Corpse March

Chapter 47 Is This Entertaining II?

“Wh-what?” Crying, breathing heavily, face contorted in internal agony, Kazumi slowly opens her eyes. 

“I’ll… buy you a cola.” Kazuko can’t believe she said something so stupid. She almost shrinks as she repeats herself. 

"..."

"..."

“Ku…” In spite of the situation, Kazumi somehow finds it in herself to laugh. “A cola? That’s your plan? That’s your plan to stop me from killing myself?” 

“It was all I could think of at the moment...” 

“A cola? Really? Like someone like me deserves something like a cola. Even after killing someone, you’d still buy me a cola?” 

“I rarely ever get to drink one...” 

“I think I’m going to need more than a cola.” Kazumi slowly lowers the gun, and sits down at the edge of the roof. Her dead eyes are fixed at her feet. The situation has been defused. For now.

“How do you feel?”

“Jesus Christ, how do you think I feel?” 

“Like shit?”

“Yeah.” 

“It really do be like that sometimes.” Kazuko carefully walks towards Kazumi and sits down next to her. 

Kazumi leans forwards and rests her elbows on her knees. “You don’t look too much better.” 

“Oh this?” Kazuko raises her cast and winces from the pain. “It’s really nothing.” 

“Uh-huh, right.” She doesn’t hide the disbelief in her voice. ”Bullies at school?”

“Not really… I just couldn’t pay Girls Won’t Cry their fee for the month.”

“Ah. That’s a pickle.” Kazumi passes the gun between her hands. “Do you have any friends who can lend you money?”

“No. I… don’t have any friends.”

“Really?”

“I did a bad thing.” Kazuko’s eyes are fixed on the ground. 

“It can’t be that bad.”

“I used to steal money from my classmates.”

“Oh… that’s pretty bad.”

“I couldn’t make ends meet at home. Which is… something considering I live in a cardboard box in the park. If I didn’t get the money somehow, I would have starved to death.”

“That… also sounds pretty bad.”

“I felt it back then. Real hunger, I mean. It hurt so much I started hallucinating. I just… couldn’t take it any more. I wasn’t old enough to apply for a part time job at the time, so…” She turns her palms upwards. “I had to steal.”

“I see.” Kazumi nods in understanding. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay.” Kazuko shakes her head, as if shedding all the horrible memories. “What was school like for you? Before all this, I mean.” 

“What was school like?” She adjusts her glasses. “Normal, I guess. I had friends but like… I didn’t know them and they didn’t know me. Not in the way that real friends do.”

“Why’d you stick around?”

“I dunno. It seems silly to say but I really don’t know.” 

“I see.”

Kazuko looks over the ledge at the blockade. Seems like things down there are escalating. Someone important-looking steps out of a luxury sports car. Haru saunters over to her before pointing up at the roof, at them. Kazuko can barely make out her face, but she gets the feeling that she can see her just fine. 

“I’m a dead girl walking, aren’t I?”

“Maybe… maybe.” Kazuko stops looking at the blockade. That’s a problem for later. “They might let you go.”

“You really think so? Even after all this?” She gestures at the dead body. 

“They’re used to both seeing and being worse, I think.”

“Heh. You make a good point.” Kazumi gets up from her seat on the ledge and starts pacing to and fro. “Say, what’s your name? I gave you mine, but you never gave me yours.” 

“It’s Kazuko Kuzue.”

“Kazuko… Kazuko and Kazumi, like two peas in a pod we are.” She nods to herself. “Hey, Kazuko?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you mean what you said earlier? About buying me a cola? In spite of everything I’ve done?” 

“Yeah. Though I only have enough allowance for one.”

“I suppose we’d have to share it.”

“I suppose we would.”Kazuko smiles to herself. Though, the smile quickly falls from her face when the door to the roof slams open. Kazuko jolts to her feet, as though there’s anywhere for her to run. From the open door comes out Haru and a lanky girl with green eyes. They take strides towards Kazumi. 

“I see that you’ve already simplified the hostage problem for us.” Haru gestures at the dead body. 

Kazumi looks away. A mistake.

“This isn’t personal.”

“What–?” Without another word, Haru plunges her ax into Kazumi’s stomach. There’s the horrible sound of meat being torn apart. Blood spills from her mouth and onto Haru’s hand. She callously wipes it off on the still-clean part of Kazumi’s shirt. 

Kazuko loses control over her body. All that she is is a consciousness seeing through the girl named Kazuko’s eyes. She sees herself running. Running towards Kazumi. Running towards her only friend. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do, all that she knows is that she’s running. Then she trips. Not on thin air, but on someone else’s foot. She hits the ground hard. Someone pins her against the ground. In between her fading consciousness, she sees that it’s the lanky girl. 

Kazuko struggles and writhes against her restraints but it’s no use. She feels like a worm floundering on its hook. She looks up just in time to see Haru push Kazumi over the roof’s edge. If the blood loss didn’t kill her, the fall surely will. There’s a sickening crunch as bones meet concrete. 

It feels so sterile. Kazumi’s dead. Kazumi, who had a heartbeat, who had a family, who had warm blood, who was no different from Kazuko, who was Kazuko’s first friend, and now there's nothing. Just warm blood and a pile of broken bones. 

“I-I’LL KILL YOU!” Kazuko screams out at Haru and the lanky girl. “I SWEAR I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU GIRLS WON’T CRY FUCKS–!” 

With Kazuko’s mouth still open, Haru promptly shoves her shoe into it. She makes a point of slowly pressing down, grinding Kazuko’s jaw against the concrete roof. The pain should be unimaginable, but the burning rage inside of Kazuko hurts even more. Her one friend. Her only friend, gone, just like that. 

“Sorry, girl.” She’s already forgotten her name. “I told you I was in a bad mood.” 

“MMMPH– MMMMMPH–!”

Haru sighs. “You just don’t get it, do you? On the bottom of the food chain is grass. Right above that are things that eat grass. Right above that are people who can’t use magic. And above that, are people who can use magic like me. Right now, you can’t do shit.”

Kazuko finally runs out of strength to struggle, but her gaze still continues to burn as she stares into Haru’s eyes.  

“If you’ve got a problem, get stronger, learn to use magic, and sign onto Barrakuda. They’ll teach you how to fight. You can take your revenge then… if you don’t get killed first, of course.” Haru takes her shoe out of Kazuko’s mouth, leans down, and gives Kazuko a pat on the shoulder. In return, Kazuko spits on Haru’s shoe. 

“...hmph. You just don’t know when to quit, do ya?!” Haru kicks Kazuko’s head. Not enough to kill her, but enough to make her brain hit her skull and it’s lights out for Kazuko. She spirals into a nightmare. An endless nightmare ruled by the laws of the jungle. 

Endlessly getting stronger, stepping on others, getting stronger, crushing others, getting stronger, killing others, getting stronger, all for the sake of exacting her revenge. No, it’s not about revenge, it’s about teaching those Girls’ Won’t Cry fucks that their actions have consequences. And it’s about damn time they finally caught up.