Chapter 196: A Keepsake with a Life of Its Own
Butterfly Mansion, Kanao’s room.
Sunlight filtered through the rice-paper windows, drawing a bright frame across the tatami.
Four heads huddled together formed a circle at the edge of the reflection, four pairs of eyes fixed on the hand resting palm-up.
"It really is stiff...," Aoi murmured, crouched on the left.
The three little ones—Kiyo, Sumi, and Naho—clustered beside her, eyes wide as saucers.
"Yeah, how strange."
"Is that the Demon Hashira’s hand?"
"It looks way too soft and pale. Looks like the hand of some seductive nobleman, not a swordsman."
"Be careful...," warned Kanao, kneeling to one side, back perfectly straight and hands folded neatly in her lap. She didn’t huddle in with the others, but she kept her eyes fixed on the limb.
Aoi glanced at her out of the corner of her eye, stretched out a finger, and made as if to stroke the palm from a hair’s breadth away.
"Aoi?" Kanao’s voice came out sharp.
Aoi froze her finger in the air and drew it back half a centimeter with a guilty smile. "I just wanted to touch it a little... it looks so soft."
"Shinobu-nee gave orders not to move it."
"I know, but...," Aoi raised an eyebrow slyly, "a little brush doesn’t count as moving it, does it?"
"What do you think?" Kanao tilted her head slightly.
Aoi stuck out her tongue. "Just curiosity."
"Huh?!"
Suddenly, she pointed toward the window with a shout: "The Demon Hashira?!"
In an instant, the other four’s eyes shot in that direction.
Her chance!
Grinning mischievously, Aoi shot her hand out like lightning, slowly grazing the center of Marcus’s palm with her fingertip before pulling it back in a split second.
Kanao stared at the empty window frame, looked at a satisfied Aoi, and blinked in bewilderment. "Aoi?! You..."
"Heehee, it’s nothing," Aoi laughed, shaking her pigtails shamelessly. "And he’ll never even know."
Kanao’s expression hardened. "It’s still wrong!"
Noticing Kanao’s genuine anger, Aoi quickly clasped her hands and rubbed them together, begging forgiveness: "Sorry! I promise I’ll behave next time!"
Kanao sighed, at a loss for how to deal with her antics.
She turned to warn the girls, but found the three of them huddled together in a corner.
Their faces contorted and their trembling fingers pointed straight at the tatami.
"It... it moved! Kanao-san, the hand moved!"
Kanao’s gaze dropped at once.
The pinky had just moved. And then, like a cat waking from a nap, the hand stretched its fingers one by one before spreading the palm open forcefully in the air.
Aoi’s mouth fell open into a perfect ’O’.
"Is... is it really alive?!"
Even knowing it belonged to Marcus, Kanao felt a tingle run down her spine. Beside her, Aoi swallowed hard, trembling somewhere between fright and guilt.
"Did... did it get mad because I touched it?"
The moment she finished speaking, the hand did a clean flip in the air, righted itself on the table, and advanced at a rapid pace with a dry clattering.
It stopped in front of Aoi with its back upright, swaggering as if inspecting her in detail.
Every last hair on Aoi’s body stood on end.
"Uuuh, Hashira-sama... I made a mistake," she pleaded, squeezing her thighs together. "I promise I won’t touch it again!"
But the hand wasn’t after apologies.
It flexed its fingers, gathered momentum, and leapt in a perfect arc, landing with brazen precision on top of Aoi’s head.
The fingers molded around it like a snug cap, and the index finger gave her two playful taps on the forehead.
"..."
Aoi stood paralyzed as the limb slid smoothly down the back of her neck, slipping under the collar of her uniform and going straight down her back.
The air in the room froze.
And then...
"AAAAAAHHH!!!"
A blood-curdling shriek rang through the room.
"Quick, help Aoi! It’s touching her back!"
"Ah! It went down her hip! Don’t look at me!"
"Kanao, help!"
The room collapsed into uncontrolled chaos.
"Ow! Who grabbed my ass?!"
"Don’t move, Aoi, try to grab it!"
"Kanao, watch out, it’s headed straight for your skirt!"
"Ahhh!!! Pervert!!!"
...
In the distant Asakusa Mansion, Marcus sat at the dining table without touching his plate.
He kept his eyes closed, but there was a completely perverted smile on his face.
"Hehehe~..."
Hearing such a degenerate laugh, everyone at the table sighed. They all knew his Blood Demon Art, and one look at that pervert’s face was enough to guess exactly what indecent maneuvers he was pulling off from afar.
...
Night fell and the sky turned jet-black.
Shinobu, exhausted, stopped at the gates of the Butterfly Mansion, rubbing her temples. She’d come from headquarters with her head in a tangle over the negotiations, the millions in sums, and Marcus’s shameless proposals.
At that instant, a wave of high-pitched screams poured out of Kanao’s room.
Thinking it was an enemy attack, Shinobu crossed the hallway and threw the sliding door open with a bang.
"What’s going on he—?!"
The words caught in her throat.
The room was a monumental disaster.
The folding screen lay broken, the futons in disarray, and cups rolling across the floor. Kiyo was up on the windowsill holding a broom, Sumi was taking cover behind the wardrobe with a dustpan, Naho trembled in a corner with a stick, and Aoi lay chest-down on the tatami, her hair mussed like a bird’s nest.
In the center, Kanao stood with her face lit up scarlet red and her breathing ragged.
"Shinobu-nee, help!!"
Aoi crawled over desperately and threw herself at Shinobu’s waist. "The hand came to life! It got under my clothes and started groping me!"
"It tied up one of my legs!" Sumi squealed.
"It squeezed my thigh!" Naho cried.
"It pinched my cheek!" Kiyo exclaimed.
Shinobu inhaled deeply, feeling the day’s exhaustion transform into an irrepressible urge to beat a certain individual to a pulp.
"Where," she said through gritted teeth, "is that thing?"
Kanao bit her lip and turned away, embarrassed.
That was when Shinobu discovered where the hand was: it was shoved completely under Kanao’s skirt, molded against her ass and kneading with an open palm without the slightest shame.
"N-No... it won’t let go of me...," Kanao murmured, on the verge of collapse, red to the tips of her ears as the hand gave her one more firm squeeze.
The veins on Shinobu’s forehead popped instantly.
"MARCUUUUS!!!"
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Throw your stones, drop them ALL! 💎
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