Even If You Hide Like a Dead Rat, She'll Sniff You Out
I stared at the massive battle axe in Rahel's hands and felt my stomach drop.
"Hey, wait! You're seriously going to smash the floor with that thing?"
"Yeah."
"No, hold on! If you wreck the place without any real proof and there's nothing down there, who's going to pay for the repairs—!"
BANG! BANG! BANG! BOOOOM—!
My perfectly reasonable protests went in one ear and out the other. Rahel swung her axe with zero mercy, shattering the wooden floorboards into splinters. Chunks of wood flew everywhere as thick clouds of dust billowed up. And just like that, a gaping black hole appeared beneath the wreckage.
"Huh? There really is some kind of basement down here?"
Once the hole was big enough for a person to fit through, Rahel stopped swinging, didn't hesitate for a second, and jumped straight into the darkness. I swallowed hard and followed her down.
"What the hell could possibly be—holy shit."
The moment my feet touched the basement floor, my jaw nearly hit the ground in pure horror. Every single wall was completely covered—floor to ceiling—with portraits and sketches of me. Me picking out seeds at the market. Me crouched in the field watering crops. Me wiping sweat from my brow while walking through the forest. And that wasn't even the worst part.
On a worn-out table in the center of the room sat every piece of clothing and random item I'd thought I'd lost over the past year, all arranged with obsessive care.
"This... have I been getting stalked this whole time?"
A full-body chill ran down my spine. Rahel silently scanned the deranged collection without saying a word. With trembling hands, I peeled one of the drawings off the wall to examine it more closely. In the sketch, I was smiling—relaxed and genuinely happy. Judging by my hair length, it must have been right after I'd retired from adventuring and first settled down to farm.
"This... this has to be that demon bastard's doing, right? He must have been secretly watching me ever since I started farming..."
"...Are you actually this dense, or are you just in denial?"
Rahel's low voice sliced through my muttering like a blade.
"Huh? You think I'm pretending not to know?"
"You really can't tell whose disgusting handiwork this is?"
Of course I wasn't an idiot. If I had to name a suspect for something this creepy and unhinged, the first person—no, the only person—who came to mind wasn't some random demon. It was her. My former party member.
But these drawings were made right after I ran away. That meant she'd found me almost immediately and spent the entire year hiding in the shadows, watching me without ever showing her face. I'd been so careful when I escaped. It didn't make any logical sense that she could've—
That was when a massive wave of dread slammed into me, tightening around my throat like a noose.
What if... what if she really had found me right away? What if she'd been watching me like a voyeur for the past year?
"Looks like it's finally clicking. When you really think about it, there's no one else but that gloomy insect bitch, right?"
Rahel rested her axe on her shoulder, driving the point home.
"...But how? I swear I lived like a dead rat, completely hidden this whole time."
"Oh really? You lived like a dead rat, yet here I am standing right next to you. How do you explain that?"
Ah. No counterargument possible.
"And listen, Mujin. That bug-like bitch is the type who'd sniff you out even if you hid at the ends of hell."
Rahel's blood-red eyes gleamed ominously in the basement gloom, and the corners of her mouth twisted up in a grotesque smile that stretched all the way to her ears.
"So if she shows herself this time, I'll have to wipe her out so thoroughly that not even her siblings will remain. Hehehee~!"
Her bone-chilling laughter echoed through the narrow, dark basement. She was dead serious. The pure murderous intent radiating from her made it clear she'd split the girl in half with that axe the second she appeared.
Naturally, I wasn't about to stop her. If I tried to talk her down by appealing to reason right now, she'd probably just tilt her head and say something like, 'My little puppy... are you defending that filthy rat bitch instead of me?' before turning that massive axe blade toward my neck.
For now, I had to play along with whatever Rahel wanted. Survival first.
"S-so... how exactly are we going to find her?"
"How? Obviously I'm going to flood the entire mountain with my magic detection and flip this place upside down until I drag her out! Ugh... this is so fucking annoying. I can't believe that disgusting insect bitch beat me to first place. Seriously, the second she shows her face, I'm grinding her bones to dust!"
It seemed the fact that she hadn't been the one secretly stalking me bothered Rahel far more than the actual stalking itself. Her competitive streak had been thoroughly triggered.
"Noooow~ where could our little bug be hiding~?"
Rahel climbed out of the basement, axe slung casually over her shoulder, and began prowling around the house like a slasher villain from a horror movie. The resemblance was uncanny.
"Doesn't seem to be in this cramped little shack, at least."
CRASH—!
She kicked the perfectly fine front door off its hinges and burst outside.
"Hehehee! Where are you, my dear Cecilia~!"
Right. Cecilia.
If Rahel was the aggressive assault-type yandere who would hurt me and eliminate everyone around me just to close the distance, then Cecilia was the complete opposite—a gloomy, voyeuristic stalker yandere who would never appear in front of me and always kept her distance.
The problem was that this bitch clung to me like a parasite under my skin, watching me twenty-four hours a day from places I couldn't see. Back in my adventuring days, I'd lost count of how many times I'd nearly had a heart attack during baths after catching her dead eyes staring at me through the drain.
Just remembering that nightmare gave me goosebumps all over again.
"She has to be hiding somewhere around here!"
Rahel rampaged through the forest outside the cabin like a bulldozer, violently rummaging through trees and bushes. Of course, with her abilities, she'd eventually find Cecilia if she kept this up. The only question was how long my blood pressure could handle it before I dropped dead.
This wasn't going to work. Time for me to step in. After all, I had zero intention of letting Cecilia keep watching me like some invisible 24-hour security camera.
"Rahel!"
I called out loudly to the chainsaw murderer—er, to Rahel—who was busy destroying the forest.
"What is it, my little puppy? Owner is busy right now removing the filthy bug that's been stuck to you~"
"If you keep brute-forcing it like that, you'll never find her."
At my rebuke, Rahel shot toward me at the speed of light and shoved her face right in front of mine.
"Oho? Does my little puppy have some brilliant idea? Hmm? Tell me right now."
"I do, actually."
I smirked, the corners of my mouth curling up confidently.
"I've survived for years surrounded by crazy bitches like you two. I've got plenty of experience."
Rahel's eyes sparkled with interest at my calm response. I glanced over the dense trees surrounding us and the weathered walls of the old cabin before speaking.
"Cecilia's specialty is Material Permeation, remember? No matter how much you swing that axe around outside, it'll be pointless. She's probably buried inside a tree or underneath the cabin, watching me right now."
"Ohhh!" Rahel exclaimed in understanding. "My clever little puppy is actually using his brain for once! So how do we end this boring game of hide-and-seek and drag that cockroach out into the open?"
Instead of answering with words, I jerked my chin toward the pitch-black entrance to the basement. The so-called sanctuary—an altar built from my lost belongings, obsessively collected by a gloomy voyeur with a serious case of scopophilia.
"Rahel. Fill that basement with your magic power and burn the whole thing to the ground."
"...Huh? But your clothes and belongings are all down there."
"Doesn't matter. They're just trash I already thought I'd lost anyway."
I continued in a deliberately cold voice.
"Start with that junk down there, then burn the entire cabin and the ground around it to ashes. If we melt away the very 'walls' she's hiding behind with hellfire, she'll have no choice but to crawl out—whether from suffocation or the unbearable heat."
At my words, Rahel's red lips stretched into a wide, vicious grin that nearly split her face in half.
"Hehehee! Ohhh, that's such a perfect idea! I didn't want to look at that disgusting garbage dump anyway!"
Wooooong—!
Rahel raised her massive battle axe high above her head. Blood-red flames of magical power gathered along the blade, violently devouring the oxygen around us. The scorching heat that threatened to burn my lungs with every breath swallowed the front yard of the cabin whole.
"Come out if you don't want to become a barbecue roasted in hellfire, you filthy insect bitch!!"
Rahel's eyes gleamed with madness as she prepared to slam the sun-like orb of flame into the basement entrance—
Shhhhlip—.
Suddenly, the old wooden planks of the cabin floor rippled like the surface of a lake. Crack. Craaack—! With a sickening sound of twisting wood, someone slid up through the floor as if emerging from water.
"...Th-that... is not allowed."
A voice like rusted metal, as if the speaker hadn't spoken in years—low, raspy, and bone-chillingly gloomy. Two pale hands pushed wetly through the wooden floor, clawing at the air. Then, pitch-black hair that I hadn't seen in a year slowly rose from the darkness.
Empty, lifeless obsidian eyes with no focus whatsoever.
But those dead eyes completely ignored the flaming Rahel beside me. They clung only to me—sticky, possessive, and unrelenting.
Cecilia had finally revealed herself right in front of me.