Now I know it's you [KyouHaba]

Chapter 14

AN: 

TW: Dead body again, proceed with caution.

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He met up with Kyotani back at the village. The blond seemed relieved when Yahaba emerged from the forest, but his whole body was tense.

"Come, I found something."

Yahaba followed him, confused by the strange tone in the other's voice. But when they reached one house with an open window leading to the forest, he immediately knew what happened.

They crawled through the window carefully, minding the blood all over the floor.

The woman laid on her bed in the same position as the man from the morning, the same fearful expression on her face. Unlike the previous victim, the wound on her chest was stretching across the whole torso. Most of her ribs were broken, the pieces lying around the body, and the hole left after the heart was removed, was even more evident.

"It's not even slowing down," stated Kyotani darkly, balling up his fists.

"And I almost had it," scowled Yahaba, furious at himself for letting the apparent killer get away. "It was right in front of me, and I lost it."

Kyotani tapped his shoulder.

"We wouldn't be able to help her anyway. And you shouldn't have gone after it by yourself. It could pretty much kill you too. Don't forget we still don't know what it is. We have no idea what abilities it has."

"But it looks like a human," objected Yahaba, trying to ignore the worry in the other's voice when he talked about Yahaba getting killed, there was enough of the inner turmoil in his head without it. "I swear I saw a woman in that forest."

Kyotani looked at him sceptically.

"Are you sure? It was dark, it could really just look like a human."

"Hey, I might not have senses like you, but I can still see quite a lot. It was a human. Or humanoid at least."

Kyotani watched him for a moment and sighed.

"All right. Let's deal with that later, ok? We have more pressing matters right now."

Yahaba nodded and bent down to the body, taking note of the amount of blood around it. It was almost as if the killer purposely made the scene look much more brutal than in the first five cases. Same with the wounds on the victims' chest. If the first cases were just a way to get to the heart and remove it, which was quite an amazing feat, in the last two, the killer suddenly went overboard.

He looked up at Kyotani, who seemed to come to the same conclusion.

"It's playing with us, isn't it?" he asked through the tightened throat. "It's laughing in our faces, right here and now. If it's not a demon by species, it's certainly by mindset."

Kyotani looked much grimmer than Yahaba had ever seen him.

"Do you think it will continue at this rate?"

It was more of a rhetorical question. They both knew very well the killer won't stop now. Yahaba came to an inevitable decision.

"If we don't solve it by tomorrow, we'll send for the backup."

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Later, Yahaba took on himself the unpleasant task of informing the village leader about the situation. The man took it better than Yahaba expected, only sighing softly with surrendered expression.

"I guess we are really cursed, aren't we?"

Yahaba couldn't really object. They were cursed, though not literally.

He took the leader to the house to secure it in case someone wanted to enter - the leader told them the woman had a daughter who was supposed to come back in the morning.

Yahaba frowned at the information.

"You said all the victims were home alone when they died, right?" he asked the leader, motioning for Kyotani to come to them. "Was there always someone supposed to come back the day they died?"

The man frowned, his brow wrinkling.

"Now that you mention it, yes. Except for Soto, the first victim, the ones that found them were away and just returned that morning."

"Did people know when they were supposed to return?"

"Yes, you can't really keep anything secret in this village. When Maeda's son, eh son of the fourth victim, got delayed for a week, most people knew about it an hour after Maeda-san got the letter."

Yahaba thanked him and took Kyotani to the side, leaving the leader to guard the house.

"It has to be someone from the village," he whispered when he was sure the leader won't hear him. "No one from outside could have known when the people are alone and when the others from the house will return."

"But how could someone with murderous intentions live here for so long without anyone noticing? You don't just wake up one day wanting to kill someone. People notice when you act differently."

Yahaba thought about it.

"Maybe they did, but just didn't think too much about it?"

"Or someone convinced them the person just has a wild fantasy."

Yahaba frowned at the strange undertone in Kyotani's voice. The other was completely still, looking somewhere over Yahaba's shoulder. Yahaba followed his gaze, meeting the eyes of a familiar figure in the window across the road.

The girl smiled widely at them and waved. The wind carried her singly voice to their ears, and Yahaba suddenly felt much colder.

"They all had their little secrets. And someone found them. Even though they buried them. And now they will be buried too~."