“Are you alone?”
When the voice fell from above, Shiraze Rina was sprawled on her scavenged old sofa in her most comfortable position.
Her silver-white hair lay scattered messily over the armrest, sky-blue eyes half-open, half-closed…
She’d been living under this Bridge Underpass for nearly a month now.
Calling it a Bridge Underpass, it was actually a fairly spacious area, the Bridge spreading overhead like a giant umbrella, blocking out wind and rain, leaving only shade and echoes behind.
That sofa had been tossed by someone, but it was surprisingly comfortable to lie on.
She crossed her legs, one foot dangling a pair of nearly-broken sandals, swaying to a rhythm only she could hear.
Another boring day.
She heard the voice, but she didn’t move.
In fact, she’d barely moved all month. Aside from eating and using the bathroom, she spent almost all her time on that sofa, maintaining the posture of a “waste” with a near-performance-art level of dedication.
People passing by would occasionally peek under the Bridge Underpass, then frown and hurry away, probably assuming she was a runaway problem child, or just a lunatic.
But today’s voice was different.
Rina’s eyelids twitched. She shifted her gaze from the top of the Bridge Underpass and shot a glance toward the direction of the voice.
A woman stood beside the sofa.
Long hair, neatly trimmed, falling on both sides of her shoulders.
Her features were delicate—the type you’d glance twice at on the street—but what really caught Rina’s attention was her eyes.
A pair of dark crimson pupils, under the dim light of the Bridge Underpass, watching her quietly and intently with something that sent a chill down Rina’s spine.
When did she get here?
Not even a single footstep.
She didn’t sit up, didn’t even change her posture, just crossed her legs the other way, then spoke in a deliberately annoying tone.
“What are you staring at? Never seen a pretty girl before?”
The persona, perfectly nailed.
Contempt, a cocky expression, but with just enough childlike innocence that could be forgiven because of her age.
She’d rehearsed this script in her head for a month, and now it was finally her turn on stage.
Kurose Hisaki didn’t get angry.
She even smiled slightly, then slowly crouched down.
Her movements were unhurried, as if afraid of startling a stray cat crouched in a corner.
Once she crouched, her gaze was level with Rina’s lying form on the sofa, dark crimson pupils meeting those careless sky-blue eyes.
“Are you alone?”
She asked again, her tone softer than before, like coaxing a child.
Rina let out a “pfft” laugh, turning her face away, silver-white messy hair covering half of it, the exposed eye full of disdain.
“Mind your own business. I like it this way.”
Her voice was sharp and brittle, bouncing several times through the empty Bridge Underpass before fading.
She closed her eyes after speaking, with an air of “leave me alone,” but her heart was already starting to race.
Here it comes, here it comes, it’s finally here.
A month ago, when Shiraze Rina opened her eyes, her first reaction was confusion.
She saw the sky.
Not the white ceiling panel of the hospital room she’d stared at for eighteen whole years, but a sky so blue it was almost blinding.
Clouds drifting, birds flying, wind brushing her face with the smell of dust and exhaust—a scent belonging to the living world she’d never experienced before.
She was stunned for a long moment, then looked down at herself.
Smaller.
Everything was smaller.
Hands and feet shrunken a size, her body unfamiliar beyond belief, silver-white hair hanging down, appearing like snow in her vision.
She raised a hand to touch herself, then felt a flat chest.
Oh, she’d become a girl.
Then came the System.
Her past life.
She remembered it clearly.
From the moment she had memories, it was all hospital smell—disinfectant, pills, IV drips, and windows that were always closed.
His body was like a machine that came off the assembly line defective, fixed then broken again, broken then fixed again, until it finally gave out completely at eighteen.
He lay in that Hospital Bed for eighteen years, from the time he could speak to the time he couldn’t, from full of hope to dead inside.
The only ones who never gave up on him were his parents, but every tear they dropped on the back of his hand burned so badly he wanted to die.
His parents hadn’t given up on him, but his own body had given up on him first.
So the words “back to the Hospital Bed” weren’t a punishment to Rina—they were torture.
The kind of torture that made her scalp tingle and her whole body shake just from imagining it for a second.
She accepted the mission.
And so Rina began her performance.
She found an old sofa, tossed herself onto it, and started playing the part of a homeless girl persona.
She deliberately didn’t wash her silver-white hair, letting it tangle into a mess, and left dust on her face to look pitiful.
But she couldn’t let the “pitiful” go too far—if she attracted not the yandere target but some kind-hearted person who took her to a shelter, then all her effort would be wasted.
So her script was:
A bratty, stubborn little kid who was clearly homeless but refused to bow her head no matter what.
Pitiful enough, and annoying enough, like a wild cat squatting in the rain that wouldn’t let anyone touch it.
Exactly the type a yandere would love.
But there was one thing that bothered her.
She’d been living under the Bridge Underpass for a month, and she hadn’t seen a single homeless person.
That wasn’t right.
A place like a Bridge Underpass was prime real estate for the homeless—sheltered from wind and rain and hidden from view. At least one or two people should’ve claimed the spot.
But there weren’t even any passing through.
For this whole month, aside from the occasional sound of cars from the road above, the Bridge Underpass was as quiet as if it had been forgotten by the world.
What she didn’t know was that every homeless person within a one-kilometer radius had already been “cleaned up” by someone beforehand.