BAD LUCK STRIKES

C H A P T E R T W O

BAD LUCK STRIKES

✦

At that moment, Ken looked and acted completely different.

“I’m having bad vibes about this ‘so not cute’ thing.”

As the girl got distracted by Ken’s shouting, she felt something and turned back to the creature.

“Uh??”

Only then did she see that her whole arm was missing, blood dripping profusely.

“AHHHHHHHHHHH!”

She screamed as she fell to the ground while the little goblin licked the blood off its lips, smiling just like a baby.

Everyone was stunned. Within a second, something so small had devoured a whole arm. Those closer ran, while the girl dragged herself along the ground, calling out for help.

“Hel-p... someone please help—”

When Ken heard her cry, he didn’t think—he charged toward her, leaving Tsubasa and Momo behind.

Time didn’t slow; it sharpened. Ken was moving faster than he ever had, some buried, forgotten instinct screaming directions his conscious mind couldn’t process.

Left. Grab her—

For a single heartbeat, his vision flickered white-cold at the edges, outlined in a sharp, frost-like static. But the moment he reached out his hand, a heavy, suffocating sensation slammed into his chest—as if an unseen weight pulled back on his limbs, freezing his stride half an inch short.

“Here, take my hand—!”

“Graaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!”

A grotesque, monstrous figure—easily eight feet tall—surged out of the crimson rift and snatched the girl back. In less than ten seconds, she was devoured right in front of him.

“No... but I made it...” Ken gasped, blood spraying across his face.

He froze, paralyzed by the sheer terror.

“Ken, watch out!”

Tsubasa’s heel drove brutally into the face of a second goblin lunging for Ken’s throat.

It wasn’t a burst of adrenaline. It wasn’t desperation. Tsubasa moved like that because he always had — that same abnormal, effortless speed Ken had grown up next to and stopped questioning years ago, the way you stop questioning why the sky is blue.

“Snap out of it! We have to go, more of these things are crawling out!” Tsubasa yelled, grabbing Ken’s collar and yanking him back into motion.

They sprinted through the double doors, joining the panicked flood of students tearing into the gym.

“How big can a goblin even get?!” Ken breathed, trying to clear the static from his eyes.

“I’m as shocked as you—there’s almost nobody left outside!” Tsubasa called out. Then he smirked briefly despite the chaos. “I told Momo to run ahead to the entrance, by the way. You know, since you forgot about her.”

“Hey—!” Ken pulled Tsubasa back, stopping dead. “Hold on. I feel something coming.”

“What—?”

Before Tsubasa could finish, the students at the front of the crowd slammed to a sudden halt.

Grey crept across their skin. Within seconds, they were solid stone.

The nightmare slid out from behind the shattered gym doors—impossibly smooth, moving like spilled liquid. A pale human face sat atop a massive serpent’s body, scales catching the gym light in slow, rhythmic ripples. Its eyes found a student.

Blink. Gone. Stone.

“MOVE—!” Tsubasa dragged Ken sideways behind an overturned bleacher a split-second before the creature’s gaze swept the space.

“That is extremely not a goblin,” Ken whispered, heart slamming against his ribs.

“No kidding,” Tsubasa hissed, his morning smugness completely gone. “Don’t look at it. Ever.”

Tsubasa was already moving before Ken finished the thought, a blur cutting between the stone-still bodies, hauling a stumbling freshman out of the creature’s path a full second before its gaze swept the spot he’d been standing in.

“Left flank, now, go now!” Ken shouted, and Tsubasa was already there — except the creature’s tail lashed out from an angle Ken hadn’t accounted for, and Tsubasa had to twist mid-stride, boots skidding on shattered tile, to avoid losing an arm to it.

“A little more warning next time!” Tsubasa called back, breathless but grinning like this was still somehow a game.

“I— sorry, I didn’t see that part of it!” Ken shouted, and hated how true that was. Every plan he built had a hole in it somewhere, some angle he simply couldn’t see until it was already swinging at someone’s throat.

They scrambled across the gym floor, hiding behind equipment and lockers. Every time Ken tried to make a break for safety, an unnatural, oppressive resistance seemed to cling to his movements—a heavy, cursed bad luck that made him stumble or catch his shoulder hard against lockers, saved only by Tsubasa dragging him back a fraction of a second before death.

And then, amid the dread, Ken’s mind focused.

“It telegraphs!” Ken whispered fiercely, pulling Tsubasa down as a spray of razor-sharp scales shattered the wall above them. “Every time it winds up, its tail dips left—look! There! It has a blind side on the turn!”

Tsubasa glanced back, eyes wide. “You’re reading its body language right now?!”

“GO LEFT, NOW!”

Tsubasa darted left. The serpent’s petrifying gaze swept half a second behind him, chasing an empty spot.

The serpent reared again, faster this time, and a hail of bladed scales tore through the space where they’d been a heartbeat earlier. Tsubasa hauled Ken bodily behind an overturned bench, close enough that Ken felt the wind of the last scale pass his ear.

“You call it, I’ll close the gap,” Tsubasa said, low and fast, no hesitation in it at all — like they’d done this exact thing a hundred times before, in some other fight Ken couldn’t remember. “Just don’t stop calling.”

“Here!” Mr. Hosaka, their homeroom teacher from earlier, slid low behind their cover, breathing heavily, blood dripping from his temple. “When it shoots its scales, watch its underside—right where the throat meets the chest. It’s soft there for a few seconds before it hardens.”

“Hosaka-Sensei, it’s cornered—it’s going to fire early!” Ken called out. “Drive it toward the bleachers!”

“How do you know that?!” Hosaka barked, already moving.

“JUST TRUST ME!”

It worked. Boxed against the collapsed bleachers, the serpent loosed its volley prematurely, exactly as Ken predicted.

The opening appeared.

Ken moved—vision flickering white-cold at the edges again as raw speed surged through him. But as he closed the distance, that same oppressive, invisible weight slammed into his chest, throwing his balance off and causing his strike to miss the target area by an inch.

“AGAIN!” Hosaka roared, stepping straight into the opening Ken’s call had created.

Every time Ken tried to strike, the strange curse bound inside him seemed to twist probability against him. Yet every single call he made was flawless. He directed the fight like a master strategist, guiding Tsubasa and Hosaka around every deadly sweep and scale storm.

Ken’s hand shot to his own chest without his permission, fingers digging into his shirt as if he could physically tear the weight out from behind his ribs. His jaw locked, teeth grinding, breath coming out ragged through his nose.

“Why —” he started, and stopped, because the honest end of that sentence was why can I see everything and do nothing, and he didn’t trust his own voice not to break on it.

Tsubasa’s eyes flicked toward him for half a second in the middle of a dodge — just long enough to catch it, that flash of something dark and furious behind Ken’s eyes, gone as fast as it came. It was a look Tsubasa had seen before, a long time ago, on a much thinner, much hungrier version of this same face. He didn’t say anything. He just moved faster.

“One more window!” Ken called out, breathless, blood on his lip. “It’s going to overcommit—Sensei, when it rears, that’s the shot!”

“Move aside,” Hosaka said quietly.

He walked past the boys like a man keeping an appointment he’d spent his whole life avoiding.

No blade was sharp enough.

No plan was clever enough.

Just forty feet of open ground and something ancient rearing back to finish what it started.

—

And of all things, it was a voice from years ago that found him now — not an accusation, just laughter, from before he’d given anyone a reason to stop laughing.

You always ran the numbers, Hosaka thought. Found the angle. Left before it cost you anything.

There was no angle left this time. No exit with his name on it.

Not again.

—

The serpent screamed. He ran toward it anyway.

The serpent struck. Scales sprayed the air, and Hosaka moved through them with unbelievable grace, dodging lethal blades before driving his fist deep into the soft flesh beneath its jaw—the weakest part of the serpent.

The serpent shrieked—a sound like tearing silk—and as it fell, its dying gaze caught Hosaka full in the eyes.

Hosaka froze. Grey stone crept up from his boots, climbing his legs and chest, locking a small, peaceful smile on his face. One final tear slid down his stone cheek before his form toppled and shattered across the tile.

“All this time... he’d been fighting his own demons. Oh, Sensei—” Ken’s voice broke, tears threatening to spill.

His death wasn’t senseless, Ken thought.

Tsubasa didn’t say a word. He grabbed Ken’s sleeve and dragged him forward, sprinting past the shattered grey remains toward the exit.

❖ ❖ ❖

They burst into the main foyer, only to stop dead in their tracks.

Hulking, car-sized ants lay scattered across the blood-stained tile, mandibles crushed, bodies leaking dark ichor.

Standing in the center of the carnage was Momo.

She stood with her back to them, shoulders heaving in short, ragged breaths, holding a dark, heavy iron pipe bent into a brutal weapon. The last ant lay twitching at her feet, its head completely crushed.

“Momo—” Ken breathed.

She turned.

For one terrible second, her eyes were wide, cold, and hollow—the look of a predator mid-hunt. Blood was streaked across her cheek and arm.

Ken froze, the instinct inside his chest going completely still.

What the— it couldn’t be Momo’s doing. Could it?

Then, in a fraction of a second, the coldness vanished. Her expression softened back into the gentle girl from the classroom, sliding her terrifying reality smoothly behind a practiced mask.

“...Yeah,” she said softly, wiping the blood from her cheek. “I’m fine. Are you two okay?” She looked past them. “Where’s the teacher? I asked him to come find you tw—”

Neither boy reacted or tried to answer; they just wore sad expressions. She didn’t press.

“There were more of them,” Momo murmured, her gaze lingering on the fallen students near the wall before her voice hardened into pure focus. “We need to move. The front courtyard is clear.”

Ken stared at her—at the crushed monsters, at the blood, at the girl offering him a quiet smile as if none of it had happened.

“...Who are you?” he asked, his voice low.

Momo’s smile returned, thin and unreadable. “Later. Promise. Now come on.”