"Mmmhm! Mmmh!" The desperate screams were barely muffled murmurs, smothered by the tightly tied gags in their mouths.
"Don't blame me for this..." Osamu said, holding a syringe in his hand as he advanced through the shadows of the basement. "You all caused this situation. And well... you didn't leave me a choice."
His voice wasn't aggressive, but it carried an unbearable weight. A mix of sadness, contained anger... and resignation.
"If only you hadn't let yourselves be dragged by your greed, by those disgusting impulses you tried to hide behind empty smiles..." he continued, stopping in front of Tatsuya, whose gaze wavered between fear and disbelief. "All of this could have been avoided."
Osamu swallowed hard. His hand trembled slightly as he raised the syringe.
"Unfortunately… it seems I have to put an end to this. If I don't, they'll try again." His words cracked for a second, but he forced himself to continue.
"Do you think I want to do this?" he whispered, more to himself than to his prisoner. "Do you think I enjoy this crap? I don't want to become a murderer... but... what other choice did you leave me?"
He tried to maintain a serene face, as if he could shield himself behind a mask of indifference. But the tension in his jaw and the trembling gleam in his eyes betrayed him.
"I'm sorry. But this is for the girls. For Rias. For my safety. I need to cut the problem at its root."
And without giving him time to doubt, he plunged the needle into Tatsuya's neck. The liquid entered slowly. One less.
He continued with the others. One by one. Eight in total. Eight bodies, eight threats silenced by their own betrayal.
"Mmmh! Mmmmh!" The men struggled, writhing in desperation. They tried to break their restraints, to scream, to plead for mercy. But nothing. Osamu had been meticulous. The handcuffs, the chains... everything was designed to prevent their escape. Even too well.
He watched them in silence. Not moving. He simply observed the panic blossom in their eyes as they realized there was no way out. The succinylcholine began to take effect. It was only a matter of time.
And so it was.
One by one, the bodies stopped moving. First, they stopped thrashing. Then their muscles relaxed, their pupils dilated, and the air stopped entering their lungs.
Osamu didn't look away for a second.
He witnessed every second of their deaths.
Until the basement was left with nothing but an absolute silence.
He moved slowly, one by one, and took their pulses.
The result was clear.
Dead.
All eight.
Without exception.
Osamu stood there, motionless, staring at the bodies that once walked with arrogance and twisted desires. Now, they were nothing more than empty shells. He had accomplished what he set out to do... but at a price he couldn't fully comprehend.
His fingers trembled. The air in the basement was thick. Every second felt eternal. And suddenly...
"Ha…!"
The gasp broke the darkness. Osamu shot up suddenly, drenched in sweat. The ceiling of his room was directly above him, illuminated by the faint light of the morning filtering through the curtains. His breath was ragged, his heart pounding like a runaway drum.
A nightmare. No... a memory.
He brought a trembling hand to his face, feeling the dampness of cold sweat, mixed with a drop he didn't know if it was a tear or not.
"I did it... I really did it," he whispered, his voice dry and muffled.
He stayed there, sitting on his bed, unmoving. The room was silent, but inside his head, the echo of muffled screams, the creaking of restraints, and the whisper of the syringe still lingered.
The dream wasn't a distortion. It was the exact memory of what he had done hours earlier.
And although the world outside kept spinning... for him, something inside had already stopped.
...
"Aren't you going to eat, Osamu?" Rias asked with a hint of concern as she watched him. "You haven't touched your plate since we started."
"Today... I'm not hungry," he replied simply, without looking up.
"You don't look well, Osamu-kun," added Ichika, sitting at the other end of the table.
"Are you sick?" Nino asked, moving closer to place her hand on Osamu's forehead. "No, you don't have a fever..."
"I'm fine, really. I just need to clear my head... I'll go take a bath," Osamu said, standing up, under the watchful eyes of the girls. His behavior contrasted with his usual energetic mood, and this worried them.
"I think Kuroda-kun is stressed about the apocalypse situation," Itsuki said thoughtfully.
"Is it because he's thinking about how we'll get more supplies soon?" Miku asked softly.
"It's possible. Osamu tends to overthink everything... Maybe it's affecting him more than he shows. I'll talk to him later. For now, let's just let him relax in the bath," Rias concluded, watching the door through which Osamu had left.
While the warm water ran over his body, Osamu remained silent in the bathtub, absorbed in his thoughts. He couldn't stop thinking about what he had done. How would he tell the girls? Would they change their behavior toward him if they knew he had killed eight people? Or would they understand?
Osamu wished, from the bottom of his heart, that they would understand.
After a while, he finished his bath, dressed slowly, and after thinking for a few more minutes, decided to look for Rias. He knew that if anyone could understand him, it was her.
But as he began walking through the mansion's halls, a sudden movement shook the entire structure. It was so abrupt that Osamu had to lean against the wall to keep his balance.
"What was that?" he murmured, puzzled.
The ground shook again, this time with greater intensity. Osamu frowned. Something wasn't right. This didn't seem like an ordinary earthquake.
He passed near the stairs leading down to the basement... the same basement where the bodies of the guards were. Another tremor coursed through the place, more intense, and this time Osamu felt it clearly beneath his feet.
His eyes widened suddenly.
"They're coming... from the basement...?"
"It can't be... They should be dead. There's no way they survived that injection..." he thought anxiously.
Without wasting any more time, he ran to the storage room. There were the weapons he had confiscated from the guards. He took one with trembling hands and headed for the basement door.
When he opened it and looked inside, his face changed completely.
"You've got to be kidding me..." he murmured, unable to believe what he was seeing.
The bodies of the eight guards, each one of them, were crawling over each other... not with their own life, but as if an invisible force was pulling them together, merging into a grotesque mass of flesh and blood.
And the worst part: a massive hand made of their bodies had formed... and it was the one striking the wall, causing the tremors.
Osamu stepped back a step, the weapon trembling in his hands. The dull sound of flesh hitting stone echoed through the basement walls with a terrifying force.
"No... this can't be happening..."
The bodies he had injected hours earlier, making sure they couldn't escape... were moving. But not in a normal way. One by one, they crawled, twisted, and fused together as if some foreign will was forcing them to unite.
"This isn't natural! I killed them! They were dead!"
But there they were. Their limbs intertwined, their flesh fusing grotesquely, forming a figure that defied all logic. A massive hand, made of torsos, arms, and heads, was rising and slamming against the basement wall with enough force to shake the entire house.
"It can't be... It wasn't the serum... This is something else…"
An eye opened, still wet and blinking, staring at him from the distorted mass. Osamu felt his skin crawl. There was no hatred in that gaze. Only an unfathomable suffering, as if that eye was begging him for release.
Panic flooded him.
"What kind of force is doing this...?"
The whispers began. They weren't coherent words. They were mixed voices, distorted, as if dozens of broken throats were trying to speak at once. An infernal cacophony that pierced his eardrums and froze his blood.
Osamu took another step back, the gun barrel trembling as it pointed at the abomination. He wanted to shoot. He wanted to destroy it before it could finish forming. But he couldn't.
Not out of compassion... but out of fear.
Because he understood something.
This thing wasn't the result of his decision.
It was a warning.
And as the creature grew, Osamu felt the air grow thicker. Darker. As if something invisible, something primal and terrifying, was waking up along with that monster.
"What have I unleashed without knowing...?"