AUTHOR'S NOTE :
Rewritten and retranslated !
Chapter 7
"Four little soldiers were cooking fish, one's wrist got cut down, and then there were three."
"Leave it, she wants to fight", Miho whispered to the blonde.
"Yes, but now you're a group and now I'm all alone, since Pazomi and Gomoyo aren't here and the others are dead", Sodoko grumbled again. "So technically, because it's one against three, I'm losing."
The others preferred to ignore her and returned to Miho's room. It was now half past one in the morning.
"I leave you, I'm too tired", Erwin murmured while standing up.
"Good night", Yukari said. "I go to bed too. See you tomorrow, Miporin !"
Miho felt her friend's last word striking her hard. She suddenly felt terribly sad. Miporin was the nickname Saori gave her. She held her tears saying :
"Sleep well, Yukari."
As soon as the vivacious girl closed the door, Miho broke down. She remembered her friend's voice calling her like this, her laughter, the moments she spent with her team, and her tears began to flow.
She had a lump in her throat and it was even painful. She stayed like that for about twenty minutes, and then went to wash her teeth and sleep.
She had trouble getting to sleep that night. Memories haunted her.
What had put her off of tankery, then when she met Saori and Hana, everything that had happened so far...
But when she saw their pretty faces, she saw them dead. Hana pale as porcelain, peacefully asleep, and Saori, with an expression of distress and purple-ish, cyanotic lips.
When she remembered Mako, she saw herself again when she was holding her while she was convulsing, just after she poisoned.
Even the others were coming back to her mind. Momo, her blank stare, her open mouth with flowing water, drowned in a singular way. Anzu, her dislocated and broken body. Yuzu, covered with the burns which cost her life.
It was very difficult for her to bear the loss of her friends and her other peers. Nevertheless, she fell asleep from exhaustion.
She went into a dream. She ate a giant macaroon with Yukari and Erwin. But suddenly, Sodoko came and pushed them off of it, making her falling into the void. The other two were trying to catch her up, but were knocked out by the small black-haired. They all fell into an abyss, under Midoriko's eyes.
This nightmare woke her two hours later, at 3:50 AM. Miho felt like inspecting the rooms.
Sodoko was resting well, lying on her stomach. Yukari had a restless sleep and she had her head at the bottom of the bed. Erwin hadn't changed her position and slept very deeply.
Reassured, the captain went to sleep again. Nothing happened to her comrades. It was just a dream, and there was no giant macaroon in the room.
She fell asleep soon after and spent the night.
In the morning, she was the last one to wake up. Yukari did pancakes, as promised. Sodoko and Erwin had already sat, taking care to get away from each other to avoid fights. The brunette with curly hair ate with them.
"Ah, you made them !" Miho exclaimed.
"These are not pancakes, but caramel-flavoured pancakes, it's Yukari who made them and they are prodigious", the blonde said, taking another one.
"Wait, repeat ?" the captain chuckled.
"I said, "these are not pancakes, but pancakes-""
"These are not pancakes, but pancakes ?" Miho giggled.
"No, these are not pancakes but pancakes", the captain of Hippo team smiled with a slight nod before beginning to eat.
The Commander of the Anglerfish team tasted her precious breakfast.
"Eat this wonderful food before it gets cold", the blonde advised.
Miho took a piece of one.
"Oh, indeed !" she nodded, her mouth half full. "Yukari, I love how you cook !"
"Thank you !"
"I rarely say this, but I love how you do the food, Akiyama-san", Sodoko told.
"Well, thanks", Yukari thanked.
The breakfast went without a hitch, unlike other days. There were always four little soldiers on the fireplace, a sign that nobody was dead.
The girls seemed to forget the gravity of the situation by joking. Despite their stress, they still managed to hold on emotionally.
Suddenly, a question crossed Miho's mind.
"What remains as provisions ? I don't want to starve to death."
Yukari went to check, and then returned.
"Cans of tuna, bread, milk, canned beef and eggs. Nothing much."
"Okay, so we'll have to eat tuna and corned beef during the remaining days", Sodoko sighed. "Life is joyful..."
"It's better than nothing", Miho said firmly.
Erwin and Yukari nodded. Sodoko kept quiet until the end.
The three girls returned to the lounge. They sat together on the sofa.
"Three against one, we hit the bull's eye !" Yukari said .
"Nothing tells you that the murderer isn't Miho or even me", Erwin warned. "If I was, right now, I could kill you. But I don't do it. Because I don't want you to die."
"It's obvious that this is Sodoko", the captain explained . "She seeks to get noticed from the beginning, but we've been taken all the time. Look, we all suspected Anzu, and finally she died."
"But how do you know that this isn't a simulation ?" the dark brown-haired asked.
"Because did you saw her neck and her back's condition ? You don't survive if it happens to you", the light brown-haired replied.
"And even if she survived, she would be paralyzed, so how do you kill someone if you're at least quadriplegic ?" the blonde added.
"How hard I suspect Sodoko, I can't persuade myself that one of you two is the killer here", Yukari confessed.
"We never said we killed", said Miho. "The culprit is Midoriko Sono. You can sense it."
"Anyway, Anzu wouldn't have been long for this world", the bright brunette blew.
The lunch went well. Sodoko stayed away from the rest of the group, so there was no conflict between the four survivors. They had to content with canned tuna. Everything seemed more bland now. Most had died, others were struggling to survive until they find the murderer.
The week was ending in two days. They all wondered if they would hold until then.
Miho didn't seem to have any big hope. She knew that death awaited her and that the moment when her life would be struck down approached second by second. She was trying to enjoy her last minutes, hours, days ? She was unable to determine who would be next on the list. Probably Yukari, or Erwin, or herself.
But she knew that in her mind, Sodoko was the one who caused all this. She and the captain were accusing each other. Midoriko also accused her of complicity with the bright brown-haired and the blonde. But it looked like some sort of counter-blast.
In the evening, Yukari went to cook while Miho and Erwin remained in the room. She began by washing her hands, then took a can of tuna and opened it.
Noise coming from behind caught her attention. She felt that something approached her. But she saw nothing. "Who's there ?"
She waited, inspected the room. She walked several times around the kitchen without departing from the food, fearing a blow from the murderer.
Not finding anything, she resumed cooking.
She took a plate in one of the cupboards and poured the fish in it. Noise again. Still noticing anything, she continued to cook, taking another tin.
"It's weird that I hear so much noise," she thought, opening the can.
She heard a metallic sound, different of the earlier one. As if something was sharpened. And then, she began to have cold sweats. Paralyzed, she was no longer moving.
And when she looked behind her, a blow to the neck knocked her out. Yukari fell to the ground, unconscious, without realizing what was happening afterwards.
Miho and Erwin were waiting for fifteen minutes now.
"Yukari doesn't come back", the captain worried.
"You know, cooking takes time, maybe it's just being baked."
"No, if she was really cooking, there would be a smell", Miho remarked.
"Not necessarily", Erwin contested, her voice however seeming to hide something.
"I swear, it doesn't reassure me at all, I'm afraid that something happened to her", the commander of Anglerfish team said anxiously.
"What could happen to her ?" the blonde asked, not seeming to understand what her friend meant.
""Four little soldiers were cooking fish, one's wrist got cut down, and then there were three.""
"How could her wrist get cut down ? We only have tins."
"I don't know, but I have a bad feeling, come, we go for her", Miho finally said.
They left the room and felt a heaviness in the air. It didn't reassure them.
And when they arrived into the kitchen, they failed to scream.
Yukari was lying on the ground. Her left wrist was covered in cuts and the artery had been severed. She was draining out of her blood, all was flowing to the floor.
The brunette that was so lively and enthusiastic was pale as death, as having been neutralized before being killed. Near her, a fish and a cleaver were there on the ground, and the fish's head was cut off.
On the fireplace in the dining room, there were only three little soldiers.
Erwin, her eyes widened, with a terrified look, under the effect of this trauma, uttered a piercing shriek, unable to control herself after that shock.
"YUKARI !"
She dropped on the vivacious girl and took her hand, now cold and inert, staining her hands with the blood flowing from the wrist.
"Yukari, Yukari !" she called tapping her cheek, her brown eyes beginning to tear up, wiping her face every ten seconds. "Yukari, hey, Yukari... I beg you, Yukari..."
Her voice weakened as she called.
"... oh no... not this..."
Miho leaned over her dead friend.
"Yukari... why ?" she whispered.
Erwin looked up nervously.
"She's not dead, is she ?" the blonde trembled, tears in her eyes, looking desperately at Miho. "She will wake up, huh ? Yes... She will... She'll get up, she will wake up, she is alive, she is not dead, it's just a bad dream, wake up, wake up, Riko, get a grip on yourself, she's not dead... she is..."
She understood what Miho thought just by seeing her grieving eyes. Heartbroken, she cried her eyes out.
Going mad, she grabbed the chopper and tried to turn it against her, held by Miho.
"Erwin, stop it ! No ! STOP !"
"Yukari can't be dead ! She's still here, I feel her presence, she's not gone !"
"Pull yourself together !" Miho tried to reason her, beginning to weep. "We can't do anything..."
"Yukari..." whispered the other, still shivering. "Oh... Yukari..."
The blonde dropped the weapon and let the brown-haired hug her, crying on her shoulder.
"I feel so guilty... Why didn't I understand that she was already dead ?" Erwin murmured. "I somewhat knew, but I lied to myself, I lied to you, I lied, I lied..."
"You couldn't guess", Miho sobbed. "And you didn't want to hurt me... oh... She has struck again.."
