“How many times has this happened now?”

“I think this makes three.”

Saya stood atop the wall, looking down at the two humans who’d fled.

The shadow belonged to Saya. The horns on its head were actually the distorted shadows of Saya’s two tufts of fake cat ears in the moonlight.

And her tail…

Well, that really did look like a demon’s tail.

Though she wasn’t a demon. She was a monster.

Just over half a month in this world had been enough to make Saya realize, all over again, just how badly morality had collapsed.

The crime rate in this city was countless times higher than in the country Saya had lived in during her previous life.

Especially in the alleys at night. There was always someone doing something strange.

Of the incidents like this one that Saya had encountered, there had been three: a few human men—sometimes with one or more women among them—luring one or two human women into an alley and trying to engage in sexual intercourse.

In the end, none of those would-be criminals had managed to get what they wanted, thanks to Saya.

But the most Saya did was make them flee from an unknown terror and the pain of their injuries.

As for why she didn’t kill them…

First, Saya was a monster. If she went around killing people, she’d attract the attention of the city’s police and bring herself unnecessary trouble.

Second, Saya had taken human women’s ability to cope into consideration, based on her own experience from when she was human.

If she suddenly killed someone in front of an inexperienced human, right within their field of vision, it could traumatize them even if she didn’t dismember the body. A sensitive person might even develop a psychological disorder.

Third, when Saya stopped people from having sex, she’d found that some humans were only role-playing for thrills.

Saya couldn’t tell which sexual acts were crimes and which were just play.

Besides, Saya always stopped the men before they went through with it. The crime was interrupted, and she couldn’t be sure whether the women involved might be held responsible or have their identities exposed.

Fourth, Saya was a monster. She was only doing this to try to reclaim her humanity.

And legally speaking, monsters had neither the right nor the duty to do these things.

Killing people, on the other hand, was a crime for monsters. (The city’s laws really did say so.)

There were other reasons, but there was no need to list them all. In short, killing people as a monster was a thankless task, and it could easily lead to killing the wrong person.

After encountering the dark side of this city, Saya had put her plans to interact with human society on hold.

At least for now, she didn’t have to be bound by human society’s rules.

Saya calmly shifted her gaze to the girl below. The girl still didn’t seem to have recovered.

To Lin Jianxue, it all felt like a dream. One moment, she’d been drowning in despair, on the verge of being violated by a strange man.

The next, with her eyes squeezed shut, Lin Jianxue heard a sound from nearby, and the strange man stopped what he was doing.

Then came the sound of him muttering something incomprehensible and making strange movements.

Unable to stop herself, Lin Jianxue opened her eyes to see what was happening. The man sprawled on the ground saw her, panicked, and scrambled away as fast as he could.

Lin Jianxue stared around in bewilderment at the empty surroundings.

It was night, and the light was dim, so Lin Jianxue didn’t see the blood on the ground.

She had no idea what had happened, but one thing was certain: she wouldn’t be violated now.

Relief washed over Lin Jianxue, and she let out a long breath.

She’d been about to get up and leave, but then she realized her body was still limp and wouldn’t obey her at all.

Lin Jianxue took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart.

The alley was frighteningly quiet. Lin Jianxue could hear her own heartbeat loud and clear.

Oh, and if she listened closely, she could just make out the sound of frogs.

Still, Lin Jianxue couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something indescribably eerie about this alley.

Now that she’d calmed down a little, Lin Jianxue finally had the presence of mind to think about what the two strange men had muttered before they ran away.

Why had those two changed so completely in such a short time?

Why had they run?

And what had they seen?

“It seems like things first changed when the other guy said… there was a monster?”

But where was the monster?

Lin Jianxue looked around at the darkness. Clouds covered the moon, and she could barely make out the outlines of her surroundings.

Could there… really be a monster?

Lin Jianxue was a little scared. After all, she was only nineteen. She’d often heard adults talk about angels, demons, monsters, and things like that.

She’d believed in them when she was little, but as she grew older, Lin Jianxue figured those monsters and demons the adults talked about were probably just people.

After all, so many cases in the newspapers involved people: people who killed, people who attacked others, people who kidnapped and trafficked, people who sold drugs.

Clearly, those demons were just humans who’d turned monstrous.

As for angels, Lin Jianxue couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone in the papers who could be called a real-life “angel.”

Every newspaper talked about the darkness of human nature and the dangers of society. They mocked everything they saw and condemned the government for failing in its duties.

There was hardly any good news—or at least, Lin Jianxue hardly ever heard any from the adults around her.

It wasn’t until she went to college that Lin Jianxue realized those stories were written for people who liked reading them. People liked them, so they were written.

Though… the events reported in the newspapers really had happened.

Back then, Lin Jianxue had always liked combining the urban legends told by her elders with the cases in the newspapers. She had no idea what she’d been thinking.

But now Lin Jianxue realized that stories and reality really were connected.

She’d always thought that “girls shouldn’t walk alone at night, or monsters will eat them” was just something adults said to scare children.

Now Lin Jianxue understood that the adults had been telling the truth. It was just that the thing that ate people wasn’t a monster. It was a “person.”

As she thought about it, a line her grandfather had once said suddenly came back to her.

Lin Jianxue had been little then, and her parents loved scaring her with stories about demons and monsters.

Whenever she cried from fright, Lin Jianxue liked to run to her grandfather for comfort.

He would gently pat her back and patiently say:

“Don’t cry… don’t cry…”

Then her grandfather would say all sorts of strange things to her as she cried.

Whatever he said, it always stopped her crying.

Lin Jianxue couldn’t remember what her grandfather had told her when she was little.

But for some reason, one line had stuck with her—

“When you’re in a situation where you’ve reached the point of praying to a demon, you’d better hope that demons really exist—”