SBS Time!
Before I start answering questions, I would like to make it clear that from now on, I'm going to answer ONLY questions related to my stories and nothing else, so please refrain from asking off-topic questions from now on. The SBS section is not for people to pry into my private life and personal interests.

M.G: What's going to happen to all the people of the original yukkuri world due to the "program" kicking in?
Game2002: That's something best left for the future to answer.

Chapter 3
Fate to be Reversed

Moon Statue Store was a store that sold, as its name implied, statues. The statues were all made from moon rocks, but polished and colored in various ways to make them look and feel different from each other. The shop owner and sculptor was a balding old man with years of experience in this field.

It was nine at night, so it was time for the store to be closed. After locking the door and covering some of the more precious and expensive statues with large pieces of cloth, the store owner went to his living quarters located in the second floor.

A few seconds after he left the first floor, something dome-shaped appeared hovering just outside the window.

The next day, at the House of Eternity…

"Eirin! Someone!" shouted the voice of Kaguya loudly all of a sudden.

Hearing this, Eirin and Reisen rushed over to her room. Opening the sliding door, Eirin asked, "What's the matter, princess?" She then noticed something on Kaguya's sleeping mattress and was shocked. "What the?!"

Covering the entirety of Kaguya's pillow and the area around it was a large amount of blood. "What happened, princess?!" asked Reisen in shock.

"Dunno," replied Kaguya. "I woke up this morning and it's like this."

Eirin bent down next to the pillow to observe it. "It's definitely blood… The fact that it covers your pillow entirely means that it wasn't poured onto you, because if that was the case, the center of the pillow shouldn't be covered in it due to your head getting in your way."

"I don't remember getting back, and even if I did, I'm sure I would notice something when I go back to bed," said Kaguya.

"Do you remember something happening yesterday while you sleep?" the doctor asked Kaguya.

"Can't remember… I was really sleepy and pretty much slept through everything…" replied the princess.

"Can… Can this be the princess's blood?" asked Reisen. "If that is the case, then someone must've attacked her during her sleep, but her regeneration healed her."

"I'll have to run a blood test on this pillow first to see if it really is her blood," said Eirin while picking up the bloody pillow.

A large amount of people were gathered outside the Moon Statue Store, as there were law enforcers in there, working on a new case that had something to do with the store's shattered window.

"Are you sure that the only thing missing is the statue of Yorihime of the Watatsuki Sisters?" asked the policewoman questioning the shop owner. Said policewoman was a lunar rabbit.

"I've been doing business at this place for so long that I can easily tell what's missing and what's not, so I'm very sure that the only thing missing is the statue of Watatsunki no Yorihime," replied the shop owner.

"Okay…" said the policewoman before jotting down some notes onto her notebook. "Before and after closing the store, did you notice anything suspicious outside your store? Have you noticed any strange customers while you're still doing business?"

"I don't remember seeing any of those…" said the shop owner. "The entire day went by normally without anything strange happening at all. All I know is that I woke up at one at midnight to the sound of the window being shattered, and when I rushed down here, the statue was missing. The statue is heavy and requires two people to move properly, but even so, one shouldn't be able to move it away from here so fast!"

As the policewoman continued to question the shop owner, Seiran and Kagome were outside, looking at things. "First, murder, now, theft…" said Seiran. "I feel like all these are connected in some way…"

"Thinking the same thing as you…" said Kagome.

"It all started to happen after we brought back that strangely-colored rock," said Seiran. "I'm very sure it has something to do with that…"

"They never found that rock after the explosion, so it's likely that it got destroyed in the blast," said Kagome, "or perhaps the rock itself blew up…"

"Still doesn't explain how Doctor Kagana and the forensic scientist died, though," Seiran reminded her. "Either way, I don't think we're going to see the last of these incidents. We better keep an eye on things to make sure nothing goes wrong again!"

"Sure thing," said Kagome.

"It really is Kaguya's blood…" said Eirin in disbelief after she was done running a blood test on the bloody pillow.

"Then someone must've attacked the princess while she was asleep, but she slept through everything and didn't realize what happened…!" said Reisen.

"The princess is indeed a heavy sleeper, so I wouldn't be surprised if she slept through her murder attempt…" said Eirin. "But who would attack her in the middle of the night?"

"There is Mokou…" said Reisen.

"As much as she hates her, I don't think she is the kind of person who would do this," said Eirin. "Anyway, can you bring Kaguya here? I want to ask her some more things to see if we can find out anything."

"Sure," said Reisen before leaving the room.

"Good job!" said Kaguya happily to the rabbit demons that cleaned her room of every single drop of blood. "Now hurry up and clean up that bloody mop. It's creepy to look at…"

Reisen was running down the hall and in the direction of the princess's room. Shortly after seeing the rabbit demons leave the room, a relatively small explosion burst out of it.

Shocked at what she saw, Reisen rushed over to the room and looked in there to see something that horrified her. There was a perfectly clean hole on Kaguya's chest. "PRINCESS?!"

Kaguya looked at the hole on her body. Everything within the circle was "cleaned" out—no bones and organs. She reached her hand into the hole and moved the former around in an almost playful manner and then said the understatement of the century, "Whoa…"

Two Lunarian girls, about twenty years old, were walking through an alleyway. "Are you sure it's safe to take this path?" asked one of them.

"Don't worry; I take this path often," said the other one. "Trust me; it's a very useful shortcut. We'll be there before you know it!"

Suddenly, someone appeared before them, surprising them. Upon closer look, they saw that it was someone they were familiar with. "Oh, it's just you, Miss Yorihime!" said the second girl. "What are you doing here?"

"Um… Is it just me, or are you… lacking in color?" the first girl asked Yorhime.

"Thanks goodness for immortality and regeneration!" said Kaguya while touching the spot on her body that used to have a hole. "A normal person would've died from something like that! I'm so lucky!"

"I can't believe you can still be so happy after what happened…" said Reisen while giving her a strange look.

After what happened earlier, Eirin, Toyohime, Yorhime, and Tewi all rushed over to Kaguya's room after hearing Reisen's scream. Kaguya insisted that she had no idea what happened at all. "All I know is that something struck me from the back and created an explosion that blasted a hole on my chest," said the princess.

Wanting to get to the bottom of this, Eirin asked her, "Where was your back facing?"'

"Nothing, just the wall," said Kaguya while pointing at said wall.

All turned to look at the wall to see if there was anything on it, but there was nothing peculiar about it. Yorihime walked up to the wall and touched it. "Are you sure there are no secret passages here? Your attacker may very well have used it to attack you."

"This is my room, so I'm one-hundred percent sure that there are no secret passages there," said Kaguya.

"And I came up with the blueprints of this building, so I can be sure that there are no secret passages in this room," added Eirin. "I made sure that the rabbit demons didn't add anything without my permission too."

"You'll never know if one of your servants did it without you knowing afterwards," said Yorihime.

"You're such a skeptic, aren't you…?" Tewi asked her.

"Let's not talk about the wall for now, but rather, let's think about what was capable of creating an explosion that was powerful enough to penetrate a person's body," said Eirin. "I don't think there's anything living in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost that is capable of doing this, and there's no way Mokou could've gotten in here without any of us knowing and then disappearing without a trace afterwards."

"I wouldn't be surprised if it was her… She can do something like that, but I doubt it's her," said Kaguya.

"Yesterday, corpses with smashed heads… Today, sliced up bodies…" said a policeman while looking at "something gruesome" discovered in the alleyway. "Things are getting bloodier by the minute, aren't they?"

While the policemen were investigating the cut up bodies of two girls in the alleyway and passersby were watching, a certain person approached that location. When the people saw who that person was, they immediately made way for him to pass through and then knelt down and lowered their heads as if he was someone important.

"Lady Sagume!" said one of the policemen. "What a surprise to see you here!"

The woman who arrived, the goddess Sagume, said nothing but motioned for everyone to stand up and then asked what happened. After getting an explanation about what happened, she approached the dead bodies and looked at them. She was in no way turned off by the gruesome sight.

"The culprit will never be brought to justice," she said before turning to leave.

"Really? Thank you for your blessing!" said the policeman happily, as he knew perfectly well that the opposite of what she said would happen.

Hearing this, everyone immediately started talking among each other about what Sagume said. "She said the culprit won't be brought to justice! That means the person behind this will be caught soon!"

As people praised Sagume for the "blessing," the goddess walked away while thinking, "I don't know who's responsible for everything that happened these two days, but now that I've opened my mouth, let's see you trying to keep up your antics!"

TO BE CONTINUED