Tokyo, on the outskirts of Ōta Ward.
In front of an ordinary-looking bus, a lively group of elementary school students who had come to Tokyo for a spring field trip bustled about.
The teacher, wearing a bright yellow vest, stood in the middle and waved as he called, "Everyone—hurry up and line up! We'll be leaving after one last head count."
Amid the crowd, a boy in a yellow cap with a backpack looked up and pointed curiously at the sky over Arakawa Ward.
"Chiyoko, Chiyoko, why's the sky over there all red?"
The girl called Chiyoko slowly opened her eyes, revealing a sly smile. "Who knows? Maybe some incredibly powerful monster died, and its blood dyed the sky red."
The boy froze for a moment, then scratched his head. "Are there really monsters in this world?"
"There are, there are. Of course there are."
Chiyoko revealed a sweet smile like she had eaten honey. The boy's face flushed red, and he turned aside bashfully.
Even though I'd anticipated how delicious Nanjō Emi's heart would be, it was only after eating it that I realized I had still vastly underestimated this unparalleled sweetness.
Chiyoko... or rather, the girl whose body had already been taken over by Ai Bielie, hummed a popular children's song that had spread through every street and alley as she thought.
Even though she had only tasted a trace of it at the very end, a trace she had painstakingly coaxed out, Ai Bielie still felt that everything she had done was worth it.
*Built on the foundation of a ten-year-old girl's purest, most innocent thoughts, with confidence, conceit, and pride like the main ingredients of fate, mixed with the bewilderment of accidentally discovering the truth and the confusion of being deceived by her closest relative all