Tears dried on her face, making her skin feel tight. Nagasaki Soyo sniffled hard, wiping away the last trace of moisture.
The practice room was as dark as a cellar, its curtains blocking all light.
Her muddled brain slowly began to turn.
"They can't film… It's so dark, what could the camera possibly capture clearly?" This thought was a tiny lifeline.
She suddenly remembered that Togawa Fuuki had installed this device to monitor Sakiko's band, and probably didn't have any other strange motives.
"As long as things are calm during this time, no one will review the footage!"
Soyo abruptly stood up and began to restore the practice room to its original state, exactly as it was when she left yesterday.
She didn't dare to gamble on whether that man would be meticulous enough to notice changes in the practice room, so she did her best to erase the traces she, as a fox, had left in the room.
Cushions were returned to their places, chairs straightened, and the small animal paw prints on the floor were carefully wiped away… When the last item was put back, a heavy silence again descended, and nothing else could distract her.
She had to face herself.
The pair of fluffy brown and white fox ears on her head brushed against the stray hairs on her forehead, the sensation so real it was unsettling. The bushy tail behind her restlessly swept across the floor. She could even control it to stiffly lift a little, then heavily drop.
These were not props, nor illusions; they were part of her body.
"Magic? A curse? A dark ritual of the Togawa Family?"
Although these thoughts perfectly fit the fantastical imagination of a teenage girl, now that it was actually happening to her, it was difficult to accept.
However, no matter the truth, there was only one reality: she had become an anomaly.
Go home like this, with fox ears and a tail? Go to school? See Sakiko?
While at first, they might be mistaken for cute decorations attracting everyone's teasing and attention, over time, it would inevitably be discovered that they were real.
She would become different from everyone else, an "abnormal" existence in others' eyes.
A distant memory fragment suddenly awakened in the girl's mind—it was that afternoon when she walked into the classroom alone after her family underwent a change.
The scene was devoid of color, only the gazes of many classmates collectively cast upon her, and the suffocating sense of estrangement… of distance.
Just then, the ears on the girl's head twitched sharply, suddenly tensing into pointed angles, acutely catching a sound approaching from the hallway outside the door.
Heavy, yet urgent footsteps.
Their target was clear, heading straight for this practice room.
Soyo's heart instantly leaped to her throat. She darted to the door like a startled rabbit, held her breath, and tiptoed to press her eye against the cold peephole.
Two suspicious men were blocking the doorway.
Thick white masks covered most of their faces, several abstract large characters were on their dazzling white hard hats, and their dark work clothes were incredibly bulky, nothing like typical repairmen.
The person on the left was carrying a strange-looking instrument, its casing rusty and several old antennas welded to it. The person on the right was holding a silver metal gas cylinder, with a cold, horn-shaped nozzle at the end of its connecting hose.
Whether as a girl or a fox, Soyo felt an incredibly strong sense of danger at this moment.
The man with the detector approached without warning, his bloodshot eye suddenly pressed against the outside of the peephole, as if penetrating the door panel, "looking" inside!
"Ugh!"
Soyo's short gasp was muffled by her hand, and she recoiled as if electrocuted, her back hitting the cold wall.
Almost simultaneously—
Bang!
The peephole exploded inward, glass shards scattering across the floor. This was followed by an even heavier, teeth-grinding sound of tearing metal!
Clang!
The practice room door lock was suddenly blown through by a powerful impact, its twisted parts spinning as they fell to the center of the room.
The door creaked as it was violently kicked open, and the two men burst in with a gust of cold wind.
"Tsk."
The man holding the detector scanned the empty room, the antenna at the top of his instrument still quivering, emitting a faint buzzing sound.
"The instrument shows residual Japari Park energy here, hmm… it should be the right place…"
The man carrying the gas cylinder scoffed, juggling the hose nozzle.
"This old piece of junk should have been scrapped ages ago! Maehara hasn't shown up in a while either, just messing around with that band, not even maintaining it." As he spoke, he disdainfully swept his gaze over the instruments left by the girls in the practice room.
The detector man ignored the complaint. He crouched like a hunting dog, his rough fingers caressing a few extremely shallow scratches on the smooth floor—marks Soyo had left with her claws after turning into a fox.
"There are claw marks, very fresh. Just now, there was a 'Beast-Human' here."
His sharp gaze fell upon the window, which had been pushed open a crack, letting in a cool breeze.
"Did it sense danger and run away?"
"From this high up?" The gas cylinder man peered out. "Probably a bird, then."
"Hard to say." The detector man stood up, his tone grave.
"That traitor stole fossils from some museum or another, I heard dinosaurs even appeared in the center of Ikebukuro."
"Haha, that would be something."
"To be honest, I really regret being assigned to this unlucky 'Search and Capture Team,' missing all the fun."
"Don't be careless." The detector man's voice grew cold. "Although the core area's energy is decaying, and most Beast-Humans are starting to regain some sanity, their aggressiveness is still fierce… People with clear consciousness who know they've become monsters will only be crazier."
"I know~" The gas cylinder man drew out his words, shrugging indifferently, and casually patted his back—a heavy, gleaming harpoon gun, its tip and handle stained with large patches of dark brown dried blood, like gruesome medals.
"I'm too lazy to catch them alive; memory erasure is a pain in the ass."
He weighed the terrifying weapon, the clinking of metal chilling the heart, and a cruel excitement gleamed in his eyes above the mask.
"They're not my type, just shoot them directly!"
The two men stopped talking nonsense and began to meticulously search the room.
Heavy footsteps echoed on the wooden floor, thudding, each sound pounding on Soyo's taut nerves.
She was curled up under a cluttered table in the corner, tightly shielding her body with a cello case, as if clinging to a last piece of driftwood.
She held her breath, her nails digging into her palms, her violently thumping heart almost drowning out all other sounds outside.
The footsteps grew closer and closer, a pair of thick, mud-stained work boots stopped in front of the table.
"Here."
The detector man's voice was right next to her, the antennas at the top of his instrument twisting wildly, pointing downwards.
"The signal source is right beneath here; the energy reaction is very strong."
All of Soyo's blood seemed to freeze instantly. She shrank herself even tighter, wishing she could melt into the shadow of the cello case.
She could feel a rough hand grasp the edge of the table, about to exert force to drag this heavy table away!
Just at this critical moment—
The detector man's movement suddenly paused, as if a stop button had been pressed.
He straightened up and turned to walk out the door.
"What?" The gas cylinder man was a little surprised; his harpoon gun was already raised.
"This thing really isn't very good…"
The detector man shook the junk in his hand, showing no intention of stopping.
"I knew it!"
Seeing his companion finally also experience the unreliability of the instrument, the gas cylinder man followed closely, and began to chatter again, complaining about the inside information he had heard.
The heavy footsteps disappeared down the hallway, leaving only the damaged door gently swaying.
Dead silence once again enveloped the practice room. Time seemed to be frozen for five minutes.
Under the table, the cello case was carefully pushed aside.
Soyo crawled out from behind the cello case, using both hands and feet, and collapsed onto the cold floor.
Her face was as pale as paper, her lips trembling uncontrollably, cushioning the lingering terror.
She leaned against the wall, staggering towards the large full-length mirror. The mirror reflected her current appearance: messy hair, a wrinkled tracksuit stained with dust, and crisscrossing tear streaks on her face. The undeniable brown and white fox ears on her head trembled slightly, and her bushy tail hung limply behind her.
"Who can tell me…" She gazed at her unfamiliar, half-human, half-fox self in the mirror, her voice bewildered,
"What exactly happened…"
Just then—
Creak…
A slight pushing sound came from the doorway.
Soyo whirled around, her heart contracting again! Had those two strange men returned?!
But there was no one at the doorway; it seemed the door had only been slightly pushed by the airflow coming in through the window.
A false alarm—just as she thought this and turned back, the fox ears on her head again stiffened and stood upright in fright.
She saw several bold red characters suddenly appear on the previously clean, large full-length mirror—
[DO NOT COME OUT.]
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