She couldn't recall how she had ended up in such a place.
Her last mory was of an utterly ordinary school day. Yet the next ti she opened her eyes, she found herself lying inside a filthy, decrepit house—on a bed that looked like it hadn't been washed in who knew how long, caked with dust, grimy, and reeking of foul odors.
Kidnapping? Blackmail? Imprisonnt?
A flood of possibilities rushed through her mind.
No matter what, this was an unprecedented ergency—one she had to face with her full vigilance.
Kaguya Shinomiya instantly shifted into battle-ready mode.
For soone to snatch her straight from school, to bring her—the eldest daughter of the Shinomiya family—out of Shuchiin Academy and into a place like this, it was impossible for an ordinary criminal to have managed.
Extre caution was necessary. First, she needed to assess the situation. Any rash move could lead to unpredictable consequences.
She ran through all these thoughts in an instant, without the slightest hesitation, and quickly devised a course of action.
She cracked her eyes open just a sliver, her body motionless, swiftly taking stock of her surroundings. She then noticed the man lying beside her. He seed to be asleep, but his head made faint movents, betraying that he too was quietly surveying the room.
From this angle, it was difficult to pin down his exact age. But he was clearly a young man, likely between eighteen and twenty-two. His clothes looked average in quality, but bore suspicious red-and-white stains. He was tall—about 1.83 m, roughly 25 cm taller than her—with a physique that was not at all frail. Considering he might be a trained operative, a head-on clash would be dangerous. It would be hard to subdue him imdiately, so recklessness was not an option.
To be in such close proximity to an unfamiliar man—for Kaguya Shinomiya, eldest daughter of the Shinomiya Group, one of Japan's four great conglorates, raised like a girl kept in a gilded box and sheltered from the mundane world—was unbearable in itself.
However, her strict upbringing and the rationality she had cultivated made her fully aware that she was now isolated in an unfamiliar environnt. When everything is unknown, acting with caution is indispensable.
The person beside her might be soone trapped just like she was, or a figure planted by the mastermind. Either way, from the way he pretended to sleep while secretly observing the room, it was clear he was just as careful and wary. In that case, he had likely already realized she was only feigning sleep. If so, he would already be on guard against any move she made, and the chance of taking him by surprise and subduing him was slim. The best next step was to find a way to open so distance between them first.
If Hayasaka were here—given her skill… No. As the Shinomiya family's eldest daughter, she should not waste thought on things that do nothing to improve the present situation. In any case, she could not keep waiting. One way or another, she had to act now.
As Kaguya Shinomiya's mind sped through possible strategies, her body had tensed without her noticing.
Only, before she could put any plan into motion, a piercing sound struck—and she lost control of her body. Then the sa eerie voice Takumi had heard rang clearly in her ears.
[…Player Kaguya Shinomiya, this is the first ga you will participate in. Ga level: Dusk]
[Your condition for clearing the ga: Escape from Shirakawa Apartnts]
[The ti limit for this ga: seven days]
[Now issuing—]
The specifics matched what Takumi had heard, differing only in the na.
Unlike Takumi, however, Kaguya—who had no idea what this thing was—was for a mont shaken to her core. If not for so inexplicable force holding her still, her face would surely have undergone drastic change by now.
What on earth was going on?
Her body would not move.
It felt as if even her breathing had stopped—no, when the voice sounded, she truly could not breathe.
From hair to toes, not a single part of her would budge, like the remains of an explorer who had slipped into an ice cavern and been found later, sealed in ice. Unless extracted, there would never again be the possibility of the slightest movent.
But that was not what shocked the girl most.
When the voice arose, it wasn't rely that she couldn't move—she could not feel her body at all. If not for her strong will forcing her to focus at once on her own breathing and heartbeat, then while listening to that voice she would never have noticed that she had already stopped breathing, and her heartbeat had ceased as well. It was as though every sense of the body had left her—as though her soul had slipped free.
This was already beyond anything a kidnapper could accomplish.
It defied all common sense—an inexplicable, fundantally unreal thing, sothing that should not exist.
What kind of situation had she fallen into?
No—this was not the ti to panic. Fear would not help her escape the present predicant. What she needed to know was what to do next.
As the Shinomiya family's eldest daughter, raised within a cold and rciless conglorate household, Kaguya Shinomiya's mind had long been tempered. Even faced with a circumstance that utterly exceeded common sense, she forced herself to calm down and listened carefully to the content of that eerie voice.
Sacrifice Ga? Escape from Shirakawa Apartnts? A seven-day ti limit?
Those three hints sounded like aningless wordplay, yet since the voice had given them, they had to hold so significance.
In that mont, Kaguya Shinomiya's mind raced with possibilities, but with so little information at hand, there was no way to draw any useful conclusions.
Soon, as the voice faded, she regained control of her body. Kaguya sat up quickly, flexing her hands and feet with movents so small as to be almost unnoticeable, her gaze instantly locking on the person beside her.
"Damn it…"
By contrast, Takumi's reaction was far more dramatic.
The abrupt loss and sudden return of control over his body left him extrely uncomfortable. He rolled straight off the bed. Even so, his hand instinctively grabbed the sheet of paper lying on the nightstand, clutching it to his chest as he scrambled to his feet and backed away two steps before lifting his head.
Their eyes t.
"Ahem, uh, konnichiwa? Nice weather today, huh."
He had no idea what would be best to say in this mont, but figured he might as well start with a greeting.
With that thought, Takumi raised his hand toward the girl sitting on the bed, putting on the most harmless smile he could muster.
Glancing at the paper Takumi held, Kaguya stepped down from the bed. She stopped by its edge, keeping a distance of roughly three ters from him, and spoke. "…That voice just now—you heard it too?"
Based on earlier observations, the chance that this man had been kidnapped and thrown into this place just as she had was high. Though she could not yet rule out other possibilities, conversation was still necessary. After a mont's thought, she decided to probe him with words.
"If you an that voice telling I was now a player in the Sacrifice Ga, the one that froze my body in place—then yes, I heard it. So you, like , were inexplicably brought here?" Takumi answered while edging back another step, putting more space between them so both could feel safer.
"I see. My na is Kaguya Shinomiya. May I ask yours?"
From that indifferent face, Takumi could read nothing of her feelings. Her voice, nearly flat, betrayed nothing either.
This black-haired girl in a Shuchiin uniform might still carry a trace of youthful immaturity, not yet fully grown, but the icy aura surrounding her was another matter entirely. Compared to her portrayal in ani, the difference was like night and day. Takumi suspected that even a man in his twenties or thirties, inexperienced and untested by hardship, would struggle to remain calm under that piercing gaze, sharp as a blade.
Still, as soone who had lost his parents early and been forced to weather society's hardships on his own, Takumi was not so easily shaken. He cald down swiftly and spoke at once: "My na is Takumi."
"Shinomiya-san, if I'm not mistaken, you suddenly lost consciousness, and when you woke, you found yourself here—am I right?"
"That's how it was for . I was at ho packing when all of a sudden, I ended up here. In any case, I think we've been caught up in sothing extrely serious. Do you have any experience with this sort of thing?"
"Also, this sheet of printer paper caught my attention earlier. It feels out of place in this rundown house. I think sothing might be written on it—whether by the mastermind behind all this or soone else. Either way, I believe it holds so value. Do you want to take a look?"
Takumi organized his words carefully, speaking at a steady, unhurried pace as he lifted the paper in his hand.
Though he hadn't examined its contents in detail—too focused on watching her movents—he had still caught a glance at the words Rules of Life in Shirakawa Apartnts written across the top.
Even so, Takumi maintained a cautious distance from her.
For one thing, there were still far too many unknowns in their situation. For another, he rembered clearly: in the original story Kaguya Shinomiya ca from, this girl—who didn't even look 1.60 m tall—actually had formidable fighting ability. She had once overpowered an ordinary 1.75 m tall high school boy with sheer strength, throwing him to the ground and knocking him out cold with her bare hands. On top of that, she had systematically trained in archery, swordsmanship, and martial arts.
And now, with her clearly on high alert and just as unsure of the situation as he was, if he rashly approached her, he might very well end up like Ip Man's wooden dummy—pounded into the ground by a full set of strikes, maybe even knocked unconscious on the spot.
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