down to make money, probably the only way out for a witch like her, many people will go to the witch for the purpose of hunting.

Sayuri took a deep breath.

Just then, the ringing of a bell interrupted her thoughts.

She looked at the unfamiliar number on the phone and hung up subconsciously. But seconds later, the call came again, with a relentless momentum.

Sayuri connects the phone.

"You are?" She asked wearily.

"Hello, Sayuri, my name is Reio Sasahara. I just came to New Tokyo, can you pick me up? Please. The voice of the mercy came. Sayuri felt like a stone had fallen into it, stirring up a thousand waves in her backwater-like heart.

(End of chapter)