Shiraze Rina felt like she was slowly turning into a little pig.
She sprawled on the huge sofa in the living room, her pose somewhere between a “melted ice cream” and a “sun-wilted cat.”
Her silver hair spread out like a puddle, one leg propped up on the armrest, the other dangling down, her toes hooked around the pale blue slipper that was about to slip off, swinging it back and forth.
She was wearing the new home dress her kidnapper had bought her…
Milk-white, strappy style, with a hem so short it had absolutely no moral limit, and every time she turned over it exposed the top of her thighs.
And she no longer cared in the slightest.
“Ah~”
She opened her mouth, tossed a chilled cherry in, chewed it vaguely a couple of times, and spat the pit with precision into the small porcelain dish on the coffee table.
On the coffee table were also cut mango, peeled lychees, two boxes of different-flavored cream puffs, half a bar of chocolate, and a glass of honey lemon water that Hisaki had made for her this morning…
Comfortable.
Too comfortable.
So comfortable that her brain hadn’t voluntarily produced the word “escape” in three whole days.
She’d even started binge-watching shows…
Being imprisoned?
Being kept?
Being locked in the house by a yandere pervert?
Rina reached for a lychee…
Her fingers froze mid-air.
She wasn’t enjoying it.
She tried to argue back.
It was strategic. A tactic. That was called…
[That’s called numbing the enemy.]
[That’s called being a kept little waste.]
“You!”
Rina took a deep breath, deciding not to argue with an artificial idiot that had no physical form.
She sank back into the sofa, deliberately lying in an even more arrogant pose, as if showing off to the system.
But the system clearly wasn’t going to let her off the hook.
[Allow me to remind you of the punishment.]
The scene before Rina’s eyes suddenly changed.
A hospital bed.
A white ceiling.
Closed windows.
An IV bag hanging on the stand, liquid dripping down one drop at a time.
Memories surged up from the depths of her mind.
“Turn it off!”
Rina’s voice suddenly changed…
[Seven days from now, if you still haven’t taken any substantial action to escape, the system will deem it a “task abandonment.” At that point, the punishment will take effect immediately. You will return to that hospital bed. Permanently.]
The vision disappeared.
The living room was still the living room…
“I know, I know, I know, shut up!”
She suddenly bounced up from the sofa…
Damn it.
Why did the system feel even more detestable than the kidnapper?
The kidnapper at least gave her food.
This system either nagged in her ear or scared her with horror movies.
Rina gritted her teeth, sat back down on the sofa, and picked up her phone.
Fine, since the system was being so insistent, she’d at least look it up, right?
She unlocked her phone and typed a line in the search bar.
“How to escape from a yandere.”
She pressed the search button.
The screen flashed, and a red warning box popped up.
[Parental control. The content you attempted to access has been blocked. Keyword: “escape.” This term has been added to the forbidden word library.]
[To lift the restriction, please contact your parent, Kurose Kisaki.]
Rina stared at the pop-up.
“You!” She took a deep breath, “No!”
She tried a shorter word. “Run away.”
[Parental control. Keyword: “run away”]
“Leave.”
[Parental control. Keyword: “leave”]
“Go out.”
[Parental control. Keyword: “go out”]
***
The fifth pop-up appeared—not red, but black.
[Multiple attempts to access forbidden content. Phone has been locked. Lock duration: 24 hours.]
The screen went dark.
Rina let out a soul-splitting scream.
Rina flung her phone onto the sofa, threw herself backward, and covered her face with a cushion.
Damn it.
It was all the system’s fault.
If it hadn’t kept pushing her to escape, she wouldn’t have searched those words, wouldn’t have triggered the parental controls, and if the parental controls hadn’t locked her out, she could’ve kept watching her shows.
Now the phone was locked, the system was still counting down the seven-day timer, and life was just unbearable.
She rolled around on the sofa twice like a sulky child, then pulled the cushion away and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, blankly.
Rina climbed off the sofa, stepped into those pale blue slippers, and headed toward the study with a face that clearly said “I’m not happy.”
Her nightgown hem swayed gently with each step, her thighs peeking out beneath the milk-white fabric, but her mind was full of “I want to play on my phone,” so she couldn’t care less about any of that.
The study door was ajar.
Rina reached out and pushed it open, using just enough force to make it bang against the wall with a “thump.”
“Kidnapper!”
Kurose Kisaki sat at the desk, a laptop and a drawing tablet in front of her, the screen showing a design layout she was working on.
She wore a dark gray home shirt, her long hair loosely gathered over one shoulder.
Hearing the door being pushed open, she looked up.
And what she saw was a puffed-up, angry face.
Rina stood at the doorway, silver hair messy, cheeks flushed with the heat from just getting up off the sofa, the milk-white strap nightgown crumpled on her body, one strap slipped down to the edge of her arm, revealing the pale, almost translucent skin where her collarbone met her shoulder.
Her sky-blue eyes were glaring at her with seven parts anger and three parts grievance, her lips slightly pouted, her hand clutching the locked white phone.
Kisaki’s hand paused on the drawing tablet.
Her brain went blank for a fraction of a second in a state called “being moe-struck”
“What’s wrong, Shiro?” Her voice was gentle, her expression concerned.