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“Shit, stay away from me, you freak!”

A man in a suit ran through Kabukichō – one of the men who were luring women into their branch offices and subsequent traps.

He ran into several pedestrians while he was busy looking over his shoulder, trying to see if his pursuer is still on his tail. He had recently turned a corner, so he couldn’t see her at all.

People shouted at him, some of them took dangerous falls into the parked bicycles at the edge of the alleyway, but he didn’t care. He was only here to save his own skin.

He jumped a barrier meant to block access to the space between two rows of houses, filled only with air conditioning and messy cables hanging off facades.

He walked deeper, checking over his shoulder periodically. He had no idea which means of tracking that thing hunting him had, but he wanted to be as far away from the road as possible. He found himself in a dead end, catching his breath for now.

His entire world had been turned upside-down in a single day.

“Damn it all! If none of these magical weirdos existed, we’d be living it up!”

He shouted his frustration into the empty alleyway against his better judgment. He took a few more deep breaths to calm down but stopped with a chill running down his spine as one smelled like roses.

He felt something at his throat - as he looked down, he saw crimson fingernails the length of knives and gasped.

“Would you, now? I remember that it was my involvement that allowed you to get so bold.”

He started to hyperventilate and broke out in a cold sweat. As he got a push from behind and fell down, he turned around, crawling backwards while looking at the monster coming for him.

She was still dressed in her out-of-season fur coat, regarding him with an unreadable expression from behind her sunglasses.

“Takura, Takura… we had such a good thing going on, me and your boss.”

She stepped closer and as he tried to crawl further away, he felt his movement restricted with painful stabs into his flesh.

Thorny vines had wrapped themselves around his arms and legs, turning every movement into an act of self-harm. The creature regarded his struggle with an amused smile as she came ever closer.

“Stay away from me! We had a deal! You wouldn’t touch us!”

The woman responded with a hiss.

“Oh yes, we had a deal. You get to make your filthy human money and have some fun, while I get rid of the girls’ memories and get to enjoy a little feast. Then you can simply leave the girls somewhere in the city so they can be found. No memories, no victims, no investigations, everyone assumes they just ran away from home and changed their minds. It was such a win-win scenario, wasn’t it?”

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The woman leaned closer, her sickly green complexion becoming apparent as she was right in front of his face.

“Do you know what memories of men they fear taste like? They are savory, with just the right amount of saltiness.” The unsettling woman licked her lips.

“I love the sweetness of happy memories, but a woman needs a balanced diet, hm? So where are the women, Takura?”

He strained against the vines against his better judgment and groaned as thorns dug deep into his flesh. His expensive suit slowly turned dark as it got soaked in his blood.

“Now, now, that won’t do, Takura. Look at me while I’m talking to you.”

A vine wrapped around his throat while another slung around his forehead, forcing him to face the woman in front of him.

“They are gone! Magical Girls were never part of the deal!” he responded to her with a pained voice.

“Oh, were they, now? This would have never happened if you had kept your mouth shut.”

“You don’t understand! There was some weirdo threatening me with a knife! She was faster and stronger than anyone I’ve ever seen before! That bitch was going to kill me! I had no choice but to tell her about the recruitment!”

The woman slapped him across his cheek, wagging a finger and clicking her tongue.

“Takura, you can’t talk like that about women! And that aside…” She took her sunglasses off, piercing him with a gaze from blood-red irises embedded in black sclera.

“…you should have died then, instead of making it my problem. I could feed on your memories until you’re an invalid who can’t remember to breathe on his own, and even then, you wouldn’t even account for half a girl’s memories of despair…”

A blue glow appeared on top of the building behind the sadistic woman, and she let out a sigh. She turned around and saw a Magical Girl in blue armor with blue-purple glowing hair that swayed in the wind; she looked at the monster with clear disdain in her eyes.

“Shame. Our time is up. Guess I won’t feast on you, after all.”

“No! Wait-“

A disgusting squelch and crunch could be heard as the vine around his neck tightened with the strength of a vise.