Episode 3: Divine Punishment Live Stream – Part 1

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Translator: Soafp

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“Your order is confirmed.”

As Inori lifted his finger from the purchase button, the black display on the screen quietly changed.

—Transaction started.

It was a message visible to only two of the millions of people using Elcari: the seller, Yumiko Minase, and the buyer, El.

Reo Sagisawa had no idea his life had just been bought for thirteen yen.

“So, I'm not asking about an order. I'm asking if I can film you.”

Reo smiled familiarly, keeping the phone he was using for his livestream pointed at Inori.

Comments continued to stream across the screen in real time.

That waiter's face is unreal.
I thought he was a girl.
Forget Reo—get a closer shot of that guy.
Where's this place? I want to meet him.
Lmao, he's going to go way more viral than Reo.

The viewers who had been fawning over Reo moments ago had already found a new toy. Perhaps he didn't like having the attention stolen from him; his smile grew stiffer by the second.

Inori blocked the lens with the menu.

“There are other customers here. As I said before, please stop filming.”

“Huh?”

“We don't allow customers or staff to be filmed without their permission.”

“Come on, you don't know who I am? I've got a million subscribers.”

“The only streamer I know is Johnny ◯mari.”

“What did you say? If you appear on my stream, even an ordinary guy like you could get famous overnight.”

“No, thank you. Unlike you, the desire for attention isn't one of my three basic needs.”

A few people at nearby tables chuckled.

Reo's cheek twitched. The moment he realized they were laughing at him, he set the gimbal on the table and sprang up, nearly kicking his chair over.

Its legs scraped across the floor with an unpleasant screech.

Reo was a little taller than Inori. He leaned in close, trying to intimidate him. Behind the sweet scent of his cologne lurked the smell of alcohol and cigarettes.

“Don't get cocky, part-timer.”

“The only thing I ride is my bicycle to work. Aren't you the one acting cocky in front of the camera?”

“What did you say?! If I wanted to, I could find out what school you go to and where you live before the day's over. I could say one thing on my stream about some rude waiter, and not just you—this whole place would be finished.”

Reo lowered his voice.

He didn't want his viewers to hear. Even as he spoke, he was leaving himself a way to deny he had threatened anyone.

“I could make it so your family and friends couldn't even go online. Want me to show you what happens when you make an enemy of my viewers?”

Inori looked up into Reo's eyes.

There was no anger or fear in them. His gaze was so still it seemed to come from the bottom of the deep sea, observing a creature on the surface.

“I see. So you're going to ‘destroy me completely' too? Scary.”

Reo's expression froze.

The change lasted less than a second, but Jin Himura, seated at table three, didn't miss it.

“…What did you say?”

“Didn't you hear me?”

“Where did you hear that phrase?”

“What phrase? ‘Scary'? Did you know the word osokkai comes from the adjective ookeha nashi—”

“Quit pretending! That phone was supposed to be water-damaged, and all the group chat history was—”

One of Reo's companions tugged on his sleeve.

“Reo. Don't say any more.”

Reo came to his senses.

The livestream was still running. Fortunately, though, the phone attached to the gimbal had toppled onto the table, and its microphone hadn't clearly picked up his words.

Inori lowered his gaze to the order tablet as if nothing had happened.

“Thank you.”

“For what?!”

“I've confirmed your order.”

Reo reached for Inori's collar.

A large hand grabbed his wrist from the side.

“Lay a hand on the waiter and this time there'll be evidence.”

It was Himura, who had stood up without anyone noticing.

Reo looked from his wrist to Himura's face, then clicked his tongue.

“You again. Should I clip you following me around and send it to the prefectural police?”

“Go ahead. Send them that threat too, while you're at it.”

“A threat? I was just talking to the waiter.”

“Still getting other people to do your talking and dirty work. You haven't changed in three years.”

Reo wrenched his arm free of Himura's grip.

“Treating an ordinary person like a criminal without evidence? The police are scary.”

“Then tell me this: how do you know the phone with the message ‘Destroy Sakura Minase completely' was water-damaged?”

The color drained from Reo's face.

His companions fell silent too.

At last, Reo forced his lips into a crooked smile.

“I read it in an online article. I don't remember every detail of something that old.”

“You just mentioned the group chat history yourself.”

“Maybe you misheard me.”

Himura narrowed his eyes.

But before he could press Reo any further, Reo grabbed his phone from the table.

“Okay, everyone, sorry to keep you waiting. I got hassled by a troublesome waiter and a self-proclaimed righteous cop.”

Back on the livestream, Reo had already perfected the face of a victim. He smiled ruefully at his viewers and portrayed Himura and Inori as the ones causing trouble.

Comments from people who didn't know what had happened began to fill the screen with abuse.

That handsome waiter's probably just trying to promote the place.
Found the restaurant.
Let's file a complaint.
Is it okay for a cop to threaten an ordinary person?
Poor Reo.
But the waiter's definitely hotter than Reo, so I'll let it slide.
Reo looks like he's about to cry after getting owned, lol.

Inori held out the order tablet toward Reo.

“So, what would you like to order?”

“…You're seriously creepy.”

“Thank you. Coming from someone who embodies the word, that's high praise.”

“Why, you little—!”

Reo glared at Inori, then ordered four of the most expensive steak sets.

When Inori returned to the kitchen, Nao hurried over, looking worried.

“Inori, are you all right? Did he do anything to you?”

“He only asked to film me. I said no.”

“He was about to grab you by the collar. You can stay in the back for the rest of your shift if you want.”

“Manager.”

“What?”

“For that customer's steak, please make it a cut steak and well-done.”

“Cut steak too? Didn't he order it medium?”

“I'd rather not serve it undercooked and have him complain of a stomachache later. Though either way, he'll be a cut steak before long.”

Nao studied Inori's face for a moment, then went to pass the order along to the kitchen.

Back at table three, Himura cut into his mixed grill, which was beginning to cool. But he kept glancing over at Inori.

Why… does that boy know the words Reo used in a private group chat?

It might have been a coincidence. “Destroy him completely” was a phrase anyone could use.

But Reo had clearly been shaken by it—and had brought up the water-damaged phone and the group chat history himself.

Himura took out his phone and sent a brief message to one of his officers.

Review Reo Sagisawa's past interrogation records. Recheck who could have known about the water-damaged phone.

After sending it, Himura looked up.

His eyes met Inori's as the boy carried a dish to another table.

Inori smiled gently.

Himura couldn't read what lay behind that smile.

---

An hour later, Reo and his companions finished their meal.

Even while paying, Reo kept streaming and tried to film Nao behind the register without her permission. When Inori silently stepped in front of her, Reo clicked his tongue and lowered the camera.

“You'll pay for this when you get home.”

“I'll remember. But I hear people's memory gets worse after they eat.”

“You… You'll get what's coming to you one day.”

“I'll take that as advice from someone with experience.”

Reo glared at Inori until he disappeared through the automatic doors. His companions followed, and a brief gust of cold winter air swept into the restaurant.

Nao relaxed her shoulders.

“Ugh, I hope they never come back. Inori, could you take out the trash in the back?”

“Sure.”

Inori carried two large black garbage bags out through the back door.

In the parking lot, Reo was still livestreaming.

“So, yeah, this place was awful. The staff aren't trained properly, and the food was nothing special. You guys should definitely avoid it.”

One of his companions unlocked the car. Another spotted Inori and tapped Reo on the shoulder.

“Reo, that's the waiter from earlier.”

Reo turned around.

“What, you come to apologize?”

Inori ignored him and set the garbage bags down at the collection point on the edge of the parking lot.

His breath turned white in the night air.

Reo stood about twenty meters away—close enough to recognize his face with the naked eye.

Inori blinked.

The next instant, all the lights in the parking lot went out.

“What?! A power outage?!”

One of the women with Reo cried out.

Three seconds later, the lights came back on as if nothing had happened.

But Inori was gone from in front of the garbage collection point.

In his place, black lines shot out in four directions from beneath Reo's feet.

“What is this…?”

The lines stretched across the asphalt as if cutting through it, forming a huge square centered on Reo. Mirror walls rose vertically along all four sides, trapping him inside before he had a chance to escape.

“Reo!”

His companions screamed and stumbled backward.

At the center of the parking lot stood a black cube, about four meters on each side.

From outside, its walls were transparent; they could clearly see Reo trapped inside. But from Reo's side, every wall was a mirror.

Wherever he turned—forward, backward, left, right—his own face stretched away into infinity.

“What the hell is this?! Open it!”

Reo pounded on the walls.

The sound shouldn't have carried outside, yet his voice came through the livestreaming phone with perfect clarity.

The phone slipped from Reo's grasp and floated into the air, filming the inside of the cube. He tried to end the stream, but the screen wouldn't respond. The viewer count surged at an impossible rate: ten thousand, a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand.

His companions' phones all vibrated at once.

Every screen showed Reo's livestream.

“Hey! Don't just stand there—break it! Ram it with the car!”

Just as Reo shouted, black smoke began to gather in front of the cube.

The smoke wasn't carried away by the night wind. Slowly, it took on the outline of a person: a head, shoulders, two arms. It was barely recognizable as human. It had no face and wore no clothes. Red-black lightning flickered through the smoke like veins.

In its right hand hung a paper bag from the family restaurant.

The strangely human-looking smoke took a large hamburger out of the bag. Watching Reo, it took a bite.

“Reo Sagisawa.”

A voice that could have belonged to a man or a woman, an old person or a child, sounded from the restaurant's speakers and every phone nearby at the same time.

“I've come to deliver the item you ordered.”

“Who are you…?”

“El.”

The moment that name was spoken, the same message appeared on every phone.

—The trial will now begin.

Red letters appeared on the mirrored walls as if written in blood.

Sakura Minase is a sugar baby.

Reo's face stiffened.

A second sentence appeared beneath it.

She'll sleep with anyone.

Then a third.

She seduced and stole the man her friend liked.

And a fourth.

She sells her underwear online.

“I didn't write those!”

Reo shouted without thinking.

“Someone else wrote them! Those accounts weren't mine!”

“That is true. Your fingers did not type those words directly.”

“Then I'm not responsible!”

“But you gave the orders.”

“Do you have proof?!”

“You just testified yourself about the water-damaged phone and the group chat history.”

Reo froze, mouth hanging open.

“I hear you're good at editing images.”

The figure of black smoke finished its hamburger and took a second one from the paper bag.

“Tonight, you'll get to experience what it's like to be the subject.”

Thin white lines appeared across the mirrored surface.

Countless squares divided Reo's body into a grid, like the grid display in an image-editing program.

The smoky figure raised one index finger.

It placed its fingertip against the square containing Reo's right shoulder, then slid it a few centimeters to the side.

Only the shoulder in the mirror moved, as if it were part of a cropped image.

Reo's real body moved with it.

Part of his shoulder shifted sideways, away from the rest of his body. Blood spurted from the torn boundary. His arm didn't fall off. Instead, his shoulder and torso remained fixed together by some invisible force, misaligned but still part of one body.

A beat later, Reo's scream rang through the parking lot.

“Aaaargh!”

Blood spattered across the mirrors. But Reo wasn't allowed to pass out from blood loss or faint from the pain.

“Put it back! Put it back right now!”

Within the black smoke, a row of white teeth formed a smile.

“The dead don't have an undo button.”

---

At home, in the living room, Yumiko Minase clutched her smartphone.

She opened the notification from Elcari and was connected to a livestream she didn't recognize. On-screen was the man who had haunted her dreams again and again for the past three years.

Reo Sagisawa.

The man who had cried in front of reporters, claimed he was a victim too, and kept smiling and streaming as if nothing had happened after Sakura's death.

Now Reo was bleeding inside a mirror.

“Seller, Yumiko Minase-san. Does the transaction match your request?”

Hearing her own name spoken without warning, Yumiko gasped.

Two buttons appeared on the screen:

That's correct or Cancel the transaction

Her fingers trembled.

Yumiko had imagined Reo suffering countless times. He should suffer as much as my daughter did. He should feel all the pain Sakura went through. She had needed to hold on to those thoughts just to keep living.

But even as she watched Reo bleed, no joy rose in her heart.

Sakura wasn't coming back.

No matter how cruel the punishment, in the morning she would still be left with an empty room where her daughter should have been.

“Sakura…”

Tears streaming down her face, Yumiko placed her finger on the first button.

“Was this the right thing to do, honey…?”

No voice answered.

Eyes closed, Yumiko pressed the button.

—The terms of the transaction have been approved.