"BOOM!!!"
The instant Shinobu said those words, Rokuya seemed to hear an incredibly muffled sound of something shattering in her mind.
He heard her sobbing her heart out inside! He felt that suffocating heartache in the dream! She was taking a knife to her own heart, slicing it into pieces, just to secure her sister's happiness, just to lock herself by his side forever with the safe yet cruel shackles of "family"!
"Damn it... damn it!!!"
In reality, Rokuya's consciousness struggled frantically. He wanted to break free of this dream body's restraints. He wanted to hold her, tell her to stop talking, tell her he knew everything!
But Enmu's Blood Demon Art had not ended! This chain of ever-escalating mental torment was only just reaching its climax!
The surrounding moonlight and the corridors of the Butterfly Mansion instantly collapsed like a shattered mirror.
The next second, cold incandescent light stung Rokuya's eyes.
The air was thick with the pungent smell of highly concentrated venom, and cold laboratory benches piled with all kinds of test tubes and scalpels surrounded him.
This was... Shinobu's Toxicology Research Institute on the outskirts of Osaka!
This was the place where, after becoming the "Insect Hashira," she had shut herself away without sleep or rest, almost as though abusing herself, to develop a poison that could kill an Upper Rank once and for all!
Within the dream, Rokuya looked at the girl before him, who had completely shed her youthful awkwardness, wore a butterfly haori, and carried that signature, masklike, perfect smile on her face.
He knew that what came next was a tragedy that had happened in reality only a short while ago.
"Oh my, if it isn't Lord Takanashi? How did you find the time to visit my shabby little poison storehouse? Is the