Chapter 14 – Spring
Main Story 1, Chapter 5, Part 2
Novel Title: 獣はかくして交わる (The Beasts Intertwine This Way)
Author：沙野 風結子 (Fuyuko Sano)
Illustrator：小山田 あみ (Oyamada Ami)
Translator: K (@kin0monogatari)
Protagonists: 鹿倉 陣也 (Kagura Jinya -MC) & ゼロ (Zero -ML)
*Please read at knoxt.space, the original site of translation. TQ*
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Her facial features and the rounded contours of her face were familiar, with a charmingly general profile.
He had estimated she was around sixteen when he saw her last, but she was likely barely fifteen.
“Hello,” he said, and the girl approached him with a stiff expression.
“Is there… anything you are looking for?” she asked in Japanese, her words stilted.
“I like Vietnamese sweets,” Kagura responded in deliberately broken Vietnamese, then added, “I like Vietnam. I’m studying the language.”
She seemed pleased that he was interested in her home country, relaxing a little. She also seemed to interpret it as a desire to practise Vietnamese through conversation.
“The sweets shelf is over here.”
This time, she responded in Vietnamese.
“What do you recommend? I’d like something sweet.”
With his clumsy pronunciation, he asked her. Nodding in a way that conveyed her understanding, the girl carefully explained several of the sweets to him.
Her earnest and kind nature was apparent.
“This one tastes similar to Japan’s kinako,” she said.
“I like kinako.”
He decided on *bánh đậu xanh*, a mung bean sweet, and the girl smiled, saying, “I like this one, too.”
As she rang up his purchase at the register, Kagura asked her, “How long have you been in Japan?”
“Two years,” she replied.
“How do you like living here?”
A shadow briefly passed through her innocent eyes before she responded, “I like it very much. I like Japan.”
The image of her being pulled along by the arm, almost with her eyes closed, flashed in Kagura’s mind, leaving a bitter feeling in his chest.
To ensure a solid case against the Eastern Alliance gang’s involvement in human trafficking, he had abandoned this girl to her fate that night.
Kagura knew it was unavoidable in the course of the investigation.
Still, guilt weighed heavily on his chest.
As he received the paper bag containing the sweets, he asked, “Could you tell me your name?”
There was a slight hesitation, but the girl told him.
“Xuan.”
In that instant, Kagura felt a shock that pierced through his chest.
“And your name?” she asked.
Still shaken, Kagura responded, “Jin.”
He immediately regretted it.
Though he had narrowly avoided saying his real name, Jinya, he had come uncomfortably close.
“I’ll… be back,” he said, hurrying out of the shop.
His chest was still roiling with unease.
What kind of coincidence was this?
―――Xuan… meaning spring.
He clenched his fist so tightly that his nails dug into his palm.
―――Haruka-nee…
***
“This is amazing. Haruka-nee’s cooking skills are really improving,” Kagura said, showing the cut side of the fried chicken to his grandmother as he took a bite.
“See? It’s cooked all the way through.”
Across the table, his cousin, Oishi Haruka, pouted slightly.
“Jin-chan, you need to compliment me properly.”
“Huh? I thought I was.”
“That doesn’t count as a compliment, Jin-chan. That’s why you never keep a girlfriend for long. You broke up again, didn’t you?”
“…How did you know?”
“Auntie told me.”
Kagura felt a sense of relief at his cousin’s bright, teasing expression.
Haruka was three years older than him, a cousin on his mother’s side.
Two years ago, her parents had been in a car accident. A truck had rear-ended the bus they were riding on. Four people died in the accident, and her parents were among them.
Haruka, an only child from a typical salaryman’s family, had been a high school senior at the time.
Kagura had rushed to the hospital with his parents, but by then, her parents’ deaths had already been confirmed. Sitting on a sofa in the hospital hallway, Haruka, usually expressive, looked like a different person. Her face was pale and expressionless.
She wasn’t crying; it was as if her spirit had left her.
Unable to find the right words, Kagura sat next to her and held her hand tightly.
It felt as if her very life force might be taken away as well.
Since their homes were close and they were both the only child in their family, they had been raised almost like siblings… or so he thought. Yet, no matter how tightly he held her hand, Haruka only stared blankly at the floor.
Haruka went to live with their grandmother in a nearby town.
She managed to graduate from high school, but her mental state was fragile, requiring regular hospital visits. It took her two years to enter nursing school as her next goal.
Once she started nursing school, her demeanour seemed to brighten, and she appeared to return to her old self.
…But that was likely just a surface-level change.
A half-month after she’d made him fried chicken, Haruka disappeared.
Haruka was twenty, while Kagura was seventeen.
Their grandmother filed a missing person report with the police. Kagura went around talking to people at Haruka’s nursing school, and that’s when he first learned that his cousin had been close to a classmate who was involved with some unsavoury men.
This classmate had already been expelled, having been arrested for violating drug laws. It was possible that Haruka herself was using illegal drugs, and that her cheerful demeanour had been due to her reliance on that.
Ten days after her disappearance, a letter arrived at their grandmother’s house.
Written in Haruka’s handwriting, it stated that she was in a serious relationship and would be back eventually, so there was no need to search for her.
Since it wasn’t considered an urgent matter, the police didn’t take any further action.
But to Kagura, it hardly seemed like a non-urgent situation.
If she were seriously dating someone safe, there would be no need to disappear. Something must have compelled her to go into hiding. Perhaps she had been caught up in some trouble, and someone had staged her disappearance.
However, as a high school student with no investigative skills, there was little he could do. Two years passed without any useful information.
While attending university and living alone in an apartment in Tokyo, Kagura saw a news report on television about a woman who had been found stabbed to death in a love hotel. When he heard that the woman was in her twenties, his heart skipped a beat.
―――This time, it’s probably not her. It’s not Haruka-nee.
Every time he heard news of a woman in her twenties falling victim to a crime, he feared it could be his cousin. But each time, it wasn’t her. So this time, it must be the same.
He tried to soothe himself with these thoughts, but a few days later, his grandmother called him, crying.
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*GLOSSARY:
- Haruka-nee: Sister Haruka (‘Nee’ is short for ‘Onee-san’ which means older sister). Haru means spring in Japanese. It’s only natural that Kagura associates the Vietnamese girl to his late cousin because of this.
Next update: 2025.09.17
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☝🏻Kinako
☝🏻Bánh đậu xanh
