"Is it really this late already?" Saeko Busujima sighed with emotion, tilting her head back to gaze at the full moon hanging high in the night sky.
Normally, high school classes in Japan concluded around three in the afternoon. Even accounting for club activities, students rarely stayed past five o'clock. For someone like Saeko to be leaving the school grounds at eight or nine at night was undoubtedly abnormal.
This was entirely because the new semester had just begun. As a core member of the Kendo Club, she had no choice but to keep herself busy recruiting new members.
Setting aside her status as the captain of the Fujimi Academy Kendo Club, the Busujima name alone was enough of a draw. With the Busujima Style's immense prestige within the country's kendo circles, it was enough to attract the vast majority of students with an interest in kendo.
Furthermore, she had secured back-to-back championships at the National High School Kendo Tournament during her first and second years, proving the undisputed caliber of her swordsmanship. Combined with the elevated cultural status and prestige of kendo in Japan, it was safe to say that a vast majority of the incoming freshmen had enrolled specifically for the Kendo Club and the Busujima name.
Even though she had already gone through this exact ordeal last year when she became a second-year student, going through it all over again this year was definitely not easy.
It will all be over in a few days.
At least, that was what Saeko thought.
Stepping off the Fujimi Academy campus, she quickened her pace toward home.
She hadn't walked far before she quickly realized something was wrong.
An ordinary person might have failed to notice, but for Saeko, who had practiced kendo since childhood, her senses were razor-sharp. She easily detected a faint, lingering gaze prying at her from a short distance behind.
Feigning ignorance, she casually brushed a strand of purple hair over her shoulder and slightly tilted her head, sweeping a quick glance over her shoulder.
Although the pursuer's movements were stealthy, she still spotted the figure hiding in the shadows trailing her.
The stalker wore a face mask that obscured their features and a heavy black trench coat that completely swallowed their silhouette. Such a shady, bizarre getup clearly didn't belong to a normal person.
A mugger? Or a perverted stalker?
The questioning thought flashed through her mind. She was intimately familiar with this kind of situation.
Back in middle school, she had experienced a similar incident of being secretly tailed on her way home from school.
It had been on a night exactly like this one. A day she would never forget.
It wasn't because the stalker had managed to harm her. Rather, it was because she had possessed the perfect opportunity to draw her White Oak Bokken and scare the man away, yet out of some twisted psychological urge, she chose not to.
Instead, she deliberately feigned weakness. She waited until the man lunged to commit his crime, then relentlessly struck back with her wooden sword, shattering his shoulder blade and leg bone.
In reality, it easily qualified as excessive self-defense. However, the police had taken her young age and the nature of the crime into consideration. A middle school girl fighting back against a perverted criminal—so they didn't press charges and simply escorted her home.
Yet, that incident left a permanent thorn in the young girl's heart. It forced Saeko to confront a terrifying reality: she possessed a deeply ingrained, violent tendency.
She might very well be a dormant murderous fiend.
Because when she struck that criminal with her wooden sword, the euphoric thrill and surging excitement welling up in her heart could not be faked. But her rational mind screamed that what she was doing was fundamentally wrong.
The brutal collision between logic and instinct constantly tormented her.
And now, faced with an impending scenario nearly identical to her middle school days, what should she do? Should she draw the White Oak Bokken hidden on her person and frighten the attacker away? Or should she surrender to her instincts, wait for the enemy to act, and vent her inner violent desires upon them?
Crunch.
Her foot stepped on something—whether a stray pebble or a twig, she didn't know—and the resulting sound snapped her out of her thoughts. Blinking, she snapped back to reality and stared at the dead end ahead of her.
Without realizing it, she had wandered into a dead end.
Saeko was about to turn and leave, only to find the stalker stepping out to block her path.
Clearly, she was the target.
She slowly exhaled a heavy breath. Gripping her White Oak Bokken with both hands, her eyes turned razor-sharp, and she stated coldly, "Leave now, and no one gets hurt!"
Even now, she was unwilling to strike first. Perhaps out of rational restraint, or perhaps she was terrified that if she struck with reckless abandon, she would truly become a murderous fiend.
If the stalker turned and fled, she would pretend none of this had ever happened. But if they saw the White Oak Bokken in her hands and still refused to give up...
A near-imperceptible smirk curled at the corner of Saeko's lips. Even she didn't realize that her innate hunger for battle—her desperate need to vent—was beginning to awaken.
As Saeko's words hung in the air, the stalker showed absolutely no intention of turning away, and instead reached a hand out from beneath the cloak.
It was an exceptionally beautiful hand. The skin was pale and clean, the knuckles long and elegant, and the fingernails neatly trimmed. It looked completely unlike a hand that should belong to a criminal. There wasn't a single callous on it, nor any signs of physical conditioning.
Saeko felt a sudden pang of familiarity, as if she had seen that hand somewhere before. Unfortunately, the stalker's eyes were hidden beneath a deep hood, preventing her from identifying them.
Before she could think any further, the outstretched hand quickly grabbed toward her.
Its target? The heavy, burdensome assets on her chest—far exceeding the size of her peers—that she usually considered a nuisance during kendo practice.
"You're dead!"
Saeko's brows snapped together, her gaze freezing over with absolute malice.
She swung her White Oak Bokken without a shred of mercy, slashing toward the hand attempting to defile her. After all, she had absolutely no intention of letting anyone take advantage of her.
Whoosh!
The heavy wooden blade tore through the air, howling as it carved a deadly arc toward the outstretched arm.
But the result was completely unexpected.
Saeko looked down. Not only had that wicked hand effortlessly dodged her strike, but it had bypassed her guard with lightning speed, pressing perfectly against her sensitive weak points.
Taking advantage of her momentary daze, the hand even lightly squeezed her twice.
"You bastard! How dare you—!?"
Saeko's eyes flushed crimson. She ground her teeth together, the veins on the back of her hands bulging as she gripped the hilt of her sword. A suffocating, unrestrained killing intent erupted from her very core.