Digital Devil Story: Reincarnation of the Goddess (3 page)

"I guess it's true how they say that there's a fine line between genius and insanity. That was one hell of an earthquake though." Iida whispered as if trying to purge his memory of the repulsive experience.

CHAPTER 4

The next week, Iida was teaching Nakajima Akemi and Takamizawa Kyoko's class math in the CAI Room. Perhaps it was because he was there to witness the failure of the demon summoning, but Nakajima was looking at Iida with a defiant stare. Until now, he would never have acted like this. Trying hard to ignore him, Iida continued his lesson.

"Now I'm going to have you take an interactive test using the host computer. However, this test won't affect your grades in any way. Through your interaction with the computer, I'd like you to get a little bit more familiar with any weak points you may have. Begin entering your commands as soon as I give the signal."

The students all affixed their eyes to their screens and silently started answering the questions given them, as the host computer started diligently recording their individual responses.

Once use of CAI spreads, things will get a lot easier for us teachers. Though if it becomes too widespread, the time may come that we teachers aren't needed any more...
Iida carefully watched over his class while relaxing a bit.

All of a sudden, as if coming from the depths of the earth itself, a low, rumbling voice sounded and shook the CAI room.

"Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh."

The magnetic tape of the host computer started spinning wildly and the screens of the computers in the room started changing rapidly. Eerie colors and strange images flashed onscreen, and strange letter-like symbols appeared and disappeared. The students said nothing, but remained transfixed to their screens as if entrhalled.

"Nakajima, this is your doing, isn't it? Come on now, there's nothing wrong with a little mischief once in a while, but there are limits!" Twisting his face into an dark scowl, Iida started to walk over to Nakajima's seat, but the moment he started walking a student in the first row stuck his leg out into the aisle, tripping the teacher and causing him to clumsily fall forward. As Iida tried to get up, two more students slammed into his back, pinning him to the ground and twisting his arms behind him.

"Wh-what are you doing!? Stop this at once!" Taken aback at the sudden hostility of his students, Iida struggled to lift his head up while crying out. The other students, staring ahead with glazed looks as if in a trance, stood up from their seats. Three male students left the classroom, and the others gradually started to surround Takamizawa Kyoko.

Her face drained of color, Kyoko stared dumbfoundedly at her classmates surrounding her. Her catlike eyes were full of fear, her lips trembling up and down but held shut as if sewn together. A male student with thick glasses touched her chest, and as if freed from a curse, Kyoko lept up onto the desk.

"Stay away from me, asshole!" Kyoko yelled out desperately, whipping out a razor blade held between her thumb and middle finger.

"Stop, Takamizwa. Run!" Iida's shaking voice echoed throughout the classrom. But Kyoko merely took a sidelong glance at her restrained teacher, spat, and swung her razor at the student that had touched her. The student's glasses flew off, and his split cheek started oozing fresh blood. But the student did not falter a bit or even try to wipe off the blood, but obstinantly grabbed onto Kyoko's left ankle.

"Let go of me, asshole!" The razor slashed open the student's temple, and then lodged into his blood-soaked arm, breaking in two. Taking advantage of Kyoko's surprise, another student grabbed her left angle, and the two students now gripping both her legs raised their arms, hoisting her up in the air and dangling her upside-down. Her skirt fell down around her waist, revealing her white legs. Kano Miyuki, one of the most beautiful girls in the school along with Kyoko, walked up, put her face in between Kyoko's legs, and bit into her inner thigh. Bending backward in pain, Kyoko attempted to fight back, flailing her arms around like an animal caught in a trap, her drooping hair swishing wildly around, but several students knelt down by her head and started to twist her neck around.

"Stop! Stop this!"

As Iida cried out with tears in his eyes, a cold voice spoke.

"Professor, it's too late." Nakajima, who had been at his computer entering commands the whole time, looked at Iida with a sarcastic smile on his face.

"Ooh..."

With a meager cry, Kyoko's legs spasmed two or three times. Without even attempting to wipe the blood from her face, Miyuki looked up and the two students holding Kyoko in the air let go of her legs. As Kyoko's twisted, lifeless body dropped to the floor, the circle of students started to break up, leaving her behind.

Right about that time, the door opened, and the three students that had left earlier entered the room, Kondo following behind them. After hearing that Kyoko was being ganged up on and verbally harrassed by her classmates, Kondo came with a mind to teach the "know-it-alls" of the gifted class a lesson. However, the classroom was completely silent, and not at all what he was expecting. The three students led the perplexed Kondo to the center of the room, then quickly moved away.

"Oh my god..."

Seeing Kyoko's corpse, Kondo was dumbfounded and words escaped him for a moment. The students in the classroom surrounded him, as if to cut off his path of retreat. At that point, Kondo probably could have gotten away had he set his mind to it. But with his mind clouded with shock and anger, Kondo didn't realize just how dangerous a position he had walked into.

"You bastards, what have you done...who killed Kyoko!?"

His body shuddering in rage, Kondo's furious, bloodshot eyes turned to the students. But the normally meek students, who would usually run away if Kondo merely looked at them, showed no signs of fear, and returned his harsh gaze.

There was something seriously strange going on here.

At that moment, a groan sounded. Looking in the direction of the voice, Kondo saw Nakajima standing over Iida with his foot pinning the teacher's head to the ground.

"Nakajima...?"

Not evening imagining for a moment that such a genius pretty-boy could be capable of something like this, Kondo was completely taken aback.

Iida called out to him from the back of his throat. "Kondo, run! Everyone's gone mad!"

Called back to his senses by the teacher's voice, Kondo howled like a wild animal and charged Nakajima. But right before he reached Nakajima, a dozen students jumped on him and pulled him to the ground. Struggling with all his might, Kondo knocked off the students clinging to them, punching and kicking any that got close. But even with their foreheads split and their ribs shattered, the students picked themselves off the floor as if they felt no pain at all, and fiercely grabbed onto Kondo. One of them picked up a computer monitor and hit him hard in the back of the head with it. Kondo's vision blurred with the shock of the blow and started to stumble, and in that instant, the students pulled him to the floor again and restrained his limbs.

"Shit, let me go! I'll kill you!!"

Looking at at Kondo vainly struggling against the students, trying to get free, Nakajima's handsome face twisted into a cold smile.

"Actually, you're the only one who's going to be killed here. I was hoping to have Kyoko be your executioner, but as you've seen, she's already died. So I've been nice enough to have Miyuki do the job for her; you should thank me."

Cradling his chin in his hand as if in thought, Miyuku kneeled down near Kondo and brought her face close to his, her chin still covered in Kyoko's blood. Her warm breath caressed his cheek. Kond's body stiffened up and shivered a bit, and in that instant, the knife in Miyuki's hand flashed and was drenched in crimson. A gurgling cry came out of Kondo's severed windpipe, and with his eyes still open, his head folded backward with a sickening crunch.

"Now then, Professor." Nakajima crouched down and looked into Iida's face.

"What do you think, Professor? You see? My demon summoning experiment wasn't a failure. That day, a demon really did appear--inside the CAI host computer. We just didn't realize it. When I was in class here in the CAI room yesterday, the demon sent me a message: "KILL! I UNDERSTOOD" He can't escape from the computer, so he used group hypnosis to control the class. By the way, Professor, I promised to give three souls to the demon. Kyoko's, Kondo's, and one other..."

For an instant, Nakajima's eyes glittered with an emotion like pity. But as if to surpress it, he pressed his lips together and stood up.

"W-wait, please wait..." As Iida desperately wheezed and struggled, ten students dragged their feet along the floor, slowly approaching him.

PART 1:

NIGHT OF DEMONS

CHAPTER 1

After many days of rain, the sun finally showed its face one June morning. The muddy water collected in puddles on the street reflected its rays like little mirrors. Shirasagi Yumiko narrowed her eyes a little bit and gazed at the three-story school building, which shimmered a bit like a mirage, wrapped in the haze created by the vapor from the evaporating water on the ground.

Shirasagi Yumiko.

Her long, slender limbs made her image seem appropriate to her name, which meant "White Heron." Her inquisitive red-brown eyes--which reflected her keen intellect--and her well-shaped nose gave her all the qualities of a natural beauty. However, it could be argued that her propensity for mischief kept her from being as mature as an ordinary high school senior.

Yumiko's transfer to this school had been quite sudden. Only two months earlier, her father, who had worked for a major electronics firm, had been transferred from the branch office in Sapporo to the main office in Tokyo. As the daughter of a salaryman, Yumiko had gotten used to frequent moves, but this was a bad time for a major change--next spring she would be taking her college entrance examinations. She had wanted to spend her last year of high school with the friends she had made, and it was hard to give that up. But after a lot of indecision and hard thought, the entire family had decided to move together, mostly on her mother's insistence that "it's too dangerous for either you or your father to live alone." But only two days after having transfered to Jusho High, Yumiko quickly started to regret giving in to her mother.

"I don't like the mood here."

Yumiko's admission test to the school had demonstrated that her abilities put her in the top tier of the "gifted" class. Her parents were quite relieved and happy at her scores, but Yumiko felt that this school had an unnatural coldness that she just could put her finger on. Her former school in Sapporo had also been quite a prestigious institution, but there was no sort of artificial separation between "gifted" and "general" classes, and the students there just seemed to be individually enjoying their life as high school students more.

In stark contrast, the students of Jusho High had the air of old hermits who had altogether given up on life. The gifted class simply went through the curriculum like machines, as if being programmed to pass their college entrance exams. Even though the general class had its share bright and talented students, many of them had lost their will because of the way that they were passed over by the administration, in favor of the students in the gifted class. Everyone knew their place in the organization, and nobody attempted to break that mold.

Come to think of it, she hadn't spoken a word yet, outside of her general introduction to the class. That alone was tough for Yumiko to stand, as she had never been the quiet type. However, she didn't feel any real hostility toward herself from the faculty or students. The entire class was eerily silent, as if being awkwardly suppressed by some sort of invisible force. During free periods, not a single one of Yumiko's classmates had said so much as a word to her.

"If you're too popular right from the beginning, people will start to keep an eye on you, and you don't want that!" That was what her mother had laughingly said when Yumiko mentioned the issue to her and joke or not, the comment had hurt her pride.

Inside the school courtyard, the opening bell rang.

Drawing in a deep breath and summoning her will together, Yumiko slowly walked toward the school building.

The first hour of the day was Classical Japanese class.

The professor, Ohara, was quite a beauty. She wasn't wearing much in the way of makeup, probably due to work regulations, but her tall height, style, and face--which looked attractive even to the eyes of other women--was such so that she could probably easily make it as a model. But the dull, toneless voice in which she read the text, combined with the monotonous translate-classical-to-colloquial manner in which she conducted the class could hardly be said to be attractive, even as insincere flattery. Yumiko had been desperately suppressing yawns all class long.

"In the
Ise Monogatari
, there is a
tanka
poem: 'In the Uzu Mountains of Suruga, I will not meet you in reality or in a dream.' In the past it has come up three times in Keio University's entrance exam, and also in Waseda University's exam, so you should memorize it..." Ignoring all cultural significance of the poem, Ohara started talking about entrance exams.

So much for romance and mystique of the
Ise Monogatari.
Ariwara Narihira must be rolling over in his grave.

Getting downright irritated by the class, and nearly on the brink of being overcome by drowsiness, Yumiko noticed a rythmical sound behind her, like that of a plastic sheet being tapped. Turning her head, she saw a handsome male student diagonally behind her to the right, typing on the keyboard of a handheld computer that sat atop his desk. She recalled his name as being Nakajima Akemi. Yumiko had been introduced to him along with all the other students the day before, but their names and faces had gotten all mixed up so she couldn't clearly remember everyone. But Nakajima's profile and name were both rather feminine, so his image had stuck in her head. Though he had completely ignored her when she had intially bowed her head in greeting.