Chapter 1

"Children~ who do you like more? Akiba-sensei?" Akiba-sensei points at herself, "Or Yuu nii-chan¹?" Then points at me, rattling a bag of candies on her other hand in an attempt to lure the kids into choosing her. I just chuckled at her antics.

The kids followed the candies with their eyes, visibly restraining themselves from taking it. But not more than a minute of contemplating, they already decided on their answer, very unusual of their indecisive nature. Turning their heads away from the candies, they looked at me then tackled me with a hug, all of them.

"Yuu nii-chan!!" They yelled together.

"Aww thank you!" I cooed, giving them little kisses on the forehead afterwards. "No fair, Yuu isn't even one of your teachers, I'm one of your teachers and I'm always with you guys." Akiba-sensei said in a sulking tone while wearing a pout.

"You're always on your phone and you're ugly, Yuu nii-chan is pretty and I will marry him when I grow up." One of the kids, Takao, said with his whole chest. I immediately panicked inside, feeling bullets of sweat forming on my forehead. What if Akiba-sensei gets offended? I'm still new here but besides that, I'm also the type of person who cares too much about other people's well-being, whether emotionally or physically. To ease my concern, I stole a glance at her side and heaved a sigh of relief when I saw that she didn't take it seriously. So I gently told Takao off, reminding him that it's not nice to insult people. He seemed unaffected so I assured him that I'd marry him if he fixed his attitude, a little white lie shouldn't hurt. Children can be so hard to reason with.

Though I think the other kids thought I was being serious so they all got fussy, yelling "I wanna marry Yuu nii-chan too!" While shaking me up, I could only nod helplessly.

"Your harem is lively as usual." Kikyo-sensei said with a smirk, I just gave her an exhausted smile.

"Oh right, Yuu-chan¹, the donation box is already full." Reminded Akiba-sensei. She was referring to the box outside the daycare where people in the community can donate their used toys and books to the children. I'm the one in charge of sorting out the usable items and vice versa.

"Oh, I'm on it!"

This is actually my job here. I'm not a teacher nor a teacher-in-training. But I do help in keeping the kids' attention in class because Kikyo-sensei told me that the kids would only look at the board if I'm sitting right beside it.

I crouched at the box outside and sat on one of the center's benches. A smile appeared on my face as I look over the full donation boxes. It always fills my heart with warmth whenever I see these boxes being full, it reminds me that humanity can still be restored somehow despite all the vile things some human are capable of doing.

"Most of the books are still new..." I muttered to myself as I look over the stack of children's books scattered around the boxes. Everything looked colorful and clean, some still had plastic covers on them while some still have tags, however one isolated book stood out among the rest. The book didn't have a title on it so I got curious and picked it up; upon observing more closely though, I noticed that there's no text on either side of the book, no title nor even a synopsis, nothing that would strike me as something child-friendly at least. In cases like this, I just read the book thoroughly to be sure that it doesn't contain anything that isn't suitable for children, it's better to be safe than sorry after all.

With that in mind, I started reading the nameless book, and before I knew it I got so immersed at the plot of the story and read the whole thing in one sitting! I should really do something about this bad habit of mine. Sighing, I placed it down as soon as I saw Akiba-sensei walking towards my direction.

"Hey Yuu-chan, the kids are already gone but you're still here, need a hand?" She asked, she was already dressed to go home so I looked at my watch to see what time is it and saw that 4 hours had already passed. The books and toys are still a mess and it's already getting dark.

"No it's okay sensei, and I'm sorry I just... I was reading this book." I was about to show her the nameless book but I noticed it was gone from where I left it.

"What book?" She tilted her head in confusion. "It probably fell in the box when I put it aside, I'll wrap this up before I leave, Take care Akiba-sensei!" I tried to change the topic, thankfully she let it go.

"Take care then, Yuu-chan!"

I tried to find the book afterwards but it seemed as though it had vanished out of nowhere so I decided to just proceed on sorting the other donations to save time, I was about to put it in the 'not for kids' box anyway. The moral of the story was there and I think the plot is pretty childlike too, but I think the whole content is not really that suitable to be read to and/or by children, it was too...dark for young minds to take, nor even to be grasped.

It started as a normal fairytale kind of story, there was a poor magical girl that was so kind and pure that she managed to form her whole reverse harem that will serve her for life, though she ended up with the Prince anyway, that part was okay I guess. The dark part was when she attracted a psychopath with her charms, I think the word yandere³ will suit the guy better.

He became obsessed with the heroine that he started harassing her, his whole intention was just to torment the heroine until she relies on him but it went out of hand. The book even explained his devious deed in detail and it consist of torturing the heroine's loved ones in front of her to let her know that she only have him, manipulated the girl's memory with the purpose of breaking her mind to make her submissive to him, and finally kidnapping her to bind her with him for eternity until he decides whether it's already the time for both of them to die. Luckily the Prince saved the day and punished him through the worst way possible.

The Prince made the palace guards make use of every torture device they can find on the yandere guy, still not satisfied with the physical torture, the Prince used mental torture and manipulated the yandere's hand into cutting himself with an axe while avoiding the vital parts to keep him alive as he watch himself tear his own skin in front of a crowd.

After that, the Prince conquered their country and made every citizen a slave for their kingdom. Even though the Prince was not labelled as a psychopath in the book, he was definitely going there with the way he thinks of 'suitable' punishments. Even now the story still haunts me, it was just too much for me to take and I feel like watching an hour video of puppies and kittens playing with each other is still not enough to cleanse my mind by how graphically the brutal scenes were described in the book.

I finished cleaning at almost 8PM, it was already dark and quiet outside. The perfect time for families to have dinner together and talk about each other's day. "It would be nice to have a family." I sighed. While locking the centre, I noticed a golden light from my peripheral vision. I looked at it and saw that the centre's mirror was mural glowing. We live in a small town so people don't usually walk alone at night especially around here, because of that I couldn't confirm if what I'm seeing is merely a hallucination or not.

"W-what" I stuttered, even though It was a strange sight I couldn't help but reach out to it. I always loved bright things. Though I doubt anyone would just walk past by a glowing mural, it was mesmerizing to the eyes, and strange, of course, I am but a curious man like anyone else.

Step by step, I continued to come closer. By the time I snapped myself into reality, I was already being engulfed with blinding light.

-- TRANS:

¹nii-chan - nii means older brother and chan is a name ender, or "honorific suffix," that adds a sense of endearment. So, nii-chan is a sweet way to refer to your older brother.

²sensei - Japanese word for teacher.

³yandere - A yandere is often sweet, caring, and/or innocent before switching into someone who displays an extreme, often violent or psychotic, level of devotion to a love interest.

**

Author's Note:

Hello non-existent readers, this story have been sitting in my notepad for so many months now and I'm afraid I need to uninstall that useless notepad finally, but I kinda love this self-indulgent story so I'm just gonna paste it here in my wattpad.

* But if anyone's reading this, please leave some comments or votes for me to see if someone's actually reading this ;-; b-but I'm not forcing you or anything /// I'm just- Okay I'll leave now.

Updated Author's Note: I'm back! I just edited this now (10-30-2020) but it's just a quick revision so please let me know if I still left some errors to correct!

⚪= Unedited chapter 🔘= Edited/Revised chapter