Baka-Tsuki - User contributions [en]

Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha Registration Page

2018-02-26T05:36:39Z

Toshiya:

To re-iterate the registration procedure:

*You are required to register which chapters you wish to work on. One portion of text per translator, please.

*Registration is on a "First Come, First Served" basis. Please register your intended chapters on the project's registration page.

*Maximum number of translators per volume is two, unless the volume is a collection of smaller stories. Another way to interpret this is no more than two translators should be working on the same "story arc".

*Translators may only register for portions of one volume at a time within each project. This is to prevent "biting off more than you can chew".

*The Registration page is not a binding contract, and translators are encouraged to negotiate between themselves which portions to register for.

*Anonymous Translated Contributions are required to inform [[User:Thelastguardian|thelastguardian]] and the designated Project Supervisor of the intend Chapters as shown on the corresponding Registration page before any major contribution.

*Portions that are not updated for a significant time may be taken over by another translator after getting permission from the Project Supervisor. The new translator is encouraged to start over to maintain consistency, but the old translation will not be deleted at least until the new translation is finished (and probably not for some time after that).

==Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha==

===Volume 1===
:*Prologue -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Chapter 1 -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Chapter 2 -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Chapter 3 -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Chapter 4 -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Epilogue -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Afterword -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''

===Volume 2===
:*Prologue -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Chapter 1 -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Chapter 2 -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Chapter 3 -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Chapter 4 -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Epilogue -- PROzess '''completed'''
:*Afterword -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''

===Volume 3===
:*Prologue -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 1 -- [[User:Arsl31|Arsl31]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 2 -- [[User:Arsl31|Arsl31]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 3 -- [[User:Arsl31|Arsl31]] '''completed'''
:*Epilogue -- [[User:Zxzxzx|Zxzxzx]] '''completed'''
:*Afterword -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''

===Volume 4===
:*Prologue -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 1 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 2 -- [[User:Zxzxzx|Zxzxzx]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 3 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Epilogue -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Afterword --

===Volume 5===
:*Prologue -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 1 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 2 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 3 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 4 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Epilogue -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Afterword --

===Volume 6===
:*Chapter 1 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 2 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 3 -- [[User:Arsl31|Arsl31]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 4 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Afterword --

===Volume 7===
:*Prologue -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 1 -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 2 -- [[User:Zxzxzx|Zxzxzx]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 3 -- [[User:Zxzxzx|Zxzxzx]] '''completed'''
:*Chapter 4 -- [[User:Zxzxzx|Zxzxzx]] '''completed'''
:*Epilogue -- [[User:Zxzxzx|Zxzxzx]] '''completed'''
:*Afterword -- [[User:Zxzxzx|Zxzxzx]] '''completed'''

===Volume 8===
:*Chapter 1 --
:*Chapter 2 --
:*Chapter 3 --
:*Afterword --

===Volume 9===
:*Prologue --
:*Chapter 1 --
:*Chapter 2 --
:*Chapter 3 --
:*Chapter 4 --
:*Epilogue --
:*Afterword --

==Short stories==
:*EX -- [[User:J2270A|J2270A]]
:*Wishing to Santa Claus --

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| Return to [[Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha|Main Page]]
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</noinclude>

[[Category:Registration Page]]

User talk:Ahmedmos1000

2018-02-26T05:31:23Z

Toshiya:

== Regarding Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha ==

Please do not post translations from external sites without permission from the translators and Project Supervisor.

Read more about rules and the guidelines of Baka-Tsuki [[Baka-Tsuki:Contributor_Agreement|here]]. -[[User:Toshiya|Toshiya]] ([[User talk:Toshiya|talk]])

User talk:Ahmedmos1000

2018-02-26T05:31:04Z

Toshiya: Created page with "== Regarding Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha == Please do not post translations from external sites without permission from the translators and Project Supervisor. Read more abou..."

User talk:Basara

2018-02-26T01:08:01Z

Toshiya:

==Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha==
Hello, I noticed you replaced most of a (badly translated) chapter; do you plan to add yourself as translator/editor for that series? --[[User:RS|RS]] ([[User talk:RS|talk]][https://discord.gg/bakatsuki discord]) 22:41, 8 July 2017 (CEST)

Sorry but no but anytime I see that u guys need it I will help

=== About Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha Volume 8 Chapter 3 ===
Please do not post translations from external sites without permission from the translators and Project Supervisor.

Read more about rules and the guidelines of Baka-Tsuki [[Baka-Tsuki:Contributor_Agreement|here]]. -[[User:Toshiya|Toshiya]] ([[User talk:Toshiya|talk]]) 02:07, 26 February 2018 (CET)

File:BloodSign v08 cover.jpg

2018-02-17T19:57:36Z

Toshiya: Toshiya uploaded a new version of File:BloodSign v08 cover.jpg

The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume8 Opening2

2018-02-08T04:15:11Z

Toshiya: typo

==Opening X-02: Window-Shattering Youth==

Now let us move back in time a bit to see why Shiroyama Kyousuke was tired.

It was past 5 in the Northern Australian city of Iron Range.

“Pant, pant!!”

A middle-aged man named Leonardo Pounds was soaked in sweat despite the office’s nice air-conditioning. He gasped for breath as he knocked over a thick bookcase. The safe on the wall behind it used a dial. Everything tended to be digital in modern times, but that man knew from experience that you could only trust the products of craftsmen when it really mattered. He turned the old-fashioned dial, opened the thick door, and pulled out a duralumin case. It was essentially the same as a disaster bag for earthquakes. However, he had prepared it for manmade disasters on the level of wars, so it contained a fake passport, a list of foreign bank accounts, cash in multiple currencies for bribing policemen in a pinch, a notebook full of secret contact points that would connect him to people who dealt in less-than-legal goods and services, a ring of keys for hideouts around the world, a cellphone and laptop modified to be untraceable, an assortment of white powders he could not admit to owning, a plastic handgun and cartridges that would slip past a metal detector, etc., etc. The fact that Leonardo had all this prepared should tell you what kind of disaster he was prepping for and what kind of world he lived in.

Anyone who assumed he was with one of Illegal’s criminal organizations was someone with a kind and honest heart.

He was actually part of a new organization that belonged to Government, the world police.

That might be understandable if you had done some thorough research into the state of monasteries in the middle ages. But that leads only to regret, so it is not recommended.

Instead of a phone, the middle-aged man shouted into a radio that was reinforced with encryption.

“Kevin!! Gather a few sets of disposable summoners and get them out there to slow the enemy down. I’m going to release the final lock, activate the gas, and escape. I need time, not money, so buy me that time even if it means spending some lives!!”

The framed symbol of their cult tilted and fell to the floor with the sound of shattering glass, but the middle-aged man paid it no heed. That was no more than some scribblings made by an advertising agency’s designer to include a few colors, shapes, and symbols that would capture the human heart.

Leonardo had no religious faith whatsoever.

He had come to understand the simple fact that a flea market could be used to create a religion.

What people wanted or no longer wanted revealed their individual desires and anxieties. It was like a guidebook to what someone would have to whisper to them to make them think it was a miracle.

He had led them to believe in god.

He had led them to hand over all of their possessions.

He had led them to continue following his teachings even if he died.

(I would have had heaven on earth if I’d managed to cross the final line and taught them I could save the world if I had sex with all the young women, so why the hell did it have to fall apart now!?)

…In truth, Leonardo himself was not as charismatic as he claimed. It might have been amusing if this had been a planned collapse. But frequent appearances of the White Queen (even if normal people could not retain any proper memories or awareness of her) had gathered anxiety and popularity as two sides of the same coin. And when word arrived that the Queen had been killed, something had exploded. It had crossed a line.

The entire office…no, the entire headquarters shook violently. The middle-aged man’s shoulder slammed into the wall and he endured the pain as he threw open the door with the duralumin case still in his arms.

Outside the door was a complex labyrinth made of sturdy steel.

He heard pounding footsteps as the obedient summoners and vessels made their way outside.

“…”

As evidenced by how he naturally held his breath, Leonardo did not want to be found by his own elites any more than by the enemy. He had no intention of staying here. He would let those hard workers form the suicide squad while he made a quick escape. There were some young women in the cult with breasts and butts he so badly wanted to claim as his own, but he unfortunately had to abandon them here.

Since he had used the form of a religion instead of a corporation or a bloodline, he could never show any weakness. No matter how attractive those breasts and butts were, if he took them with him during this desperate situation, they could awaken from their dream at any time. And he would really prefer to not have them stab him. Luckily, he had proven that his methodology worked. He had memorized the process. If he swallowed his tears here, said goodbye to those breasts and butts, and escaped to a new life, he could rebuild a community from scratch and gain peace of mind.

(I can’t have any damage from my past when I do that. I need to blow it all up and leave no trace behind. I’m getting a fresh start, so it has to truly be from nothing. I don’t want any debt. If I don’t start a new self from scratch, I’ll just be tripping myself up.)

''The turbine that provided thrust'' was exposed on the surface, but the engine room that contained the key to blowing it up was deep inside. And it was not set up for remote control. His own demands were getting in his way. And since he was a terrible person, he clicked his tongue like it was someone else’s fault. He slid past the thick metal door and into the engine room that was full of thick pipes and machines that looked like metal guts. He removed a panel that used four different types of screws, none of which were a normal Phillips head or flat head, inserted the analog key, and typed in a 16-digit code.

After seeing the green light turn red, he removed the key with a satisfied look.

Unlike in a movie or drama, there was no obvious digital countdown. For one thing, no one but Leonardo needed to know about the countdown. The believers who had stayed behind because of their faith in him could continue doing their duty without a doubt in their mind until it all blew up around them.

When the time came, a flammable gas made by vaporizing fuel would spray from all of the sprinklers and all trace of every person and thing here would be erased in one giant fireworks show. Instead of setting up small explosives all around the structure, the plan was to turn the entire space into a giant bomb. Thus, it was impossible for anything to survive.

“Kevin, I’ve finished! I’m on my way to the heliport, so get the engine warmed up so we can leave right away!!”

Another rumbling and tremor shook the world.

He staggered but managed to regain his balance, left the engine room, avoided the pounding footsteps of his allies, and ran up a narrow metal stairway.

He tackled open the metal door leading outside.

He found the clear blue sky and sunshine of Australia. A vortex of heat pushed in at him. Even if the Southern Hemisphere’s seasons were opposite of the Northern Hemisphere, this harbor city was closer to the equator than Hawaii or Guam. But the middle-aged man did not see the rooftop of a high-rise building in front of him. This was an extraordinarily large aircushion ship that measured more than 200m long. A large balloon was opened below and the power of air was used to keep the giant ship moving across land or sea. The heliport on the deck was Leonardo Pounds’s goal.

“Pant, pant…”

He gasped for breath, but also looked away from his obvious goal. He could not help but look.

Hell on earth lay before him.

He saw the magic king of Norse mythology whose name begins with an O and who offered up one eye at a spring.

He saw the trident king of Greek mythology whose name begins with a P and who rules the sea.

He saw the light king of Celtic mythology whose name begins with an L and who excels at using projectiles.

He saw the black king of Slavic mythology whose name begins with a C and who rules over death and the underworld.

Outside the aircushion ship, several beings had appeared on the concrete of the 2nd dock in Iron Range’s commerce area. They were all Divine-class and they were Materials who held dreadful power at the center of their respective mythologies. Viewed from a different perspective, they could be seen as a treasure trove of material on what Leonardo should make people think of when he used his tricks.

But that was not the center of the hell he saw.

They were cut down, crushed, broken, or suppressed.

The Blood-Sign Summoning Ceremony had changed everything.

He knew that, but how many people would believe that a single individual could do all this?

Unexplored-class. Cost: 20. Sound Range: Low.

The “Red-Eyed” Lady who Sees Through All Sin and Calamity (f a – a o – a b – e i – f j – c i b – b – d u – a – e i f).

She looked a lot like a female Oni of Eastern folklore. Her long, beautiful hair and the two horns protruding from her forehead gave her an oriental charm. She wore a red kimono and innerwear resembling a one-piece swimsuit. Countless gears of varying sizes fit together behind her and they guided her hair to different parts of the world like a loom. The middle-aged man placed his sexual desire at top priority when making any decision, but the divinity inside her left even him hesitant to make her a target of lust. Not only could she prophesy all things to always make an accurate attack, but if she merely opened her closed eyes, it was said she would forcibly determine the target’s fate. Even the gods of legend would fail to see their fate and be swallowed up before they could dodge. Faced with one of the Unexplored-class Materials known as the Three, even gods of death and war could not make use of their powers.

“There he is…”

But it was not even the Red Lady that made the middle-aged man gulp when he saw them.

He was looking at the boy who stood by her side.

That veteran summoner was calm and composed as he controlled one of the Three.

“I had a feeling you would show up, ''Queen Executioner''!!”

Even at such a great distance, he could tell something the instant their eyes met: the owner of those rusty eyes was a true berserker. He would show no mercy whatsoever. He was not just a wild beast or a faceless unmanned weapon. He felt like an incarnation of ruthlessness itself.

Leonardo Pounds lost what calm he had previously felt.

He ran across the aircushion ship’s deck and threw aside the duralumin case that was weighing him down. That was his valuable social lifeline for after he escaped, but his instincts were screaming that this was not the time to worry about what happened after he escaped. It was all for naught if he was killed before he escaped.

“Pant, pant, pant!!”

(Dammit. What was all that nonsense about the White Queen being the strongest of the strongest? It’s all meaningless if she gets herself killed. I have to redo everything and build up the symbols from the ground up. Dammit, dammit, dammit. What am I supposed to do? It’s all fading away. My life of debauchery is fading away. What do I do now? And I had finally completed the ultimate method of safely abducting women. Oh, it’s no use. I can’t think. I just want to have sex so bad!!)

Luckily, that frighteningly effective summoner had yet to board the aircushion ship. The vanguard was obediently fighting on the harbor where it was docked. Artificial Sacred Grounds were powerful, but they also anchored the summoner and vessel in place. It was all over if that boy made it here, but Leonardo could still escape.

He was almost to the helicopter that was waiting with the main rotor turning.

He made it in time.

Perhaps because he was freed from so much tension, the dam in his head broke even though he had not sniffed anything yet today. After taking a step into divine territory while sober, psychedelic colors danced wildly in his brain.

(Yes, this is my chance. The White Queen has lost, but I can use this. I can say the new strongest of the strongest will reside in any woman who has sex with me. Yes, that’s it!! This will work. I’m still winning. Hardship only makes you stronger. Once I get the details worked out, I can start spreading these new teachings. And I can make up for being forced to wait by having sex, sex, sex, and more sex!! Ah, it just hit me. I can hire a famous songwriter and make a sex festival dance. Yahoo, yahoo, sex, sex! Ah ha ha! God, I’m so hard just thinking about it! I’m still the best and I’m still unbeatable!!!!!)

“Bwah!!”

The middle-aged man rushed toward the helicopter and naturally made for the rear door for passengers. He was having trouble breathing but managed to raise his voice.

“Sorry about the wait, Kevin! The great Leonardo is here! I’ll praise you for holding back and not going off early. I’ll never call you a quick shot again. Okay, now get flying!! It’s time for that sweet release after holding back for so, so, so long! We can redo this together. To start with, let’s set our sights on a pool crammed full of naked women. Like the world’s most wonderful rush-hour train car! Screw this up and its back to Chicago’s back alleys for the both of us! You don’t want to go back to dressing up like a woman to lure people in for me to threaten with a gun, do you!? Then get working!!”

But there was no response.

''Does he want some kind of reward?'' wondered the middle-aged man with a frown, but that was not the case.

With a horribly sticky sound, the lump of flesh sitting in the pilot’s seat crumpled to the side.

What in the world had happened? The convulsing figure’s face was so badly covered in red and black that it was unclear where the eyes, nose, or mouth were.

“Eh? Ah?”

Leonardo did not even feel the proper sense of danger.

He was simply confused.

(Who did this to Kevin? Him? The Queen Executioner? No, he still wasn’t on the ship last I saw him. He couldn’t have gotten here so soon. An ambush? No, this is bad. These depressions look a lot like a Blood-Sign tip. Was he jabbed with that flat tip? This is bad, bad, bad!! This isn’t even about the Summoning Ceremony anymore!!!)

More than the clear threat approaching him, he wanted to avoid breathing the same air as that disturbing mass of flesh and blood. Leonardo Pounds had used flea markets to design a cult, but it was an extremely primitive sense of disgust that bound his soul right now.

And that was why he misjudged the threat.

Just as he reached for the door to leave the helicopter, something broke through the helicopter’s even-thicker glass like it was thin paper.

An object with flat tip mercilessly approached his face: a Blood-Sign. The fact that it would not kill him instantly like a spear actually made it an even more ruthless attack, but did the middle-aged man even manage to see it before it hit?

The first attack crushed the bridge of his nose.

He rolled the other way as if torn from the door he had grabbed at, he hit his back, and then the second attack arrived. He shook his head in protest, so his right cheekbone was broken from a blow powerful enough to knock him out the other door where his girth fell onto the heliport.

“Bwah, bghee!?”

While collapsed and curled up, he reached for his own face and trembled in his heart when he found it had been horribly misshapen. His chin had been shifted to the side so that his top teeth and bottom teeth no longer fit together. Was he lucky or unlucky that there was no mirror here? His mind returned to the image of Kevin’s red and black face as he convulsed in the pilot’s chair. The attacker – the Queen Executioner – showed no mercy. He would “process” Leonardo as if preparing to cook him.

The middle-aged man’s entire body shook when he heard some footsteps that should not have been here.

Something was circling around toward him.

(A-are you kidding me…?)

There was something there. There was definitely something there. Leonardo had poured his all into studying the Blood-Sign method for the inappropriate purposes of using that paranormal system to satisfy his own desires, but he could not explain how this threat had arrived at the heliport.

(Did he release the Artificial Sacred Ground that pins the summoner and vessel to the ground like a powerful anchor? But that would mean giving up his Unexplored-class and finding himself surrounded by Divine-classes without his protective circle. Did he ignore all of that and make it here!?)

The threat was well past anything he could calculate by this point.

He felt the pure terror of facing a formless ghost, like a young child fearfully peering into the darkness.

“Ah, abh. Abfhh…”

He knew nothing about them, but they knew everything about him.

They really were a ghost.

The bloody middle-aged man was certain they knew he had planned to take advantage of the White Queen’s defeat to start a new cult and that he would try to prey on all the young women he wanted when he did so.

He heard something slowly swishing through the air.

It was the sound of someone casually spinning a long, long Repliglass stick.

Just for now, that boy’s Blood-Sign was not a divine-yet-blasphemous ceremonial tool. It was no more than a ruthless tool for processing a human body by primitively crushing the flesh and smashing the bones. There was no room for otherworldly beings to intervene.

The middle-aged man lay on the heliport in a daze. Simply in a daze.

He moved his trembling head to look up at the ghost whose back was to the sun. And that berserker with rusted eyes spoke.

“I went to the trouble of defeating the strongest, so don’t go around twisting everything yourselves now…”

He was Freedom Award 903, Alice (with) Rabbit.

And his icy voice seemed to reject the entire path he had built up to this point.

“…''Keep it up and I’ll kill you, you goddamn cultist.''”

The Queen Executioner produced a new form of art.

The heliport looked like an entire can of toxic paint had been dumped on it to form a red crescent moon. At one end, a middle-aged man convulsed with his face against the deck and his butt sticking up, but the rusty-eyed boy in a red and black hoodie and track suit pants did not even glance in his direction.

Half of the world’s conflict was related to the White Queen and Shiroyama Kyousuke had helped cause that. He wanted to resolve what problems he could, but they just kept growing more and more twisted.

He knew the feeling was unreasonable, but it was starting to piss him off.

Some small footsteps approached that annoyed grim reaper who rested a Blood-Sign on his shoulder.

“Onii-chaaaan.”

It was Olivia Highland.

That girl had entered into a contract as Kyousuke’s vessel.

She wore something like a metal bag carried by a thick chain draped diagonally across her body. It was actually a giant padlock that psychologically bound her as a vessel. It jangled as she clung to the blood-splattered boy without hesitation.

“I’m kind of tired,” she said.

“It seems a self-destruct device was activated, so we should get away from the ship. I have no problem with the cult’s mobile base blowing up, so there’s no real reason to deactivate it.”

“Aren’t there still people onboard?”

“Don’t worry. If we tie up their battered leader and drag him behind a car, they’ll follow.”

“Hmm,” said Olivia like she did not really care.

She may have had no interest in the fate of some strange old man.

“More importantly, we’re in Australia, so let’s get something to eat, Onii-chan!”

Since this bloody scene did nothing to dampen her hunger, you could say Olivia was a true vessel.

“That’s fine, but are there any famous Australian dishes? Like something you can only eat here?”

“Hm? Beef maybe???”

“That’s an ingredient, not a dish.”

Even now, bursting sounds were ringing out in the distance.

With Olivia still clinging to his waist, Kyousuke swung his Blood-Sign like a baseball bat to hit the bolts and nuts he scooped up from the floor. Before the summoners and vessels in the harbor could plot a comeback, he “sniped” them one after another to knock them unconscious.

While continuing to unilaterally hit them with his 1000 fungoes from hell, Kyousuke held his smartphone in his other hand and viewed a blog by a housewife who used a form of English distinct from that of England or America.

“Let’s see. With more than 80% of its territory taken up by a vast desert, Australia is known for its insect dishes that combine aboriginal knowledge with cutting-edge nutritional science.”

“Eh?”

“Worms, caterpillars, and ants are favored because they are nonvenomous, have no strong flavor, and reproduce easily. Eating bugs has gathered the attention of the wealthy the world over as a next generation source of protein needed to survive an age of famine brought on by global warming and overpopulation, but roach cakes made from the giant burrowing cockroach (known to be the largest in the world) can be easily made by anyone with a blender and an oven. It is a unique Australian-…Olivia? Why are you backing away so quickly? Hey!”

“Onii-chan, you wouldn’t understand since you’re a freak who only has standards when it comes to cereal!”

While enjoying himself like that, Kyousuke continued sniping the cult’s elites from a distance before they could throw a new Incense Grenade.

Then he saw the top trending online news listed outside of the blog article:

“The Toy Dream Company is supposed to spread hopes and dreams around the world, but have they posted a pro-war video? Has a platinum resource war between America and Eastern Europe finally begun? The suspicious Missing Princess, that mobile VFX studio made from a remodeled cruise ship, is scheduled to stop at Toy Dream 35 soon.”

“…”

Shiroyama Kyousuke sighed.

There were a few different methods for choosing online advertisements, but this seemed to be based on search rankings. Vertical and horizontal banners were set up to guide you to a dedicated page on a video sharing site.

No.

At this point, one had to question whether the search rankings were even accurate. Without even mentioning DDoS attacks, there were plenty of techniques for sending in a ton of access data to increase a visitor counter or number of viewers.

Still.

This was far greater than a small cult.

It was the United States, the world’s greatest superpower.

Even something on that level was distorted, bent, and twisted.

It might not be as direct, but not even defeating the Queen had freed the people of the world. In fact, they were unable to accept that she had lost, so chaos and panic were spreading.

For better or for worse, a powerful force had been drawing the 7 billion people on the planet toward a single point, but now they were beginning to separate once more.

An age of chaos had begun.

This was likely another part of that.

The Toy Dream Company itself was a normal international corporation that did not belong to Government, Illegal, or Freedom, but it had gathered items and documents related to mysteries around the world in search of subjects for their children’s books. It was entirely possible that they had unknowingly come into contact with information related to the White Queen.

So it was also possible that her death or defeat had knocked something out of order.

“Olivia.”

“Never mind, never mind. I’m not hungry at all! I’m just fine with a burger you could find anywhere in the world!! A-a consistent flavor is just the best, isn’t it!? Isn’t it!?”

“That’s perfect then. We’re going to Japan next.”

“…What?”

“Our target is the world’s largest VFX studio that’s docking at Toy Dream 35 as a ship. I won’t let them guide us toward war by shifting public opinion like a seesaw. Let’s find out just what Toy Dream is up to.”

Olivia’s mouth flapped wordlessly.

And when she saw the seriousness in Kyousuke’s eyes, she just about grew tearful and her throat trembled.

“I don’t want to!! How many countries do you think we’ve visited today alone? I don’t care if it’s in a tent or a car! I just want to get some sleep!!”

“A civilian Repliglass supersonic plane takes two hours, so you can rest on the way there.”

User talk:Entropy

2018-01-29T05:58:28Z

Toshiya:

==Black Bullet==

Hi Entropy,

With regards to the translation of Black Bullet volumes 5 and 6, please indicate your ID on the registration page here: http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Black_Bullet:Registration_Page.

--[[User:Teh Ping|Teh Ping]] ([[User talk:Teh Ping|talk]]) 22:52, 20 September 2014 (CDT)

==Regarding Unlimited Fafnir==

Indeed, I've never heard of it before so i'm a bit lost about what it means so i read the kanji and only thought of the literal meaning of it. Anyway, could i used your translation and translate it to Indonesian? I thought it's a pretty decent translation and I am wondering if i can used it as an intermediary from japanese to Indonesian because as you can see, my Japanese is not enough to become a direct translator.

--[[User:Bastooth|Bastooth]] ([[User talk:Bastooth|talk]]) 18:58, 7 May 2015 (GMT +7)

Go ahead. --[[User:Entropy|Entropy]] ([[User talk:Entropy#top|talk]]) 06:08, 9 May 2015 (CDT)

Thanks for your approval. --[[User:Bastooth|Bastooth]] ([[User talk:Bastooth|talk]]) 18:35, 10 May 2015 (GMT +7)

For translating Unlimited Fafnir, thank you very, very much! I really enjoyed reading it! Thank you!

[[User:Subsinexus|Subsinexus]] ([[User talk:Subsinexus|talk]]) 13:56, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

I noticed that you've been updating a lot of short stories. How many are there, and are they released along with the main volumes?

The main volumes are bundled with short stories when purchased from specific retailers in Japan. I'll reorganize them a bit and make the descriptions more explicit. --[[User:Entropy|Entropy]] ([[User talk:Entropy#top|talk]]) 12:57, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

So what will be your schedule from now on? you will continue with the ss or you are gonna translate the main story

Volume 8 will be done before the end of August. -[[User:Entropy|Entropy]] ([[User talk:Entropy#top|talk]]) 11:41, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for translating and catching up to the latest volume [[User:Ren|Ren]] ([[User talk:Ren|talk]]) 11:08, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

How goes the translation for Volume 10?

I'm just wondering why only the colour pictures are included Volume Illustrations pages while other series have all the images in their Volume Illustrations pages. [[User:Wolfpup|Wolfpup]] ([[User talk:Wolfpup|talk]]) 11:38, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

10 volumes in and now you ask? I don't care how other projects are run, but when you pick up a book, do you instantly look at all the illustrations to spoil yourself silly? No, the normal way is to read the book and encounter the illustrations in the text where they are placed. --[[User:Entropy|Entropy]] ([[User talk:Entropy#top|talk]]) 07:02, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

For translating Unlimited Fafnir, thank you so much! Appreciate it!

Is there a reason for not including the story and character pages? [[User:RS|RS]] ([[User talk:RS|talk]]) 15:28, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

They're just as pointless as including the synopsis on the back cover or the author profile on the inside cover. --[[User:Entropy|Entropy]] ([[User talk:Entropy#top|talk]]) 22:31, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

That's a bit like saying the ToC is pointless because the chapter names also appear on the chapters themselves. But well, it's your project. <del>Though I'll leave the images on the epub generator entries so they're not forgotten.</del> Actually, the images are still on the wiki, though not visible. That's fine too. [[User:RS|RS]] ([[User talk:RS|talk]]) 08:29, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Hey Entropy, just curious as to whether you're still translating this story or if you have dropped it?

Hi. Questions would be better directed to the talk page. :) 
Anyway - "why are you adding pointless notes? anyone can figure this out with a simple web search" 
There are many words in novels which sound like made up things. I was just merely pointing out that the numbers were in a different language, not some code of made up words. For example Code Zirst means nothing since I just made it up. There are many references like that in most stories so ''people simply don't bother with a web search'', assuming that's just something in the story's unique things, like a substance/phenomenon/existence/etc the author will explain later. (going with my earlier example, I could later write Zirst means something specific in my story). 
That's my reason anyway. I had started reading this sometime ago & assumed ''Neun'' was something in the story, rather than a word in a real language, hence did no web search. I only later realized it translating some German for something else. Thought it'd be a helpful ref. (I'd have found it helpful anyway.) 
But if you think it's a problematic addition I won't add anymore, since it's your translation. Good thing I happened to check back on it or I'd have added one for Fünf in Vol.5 :P 
Anyway, thanks for translating this pretty good LN :) - [[User:FallenSky|FallenSky]] ([[User talk:FallenSky|talk]]) 16:59 September 25, 2016 (UTC)

Wow, translation resumed?! Thank you so much! There is hope!!

Are you still active or have you dropped this? Sorry if I messed anything up by the way, first time using this site to chat.

: Hi [[User:TheLittleDemon|TheLittleDemon]]. Maybe you haven't noticed but Entropy updated [[Unlimited_Fafnir:Volume_13_Chapter_2|Volume 13, chapter 2]] a few days ago. [[User:Toshiya|Toshiya]] ([[User talk:Toshiya|talk]]) 06:55, 29 January 2018 (CET)

== Asking for translating tips ==

Hello Entropy, I had seen your work speed in translating Unlimited Fafnir and I am wondering if you can give me some tips from the secret of your speed. Is there any effective way to increase my translation speed, any tricks or tips, or maybe better dictionary for kanji, anything? I don't think I have seen any translator as fast as you.
--[[User:Bakapervert|Bakapervert]] ([[User talk:Bakapervert|talk]]) 00:29, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't think speed itself should be a goal because you'll be sacrificing other things if you're actively seeking to translate faster. Rather, you should be working on accuracy and improving your understanding of the language. Speed will come automatically with familiarity. That's my two cents, at any rate. --[[User:Entropy|Entropy]] ([[User talk:Entropy#top|talk]]) 01:26, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Haha, thanks for your response. I guess I'll keep persisting in what I am doing right now. --[[User:Bakapervert|Bakapervert]] ([[User talk:Bakapervert|talk]]) 22:27, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you again, but I want to ask about grammar this time if you can help me. I noticed that most translator keep using past tense in the part that is not character dialogue even though in the raw the sentence is using present tense. The first time I start translating when I use present tense in the explaining part later on someone edited it into past tense. Can you please explain why most translator use this kind of format?--[[User:Bakapervert|Bakapervert]] ([[User talk:Bakapervert|talk]]) 14:52, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

== Regarding Glau Standear Empire Story ==

Hi,
I don't want to be annoying or something, I'm just interested in this story, so I want to ask if you're going to translate this novel? Because I think it's a great story and I want to translate it to Czech, but I'm just a beginner in Japanese.
Thank you for the answer and your hard work on other projects ^^ --[[User:Scaren_Kage|Scaren Kage]]

== Fremd Torturchen (Isekai Goumon-hime) ==

Hello, first, thanks for your hard work!
I would like to ask, will you continue with Fremd Torturchen TL? For me this LN is really amazing and I miss it.
Thanks!

== How are you doing? ==

I'm sorry if I'm bugging you unnecessarily, but I just wanted to ask how you're doing. And also if you're planning on continuing the translation for Unlimited Fafnir. If you're just busy, that's fine, but I hope you'll come back to translated ASAP.

== Fafnir Project. ==

I'd like to give you a heads up on my intention to join the Fafnir project as a project editor and translator. Though I tend to edit more as sometimes I don't trust my Japanese, and would like your approval. --[[User:Maki|Maki]]

== Will you continue Fremd torturchen ==

It seem that you came back to edit it a while ago but are you going to keep translating it?

== Fremd Torturchen ==

Hi,i wish if u can continue the LN,you are the only one who did start with it :( and im in love with it, anyways thx for at least traslating the first vol.
P.D: MERRY CHRISTMAS!! <3

== Is fremdt torturchen still alive? ==

Sorry to bother you.but have you already abandoned the project or are you planning to continue it in forseeable future?

Date A Live Russian

2018-01-27T18:40:58Z

Toshiya: Reverted edits by Rimaelle (talk) to last revision by Glebggg

{{Status|Active}}

[[File:DAL v01 cover.jpg|300px|right]]
'''Date a Live (デート・ア・ライブ)Рандеву с жизнью'''-серия японских лайт-новел, написанных Тачибаной Коши, с иллюстрациями Тсунако. Серия выпускается [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujimi_Shobo Fujimi Shobo] под лейблом Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Первый том появился в Марте 2011 года. На данный момент существует 7 томов. С апреля 2013 выходит одноимённое аниме.

Доступно на других языках:

*[[Date A Live|English (английский)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_~Brazilian_Portuguese~|Português Brasileiro (Португальский бразильский)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_(Indonesia)|Bahasa Indonesia (индонезийский)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Russian_Alt|Pусский альтернативный перевод]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Spanish|Español (испанский)]]
*[[Date A Live - Français|Français (Француз)]]
*[[Date A Live (Tiếng Việt)|Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Polski|Польский (Polish)]]

==Сюжет==

Сегодня 10-ое апреля. Вчера был последний день весенних каникул, так что, начиная с сегодняшнего утра, снова начинаются занятия в школе. Даже после того как его разбудила милая младшая сестренка, Ицука Сидо надеялся что это утро станет началом еще одного обычного дня. Не мог же он знать наперед что его ждет встреча с девушкой-духом...

Но на его глазах целый квартал был стерт с лица земли мощной ударной волной. А посреди улицы, в центре кратера, стояла девушка.

- Ты тоже пришел убить меня? - спросила она.

Она угроза для всего человечества, тварь порожденная иным и отвергнутая нашим миром. И остановить эту угрозу можно лишь двумя способами: полным уничтожением или же беседой. Его младшая сестра Котори, облаченная в военную форму, предложила ему:
- Ну если так, то пригласи её на свидание и заставь духа влюбиться в тебя!
- Чт... чтооооо!?

Вот тут и начинаются приключения парня и девушки.

==Переводчики==
Проект переводит futyn.
Вы можете сделать свою альтернативную версию перевода на БЦ следуя [[Format guideline|общим правилам по оформлению]] (англ.)

==Обновления==
30.04.13. Добавление страницы.

02.05.13. Добавлен пролог и часть первой главы первого тома.

27.07.13. Перевод возобновлён. Вторая и третья части первой главы редактируются.

09.07.14. Перевод возобновлен.Первая глава редактируется.Вторая переводится.

==Тачибана Коши. ''Рандеву с жизнью''==


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc1 mw-customtoggle-Arc1Close mw-customtoggle-Arc1Open" style="background:#9e6c38;cursor:pointer;height:20px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 1</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc1">

===Том 1 - Сомнения Токи===
[[File:DAL_v01_cover.jpg|thumb|x150px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 1 Illustrations|Иллюстрации]] [http://ruranobe.ru/r/dal/v1/i (Rura)]
::*[[Date a Live:V1P|Пролог: Случайная встреча]]
::*[[Date a Live:V1C1|Глава 1: Девушка без имени]](50%-перевод продолжается)
::*[[Date a Live:V1C2|Глава 2: Игра началась]]
::*[[Date a Live:V1C3|Глава 3: Я назову тебя...]]
::*[[Date a Live:V1C4|Глава 4: Случайное свидание]]
::*[[Date a Live:V1C5|Глава 5: Беспощадный Сандальфон]]
::*[[Date a Live:V1E|Эпилог: Жизнь с духом]]
::*[[Date a Live:V1A|Послесловие]]


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc2 mw-customtoggle-Arc2Close mw-customtoggle-Arc2Open" style="background:#79b2ff;cursor:pointer;height:20px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 2</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc2">

===Том 2 - Марионетка Ёшино===
[[File:DAL2_cover.jpg|thumb|x150px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 2 Illustrations|Иллюстрации]]
::*Пролог: Новая повседневность
::*Глава 1: Задание - "Под одной крышей"
::*Глава 2: Девушка, похожая на дождь
::*Глава 3: Чрезмерно искаженное сострадание
::*Глава 4: Уговор с Тобиичи
::*Глава 5: Замерзшая земля
::*Эпилог: Прошлое дает о себе знать
::*Послесловие


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc3 mw-customtoggle-Arc3Close mw-customtoggle-Arc3Open" style="background:#ff4746;cursor:pointer;height:20px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volumes 3 and 4</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc3">

===Том 3 - Убийца Куруми===
[[File:DAL3_cover.jpg|thumb|x150px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 3 Illustrations|Иллюстрации]]
::*Пролог: Гость в черном
::*Глава 1: Новый переведенный ученик
::*Глава 2: Приглашение от фантома
::*Глава 3: Война сестер
::*Глава 4: Тройное свидание
::*Глава 5: Поддельный ужас
::*Послесловие

 

===Том 4 - Сестра Итсуки===
[[File:DAL4_Cover.jpg|thumb|x150px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 4 Illustrations|Иллюстрации]]
::*Глава 6: Пламя рвущееся сквозь время
::*Глава 7: Конференция Котори
::*Глава 8: Битва купальников
::*Глава 9: Последнее свидание
::*Глава 10: Мститель из пятилетней давности
::*Эпилог: Встреча со Тьмой
::*Послесловие


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc4 mw-customtoggle-Arc4Close mw-customtoggle-Arc4Open" style="background:#efd807;cursor:pointer;height:20px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 5</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc4">

===Том 5 - Буря Ямаи===
[[File:DAL5_Cover.jpg|thumb|x150px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 5 Illustrations|Иллюстрации]]
::*Пролог: Обратное завоевание
::*Глава 1: Планы DEM
::*Глава 2: Ураганные девушки
::*Глава 3: Двойной подход
::*Глава 4: Перекресток сердец
::*Глава 5: Свет рассекающий Ветер
::*Эпилог: Шидо, я...
::*Послесловие


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc5 mw-customtoggle-Arc5Close mw-customtoggle-Arc5Open" style="background:#d0aeff; cursor:pointer;height:20px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volumes 6 and 7</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc5">

===Том 6 - Мику Лили===
[[File:DAL6_Cover.jpg|thumb|x150px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 6 Illustrations|Иллюстрации]]
::*Пролог: Рандеву с девушками
::*Глава 1: Странный фантом
::*Глава 2: Парень/Девушка
::*Глава 3: Время перемен
::*Глава 4: Мелодия
::*Глава 5: Лазурная вспышка
::*Послесловие

 

===Том 7 - Истина Мику===
[[File:DAL v7 cov.jpg|thumb|x150px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 7 Illustrations|Иллюстрации]]
::*Глава 6
::*Глава 7
::*Глава 8
::*Глава 9
::*Глава 10
::*Эпилог
::*Послесловие


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc6 mw-customtoggle-Arc6Close mw-customtoggle-Arc6Open" style="background:#4aed93; cursor:pointer;height:20px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volumes 8 and 9</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc6">'''

===Том 8 - Поиск Нацуми===
[[File:DAL v8 cov.jpg|thumb|x150px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 8 Illustrations|Иллюстрации]]
::*Пролог: Другой Шидо
::*Глава 1: Ведьма Октября
::*Глава 2: Двенадцать фотографий
::*Глава 3: Утро двенадцать часов
::*Глава 4: Подозрительное обозначение
::*Глава 5: Ведьмина работа

 

===Том 9 - Измененная Нацуми===
[[File:DAL v9 cov.jpg|thumb|x150px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 9 Illustrations|Иллюстрации]]
::*Глава 6: Ребенок
::*Глава 7: Призыв из темноты
::*Глава 8: Преобразование
::*Глава 9: Это определенно ложь
::*Глава 10: Падение отчаяние
::*Эпилог
::*Послесловие

 

===Рандеву в Акихабаре===
::*Тока
::*Ёшино - Дата выхода еще не известна
::*Куруми - Дата выхода еще не известна
::*Котори - Дата выхода еще не известна

===Короткие истории===
::*Тока и Шидо
::*День рождения Котори
::*Фейерверк с Ёшино - Выйдет в конце мая
::*Невозможная Оригами - Выйдет в конце июня
::*Робкая Тока - Выйдет в конце июля

==Вышедшие тома==
*デート・ア・ライブ十香デッドエンド (March 19, 2011 ISBN 978-4-8291-3623-2)
*デート・ア・ライブ2 四糸乃パペット (August 20, 2011 ISBN 978-4-8291-3672-0)
*デート・ア・ライブ3 狂三キラー (November 19, 2011 ISBN 978-4-8291-3704-8)
*デート・ア・ライブ4 五河シスター (March 17, 2012 ISBN 978-4-8291-3744-4)
*デート・ア・ライブ5 八舞テンペスト (August 18, 2012 ISBN 978-4-8291-3795-6)
*デート・ア・ライブ6 美九リリィ (December 20, 2012 ISBN 978-4-8291-3835-9-C0193)
*デート・ア・ライブ7 美九トゥルース (March 19, 2013 ISBN 978-4-8291-3871-7-C0193)

[[Category:Teaser (Russian)]]

User talk:Rimaelle

2018-01-27T18:24:50Z

Toshiya: Created page with "== Date a Live == Please do not copy-paste translations to a DMCA'd project. Thanks."

== Date a Live ==
Please do not copy-paste translations to a DMCA'd project. Thanks.

Date A Live

2018-01-27T18:20:46Z

Toshiya: Reverted edits by Rimaelle (talk) to last revision by Moreau

{{Abandoned}}
<big>'''This project has been removed in response to a DMCA notice from its publisher, Kadokawa.'''</big>

[[Image:DAL v01 cover.jpg|300px|thumb|Cover for Date A Live Vol 1]]
'''''Date A Live''''' (デート・ア・ライブ), is a Japanese light novel series written by Tachibana Koushi (橘公司), with illustrations by Tsunako (つなこ), published by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujimi_Shobo Fujimi Shobo] under their Fujimi Fantasia Bunko label. The novel was first published in March 2011 and has 16 volumes currently. In April 2013 an anime adaptation began which covered the events of volumes 1-4 of the light novel which ended in June 2013. A dub of season 1 was released on 10th June 2014 by FUNimation. A second season aired on 11th April, 2014 to 13th June, 2014 which covers the events from volumes 5-7. A movie Date A Live : Mayuri Judgment was released on 22nd August 2015. A third season has been announced in october 2017.

The Date A Live series is also available in the following languages:
*[[Date_A_Live_(Indonesia)|Bahasa Indonesia]]
*[[Date_A_Live_~Brazilian_Portuguese~|Português Brasileiro (Brazilian Portuguese)]]
*[[Date A Live - Français|Français (French)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_(German)|Deutsch (German)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Polski|Polski (Polish)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Russian|Русский (Russian)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Russian_Alt|Pусский альтернативный перевод (Russian Alternative Version)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_~_(Spanish)|Español (Spanish)]]
*[[Date A Live (Tiếng Việt)|Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)]]
*[[Date A Live (Italia)|Italia (Italiano)]]

{{DateALive:Toggle}}

==Story Synopsis==

April 10th. Today was the first school day morning after the end of Spring vacation. After being woken up by his cute little sister, Itsuka Shidou believed that it would be the start of another normal day. As for predicting the chance meeting with the girl who called herself a Spirit......

Along with a sudden shockwave, the townscape vanished without a trace. In a corner of the street which had now become a crater, the girl was there.

"—You, have you come to kill me too?"

She is the disaster that will destroy humanity, a monster of unknown origin, and a being rejected by the world. There are only two ways to stop this girl: annihilation, or conversation. His little sister Kotori, wrapped in a military uniform, thus said to Shidou: "Since it's like this, just go date her, and make the Spirit fall for you!" "Wh.. whaaaaaaaat!?" Enter a new age of boy meets girl!!

==Translation==

=== [[Date A Live:Registration Page|Registration]] ===

'''Translators are asked to [[Date A Live:Registration Page|register]] for chapters they want to work on'''

===Format Standards===
'''Every Chapter (after editing) must conform to the general format guidelines.'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]
*[[Date A Live: Names and Terminology Guidelines]] '''(WARNING: May contain spoilers)'''

===Feedback===
'''If you enjoyed the series, why don't you tell us in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4694 Feedback Thread]'''

==The ''Date A Live'' series by Tachibana Koushi==

'''You can find the PDF, EPUB and MOBI files in the Date A Live forum [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=6662 here].'''


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc1 mw-customtoggle-Arc1Close mw-customtoggle-Arc1Open mw-customtoggle-Arc2 mw-customtoggle-Arc2Close mw-customtoggle-Arc2Open mw-customtoggle-Arc3 mw-customtoggle-Arc3Close mw-customtoggle-Arc3Open mw-customtoggle-Arc4 mw-customtoggle-Arc4Close mw-customtoggle-Arc4Open mw-customtoggle-Arc5 mw-customtoggle-Arc5Close mw-customtoggle-Arc5Open mw-customtoggle-Arc6 mw-customtoggle-Arc6Close mw-customtoggle-Arc6Open mw-customtoggle-Arc7 mw-customtoggle-Arc7Close mw-customtoggle-Arc7Open mw-customtoggle-Arc8 mw-customtoggle-Arc8Close mw-customtoggle-Arc8Open mw-customtoggle-Arc9 mw-customtoggle-Arc9Close mw-customtoggle-Arc9Open mw-customtoggle-Arc10 mw-customtoggle-Arc10Close mw-customtoggle-Arc10Open mw-customtoggle-Arc11 mw-customtoggle-Arc11Close mw-customtoggle-Arc11Open" style="background:#FDF1B8;cursor:pointer" align="center"> <big><big>''Date A Live'' - Main story</big></big><hr/></div>
<div style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%;">


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc1 mw-customtoggle-Arc1Close mw-customtoggle-Arc1Open" style="background:#9A76CC;cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 1</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc1">

[[File:DAL_v01_cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 1 - Tohka Dead End===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: Chance Meeting -restart-
::*Chapter 1: The Nameless Girl
::*Chapter 2: {{Furigana|Training|Game}} Start
::*Chapter 3: Your Name Is......
::*Chapter 4: Surprise Date
::*Chapter 5: Ruthless {{Furigana|Slaughterer|Sandalphon}}
::*Epilogue: Life With a Spirit
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc2 mw-customtoggle-Arc2Close mw-customtoggle-Arc2Open" style="background:#79b2ff;cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 2</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc2">

[[File:DAL2_cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 2 - Yoshino Puppet===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: New Daily Life
::*Chapter 1: Mission: Under One Roof
::*Chapter 2: Rainy Girl
::*Chapter 3: Excessively Distorted Compassion
::*Chapter 4: Multiple requests at Tobiichi's House
::*Chapter 5: Frozen Earth
::*Epilogue: The Past that Starts to take Action
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc3 mw-customtoggle-Arc3Close mw-customtoggle-Arc3Open" style="background:#ff4746;cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volumes 3 and 4</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc3">

[[File:DAL3_cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 3 - Kurumi Killer===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: The Black Visitor
::*Chapter 1: Second Transfer Student
::*Chapter 2: A Spirit's Invitation
::*Chapter 3: Sister Wars
::*Chapter 4: Triple Date
::*Chapter 5: Imitation Nightmare
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL4_Cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 4 - Itsuka Sister===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Chapter 6: Time Penetrating Flame
::*Chapter 7: Kotori's Conference
::*Chapter 8: Swimwear Battle
::*Chapter 9: Last Date
::*Chapter 10: Avenger from Five Years Ago
::*Epilogue: Encounter of Darkness
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc4 mw-customtoggle-Arc4Close mw-customtoggle-Arc4Open" style="background:#FFA947;cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 5</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc4">

[[File:DAL5_Cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 5 - Yamai Tempest===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: Reverse Conquest
::*Chapter 1: DEM's Plans
::*Chapter 2: Cyclone Girls
::*Chapter 3: Double Approach
::*Chapter 4: Cross-Counter Heart
::*Chapter 5: The Light that Splits the Wind
::*Epilogue: Shidou, I—
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc5 mw-customtoggle-Arc5Close mw-customtoggle-Arc5Open" style="background:#d0aeff; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volumes 6 and 7</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc5">

[[File:DAL6_Cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 6 - Miku Lily===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: The Girls' Tryst
::*Chapter 1: Incomprehensible Spirit
::*Chapter 2: Male/Female
::*Chapter 3: Edit Time
::*Chapter 4: Music
::*Chapter 5: Azure Flash
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL v7 cov.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 7 - Miku Truth===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Chapter 6: Nightmare, Reappear
::*Chapter 7: The Battlefield of Only Two People
::*Chapter 8: Streets Engulfed in Fire and Shadow
::*Chapter 9: Demon King
::*Chapter 10: Slaughtering Tyrant
::*Epilogue: After the Festival
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc6 mw-customtoggle-Arc6Close mw-customtoggle-Arc6Open" style="background:#4aed93; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volumes 8 and 9</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc6">'''

[[File:DAL v8 cov.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Volume 8 - Natsumi Search===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: {{Furigana|Another Shidou|Doppelganger}}
::*Chapter 1: {{Furigana|Witch of October|Halloween}}
::*Chapter 2: {{Furigana| Twelve Photos|Suspect}}
::*Chapter 3: {{Furigana|Morning Twelve O'clock|Delete}}
::*Chapter 4: {{Furigana|Suspect Designation|High risk}}
::*Chapter 5: {{Furigana|Witch's Work|Witchcraft}}
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL v9 cov.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 9 - Natsumi Change===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Chapter 6: {{Furigana|The Children|Little Monsters}}
::*Chapter 7: {{Furigana|Beckoning From The Darkness|Head Hunting}}
::*Chapter 8: {{Furigana|Transform|Makeup}}
::*Chapter 9: {{Furigana|It's Definitely A Lie|I'd Like To Believe}}
::*Chapter 10: {{Furigana|Despair Is Falling|Fall down}}
::*Epilogue: {{Furigana|DEM's Wizard|Friend Or Enemy}}
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc7 mw-customtoggle-Arc7Close mw-customtoggle-Arc7Open" style="background:#E0FFFF; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volumes 10 and 11</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc7">'''

[[File:DAL v10 cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 10 - Tobiichi Angel===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: Tobiichi Origami
::*Chapter 1: The Targeted Shidou
::*Chapter 2: The Radiant Goetia
::*Chapter 3: Angel
::*Chapter 4: Truth
::*Chapter 5: The Descending Of The Devil King To Darkness
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL v11 cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 11 - Tobiichi Devil===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Chapter 6: The One Struggling
::*Chapter 7: Illusion
::*Chapter 8: <Devil>
::*Chapter 9: Instinct
::*Chapter 10: The Angel Of The Night With Falling Stars
::*Epilogue: Tobiichi Origami
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc8 mw-customtoggle-Arc8Close mw-customtoggle-Arc8Open" style="background:#8CB1DD; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 12</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc8">'''

[[File:DAL v12 cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 12 - Itsuka Disaster===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: The Beast of Demise
::*Chapter 1: An Invading Unordinary
::*Chapter 2: King's March
::*Chapter 3: Vacation Time
::*Chapter 4: Party Time
::*Chapter 5: Spirit's Dance
::*Epilogue: “The Second” Who Has Been Released
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc9 mw-customtoggle-Arc9Close mw-customtoggle-Arc9Open" style="background:#A5A5A7; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 13</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc9">'''

[[File:DAL v13 cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 13 - Nia Creation===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: And More Importantly—The Time Is Not Enough
::*Chapter 1: Don't Panic, This Is Spirit's Trap
::*Chapter 2: Akiba, I Have Returned!
::*Chapter 3: Very Well, Then 2D Is What You Shall Have
::*Chapter 4: If You Give Up, The Deadline Is Already Over
::*Chapter 5: What's Yours Is Mine
::*Epilogue: You Know That Nia?!
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc10 mw-customtoggle-Arc10Close mw-customtoggle-Arc10Open" style="background:#FFFFB3; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volumes 14 and 15</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc10">'''

[[File:DAL v14 cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Volume 14 - Mukuro Planet===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: Awakening of the Stars
::*Chapter 1: First Shrine Visit of the Year
::*Chapter 2: The Spirit from Space
::*Chapter 3: New Wings
::*Chapter 4: Fairy Tale
::*Chapter 5: Hero
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL v15 cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 15 - Mukuro Family===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Chapter 6: Battle of Cosmos
::*Chapter 7: The Unlocked Heart
::*Chapter 8: The Locked Memories
::*Chapter 9: Oblivion of the Outside
::*Chapter 10: The Key and The Sword
::*Epilogue: Reunion Time
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc11 mw-customtoggle-Arc11Close mw-customtoggle-Arc11Open" style="background:#A15B17; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 16</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc11">'''

[[File:DAL v16 cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Volume 16 - Kurumi Refrain===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Prologue: Ally of Justice
::*Chapter 1: Nightmare's Temptation
::*Chapter 2: Tide of Battle
::*Chapter 3: A Maiden's Time
::*Chapter 4: The Recent Sin
::*Chapter 5: Samsara of Salvation
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Arc11 mw-customtoggle-Arc11Close mw-customtoggle-Arc11Open" style="background:#B9FFC5; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 17</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Arc11">'''

[[File:DAL v17 Cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Volume 17 - Kurumi Ragnarok===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Fragment Chapter: The Birth of Spirits
::*Chapter 1: The Signal Outbreak of War
::*Chapter 2: Nightmare’s Secret Maneuvers
::*Chapter 3: The Final Rest
::*Chapter 4: Footsteps of Demise
::*Chapter 5: Revival of Spirit
::*Afterword
 

==The ''Date A Live'' side stories by Tachibana Koushi==


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Akihabara mw-customtoggle-AkihabaraClose mw-customtoggle-AkihabaraOpen mw-customtoggle-Encore mw-customtoggle-EncoreClose mw-customtoggle-EncoreOpen mw-customtoggle-PS3Special mw-customtoggle-PS3SpecialClose mw-customtoggle-PS3SpecialOpen mw-customtoggle-BluRaySpecials mw-customtoggle-BluRaySpecialsClose mw-customtoggle-BluRaySpecialsOpen mw-customtoggle-ShortStories mw-customtoggle-ShortStoriesClose mw-customtoggle-ShortStoriesOpen mw-customtoggle-RatatoskrsObservations mw-customtoggle-RatatoskrsObservationsClose mw-customtoggle-RatatoskrsObservationsOpen mw-customtoggle-Volume0 mw-customtoggle-Volume0Close mw-customtoggle-Volume0Open mw-customtoggle-Material mw-customtoggle-MaterialClose mw-customtoggle-MaterialOpen" style="background:#fdf1b8;cursor:pointer" align="center"> <big><big>''Date A Live'' - Side stories</big></big><hr/></div>
<div style="text-align:left;margin:5px5pxclear:both;font-size:100%;background:transparent;width:100%;">


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Akihabara mw-customtoggle-AkihabaraClose mw-customtoggle-AkihabaraOpen" style="background:#cef2f2; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Date A Akihabara</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Akihabara">

===Date A Akihabara===
::*Illustrations
::*Tohka
::*Yoshino
::*Kurumi
::*Kotori
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Encore mw-customtoggle-EncoreClose mw-customtoggle-EncoreOpen" style="background:#cef2f2; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Date A Live Encore</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Encore">

[[File:DAL vE cov.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Date A Live Encore===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Dating Preparations Case 1: Yoshino
::*Dating Preparations Case 2: Itsuka Kotori
::*Dating Preparations Case 3: Tobiichi Origami
::*Tohka Game Center
::*Origami Impossible
::*Yoshino Fireworks
::*Kotori Birthday
::*Yamai Lunchtime
::*Kurumi Star Festival
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL vE2 cov.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Date A Live Encore 2===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Date A If Case 1: What If Tohka And The Others Did A Gravure Shooting
::*Date A If Case 2: What If Kurumi Blends Into Daily Life
::*Date A If Case 3: What If Origami And Mana Are Blood Related Sisters
::*Shidou Hunters
::*Unidentified Summer Vacation
::*Unidentified Brother
::*Spirit King Game
::*Tenou Festival Contest
::*Ellen Mathers' Strongest Day
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL vE3 cov.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Date A Live Encore 3===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Dress A Live Case 1: Astral Dress
::*Dress A Live Case 2: Swimsuit
::*Dress A Live Case 3: Santa
::*Miku On-Stage
::*Shiori Penalty
::*Natsumi Teaching
::*Mana Research
::*Cat Cafe A Live
::*Spirit Merry Christmas
::*Kurumi Santa Claus
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL vE4 cov.png|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Date A Live Encore 4===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Date A Job Case 1: Student
::*Date A Job Case 2: Maid
::*Date A Job Case 3: Little Sister
::*Tohka Working
::*Yoshino Highschool
::*Origami Normalize
::*Kurumi Cat
::*Mana Mission
::*Kotori Mystery
::*Tohka Reverse
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-PS3Special mw-customtoggle-PS3SpecialClose mw-customtoggle-PS3SpecialOpen" style="background:#cef2f2; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>PS3 Special</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-PS3Special">

[[File:DAL_PSPS_00a.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Rinne Utopia===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Rinne Bathtime
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL_PS3AI cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Arusu Install===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Arusu Quest
::*Afterword
 

[[File:DAL_PSVRR_cover.png|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Rio Reincarnation===
::*Novel Illustrations
::*Rio Reunion
::*Afterword
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-BluRaySpecials mw-customtoggle-BluRaySpecialsClose mw-customtoggle-BluRaySpecialsOpen" style="background:#cef2f2; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Blu-ray Specials</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-BluRaySpecials">

===Blu-ray Specials===
::*Illustrations
::*Spirit Treasure Hunt
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-ShortStories mw-customtoggle-ShortStoriesClose mw-customtoggle-ShortStoriesOpen" style="background:#cef2f2; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Short Stories</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-ShortStories">

===Short Stories===
::*Illustrations
::*Web Chapter (Tohka and Shidou)
::*Tohka Fearful (from Fantasia Bunko's 25th Anniversary Book)
::*Date A Quest
::*Fantasy April
::*Origami Deceive
::*Itsuka Shidou's Ordinary Day
::*Origami Counseling
::*Reine Holiday
::*Silver Astray
::*Spirit Baseball
::*Silver Murderer
::*Spirit Snow Wars
::*Nia Galge
::*Mayuri Judgement Popularity Poll Results Announcement
::*Web Chapter (Mayuri and Shidou)
::*Web Chapter (Kurumi and Shidou)
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-RatatoskrsObservations mw-customtoggle-RatatoskrsObservationsClose mw-customtoggle-RatatoskrsObservationsOpen" style="background:#cef2f2; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big><Ratatoskr>'s Daily Observations</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-RatatoskrsObservations">

[[File:DAL_CaseTS.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===<Ratatoskr>'s Daily Observations===
::*Illustrations
::*Case 1
::*Case 2
::*Case 3
::*Case 4
::*Case 5
::*Case 6
::*Case 7
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Volume0 mw-customtoggle-Volume0Close mw-customtoggle-Volume0Open" style="background:#cef2f2; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Volume 0</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Volume0">

[[File:DAL v0 cover.png|right|frameless|x200px]] [[File:DAL v0-ver.2 cov.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Volume 0 - April 9===
::*Illustrations
::*April 9
::*Nurse A Live
::*Popularity Poll Results Announcement
::*Tohka Prison
::*Tohka Miss fantasia
::*Kurumi Neighbor
::*Spirit Akihabara
::*25th Anniversary
 
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Material mw-customtoggle-MaterialClose mw-customtoggle-MaterialOpen" style="background:#cef2f2; cursor:pointer;height:25px;padding-top:3px" align="center">'''<big>Date A Live Material</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible " style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Material">

[[File:DAL Material 000.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]

===Date A Live Material===
::*Illustrations
::*April 9
::*Nurse A Live
::*Rinne Bathtime
::*Spirit Conference
 
</div>

==Project Staff==
*Supervisor:
*Project Manager:

===Translators===
<table><tr><td width=200 valign=top>
'''ACTIVE'''
* [[user:Rozenbach|Rozenbach]] (Active in December)
</td><td width=200 valign=top>
'''INACTIVE'''
* [[user:Shini|Shini]]
* [[user:Jonathanasdf|Jonathanasdf]]
* [[user:iamadooddood|iamadooddood]]
* [[user:Starduster|Starduster]]
* [[user:Restiaest|Restiaest]]
* [[user:Tsuchiura|Tsuchiura]]
* [[user:RikiNutcase|RikiNutcase]]
</td></tr></table>

===Editors===
<table><tr><td width=200 valign=top>
'''ACTIVE'''
* [[User:Dual Blades|Dual Blades]]
* [[User:Monsterbandage|Monsterbandage]]
* [[User:Flowers-LavDai|Flowers-LavDai]]
* [[User:Insanitizer|Insanitizer]]
* [[User:Sideswipe|Sideswipe]]
* [[User:Royaloyalz|Royaloyalz]]
* [[User:ProxY|ProxY]](Please email me if there is work to be done.)
* [[User:DarkeKyuubi|DarkeKyuubi]] (Refuses to read out of order, so won't be editing most recent volumes)
</td><td width=200 valign=top>
'''INACTIVE'''
* [[user:Chancs|Chancs]]
* [[user:Zeker|Zeker]]
* [[user:Alexpte|Alexpte]]
* [[user:Xanga|Xanga]]
* [[User:Cliff|Cliff]]
* [[User:Daylighter|Daylighter]]
* [[User:FERVENT|FERVENT]]
* [[User:Kira0802|Kira0802]]
</td></tr><tr><td>

</td></tr></table>

==Series Overview==
*デート・ア・ライブ十香デッドエンド (March 19, 2011 ISBN 978-4-8291-3623-2)
*デート・ア・ライブ2 四糸乃パペット (August 20, 2011 ISBN 978-4-8291-3672-0)
*デート・ア・ライブ3 狂三キラー (November 19, 2011 ISBN 978-4-8291-3704-8)
*デート・ア・ライブ4 五河シスター (March 17, 2012 ISBN 978-4-8291-3744-4)
*デート・ア・ライブ5 八舞テンペスト (August 18, 2012 ISBN 978-4-8291-3795-6)
*デート・ア・ライブ6 美九リリィ (December 20, 2012 ISBN 978-4-8291-3835-9)
*デート・ア・ライブ7 美九トゥルース (March 19, 2013 ISBN 978-4-8291-3871-7)
*デート・ア・ライブアンコール (May 18, 2013 ISBN 978-4-8291-3892-2)
*デート・ア・ライブ8 七罪サーチ (September 20, 2013 ISBN 978-4-8291-3938-7)
*デート・ア・ライブ9 七罪チェンジ (December 20, 2013 ISBN 978-4-04-712974-0)
*デート・ア・ライブ10 鳶一エンジェル (March 20, 2014 ISBN 978-4-04-070066-3)
*デート・ア・ライブ11 鳶一デビル (September 20, 2014 ISBN 978-4-04-070143-1)
*デート・ア・ライブ12 五河ディザスター (June 20, 2015 ISBN 978-4-04-070151-6)
*デート・ア・ライブ13 二亜クリエイション (October 20, 2015 ISBN 978-4-04-070694-8)
*デート・ア・ライブ14 六喰プラネット (March 20, 2016 ISBN 978-4-04-070695-5)
*デート・ア・ライブ15 六喰ファミリー (September 16, 2016 ISBN 978-4-04-070927-7)
*デート・ア・ライブ16 狂三リフレイン (March 18, 2017 ISBN 978-4-04-070928-4)

Ultimate Antihero:Volume 1 Chapter 1

2018-01-22T22:58:10Z

Toshiya: Undo revision 533731 by 172.68.150.7 (talk) vandalism

==Chapter 1==
===Part 1===

<Demon King Typhon>.

Five years ago, it was the name of the demon that crossed over the dimensional boundary and came attacking the earth.

The length of its body was five kilometers. It was a giant multi-headed dragon with a size that rivaled a small island.

During the time since humans began fighting demons approximately a century ago, this first observed <Demon King class> demon had burned the earth’s surface to ash from one end to the other in only ten days.

This event was the calamity that was called <Walpurgis Night>.

That calamity reduced the human population of the the world till only 10 percent remained. The countries too were destroyed until there were only ten countries remaining.

But even while that much damage was inflicted, the human race wasn’t ruined.

The surviving people joined together and formed the <United World Government>.

<United World Government> took the lead and concentrated on reviving urban areas all over the world and maintained the [life sphere]. By restoring the infrastructures, the human race had recovered civilization that wasn’t different from before albeit the scale had become smaller. This was accomplished only five years after the <Walpurgis Night>.

The [Tokyo life sphere] that was formerly Tokyo city was also one of those.

Right now in this place, around 70 million humans from a great variety of races, gathered from all over the world to live their life close to each other.

However, that restoration was something that stood on thin ice.

After the extermination of <Demon King Typhon>, the number of demons that came invading from the demon world didn’t decrease.

No, rather, the passing of demons possessing vast power like Typhon caused the dimensional wall boundary to crumble. It can be said that the number of demons that came invading from the demon world to the human world increased.

The interior of the [life sphere] was protected by a barrier so the demons couldn’t directly come in; however, it was not strange for demons that appeared outside the [life sphere] to sometimes approach for an invasion. This was the current world’s situation.

Today just like other days, invaders passing through the dimension wall are instantly coming into this world.

But there exist a fighting strength that didn’t hesitate in taking on those demons, possessing terrifying power, as opponents.

Equipping the magic wand <{{furigana|Arms|Sorcery Armament}}> and magic shield <{{furigana|Magi’s Jacket|Magic Costume}}> that were created from the combination of science and sorcery, they were the human magicians that could manipulate sorcery similar to the demons.

===Part 2===

“Stop making useless resistance. If you do that then I will kill you painlessly.”

The Tokyo life sphere’s bay coast area, the abandoned harbor warehouse.

At the wharf where no sounds could be heard except the splashing sounds of the waves when it turned into night, there was the commanding voice of a girl ringing out.

The owner of the voice stood on the wharf, a student magician in the <Gunner> style whose body was wrapped in a Magi’s jacket based on a cowgirl’s outfit.

While her blond hair that released faint light like gold dust was fluttering from the sea breeze, the girl was taking a stance with her <Gunner> style’s <Arms> that was a silver revolver.

The <{{furigana|leader|commanding officer}}> of New Tokyo Sorcery Academy’s 101st trainee platoon, Hoshikawa Sumika.

The girl right now was facing a single grotesque thing.

That grotesque thing was something that was around three times bigger than Sumika, a giant with a human body that had a head of a pig.

<Soldier class> demon, orc.

This orc was the vanguard of the invaders from another dimension that the human race had continued to fight from one hundred years ago.

As a demon it was not categorized as strong.

It couldn’t even use any particular sorcery, what it could do only amounted to swinging around the giant club that it held in its right hand.

―At best, its threat level was something like [an African elephant that held ill will towards humans].

Even for someone who was still a student, for a magician that had piled up training to defeat demons, this orc was an opponent that could be dealt with easily. That was exactly why, the girl―Sumika didn’t fear that monster for even a bit.

“I’ll say it one more time. Stop making useless resistance.” <ref>This girl Sumika is always talking in polite language. Even against this demon.</ref>

She announced her last warning.

She put strength on the finger that was holding the trigger of the revolver-style <Arms> that had its aim directed on the forehead of the orc.

If the girl put just a little more strength into her finger, a {{furigana|mythril|fake silver}} bullet coated in magic power would pierce the demon’s forehead from the gun muzzle.

If it was only something like a <Soldier class> than just a single attack would certainly result in death.

Furthermore, using necromancy, a magician could bind a contract with the soul of a hero and through that they borrowed the hero’s power.

Sumika’s contracted hero was the <Gun Saint> Billy the Kid.

The bullet of <Gun Saint> couldn’t miss. It would end if she shot. The orc would be killed if she pulled the trigger. But―

{Gufufufu-…! Bluff, useless. You, can’t shoot.}

The orc laughed with an unpleasant voice that was similar with the sound of burbling mud.

“-…!”

Sumika’s expression distorted from those words. After all, what the orc said was right on the mark.

Sumika couldn’t shoot. The reason was located in the orc’s left hand.

There was a girl with a mini-ponytail clutched in the orc’s left arm with her face turning pale.

The girl was the same with Sumika, the 101st’s <{{furigana|Striker|close range combatant}}>. Her name was Ichinotani Chikori.

That’s right, in other words, this was a hostage situation.

As a demon, the orcs were a weak race, but in place of that it was using its intelligence.

In reality, the one that was cornered was Sumika.

{Weapon, throw away. If not, this girl, crushed.}

Pressed with choices, Sumika gritted her teeth.

(Just against an orc, to be treated as it pleased like this…!)

For Sumika, this situation was a humiliation.

If asked why, it was because while Sumika was still a student, she was a genius magician that obtained the title of S-rank magician where there were only ten people in this world. Originally, just an orc or even ten orcs, she was an existence that could easily defeat them. ―The fact was, a few minutes before, this Sumika had instantly killed two orcs that were invading into the life sphere from a different place.

But, a trouble appeared when the third orc came invading.

The predicted place where the third orc would appear was in the side of the residential area, so beforehand Sumika made two of the 101st platoon members that were her subordinates to standby there, but―of all the things to happen, the moment the orc appeared one of the members got terrified of real battle and deserted the battle before the enemy’s presence. No, if it was only that then it was still fine, but―

{If it’s just around three minutes before leader comes, then even I alone can hold back this enemy!}

Like that, Chikori who couldn’t be expected as a battle strength just by her lonesome didn’t even hear her command to stop and rushed to the enemy by her own judgment.

And the result,

{Leader. Chikori-san was captured by the orc.}

Only three seconds after that, that kind of transmission came from the <{{furigana|Operator|Battle Controller}}> that was in charge of battle situation and <{{furigana|Idea Link|Sorcery Transmission}}> from the place slightly separated from the actual scene.

(She cannot do it at all aren’t she―!)

As expected, she wanted to cry.

And then, right now, under that situation she got cornered and that was why it was unbearable.

{Quick, weapon! Throw away!!}

“Leader! Don’t mind me! I’m wrong for ignoring the order-!”

She wanted to shout angrily that it’s exactly your fault, but right now it was no use even if she blamed the girl.

As a leader, as a magician, to do something like abandoning a human who was going to be killed by a demon right now was not something Sumika could do.

Right now she needed to continue this deadlocked situation for even a little longer, buy time, and wait until reinforcements arrived.

―But, that sneaky consideration was read by the orc.

{Do it quick!}

In order to hurry Sumika who was trying to buy time, the vein of the orc’s arm protruded out and its herculean strength constricted Chikori’s thin body like a vise.

“UAAAAA…-!”

“St, stop it-!”

Sumika reflexively raised her voice hearing the creaking sound that was like the crack of a decayed tree.

Chikori who was grasped in the orc’s left hand turned limp and became unmoving.

It would be really bad if more than that happened. She couldn’t buy time unskillfully. There was nothing that she could do except obeying obediently.

“Understood. I surrender…”

Sumika threw away the revolver in her hand and also one more revolver that was holstered on her hips,

“-―――!”

That instant, a shock ran through Sumika’s brain that informed her of danger to herself.

That was the intuition that came from the girl’s contracted heroic spirit, <Gun Saint> Billy the Kid’s Hero Skill.

What is called Hero Skill was the obtained special move or something like enchantment that came from being possessed by the soul of a hero.

From this, a magician became able to wield power that was equal with heroes of previous life.

And then the danger signal that ran through Sumika’s brain at this time was <Gun Saint>’s Hero Skill <{{furigana|Back Sniper|Instinct Evasion}}>.

With this Hero Skill that was associated with Billy the Kid’s legend that said that he shot to death enemies behind him without even turning back, its effect was [perfect invalidation of blind spot]. The contractor of <Gun Saint> became able to detect all dangers of attack that came from blind spots with 100% accuracy using instinct. And then, this instinct was by no means inaccurate―

“{{furigana|Protection|Barrier Expand}}!”

Sumika immediately expanded a no element first grade magic barrier using sorcery.

Thereupon in a flash that barrier was hit by the orc’s club.

That one hit possessed the brute strength of several tons’ weight, but the expanded magic barrier that was for use pertaining to physical impact didn’t even twitch.

It was exactly like her instinct told her.

Sumika safely evaded the surprise attack completely.

For her it was something really easy. But―

{Don’t defend! Next, if defend, this girl, crush!}

“Kuh-“

When there was a hostage even that couldn’t be kept up.

{You, kill comrade! Not forgive. Pulverize. Pulverize until became mince meat!}

The orc once again swung its club.

If she evaded this next attack the orc would unhesitatingly crush Chikori.

She couldn’t evade.

If it became like this then she could only become a sandbag while reducing the damage as much as she could using magic power.

For Sumika that was a bitter choice.

(Even though I cannot die in this kind of place…!)

Sumika had a dream. An important, strong wish that could even be called a craving.

Five years ago, the giant seven headed dragon that burned to ash everything in the world. <Demon King Typhon>.

That day, where everyone could do nothing except looking up to the closed sky, sinking into despair in front of the overwhelming power.

―There was someone, who killed that dragon.

That Typhon, who bore not even a single injury even with all the militaries of all the world’s countries challenging that monster …there was a magician who killed that monster just by his lonesome.

That day, Sumika watched up from the burning ground the full story of what happened.

And then, she thought. That she wanted to become like that.

Like that, she wanted to become an existence that could save people from no matter what kind of despair.

―That dream, was still not fulfilled.

She was still half-way.

(That’s why, even though I cannot die in this kind of place, why does this kind of thing happen!)

While gritting her teeth in frustration, Sumika wrapped her body in magic power.

For the sake of softening the blow for even a little.

She was waiting for reinforcements while receiving the orc’s blow.

Having no option other than that, she could only brace herself by all possible means.

The club that was swung down cutting wind.

Against the approaching strong blow, Sumika resolved herself and closed her eyelids.

“Sheesh. Can the apprentices these days not deal with just a single orc.”

She heard that voice.

“Eh…”

Instantly, a blast resounded in the wharf.

It was the sound of a severe shockwave hitting and breaking the concrete surface.

But that was not the sound of destruction of a blow that was produced by a club.

The one who broke apart the concrete was, a lone young man.

Jumping down from a passenger plane that was flying in the far above sky at the height of ten thousand meters, the young man that split apart into two the orc’s body from its head until its crotch using an obsidian sword, was the one making the sound of the broken concrete and landing.

The orc’s body was torn vertically, split into left and right.

Of course, it died instantly.

The hostage spilled out from the arm, that orc’s body changed into shining ashes in a rustle and scattered apart from the sea breeze.

Inside that prism, the young man said.

“But, I’ll give you a passing mark for not abandoning the hostage.”

A loose and disheveled, uncontrollable black hair.

The end of a long stole flapped like a wing, the young man looked down on Sumika with a listless eye. A look that didn’t seem far from Sumika in age.

Looking at that face, Sumika gulped her breath.
[[File:Ultimate Antihero V1 c11.png|thumb]]
“Yo, you, are……!”

It was only natural. For magicians that lived in this age, there was no human that didn’t know that young man’s face.

The grand magician that mastered all the sorcery that existed in this world, the human that employed the existences that were far more powerful and even far more evil than even the [Demon King], the <Evil God> like one would use a familiar, the <Evil God User>.

And then, on the <Walpurgis Night> five years ago, possessing the overwhelming power that subdued even god, the hero of salvation that just alone subjugated <Demon King Typhon> who burned 90% of the earth surface―

“Kamishiro, Homura……!”

“Yeah, that Homura-san. As for today I got assigned to 101st platoon. Well, take care of me okay.”

Why did the hero that saved the world get assigned to a mere trainee student platoon―

Even such an obvious question didn’t cross the head of the current Sumika.

Homura who stood still inside the shining wind with his long stole flapping.

That standing figure was powerful, beautiful, in that one moment Sumika even forgot all words and became entranced.

It was as if time itself had come to a complete stop.

And then, during the instant where everything stood still, Sumika obtained a single conviction somewhere inside her heart.

This time, this moment, ―a tale was beginning, that was what she believed.

===Part 3===

Let’s rewind time back a little.

The <Evil God User> Kamishiro Homura was living in the slums of London life sphere until yesterday.

A shabby, run-down apartment that had wind blowing in from the gaps.

The place was really wretched for the residence of a hero savior.

But, there was a reason for that.

He, who alone exterminated <Demon King Typhon> that even the gathering of the battle strength throughout the world couldn’t even scratch, was ostracized by the <United World Government> due to that too extreme strength.

Well, that could also be said as natural.

Establishing vested interests for themselves using all kinds of methods.

A ruling structure for the sake of exploiting the people.

If there was a human that existed that could possibly blow away all that they built right from its root, there was no way it would be something pleasant for them.

It felt like a swelling above your eye.

That was why the <United World Government> made use of all kinds of methods and tailored the <hero> into the <traitor>.

―Homura could become that strong because he sold his soul to demons.

―Sooner or later, Homura would become the demons’ pawn and bare his fangs at the human race.

Such things were whispered to the people as if they were true.

And then there was also the cooperation of the <Holy Path Church> that was ruling over the populace the most right now, making the propaganda a great success. The human race that survived the <Walpurgis Night> feared the hero that saved them as a [traitor], the messenger of demons, they rejected him from human society. ―His nationality was taken away from him, his power was taken away by <{{furigana|Aureole|Great Seal}}> that was performed on him, all his rights as a human were stripped off.

There was no way such a Homura could live in a proper place.

But, Homura didn’t dislike that life as much as one would believe.

In the first place he didn’t have any interest in social status, for his lifestyle of [killing as many demons as possible] too, a position where he wasn’t tied by the stupid rules of human society or country borders was convenient.

Everyday he passed his time however he pleased without worrying about anyone’s eyes. Occasionally, he hunted demons that threatened the life sphere and received bounty from the world government as his daily earnings.

Due to <Aureole> that sealed his power, the <United World Government> publicized to the domestic and foreign that the [traitor] had been tamed as their [watch dog]. Homura himself was understanding of the existence of such a system, but for Homura it was only something trivial that only provoked a little sympathy from him thinking [Keeping up honor is also pretty troublesome huh―].

He freely killed demons as he pleased, and protected what he wanted to protect.

He was not adhering to anything, it was a pleasant life that was quietly and comfortably free from worldly cares.

But, on a certain day where he was spending such easygoing days.

The currently nonexistent <Knight Order Without Borders> that Homura was once a member of, it was a group that didn’t question one’s country, country border, or faith, a mercenary organization with mission to protect the people of all countries from the threat of sorcery and demons, the ex-leader of such an organization contacted Homura.

The contents of the contact was extremely strange.

[I registered your name into the 101st trainee platoon of the New Tokyo Sorcery Academy. Come to Tokyo life sphere right now.]

That was what he said.

He wondered whether he should just slam the phone off. He would be troubled if he was just called carefreely from the other side of the earth only to ask him to go drink.

―But, what was truly annoying, that former superior of his that was right now the board chairman of New Tokyo Sorcery Academy, Onjouji Kai was not someone that would contact Homura without any reason.

Generally there were two patterns of situations when this man contacted Homura.

There was a human that was about to die, or the world that was about to die.

That kind of evil omen really resembled the trumpet of the Apocalypse.

And then there he would without doubt get entangled with the existence of a powerful demon.

The demons, were enemies that he had to kill.

That was why Homura decided to go to Japan even reluctantly.

In a certain meaning, that was also Homura trusting this man Onjouji, perhaps.

And then, the time returned to now.

Homura who dynamically entered the New Tokyo life sphere illegally from the height of 10000 meters, was now sitting on the sofa in the New Tokyo Sorcery Academy’s board chairman’s room with his legs outstretched while waiting for the arrival of his ex-superior that called himself here.

Before long, the double doors of the room were pushed open and a tall and lean statured gloomy man entered the room.

“It has been five years, my friend.”

The heavy and gloomy tone really suited the external appearance of the man―Onjouji Kai.

But, there was an intimacy in that voice.

“How was it? Was the air travel enjoyable?”

“Just whose mouth is saying that kind of thing.”

“You didn’t like it? Even though I have prepared the first class for you expressly.”

“Certainly the food was delicious. The seat was also so comfortable it couldn’t compare with the bed of my ragged apartment. But you know, do you think suddenly getting a call saying [my student is in danger so help them] and made to jump down from 10000 meters is something fun?”

Homura glared in protest. But Onjouji didn’t seem like he would apologize.

“Fufu. Regarding that you really helped me. That Ichinotani girl was also completely healed by your healing sorcery. Let me say my thanks once more.”

“…Well, it’s fine. After all, thanks to that those gays from London also got shaken off me. Really, when those guys turn up, they are gonna chase my ass even until the inside of the plane. Scary country.”

“Unfortunately they are not shaken off yet. If it’s those MI6 bunch then there are also some in Japan.”

“You serious?”

“Coincidentally CIA and KGB, the Inquisition agents of the <Holy Path Church>, on top of that the military satellites that float in the sky are also observing you. Of course {{furigana|Japan|we}} too.”

“Just how much are you guys engrossed in me.”

“It can’t be helped. After all, you are a human that truly merited all that.”

Homura heaved a deep sigh in resignation.

A human that merited all that.

It was a fact that even Homura himself was self-aware.

“However, …five years already. Thinking back again, since you were gone the time had already passed that long. That child has grown really big now.”

“Not having awareness of time is the proof of old age yeah.”

“Your lack of love is just as usual.”

“I didn’t happen to have any love on hand for a geezer as my company.”

After saying that bluntly, Homura corrected his seating posture a little.

And then he inquired Onjouji with a serious expression.

The question was of course, the reason why he was called here.

“Putting aside the useless talk, let’s move on to the main topic. What in the world is your reason for calling me here?”

“What I want to request from you is just as I said. I want you to enroll into this academy and look after the 101st platoon. The document of the members’ details should have reached your place too―”

“Stop the joke.”

Homura scornfully laughed from Onjouji’s answer.

“Even I know just how risky it is politically to make contact with me. You are also not someone that is going to brave that kind of risk just for something like having me protect some trainee. Entering the 101st is just the front. The real reason is something else. Isn’t that right?”

“Actually that’s a correct assessment.”

“Then talk quickly. What is happening? What kind of trouble are you going to make me shoulder that you called me here?”

But, Onjouji slowly shook his head left and right in rejection towards Homura’s hurrying.

“I can’t say it right now.”

“Why?”

“It’s not my role to talk about this. In the near future the story will come from the person who should actually talk about this.”

“So you are just the go-between, and the one that called me is another person then?”

“It’s like that.”

“Who is the person?”

“I can’t say it right now.”

Onjouji repeated the same sentence once more and lowered his eyes.

Homura who knew him from a long time ago understood.

It was impossible to drag out the circumstance from Onjouji with his attitude like this.

“Chih-. I got it already. I’m not gonna ask. But the talk is really going to happen in the near future right?”

“I’ll promise that.”

“…Then, maybe I should waste my time strolling around for awhile in the hometown that I hadn’t seen for five years.”

“Wait. That’s going to become trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“You laughed at the front that I prepared but, I really wished for you to seriously train the 101st. I want you to do me the favor of looking after those girls for this one year until their graduation.”

But Homura amazedly shook his head hearing those words of Onjouji.

“That’s a joke ain’t it. Just why I gotta look after some trainee this late…”

In a certain meaning it was a natural reaction.

Homura was a magician that possessed power to the degree of saving the world once.

The person who pushed around the <Evil God> and even mastered all the existing thousand sorcery, the <{{furigana|Master Therion|Wisdom of Thousand}}>.

For that kind of person to mingle with trainee magicians and did [practice make-believe], that was really something ridiculous.

But, Onjouji just threw a single sentence towards that unamused Homura.

“This is something that none other but you yourself said. [Take responsibility] you said.”

Hearing those words, Homura’s eyebrow moved a little.

“You have the duty to take responsibility and watch over the [girl]’s future. Am I wrong?”

“……You still remember an old story like that huh.”

“Even if memories grow dull, but a promise won’t fade. You too should be the same. That’s why even with <The Knight Order Without Borders> dissolved, you still continue to fight alone like this.”

“………”

Homura reclined his body even deeper into the sofa and gave a long sigh.

What a really old story.

It was a happening far older than even Homura being bathed in the world’s attention as the <Evil God User>.

It was a really really old promise, that even the person he made that promise to had gone already, just a single promise…

But, just as Onjouji said, no matter how old it was and even with the person he made that promise to gone already, that promise still existed, inside Homura.

That’s why―

“…I’ve never gone to school or anything before so I don’t know what I gotta do y’know?”

“I don’t plan to tell you to be some kind of teacher. Just become support as one of the platoon members of the 101st, that’s all. The platoon has difficulties communicating with the surroundings and it didn’t produce good results, so it is ridiculed as the [baggage platoon], but the girls of the 101st have a bright future. Someday they will become a support to this world for sure.”

Homura didn’t show any signs of affirmation or denial hearing those words of Onjouji.

But in regards to the responsibility that he shouldered, Homura gave his answer back properly.

“…Got it already. It’s also not bad to just laze around at the place where the light shines after a long time.”

“I owe you.”

At that time, the door of the board chairman’s room opened quietly.

Feeling a nostalgic scent from the slight wind that flowed into the room, Homura directed his gaze towards the entrance.

Over there was a tall girl standing with a stance so beautiful that it made one wonder whether there was a wire going through that straight back.

Captivating black hair that grew out until her hips.

Her face that didn’t hide her intelligence really suited her adult looks.

And then Homura knew the face of that girl.

The last time he saw her face was five years ago, but he didn’t overlook the vestiges of the past in her face now.

“…Yo. You have become an adult, Shiori.”

The girl’s name was Onjouji Shiori.

The <operator> of the 101st platoon.

She was also the daughter of Onjouji Kai, and she also knew of Homura, an old acquaintance of his.

===Part 4===

After Shiori glanced at Homura, who was talking to her with unconcerned eyes, she returned some words back with a voice that had little intonation similar to her father.

“You flatter me. You too have become a really handsome man haven’t you?”

“Hah-. Stop it with the flattery.”

“Even after five years you are still ugly as usual aren’t you?”

“So it was really just a flattery…”

“Well, but it really has been so long. You look healthy that it made me feel sick.”

While spouting poisonous words like that, Shiori briskly approached near until the table between Homura and Onjouji.

And then she was going to sit besides Onjouji, however she soon seemed like rethinking back and moved her legs towards Homura’s direction.

“Fuh-“

She took a seat besides Homura. And then after taking a single breath, she plopped her head leaning on Homura’s shoulder.

A floral scent of shampoo gently tickled Homura’s nose.
[[File:Ultimate Antihero V1 c12.png|thumb]]
“What? So even though you abused me with hateful words, but the truth is you actually loved me?”

While saying so Homura circled his hand on Shiori’s shoulder.

But that hand was *pachin!* struck down.

That hit was also done without holding back, he felt the numbness until his bone.

“…What. Shiori, you didn’t love me?”

“Such thing is even more impossible than the sun rising from the west.”

(It’s on cataclysmic level you said…!)

“Then why are you clinging this close to me?”
f
“Because I like your scent.”

“Even if you praise my body odor, I’m troubled how to reply to that.”

Homura twisted his body uncomfortably, but Shiori didn’t pay it any mind and brought her cheek closer to Homura’s shoulder.

Onjouji asked a question towards that daughter.

“Shiori. Why did you come here? I should have told you to wait at the platoon room of the 101st.”

“It can’t be helped don’t you think? Leader and Nakajima-kun are quarreling in the platoon room so annoyingly.”

Homura picked out the name Nakajima from the 101st’s data that he had a read of before this.

It was the name of the only male in 101st, the male that today abandoned Chikori alone and ran away.

“Well, as a leader surely she is going to complain of something like that.”

Because of that one’s action, Sumika almost died, so it was only natural to complain.

“There is also that but, it’s also because Nakajima-kun suddenly said that he is going to get out from the platoon. …He said that he already got the permission from Otou-san, but I wonder if that’s true?” <ref>Otou-san = father</ref>

“It’s true. He was headhunted by a different platoon and moved into the 67th trainee platoon. In exchange there is a plan to enter Homura as the replacement, but… Although they are still trainees, but a talk about fellow magicians quarreling with each other is not really good. Homura. My bad but take a look at the situation. No matter what you also have to show your face officially to them after all. You should take this opportunity while you’re at it.”

“…geez, I get it.”

Homura replied and stood up.

He was not enthusiastic to stick out his neck into other people’s quarrel, but it had been decided already that he was going to look after the 101st. It was looking for trouble but, Homura was not an obstinate person that was going to look for every single trivial reason just for an excuse not to do what he had decided to do already.

“Shiori. Show me the way to the 101st’s waiting room. You know the way right?”

“It can’t be helped.”

When he asked her, Shiori stood up without even showing him any reluctant attitude.

And then she exited the board chairman’s room together with Homura.

“This way.”

Saying that, Shiori took Homura’s arm as if embracing it.

“Are you a ghost that resides inside my hand or something?”

“I like this hand you know. After all, this is the first scent that I know that makes me feel safe.”

“…Oh yeah?”

“What? You don’t like it?”

“No. This makes us a picture of a handsome man and a beautiful girl couple, ain’t that great?”

While making that kind of frivolous talk Homura matched his pace with Shiori’s steps and walked for a while.

Homura asked her something that weighed on his mind.

“Speaking of it, before I came here I took a look at the 101st’s data, but you are [Rank D] it said? Your results are also full of red marks all over the paper, you really are making light of this. Is there any reason that you don’t want to get serious?”

The strength of a magician was assessed in 6 levels from S to E, but among those ranks, rank D was quite a poor student. One could agree even if a magician of that rank was entered into the <baggage platoon>.

But Homura knew about Shiori’s true power.

The girl’s power was not something to be sorted into a degree of rank D. That was why he was feeling doubtful.

In response, Shiori gave a curt answer.

“I don’t have any interest in going along with children playing soldier.”

“Are you at the age that thinks getting worked up in a marathon and trying to win is uncool?”

“Isn’t it fine? Even if my results are bad, it’s not like I troubled anyone. Besides I did the minimum duty in my work as an Operator that no one can be dissatisfied with. There is no reason for anyone to complain to me.”

“What a girl that is not cute at all.”

“I’m happy to hear that from you.”

―Was that the way of talking of someone that was hugging his arm?

(In the past she was a girl that was a little bit easier to understand though.)

‘She is really rebellious now’, Homura heaved a deep sigh inside his mind.

Against that Homura,

“Now that you mentioned it, I too have one thing that I want to ask you.”

This time the question came from Shiori.

“Hey Homura. Why did you come to Japan after all this time?”

“No idea. Ask your father. And then after that teach me why.”

“…So you really returned here without knowing anything. Otou-san being your superior is already something from a long time ago right? Even though the <Knight Order Without Borders> has already been dissolved a long time ago, why are you still following his orders? Are you gay?”

Absolutely not.

“That’s because he is a man that can be trusted in a bad meaning. Ain’t like I can even ignore him. …Rather, why are you that concerned? This doesn’t have any relation to Shiori right?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s just, makes me concerned.”

Just then, *ton*, Shiori lightly pushed Homura’s arm and separated their body.

And then, with blaming eyes she burned a clear fire of hatred―and said.

“A good-for-nothing that threw away his various promises and ran away, just what is he doing returning back here after all this time.”

“…That’s mighty harsh how you say it.”

Homura shrugged his shoulders from Shiori’s hostile gaze.

(Well, it’s only obvious that she is angry.)

Five years ago, he got out from Japan without saying anything to Shiori.

That was the conclusion Homura reached from thinking about Shiori in his own way, but Shiori being angry like this was also only natural.

Because Homura also thought so, he couldn’t even give an excuse or gloss over the matter in regards to the girl’s blaming gaze.

Thereupon, as if Shiori had no interest in Homura that was like that, she returned her gaze to the front and resumed leading the way.

Their arms were already separated, now Shiori was walking briskly with a fast pace.

After a while,

{Your whining is annoying! It’s my own business no matter which platoon I want to move to!}

{What’s with your attitude-!!}

From the other side of the path corner, the angry voices of a male and female could be heard.

There was no mistake.

At the other side was the platoon room of the 101st.

“Hey. It’s annoying right?”

“Well, certainly, it makes me want to just get away too…”

“I don’t want to enter inside that anymore, so I’m going back first to the dormitory.”

“Right. Thanks for the guide.”

Shiori lightly waved her hand after telling him her farewell, and Homura advanced towards the corner alone.

Passing through the corner, there was a door there attached with a plate numbering 101.

The quarreling voices reverberated out from inside the door.

===Part 5===

{I’m already free from this platoon.}

With that sentence as the beginning, the confrontation between Sumika and Nakajima was not something peaceful from the start. But finally after getting this far, a dangerous air as if they would be going at each other soon began to drift off.

Unable to bear it, Ichinotani Chikori who at first remained a spectator stepped forward in between the two.

“Le, Leader and also Nakajima-kun, let’s calm down a little? Okay?”

“There is no way I can calm down! I and also Chikori-san, if we weren’t saved by that person we might have really died back there!”

That was why Chikori’s attempt was futile.

Sumika had already been completely fired up.

While her golden hair stood on end from rage, Sumika pushed back Chikori and drew closer to Nakajima.

“Nakajima-san! Are you thinking about just how much danger we encountered because you ran away on your own!? Although it ended well because of Homura-san’s assistance, but if Homura-san didn’t come just what was going to happen to us! Yet despite so you didn’t even apologize and in addition even quit the platoon, isn’t there a limit to just how rude one can be!?”

“I don’t care! You two almost died only because both of you are greenhorns! Don’t make it my fault!”

But Nakajima was also similarly fired up.

He yelled angrily with a voice so loud that spit flew at Sumika’s face.

“Are you planning to shift the blame!?”

“In the first place it’s fine even if we ignored the scramble! If we did that the National Defense Magicians would take care of it, yet you, Hoshikawa, accepted the mission on your own so…! Everything is your fault!”

“The trainee platoon is also a member of National Defense Magician! We have a responsibility to respond to the scramble!”

“Hah-! You're acting like a good kid as usual aren’t you―! As expected from the S-rank magician-sama. But ignoring the scramble is done by all trainee platoons! Everyone cuts corners in this. After all by raising achievements in repelling demons, you will only pointlessly stand out and just get placed on the front line in the future, not taking the scramble is just obvious!”

“Wha-, are you seriously saying that!? Humans that can handle sorcery are still few in number. If we who are just that few in number don’t do this seriously then just what’s going to happen! What’s going to happen if we cannot protect everyone!”

“Like I care! Besides why do I have to bet my life for other people’s sake, just because I happen to be able to handle magic power and got conscripted! If you want to become a superman that much then just do it yourself! Who wants to go along with you!”

When he returned a sharp parting remark like that, Nakajima now couldn’t turn back anymore.

Pushing open the door with force as if to break it, he exited outside while his shoulders were heaving in rage.

After Nakajima left, Sumika dropped her waist on the pipe chair in the platoon room and blew out her breath.

“Really, what a low awareness……!”

That disappointment was not directed at just Nakajima alone.

Not limited only to him, the majority of people in this academy had low motivation.

Well, it was not something so unjustifiable.

Even though humans that could manipulate magic power were already few even in the best of times, the number of magicians was greatly decreased from the war with <Demon King Typhon>.

That was why people who possessed even the slightest bit of aptitude were forcefully enrolled into the magician training academy.

And then from the shortage of human personnel, there were a lot of cases where <Soldier class> demon’s exterminations like this time were handed over to the students in the trainee platoon.

It couldn’t be helped, because of the fact that the demons couldn’t be killed except by an attack that was using magic power.

However, to tell children to be understanding about such a problem of society was unreasonable.

Just why do they have to do something this dangerous?

It was not like Sumika couldn’t understand that feeling.

(However, even if one can understand one may not accept it.)

She understood that it was scary. Even she was scared of the exchange of life. Even today she had just almost died.

But, right now the only ones who could oppose the demons were them.

And so, why couldn’t everyone become serious about this, no matter what it made her really irritated.

In this area…Sumika was also still immature.

As a result, Sumika who had a high awareness as a magician felt uncertain somehow.

Too serious. Gloomy. What are you doing acting like a good child? She was ridiculed like that, estranged, while she was a possessor of the greatest fighting strength that was S-rank Magician where there were only ten people in the world, she was washed away to the 101st platoon that was scorned as [baggage platoon]. She was stuck with taking care of poor students that couldn’t be accepted anywhere else.

Even so Sumika didn’t rot, in order to make her platoon able to fight somehow even with all the difficulties, she was always wracking her brains over and gave out instructions, but she had never been rewarded even once.

Even though she had given her best, the existence of the humans by her side made all of her effort for nothing.

No matter how much she did her very best, the result was always always tilting in a bad direction.

And today the end result was she was almost killed by something like an orc.

Her that if she was alone she could kill something like an orc instantly.

“Haa……..”

Sumika released a big sigh and covered her head with both her hands.

Will that couldn’t be understood. Her useless teammates.

The anxiety of Sumika’s heart reached the peak.

And then the petite girl with loose and disheveled hair that was pushed back just now, Ichinotani Chikori called out reservedly to Sumika who was like that.

“Leader, cheer up. Leader didn’t do anything bad you know…?”

Those words of Chikori were her consideration towards the totally exhausted Sumika right from her heart.

But, …Chikori was also a factor of that exhaustion.

Looking from Sumika’s position, Chikori also had the same fault like Nakajima.

That was why Chikori’s words of encouragement snapped apart the frayed mind of Sumika.

“That’s just obviousssss-!!!!”

“Kyan-“

“Chikori-san. Even you are not unrelated to this problem. Even though I told you to stop, yet you rushed off on your own! In the end you were taken hostage! Do you not have self-awareness, do you know just how much trouble you caused me because of your rash action!?”

“Bu, but, that time the orc was heading to the town area…”

“Then what you should have done was to circle ahead to the town and evacuate the citizens! Just why do you think I had you and Nakajima-kun form a group!? That’s because the two of you cannot win against an orc alone! I have told you that thoroughly in the briefing! I told you to absolutely not fight if one of you is not there! Despite that just why did you commit something so foolish like entering battle by yourself-!”

“A, auu”

Being pierced through by eyes that were carrying burning rage, Chikori’s face paled and her expression was going to cry.

However Sumika didn’t stop. Chikori’s words from before made her lose all self-control of her emotion, all the various resentment that had been piling up since she enrolled into New Tokyo Sorcery Academy turned into an overflowing muddy stream that even Sumika herself couldn’t control.

“I’ve…-! Even though I’ve been thinking very hard for strategies that could be accomplished even with little magic power, just why can’t you move exactly like I said!? Chikori-san and Nakajima-kun too, and also Shiori-san that always just do the bare minimum of her work even though she is actually an excellent magician! Everyone, everyone is always doing just whatever they please-! You all cannot be useful satisfactorily, so at least please just listen to what I saiddd-!!”

“..................-“

“…ah,”

Instantly, Sumika thought ‘now I’ve done it’, that was what her expression looked like.

Just now she had said really too much.

Looking at Chikori’s expression that had been completely stabbed by her words, made Sumika aware of that.

(Even though I’m the one, that knows best just how much Chikori-san has worked hard…)

“E, err, Chikori-san. Just now is…”

Trying to apologize for her own slip of the tongue, Sumika spun her words. But at that time,

“Aa― my ears hurt. Just why a girl’s yelling face can reverberate this much in the eardrum I wonder.”

The door of the platoon room opened, and a single male entered the room.

It was the one who saved the life of Sumika and Chikori just before, the <Evil God User> Kamishiro Homura.

===Part 6===

(Aa― aa―, I really done it huh.)

In front of the two who was wearing their <Magi’s Jacket> in <{{furigana|Standby Mode|Uniform Shape}}>, Homura was making a bitter expression inside his heart.

What he regretted was the him who took upon himself to cut in at the timing that stopped Sumika’s apologize.

(Even though the matter will be settled for the time being if I just let her apologize. Just why did you come out, me.)

His intervention was done mostly unconsciously.

Homura was straining his ear and listening attentively at the conversation from outside, but when he sensed that Sumika was going to apologize about how she said too much to Chikori, he showed himself completely.

That was because for Sumika to apologize at Chikori here, was the thing that mustn’t be done the most.

It was a poor move that would bring nothing but harm for both Sumika and also Chikori.

The apology might even liable to destroy this team.

―Actually, that kind of thing shouldn’t have really related to Homura but,

(No matter what it ain’t good. I just can’t bring myself to leave something like this alone.)

If there was something in front of his eyes that was [going to break], he would unconsciously reached out his hand.

That was also Homura’s nature.

(…Well, fine. I interfered already so I gotta take responsibility.)

Appointing such responsibility to himself, Homura called out to the two that was inside the room.

“Both of you, you two look comparatively energetic for someone that almost died huh. That’s a relief.”

“Ho, Homura-san-!”

When she knew that the man who entered the room was Homura, Sumika’s expression that was dyed with anger until now turned brilliant.

The girl happily rushed toward Homura and bowed her head deeply.

“You are Kamishiro Homura-san aren’t you! Truly thank you very much for helping us from the danger before this! As the representative of 101st, I express you our gratitude!”

“You really give an extremely courteous greeting huh. Even toward the <Evil God User> that is even called the [traitor].”

“Evil god or whatever, what mistake there is in using a power that you can use in order to protect. Even if the power that you use is even more evil than the devil itself, you are a hero who stand in the dangerous foremost line more than anyone and saved lives more numerous than anyone, not an evil existence.”

It was the duty of those with power to protect those without power.

For Sumika who remonstrated herself like that, Homura who exterminated the <Demon King Typhon> was an existence she aspired for.

That was why, the girl didn’t care at all about the label that the influential people stuck to Homura.

She stared straight at Homura and sent him a gaze of respect and gratitude.

“E, excuse me-! Please let me say my thanks too! To save me from the danger, and for even going as far as healing my injury, really, thank you very much-!”

Continuing after Sumika, Ichinotani Chikori was also lowering her head to Homura while her little ponytail shook.

He couldn’t feel respect as much as Sumika from the girl’s voice and gaze, but it was obvious that there was no fear in those.

Looking at that situation, Homura finally comprehended.

Certainly, it was just like Onjouji said, the sense of these two as magician was not bad.

While it was only natural for Sumika who was already an S-rank magician, this Ichinotani Chikori was also a girl who was able to believe the thing that she had seen herself.

Not carried away by rumor, believing on what she had seen herself, believing on the knowledge that she had obtained.

In a certain meaning it was even the most important resource for a magician.

Just from that exchange Homura had managed to take in these two’s aptitude.

“Well, it’s all fine. It’s not even too much trouble for me. Besides I said it right, I got a little reason that I got entered into 101st. In other words from now on we are comrade.”

Talking to the two with a kind tone,

“Helping a useless leader that has no ability at all save yelling around, is also the duty of a comrade.”

That voice tone, suddenly turned into something cold.

“――eh.”

It was words that suddenly struck and stabbed Sumika.

Sumika’s expression froze from those words.

(…I am, useless?)

Cold scorn from the person she was harboring aspiration to.

But Homura left alone the dumbfounded Sumika, he passed through in front of the girl and,

“Ichinotani Chikori, right? You too have it hard huh. Getting used by this greenhorn and almost died. You have my sympathy. Really, it’s great that your wound was not something big. But you can be relieved. From tomorrow I’ll be the leader of 101st. Just as you know, I’m a magician that can even use evil god, that’s why those demons are just like fart for me. If you work under me you ain’t gonna meet almost death experience for the second time.”

Homura gave a friendly smile while clapping Chikori’s shoulder repeatedly.

“Eh, a…, eh.”

However Chikori was also confused from that.

Just how should she act in this scene that would be good, her expression showed that she hadn’t the slightest idea.

But, faster than that confused Chikori,

“Please wait.”

Sumika pierced Homura’s nape with a sharp voice.

Right now the envy in Sumika’s eyes was gone, replaced with a glaring hostility.

It was understandable. Sumika believed that she had continued until this far with her very best effort in her own way.

For her to be ridiculed by someone who just arrived today that didn’t know anything saying whatever he pleased, there was no way she could endure that.

“Certainly Kamishiro-san is far stronger than someone like me. I even think that it’s fine to say that there is no magician exists above this earth that can match you. That’s why perhaps it’s the correct decision for you to become the leader. But, …I cannot accept to be told as useless.”

“You really talk big for someone that almost death just from something like orc.”

“Wr, wrong! You are wrong you know, Evil God User-san! That’s because of my fault! It’s my bad because I didn’t listen to leader’s warning, leader didn’t do anything wrong at all-!”

However Homura shook his head saying “No” to Chikori’s objection and add to his denial.

“It ain’t wrong. In the first place, her inability to draw out Ichinotani’s power except of something to the degree of getting beaten by orc, is the proof of her incompetence. Yet despite so, to brand Ichinotani as useless is just shelving her fault. Let me say this, if I become Ichinotani’s master then at tomorrow morning, ―Hoshikawa Sumika, she can become even stronger than you.”

“―――!”

“Eh, eeeee!?”

Chikori screamed from the too sudden words.

On the other hand Sumika was making a doubtful expression that seemed to say [Just what in the world this guy is talking about], while scrutinizing Homura.

“<Evil God User>-san really doesn’t have a sense of humour doesn't he?”

“If you say you cannot believe that let’s try it out for real. Tomorrow is also just right because it’s Sunday and there is no class. Do a mock battle between you and Ichinotani the first thing in the morning. I’m going to show you I can make Ichinotani win against you in that mock battle.”

“Wha, tha, that kind of thing is obviously impossible-!”

Chikori who was dragged into a duel without her say so raised a protesting voice, but Homura didn’t lend his ear to that at all.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t get that nervous. This kind of girl, she won’t even reach your pinky after all.”

“…Do you know about the grades of me and Chikori-san?”

“You are an S-rank magician and the number 1 of your year. While Ichinotani is in the academy’s lowest place with E-rank…the lowest rank. I have seen your data before so I know already. Obtaining the title S-rank magician when you are still a student, well that’s quite something. But looking from <{{furigana|Evil God User|my}}> position, the rating of those like <{{furigana|Heroic Spirit User|you}}> is just like comparing heights of bunch of acorn.”

“-!”

Sumika’s eyebrow twitched from those words.

At any rate <Heroic Spirit User> could only contract with human soul, in contrast this man exchanged contract with god itself. The scale of strength was different.

But, even so Sumika until now had continued to struggle to death doing her best until now in order to distinguish herself from among those acorns.

She strived in her study of sorcery sacrificing her youth, she exposed her life to danger and overcame battles against demon.

In the end of all that what she obtained in her hand was her own power, the title as S-rank magician.

For that, to be told that it was only something to the degree that could be overtaken by the academy’s weakest Chikori in just one night, it was not something that could be endured. That was why,

“…Fine then. That match, I’ll accept it.”

“Leader!?”

With eyes that conceived a strong anger, Sumika accepted the fight that Homura brought to her.

“The match will be tomorrow morning. Can you get Chikori-san to become stronger than even me until then?”

“It’s a piece of cake.”

“But, if Chikori-san lost to me, please withdraw your calling me as incompetent.”

“Of course. I’ll also bow my head. Not just that. I’ll also entrust being the leader to you for a long time, and I’m going to become a loyal underling for you that follow your order no matter what it is.”

“…That’s extremely generous isn’t it?”

“After all there ain’t no way I’m gonna lose.”

“I’ll make you regret it. That self-conceit.”

“Just who do you think I am. Even if I get self-conceit, but just against a mere magician as an opponent, I still got a lot of leeway left.”

“……Is that so? Then, let’s meet tomorrow.”

Glancing in annoyance at Homura whose composed attitude persistently didn’t break, Sumika left from the platoon room.

===Part 7===

After Sumika exited the room, there were only Homura and Chikori left inside the room.

For a while Chikori was dumbfounded from the fact that a duel between her and Sumika had been decided, but when she came to her senses she protested to Homura as if snarling.

“Wh, what kind of promise that you decided by yourself!? Th, this is troubling for me you know-!”

“This is the chance to clear your reputation right? If you win against Hoshikawa, then you won’t be called useless for the second time anymore.”

“That might be so but, for me to win against leader, there is no way that’s possible…. In the first place leader didn’t do anything bad at all! Today too she tried to help me who violated the order, she was always supervising the training of the weak me! Yet…even though you don’t know anything, don’t you badmouth leader-!”

Chikori moved her small body in a large way and expressed the strength of her anger.

That anger was not about the duel that had been decided without her say-so, but an anger toward the fact that Homura criticized Sumika without knowing about her dedication.

Sumika was accomplishing her duty as the leader of a trainee platoon far surpassing the standard that had been demanded from her.

Chikori knew about that.

And also about how she and the other was dragging down the legs of such Sumika.

That was why, she couldn’t bear it for Homura to unreasonably hurt Sumika with his words.

(I’ve to quickly apologize to leader……!)

She had to quickly restore the unfairly wounded honor of Sumika.

Surely right now she was deeply wounded.

Thinking so, Chikori brushed aside Homura and reached out her hand to the doorknob in order to chase after Sumika.

Homura’s voice reached that back.

“Where do you plan to go?”

“That’s obvious! I’m going to apologize to leader!”

“Even though I’ve said that I’m gonna make you stronger than that girl from now on? What are you gonna do about the mock battle tomorrow?”

“Something like that has nothing to do with me! Rather than that, I’ve to apologize to leader quickly. If it’s now perhaps she will forgive me―”

“After apologizing and getting forgiven, you are going to keep being a hindrance to her for your whole life?”

“――-!?”

Instantly, from Homura’s words that was quiet as if being whispered, yet possessing a sharpness that pierced her heart from the back, Chikori’s whole body froze.

“Just what are you getting surprised from? You apologize. Hoshikawa forgives you. I become the bad guy. With that everything is buried. That’s the gist of it right. That’s what are you going to do right now.”

“That, is……”

“It’s just the idea of putting on hold everything by leaving behind the real problem and preserves the surface of your human relationship. Not just you Ichinotani. That girl Hoshikawa too. Before I came out, that girl was trying to apologize to you for saying too much. But, that was the wrong action. No matter how much you try to maintain the surface of your relationship, the left behind pestering wound will surely coming to a head someday. And that’s also gonna happen in a scene that’s even more fatal than today. That’s why I cut in there.”

Correct. Even Homura understood perfectly that Sumika didn’t have any wrong.

No rather, he evaluated Sumika as an excellent magician that was too much for the level of a student, a competent leader.

But, there was only one, one thing that Sumika fatally mistaken as the way to resolve this problem.

That was exactly why, Homura created this situation where he made Sumika to duel Chikori without apologizing.

There was only one way to resolve the problem of these two, there was no other way than for Chikori to become strong.

Therefore Homura asked Chikori.

“Ichinotani, do you think you are fine staying like you are now?”

Against that question, the shoulder of Chikori who was grasping the doorknob shook.

―Just who in the world can think that it’s okay to stay like this.

That’s,

“……It’s obvious that even me think it’s not okay.”

The answering voice was filled with painful emotion.

That’s right, she too thought that she couldn’t stay like this. She never thought even for an instant that it was okay.

That was why, she did all the training that she could come up with.

Almost the whole time of her day was devoted for training her magic power.

“But, it didn’t do me a single good at all! Even though everyone else rapidly get stronger doing the same training, just me, rather than getting stronger I rapidly getting weaker instead!”

When she first enrolled into New Tokyo Sorcery Academy she wasn’t like this.

But, about three months after enrolling, suddenly her magic power became unable to grow.

No, it was not just that. No matter how desperate the effort that she did, even when she piled up effective training that Sumika thought really hard for her sake, day by day Chikori became unable to knead her magic power well, and right now she had completely weakened until she became unable to even mostly use her contracted Heroic Spirit’s <Hero Skill>.

Just why did this happen.

The answer that came out from the instructor she consulted with was, ―this was the [limit of her talent].

The limit of her capacity as magician. That was why the instructor said that she couldn’t hope for more than this.

Then―

“Then it can’t be helped.”

She didn’t think that it was fine for her to stay like this.

But if she was told that she couldn’t hope for more than this―

“Isn’t there nothing I can do, except doing my hardest at what I can do right now.”

That was why Chikori did just that until now.

She trained for dozens of times longer than other people, trying to at the very least slow down the declining of her magic power.

Like that she did the only thing she could do until now.

That was why, being asked [is it fine to stay like this] this late just made her irritated.

“…There is nothing else to be said more than this.”

Saying that, this time for sure Chikori was going to get out of the room. But,

“It’s a mistake that this is the limit of your talent. What happen to you, ―is just a sickness.”

“……eh-“

The girl’s leg stopped from the unforeseen word.

===Part 8===

The door was still opened, but Chikori’s leg was stopped, Homura talked toward that Chikori.

He noticed when he healed her wound, the truth that was happening in her body.

“It’s a rare illness that there is still even less than ten people in the world that ever got it. It’s called Apple Seed(AS) syndrome. An illness that occur only in magician. From the medical examination I did when I healed you before, there is no mistake about this.”

“……Sick, ness…?”

“Yeah, the magician that is afflicted with this illness has their magic power conduit vein that create magic power and circulate it to the whole body degenerating really fast, just in a few months the ill person will completely become unable to use sorcery and become a normal human. That’s why no matter how hard the current you work hard, it’s obvious that all of that is pointless. After all, even the new magic power conduit vein created from the magic power training that you piled up is degenerating from the start right when it was created.”

“Bu, but, the teacher didn’t say even a single word about illness…..!”

“That’s because that guy is just ignorance. And then…I can heal your illness.”

“Eh-!”

“Apple Seed syndrome is an illness that degenerate your magic power conduit vein and blocked them. That’s why, it’s going to be fine if magic power is poured from outside and the veins are forcibly opened. Although doing something like pushing open other people’s conduit vein with your own magic power, is something like sticking through a sharply pointed wire through a brittle blood vessel. Even though the way to cure it is understood, it’s not something possibly doable in practice. But…if it’s me then it’s doable.”

“Th, that’s, is that, true!?”

“Of course. After all though the image of <Evil God User> tend to sound wild, but in practice that title meant a sorcery expert in the level that can control freely even [god].”

In this world there was no sorcery existed that Homura didn’t know, sorcery that he couldn’t perform also didn’t exist at all.

Whether it was offense, or even in defense, or even in healing―

Because Homura was perfect in everything, that he was able to employ even god.

“And then Apple Seed is similar like an epidemic parotitis, someone who has overcame it once won’t get it anymore for the second time. That’s why if you receive my teaching and duel against Hoshikawa tomorrow, that’s the proof that you are completely healed. Based on that I’m gonna ask one more time. ……You, are you fine staying weak?”

“……”

Homura’s question that was repeated once more.

Chikori couldn’t return any word to that, she grew quiet and hung her head down.

The girl was lost. Was Homura’s words the truth? Was if fine for her to believe him?

Thereupon, Homura created an escape path for such Chikori.

“Well, I’m not gonna force you. If right now you want to chase Hoshikawa and get back to being friend like before then that’s okay. Not like I’m gonna blame you. In the first place since I entered 101st already, there is not going any dead that will come out just from taking one or two extra baggage.”

It was fine even if she stayed weak. Homura said that he would allow the weak Chikori.

Saying honestly, this was also words that came out from Homura’s true feeling.

Until now, people who met sorrow or died because they were blessed with talent in sorcery, Homura had seen a lot of them.

It was better to not have any talent in sorcery. That was Homura’s conclusion in regard of sorcery.

That was why he was not forcing her. He also wouldn’t hurry her.

Until the end it was Chikori herself that chose. Saying those words from his mouth as the last, he now waited for Chikori’s reply.

And then, after a little long silence―Chikori opened her mouth.

“……Leader, is really kind. Since the second year, she tried her hardest to make strong this me that couldn’t do well any sorcery at all. …Everyone abandoned me and treated me like unneeded child, yet among them only leader believed in me. I can continue being a magician until today is thanks to leader. That’s why…leader, is a really important friend for me.”

“Is that so.”

“However, exactly because of that I don’t want to become Sumika-chan’s friend, I want to become her comrade in arms!”

Chikori closed hard the door that she opened in order to chase after Sumika.

That was Chikori’s answer.

Just now, when Homura proposed to her an escape path that it was fine even if she was not healed, a future flashed inside Chikori’s mind.

Besides Homura and Sumika who betted their life fighting demon, not doing anything, looking up from afar at a safe place at those two, the figure of herself.

(…Something like that, I don’t want it!)

She liked being useful to someone since a long time ago.

She liked seeing someone’s happy face.

That was why, Chikori had always admired hero that protected those smiling face, she came to this New Tokyo Sorcery Academy trying to become that kind of hero.

Perhaps her illness would be cured.

That hope resurrected the passion of that time inside Chikori’s heart.

That’s right. If she didn’t do anything staying like this, she would not be a magician any longer sooner or later anyway.

She would leave this academy, with her important friend that believed in her, continued to believe in her until now stayed disappointed in her.

That was, completely running away.

Then, if there was hope even if just a little, she was going to bet on it.

For the sake of Sumika who accompanied someone like her until now.

And then, above all for the sake of her own dream.

“Evil God User-san. Please make me strong!”

There was no more color of hesitation in Chikori’s eyes.

Then, asking repeatedly more than this was just boorish, it was something that Homura also understood.

“Just leave it to me.”

Therefore Homura gave his firm promise toward the girl’s resolve.

That he would grant the girl’s wish.

And then for that sake, he slowly approached Chikori, and grabbed the delicate shoulders of the girl.

“Eh……!”

Her body stiffened from the sudden happening, Chikori tried to take a few steps back from Homura.

But Homura was,

“It’s okay. Believe me.”
[[File:Ultimate_Antihero_V1_c13.png|thumb]]
Gently, Homura stared at the girl’s eyes and whispered.

Chikori was agitated from the distance that suddenly became close, her eyes anxiously shook―

“Yes……”

The strength of her body immediately relaxed.

The eyes of Homura that stared at her.

Affection was overflowing from there.

To the degree that it surprised her, if human could really be this earnest and sincere toward other people.

That was exactly why, it was something that was worthy to believe.

Chikori closed her eyes and entrusted her body to Homura even while her cheeks reddened.

“Good kid.”

Homura whispered that to Chikori who entrusted her body to him and stroke her cheek with the hand that was on her shoulder.

And then keeping like that he lifted the front hair on her forehead, and kissed the forehead like a gentle touch.

At the same time from his lips through her skin, his magic power flowed into the conduit vein of Chikori.

“…a, -!”

―Instantly, sky colored magic power overflowed from Chikori’s whole body.

<noinclude>

==Translator's Notes and References==
<references/>

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| Back to [[Ultimate Antihero:Volume 1 Prologue|Prologue]]
| Return to [[Ultimate Antihero|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Ultimate Antihero:Volume 1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut:Volume 3 Episode 1

2018-01-22T15:35:09Z

Toshiya: readded nav

==Episode 1 – The Return of the Strongest==

===Part 1===

“Uuh… It’s getting chilly today huh……”

There were about a few days until the date of the inner school selective battles to decide the representatives for the international tournament that awarded the right to investigate the ruins.

As a Drag-Knight it was the greatest event to display one’s abilities, the inside of the academy was full of tension that was also similar to exaltation.

On the night of such a day, Lux was walking through the school premises ── at the courtyard in the vicinity of the girls’ dormitory.

Within the darkness where the stars weren’t visible, only the lamp’s light that leaked out from the dormitory was faintly illuminating the stone pavement.

The main gate was already closed for the girls’ dorm that was located in the Royal Military Academy.

Because this place, an institution for rearing Drag-Knights that was located in Cross Feed, was an important place as a defense point, it also contained exclusive guards and the security was firmly ensured.

But, even so, outsiders who attempted to trespass and peep were never ending.

This was because, for human beings trying to commit a crime, this academy where noble young women from marriageable age commuted and where the super weapons called Drag-Ride resided was, so to speak, something like a treasure vault.

Therefore, the girls known as the Triad, which was renowned in the academy, had been independently patrolling within the premises up until now but, since he had received a request, Lux was also participating in the patrol tonight.

(Though, if it was just that then it would’ve been fine. Why is something like this──)

As Lux’s cheeks reddened to the present situation,

“Huh? You ── I’ve never seen you before. Could you by any chance be…”

“Ah……? E-Errr, umm──”

Right in front of the girls’ dorm, as he was called out by a classmate who was in a dressing gown, he unintentionally raised a voice of surprise.

(S-She noticed it!? What do I do! If she recognized me with this appearance, then tomorrow, I’d become the laughing stock in the class──!?)

“A transfer student? That’s very unusual in this period.”

“Eh…!?”

Towards the girl in front of him who dropped her interrogative face, a deep turmoil was born inside Lux.

After hesitating for several seconds, Lux resolved himself to deceive her.

“T-That’s it. U-uh……I was called by the headmaster, specially ──”

“Hmm. Well, if we happen to be in the same class then nice to meet you. Mm, as for me, I would’ve rather wanted that you were a boy, you know. Then again, that would be impossible in this academy”

After drawing close and fixedly gazing at Lux’s face, the girl made a wry smile.

(A-As expected, she noticed it!?)

The moment when Lux panicked for an instant,

“I mean, you’re seriously really pretty. There are a lot of cute girls in our academy, but none among them are top class.
Ahh, no way no way. Another rival.”

The girl sighed somewhat exaggeratedly while shrugging her shoulders.

“R-Rival you said……?”

“Yep, a rival who targets Lux-kun from my class. There’s only one boy in this academy right now. But, surrounding him are incredibly beautiful girls, I couldn’t approach him at all you know. If a beautiful girl like you were a boy, against a boy, the popularity would also be scattered a little and my chance to be able to talk to Lux-kun ──to that boy would increase even a little.”

As she pouted in a lovely manner, the girl said so.

“Ah, ahaha……”

In response, Lux couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

“Well then, good night. ……Ah! Recently, there seems to be some male perverts appearing around the area, so be careful okay.
A cute girl like you would be the first to be targeted.”

“……Y-Yes. I will be careful.”

While awkwardly waving his hand, Lux smiled as if troubled.

When the back figure and footstep sounds of the girl who went back to the dorm completely disappeared──

“──Hold up, why didn't anyone notice it!?”

Lux, who currently had the appearance of a female student, inadvertently shouted out.

Since he began with this appearance, he had already met with five female students, and yet not a single one of them noticed that it was Lux.

……Well, I guess it’s only natural.

He was only wearing a long chestnut-colored hair wig on his head and some girl clothing, but looking at a mirror, it was to the point where Lux himself also couldn’t believe his own eyes.

However, even so,

“D-Despite that, I still thought I would be exposed by my fellow classmates……”

He was saved thanks to no one asking him about the female clothing, but he was having staggeringly mixed feelings.

“Haah……”

With a small sigh, with the purpose of resuming the request, Lux began to wander around the academy’s grounds.

“W-Was this really necessary……?"

While gently gripping the hem of his skirt and thinking such a thing, Lux thought back upon the event from just a little while ago.

===Part 2===

“Errr…… a request to guard the academy’s premises ── is that it?”

On that day after school, Lux was called out by his female friends, and consulted with them in regards to a “certain request”.

The third year student and dignified leader, Sharis. His classmate with a lively personality, Tillfarr. And the cool girl who was also a close friend of his little sister Airi, Nokuto.

The request from the Triad, the renowned trio who formed a vigilante corps in the academy in addition to also causing various disturbances, was unexpectedly a serious one.

“Yep, that’s right. The academy’s security is, in truth, the guards’ job. But with just them, there are places which weren’t always patrolled.”

As Tillfarr folded her arms and showed a pensive look, Nokuto next to her also nodded.

“Yes. They also have their lives and the day also continues after nightfall. Meaning it would be impossible to keep up.”

“Especially at night, we, the Triad, voluntarily go around patrolling the premises and the girls’ dorm, but in consideration to the recent state of affairs here, we would like a little bit of assistance.”

Sharis summarized so and approached Lux.

“Therefore, Lux-kun. We have come to request that you participate with us for a short while starting from today. In order to protect the academy’s peace, won’t you become our strength?”

She asked so in a somewhat exaggerated manner.

(As usual, I don’t know whether she’s earnest or irresponsible; a truly hard to understand person, huh……)

While wryly smiling in his mind, Lux consented like it was only natural.

“I got it. If I can be of some use, please allow me to help you.”

Which he answered so with a smiling face,

“Thank you. Just as one would expect of our academy’s prince.”

“Yes. As expected of Lux-san. Please allow me to offer my thanks, too.”

“Really, just as you’d expect from Lux-cchi. Thank goodness, I’m glad.”

Matching Sharis’ expression of gratitude, Nokuto also lightly bowed her head, and Tillfarr showed a smile.

“No, if it’s an odd job like this then I would warmly welcome it but──”

Odd jobs.

The criminal Lux, who was a survivor of the royal family of the Old Empire that laid out misrule, was given this obligation at the time when he was acquitted through amnesty.

The agreement to receive odd jobs from any of citizens, even after transferring into this academy, it had continued in the form of him undertaking odd jobs from officials and students but──.

(Everyone’s been giving me nothing but strange requests……)

Recalling that matter, Lux had a bitter smile.

Things like assistance with shopping and cleaning the room, those were still the better ones.

It was not unusual for Lux who was the only boy in the academy to receive outrageous requests, whether it was a joke or for real, from the young girls here who were interested in him.

A personal bodyguard for constant supervision, aiding in a body massage, an assistant for changing clothes. In the end……when he saw the letters spelling out help with bathing, he doubted his own eyes as would be expected.

And so, towards the request that seemed decent this time, he was frankly relieved, but──.

“……Hold on, what the heck is this!?”

Lux, who went to the waiting room of the training grounds to prepare for the request, unexpectedly shouted out.

The uniform which he was presented with a change of clothes from the Triad was for some reason a girl uniform.

A blouse and skirt beautifully well kept.

And, a chestnut-colored wig which was a high quality ornament.

“Well you see, since we had requested the headmaster and had her specifically arrange it, it’s fine to wear it without hesitating, you know?”

“That’s not it! The thing I’m worried about isn’t how you acquired this……um, why do I, with this kind of f…female clothing like this──”

“Lux-kun, calm down a bit. This is for the sake of a goal.”

Sharis put on a serious look and said to the embarrassed and flustered Lux.

“The main area we are guarding this time is the surroundings of the girls’ dormitory. In addition, it seems like there’s some male perverts who are prowling around the academy’s surroundings recently and peeping.”

In regards to that information, Lux was also alerted by the teacher and knew about it.

“If we were to disguise you as a frail girl, we will be able to strike during the interval where the pervert lowered his guard. Letting your anxieties die out in the face of vigilance. In other words it’s a decoy role. This is also to protect everyone in the academy. ……Do you understand?”

“U-understood……”

Pressed by Sharis’ nudging, Lux finally returned a nod.

As expected, he could not refuse when she earnestly requested him to that extent.

For Lux right now, this academy was an important place.

Even though they had been tormented with the tyrannical rule of the Old Empire and the customs of male supremacy over women for a long period, the girls of the academy had accepted him who was a criminal from the imperial family.

If it was to protect those girls, this much was──.

“Is that so, thanks. Well then, shall we immediately move on to the fun clothes changing time? Prince.”

“Eh…!?”

Sharis smiled with a broad grin and extended her hands towards Lux’s chest.

As if matching her, Tillfarr who had been watching silently also held the uniform in her hands and Nokuto retrieved some perfume and a comb from a bag.

“Well then, let us change your clothes okay?! Lux-cchi, you don’t know how to put on a girl’s uniform right?”

“N-no……! I’ll give it a try on my own! Why are you all grinning!?”

“No. We have no ill intentions, so please relax. Sharis and Tillfarr, and I as well, it’s not like we’re taking advantage of the request and are eager to see the figure of you in girl clothes, because there’s no way we were thinking of that even a little.”

“There’s no way I can believe that!?”

Lux involuntarily retorted towards the indifferent Nokuto’s words.

However, resistance was already impossible.

“Okay okay. Shall we take it off quickly, Lux-cchi. No… Lux-chan”

“Lux-kun, I have also prepared underwear for girl use just in case, but?”

“Please stop, anything but that!”

Somehow he has struggled desperately only at the last line, but after several dozen minutes, he has been completely transformed into the appearance of a girl student.

“Uwah…!? T-This is beyond my imagination, by far──”

“Yes. For it to fit him this much, I have gravely miscalculated”

“S-Should we also give up on the makeup? E-Even like this now, it should be more than enough, so…”

“…………”

While the three girls of the Triad gave their impressions as they pleased, Lux has hardened in front of the mirror as he felt extremely embarrassed.

“Rest assured Lux-kun. Anyone who looks at you right now would see a very beautiful aristocratic young girl student.”

“……I’m, not happy about this at all!”

Lux yelled with teary eyes towards Sharis who had placed a hand on his shoulder with a cheerful smiling face.

===Part 3===

Afterwards, having checked on how to walk like an aristocratic young girl and just simple mannerisms,just like that he was participating in the patrol around the premises. However no suspicious-looking person appeared in the area at this time.

“Rather, it would really be fine if no one enters all the way into the premises but──”

Lux was worried about whether he would be forced to use this appearance again.

He absolutely did not want to be seen, especially by his little sister Airi or the girls he was close to.

[[File:SaijakuBahamut v3 019.jpg|thumb]]

“But, I really have to be careful in a lot of ways──”

That’s right; Lux recalled the matter from just a few days ago.

In the incident surrounding Krulcifer who’s a transfer student from the religious country Ymir, the heir to one of the four Great Nobles of the New Kingdom, Barzeride Kreutzer was overthrown.

There were no doubts that he had committed various crimes behind the scenes, but for Barzeride who was said to have saved this Atismata New Kingdom, it seemed like it was arranged so that he would be given an important errand.

The largest and strongest Abyss said to exist within each of the seven ruins, Ragnarok.

As the fact that the former Old Empire of Arcadia had released one of those Ragnarok from the ruins came to light, from the Heiburg Republic came a demand to subjugate it.

If that demand were to be rejected then diplomatic pressure would probably come from the three countries alliance that Heiburg was a part of.

For the New Kingdom, that was an undesirable situation.

But, the subjugation of a Ragnarok cannot be dealt with through normal means.

It was a monster of mythical class to the extent that results have shown that for the average Drag-Knight, even if they formed a group they would still be unable to put up a fight.

Lux had already heard the story from Lisha and Principal Relie on the matter of the war council that was being held every day at the Royal Capital concerning the method of subjugation and the unit formation.

『If we were to consider someone from the fighting force of the New Kingdom who has a chance at victory ── there would be probably none besides Celestia at present』

The princess of the New Kingdom Lisha’s answer was as such.

She was a third year student and a girl from the four Great Nobles that was crowned with the title of strongest.

The highest prospect of victory was to have her lead a large force of the army and fight.

As for Lux who had defeated Barzeride who was a candidate for the spot of captain of the subjugation unit, he was in the position of wanting to request cooperation with Celis while apologizing for that fault but──.

(But, that person seems to be a great man-hater huh……)

He has heard many times of her military prowess, but the number one problem was that.

At present, the existence of Lux as the sole male in the academy was accepted by the first and second year students, while the third year students tolerated it, but when Celis returns there was no knowing what would happen.

Let alone asking for her cooperation, the possibility of Lux being chased out of this academy was not zero.

(I must think of a way or something…)

When Lux was thinking so while leisurely walking around the vicinity of the girls’ dorm,

“……? That’s──”

Feeling something was faintly out of place in the corner of his vision, Lux readied his guard.

At the grass thicket of the back gate, a place where the light of the bonfire didn’t reach, he felt like he saw the shadow of a figure.

“…………”

“──Like I said, that’s what I thought.”

When Lux held his breath and hastened his pace, a voice could be heard from the vicinity of the rear entrance gate.

(They are talking with someone…? In such a place, at this hour?)

For a moment, the matter of the suspicious person floated across his mind, but Lux immediately realized it was something different.

The sound of a crystal clear voice and the elegant pronunciation belonged to a young noble girl.

Even so, as he concentrated his eyes in order to confirm just in case, the side face of a tall and slender girl leaped into his field of vision.

(Huh……?)

Judging from the uniform he was familiar with and the blue-colored necktie that represented third year students, there was probably no doubt that it was a senpai but; something was strange.

“──due to that, at that time I decided it was fine to remain alone in the Royal Capital. Even though I’m bragging about that decision, what do you think?”

The girl was speaking in a way as if she was talking with someone, but no one could be found in the surroundings.

(…What the heck is that?)

When Lux cocked his head in puzzlement,

“Nya~”

A small cry could be heard from beside the girl’s feet.

“However, in my heart I was expecting someone to suggest remaining together. Yet, no one remained… Of course, I had intended to refuse even if someone suggested it but… Ah, please wait! The story isn’t yet──”

Appearing flustered, the girl extended her hand, but the cat ran away from that place.

(Hold on, she was talking to a stray cat! And moreover it ran away…!?)

While looking at the crestfallen girl who hung her head, thinking that it was not the time to do something like this, Lux moved along.

(Still, I only watched from a distance, but she sure was a beautiful person. ──Wait, just what am I thinking of!)

Shaking his head and clearing away idle thoughts, Lux continued his patrol as is.

Then,

“Hmm……?”

At the edge of his field of vision, he noticed the moving figure of a person.

Holding his breath and chasing after it, he caught sight of a familiar building.

(This place is… the library…?)

The place he arrived at was the library in the academy premises that was separated from the school buildings.

Of course, the building was closed as it was late into the night now, so it was supposed to be deserted, but──.

(Why, at this kind of place?)

When Lux silenced the sound of his footsteps and tried to approach in order to get a better look at it,

“──Hey there, please don’t make a sound. Ojou-chan”

The voice of a young man abruptly called out from Lux’s back.

“……!?”

It was neither a teacher nor a patrolling guard.

They should be at the station outside of the premises, having already finished their tasks.

Which means──.

(Could this guy be the aforementioned pervert?!)

Lux turned around and looked at the man, but he had absolutely no recollection of him.

He was wearing a thin dark brown coat, with a sharp impulsive look in his eyes.

“Good girl. Now, you won’t try to run away right? I don’t have any intention of hurting you. It would reduce the value when I receive the ransom and in the first place, it’s against my nature to hurt a beautiful girl.”

(The heck… even this person is mistaking about me!?)

Since he had put on girl clothes for that reason, it was going according to the plan in a sense; but Lux had mixed feelings.

“Alright. Then, would you slowly come with me”

However, the pervert ── no, the man who seems like a kidnapper was completely off guard. The knife that was clasped in his right hand wasn’t thrusting at the nape of Lux’s neck or his back.

At this rate, there was a possibility to subdue him in the momentary opening when the man averted his attention.

As Lux made that judgment and try to observe the situation for the moment ──

“I won’t allow that. My judgment is ── to not permit it.”

An elegant clear voice shook the night air.

In the spot slightly distant from the cross-dressing Lux and the suspicious man.

Before anyone noticed, standing over there was the girl who was talking with the cat earlier.

She had fair colored skin and brilliant blonde hair that spanned until her waist, and bottomless deep jade pupils.

In addition, the girl had an abundant chest that seemed ready to burst.

Lux and the suspicious person’s movements were stopped, having been captivated by that beauty which the term beautiful would not be enough to describe, and that was not all.

A detached atmosphere that could even be called mysterious was cladding the girl’s body.

It was the figure of a noble girl that possessed the qualification to stand above others from birth.

“I'll allow you to throw away the cutlery and quietly release that girl. You have no right to refuse.”

An extremely calm voice of warning was uttered from the girl’s mouth.

Without any emotions of bloodlust or anger, her mouth held a calm smile.

The composure of an absolute being that allowed her to take full control of the situation.

“…Too bad, but I won’t be able to meet that expectation.”

The suspicious man said in a somewhat defeated voice and retreated.

It was not out of caution for the fighting power that the girl possessed. Most likely, instinctually ── he recognized the <Difference in Status> between her and himself.

However, despite harboring fear towards the girl in front of him, the suspicious man resisted.

Lux became aware of the man putting strength into the hand which held the knife at his back.

“…How’s that? First off, how about you discard that weapon you have on your waist, huge breasted Ojou-sama?”

As if in order to encourage himself, the man started to mix threats into his frivolous talking.

He was probably contriving to use Lux as a hostage and first off, get rid of her weapon, and then make a run for it.

“I understand.”

The moment when the girl suddenly loosened her cheeks and put her hand to the sword belt at her waist──

“That means you want to experience something painful, right?”

Pretending to unfasten the belt, she pulled it out at high speed.

“Wha…!”

The distance of Lux and the suspicious person from the girl was around 7 Mel, thus it was not a distance that could simply be shortened in an instant.

Even Lux had judged it so but, she had completely surpassed it.

[[File:SaijakuBahamut v3 027.jpg|thumb]]

Without missing the moment when the suspicious man’s guard was slack and open, in a single breath the girl thrust the drawn rapier type sword device at the man’s throat, and the match was decided.

“Wha…!?”

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Crackle*! Simultaneously with that thunderclap the girl’s back shined and a golden Machine Dragon appeared.

In the interval where Lux and the man were blinking their eyes in surprise, that armor covered over half her body.

It was a partial connection in order to achieve a swift attack through high speed Machine Dragon summoning without chanting.

While being dumbfounded at the Machine Dragon operating technique with a level of difficulty that was almost impossible under normal circumstances──.

“I'll allow you to discard your weapon. This is the final warning.”

Showing a cold, overpowering smile, the girl announced the fact.

The rapier that was thrust was pricking the man’s throat skin-deep and blood was oozing out bit by bit.

“Guh…!”

While sweating from his forehead, the suspicious man tossed the knife at the lawn and raised both hands.

The tall statured girl smiled when Lux separated from the suspicious man at that chance.

“Are you unharmed?”

Without taking her eyes off the man, she muttered so.

In this situation, the suspicious person could no longer escape.

Right as Lux took a small breath of relief, *tumble*, something rolled at his feet.

“……!?”

A sphere about the size of an egg burst opened with a *pan!* sound and their field of vision was obstructed by white smoke that rolled up.

“Kuh……!”

When he heard the sound of the suspicious man starting to run, Lux immediately felt a bloodlust from behind.

“Watch out!”

He promptly stood guard at the girl’s back with both arms outstretched.

Immediately after, a sharp pain ran through his two arms and fresh blood scattered.

“Tch…!”

“Are you alright?”

Right before the girl Lux protected could get her sword ready again, the white smoke cleared away.

The figure of the suspicious person was already gone.

Only the chilly air of the night remained there.

“……I’m all right. How about you senpai, any injuries──?”

“I’m safe. Leaving that aside, let’s quickly get you to the infirmary.”

With a voice that seemed slightly flustered for the first time, the girl with a detached atmosphere led Lux by the hand.

And then, while conveying this situation by making an excuse of “it’s just a scratch” to the female students they passed by, she pulled the reserved Lux by the hand and headed to the infirmary.

===Part 4===

“Does it hurt?”

As a substitute for the female doctor who was already off duty, the blonde girl skillfully disinfected Lux’s injury and wound a bandage. He was saved thanks to the fact that the thrown knife was not smeared with poison and that the wound was shallow.

Although they were unable to capture the suspicious man, it seemed like the Triad and the other girls of the “Knight Squadron” were presently split into groups in pursuit of him.

“I’m alright. Thank you very much.”

When Lux thanked her as he was relieved for the time being,

“…………”

Without showing any reaction, the blonde girl was peering intently at Lux’s face.

(What’s the matter──? Oh crap! Aren’t I still wearing girl clothes right now!?)

When Lux was about to remove the wig in a hurry, a soft sensation was pressed against his face.

“Eh……?”

A mass of elastic and tender sensation.

And, her silky hair was gently swaying and tickled Lux’s face.

“Wha…!?”

As he became aware of being closely embraced by the girl in front of him, Lux panicked.

(W-Why, all of a sudden──!?)

As Lux was extremely confused, her two arms that softly held his head separated.

“Ah…!? S-Sorry. You were so cute, so ──umm, please excuse me.”

The girl said as she averted her eyes towards the corner of the floor in embarrassment.

Seeing that she was blushing faintly, she seemed to be quite embarrassed.

“N-No, don’t worry about──”

As Lux answered as his heart was also throbbing, the girl just smiled lightly.

“T-thankfully, the wound is minor.──But still, I cannot approve of the conduct from earlier.”

Speaking as if she was lightly reprimanding him, the girl in front of Lux stood up from the chair.

“I am here in order to protect you kouhais after all.”

The girl declared in a resolute tone.

That was probably this girl’s conviction, but Lux became curious.

From what he saw of her carriage from earlier and her Machine Dragon operation, there was no doubt that she was a prominent and powerful person even in the academy.

However, she seemed unable to completely entrust dangerous things to a girl who was similarly a student.

“Even so, I’m glad since Senpai didn’t get hurt.”

“…………”

As Lux spoke his true feelings, the girl became stiff for a moment,

“──You’re a hopeless child, huh.”

She said, showing a slightly gentle facial expression,

“But, this is the first time someone has said that to me.”

Blushing faintly, she held Lux’s hand.

Lux unintentionally became startled at the softness and warmth of her palm.

“Ah, umm, come to think of it──”

The panicked Lux suddenly recalled something and began to speak.

“Senpai, by any chance, weren’t you doing something before at the rear entrance?”

“……!?”

In that moment, the girl’s whole body went rigid with a start and she made a fretting face.

“D-did you see it!? I'll allow you to forget it immediately! That was just your imagination! Since there was absolutely no one I was talking to, there’s no way such a thing is possible!”

“I… I understand.”

It was pretty suspicious how desperate she became, but he decided not to inquire any further.

Reading the mood was also an essential task in odd jobs.

“However, I wonder just when that kind of man trespassed into the academy. There’s no choice but to have them strengthen the security even further.”

“Y-Yeah──”

Suddenly, the girl’s expression changed and her tone became stern.

“As expected, males are our enemy. In order to also protect a sweet and kind girl like you, they must be kept further away from this academy──”

“Umm……?”

As he called out to the girl with a serious face, she straightened her back with a startle and faced towards Lux.

“Sorry. It’s already time for bed, right? Let’s return to the dorm.”

Saying so, the girl went out of the infirmary while still holding Lux’s hand.

“Come to think of it, it’s the first time I’ve seen your face. Are you a transfer student?”

“Ah, err──”

As Lux was about to say his own name on reflex,

“I have only just returned to Cross Feed today, I’m called Celestia Ralgris”

“…Eh!?”

At that moment, Lux thought his heart had stopped.

(This girl……!? No, this senpai is, the academy’s strongest girl──!?)

The girl who was the eldest daughter of the Ralgris family, one of the four Great Nobles, and renowned as a great man-hater.

''I was careless.''

Her skill and demeanor he had witnessed which reminded one of a pure noble, these things which he didn’t realize up until now was a problem.

“…………”

As Lux stiffened up, Celestia fixedly stared at his face with a serious look.

“Please call me Celis. And if you don’t mind, would you tell me your name?”

“I’m Lu… Lu, Luno. And umm──, I’m a second year student.”

(……the heck, just what am I saying?!)

Having sensed that it would be dangerous to reveal that he was a man here, Lux promptly said so.

Although she had went to the Royal Capital up until now, it might be possible that she had learned of the matter on Lux who enrolled into the academy as the sole male through a letter of sorts.

“Luno…is it. It’s a really wonderful name.”

With a face that did not know about Lux’s anxiety, Celestia nodded and smiled.

“Please chat with me again, Luno. I’ve become fond of you.”

Saying so, Celestia reluctantly released her hand from Lux and then left.

“…………”

A little while after seeing off the girl’s back.

“──Wait, what will I do!?”

Wearing girl clothes as is, he deceived her and they parted.

Normally since it was concealed under his uniform, the wound on his arm shouldn’t be exposed, but it was still a problem.

“But…… Celis-senpai is──”

‘Men are our enemy’, she certainly said that.

Then, the next time she met Lux as a male, just what would happen then?

After Lux took off the girl clothes, with a faint unease and bemusement in his heart, he went to search for the Triad girls.

===Part 5===

The same time, outside the academy grounds.

In the darkness of a deserted back alley, there was a pair of young man and woman.

The two people, who were clad in a somewhat dangerous presence, were quietly exchanging words while remaining vigilant of their surroundings and staying hidden.

“However, we are out of luck, huh. To think that the academy’s strongest has returned with this timing now of all times.”

The red haired man exaggeratedly shrugged his shoulders with a disappointed exclamation.

And, once he had sent his gaze to the surroundings, he turned towards the girl in front of him.

“I’m the one who is amazed. For what reason do you think that I made you break through the security?”

“Hey hey, you were the one about to be found earlier, Kirl. That frail looking girl was sharp. I make a fool of them thinking that it was just an academy of peace idiot young ladies, but it looks like there’s a need to change that perception.”

“…Hmph”

The girl standing before him snorted in displeasure and turned her back on the man.

“It can’t be helped if the situation changes. I will convey the instructions from the <Black Marketer> to you. Until then, conceal yourself in the shadows with Kirl as planned, Ignidd.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

After the man showed a smile and nodded in assent, his figure vanished from that place.

“The plan has changed a bit, but… well that’s fine. With this, our longstanding desire can finally be fulfilled, too.”

The sole person who remained was looking up at the sky.

Reflected in the girl’s pupils was the same darkness colored night sky with no stars.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut:Volume 3 Prologue|Prologue]]
| Return to [[Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut:Volume 3 Episode 2|Episode 2]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Fate/Zero:Act 16 Part 7

2018-01-21T04:58:01Z

Toshiya: /* -03:52:18 */ italicized thoughts

=== -03:52:18 ===

Now, pain had become everything to Kariya.

Whether it was the human called Matō Kariya that could feel pain, or that the concept of pain had been stuck into the body of this trash that was called Kariya—there was no longer any difference between the two. He felt that none of this mattered any more.

Which part of him hurt for what reason, why he had to experience this sort of torment—he had never known these causes and effects.

It hurt to breathe. It hurt for his heart to beat. It hurt to think. It hurt to remember.

There was nowhere to run, nothing that could be done. It seemed that he had felt like this before, but he could not remember. Perhaps he had already given up on himself.

The worms were crying within his body. The worms were writhing their bodies in pain. The culprit of his torment was at this moment also making its final struggle.

Berserker. It must be because of that resentful black spirit. At this moment Berserker was fighting; because the prana he required far exceeded that which his Master could provide, he had gone beyond control. The worms were suffering because they had been drained of too much prana, and so they tore at Kariya’s internal organs, ceaselessly struggling.

But that could not be helped; there was no other way.

Berserker must fight—that was what that priest had said. Kariya no longer remembered his name—but they had both made an agreement; he had agreed to let Kariya have the Grail, therefore Berserker must fight.

The Grail—at this moment only it meant everything to Kariya.

As long as he had the Grail, the war could end. As long as he had the Grail, Sakura could be saved.

There seemed to be something else, but remembering was really too painful. Those must be things outside the range of his thoughts.

Kariya did not even know what this place was. At first he had been in icy darkness, but now he felt a strange heat, and even breathing was difficult. He thought he smelled something burning; perhaps it was his own body that had been burned, but that didn’t matter. In any case his body could not move; what was most important now was Berserker’s fight—and— saving Sakura.

Sakura—ah, he would really like to see her one more time. He would really like to see that child.

But not Rin; he couldn’t see her. He mustn’t see her—no, but why was that, again?

Even thinking made him feel pain. His brain, his consciousness and his soul were all being crushed.

There was something strange. It seemed that something important had happened. Something was wrong.

Though he had become aware that something was different, Kariya’s thoughts were quickly caught up once again in endless torment.

It hurt—

There was only pain. And suffering—

For the countless time, she was thrown into the air.

For the countless time, she was effortlessly beaten to the ground.
Saber had given up counting, because she could no longer remember.

The strongest sword-wielding Servant? Who had fabricated this? —Now she was like a small boat in a storm. Facing Berserker’s waving black sword, she could only give up resistance and suffer the attack; she could not even make a single decent retaliatory blow. She did not even feel indignant at this. Her heart, immersed in hopelessness, had long since become devoid of all fighting spirit. She was no longer the heroic King of Knights that was named the incarnation of the dragon. This was truly too tragic; it made one sigh.

She should be going to save Irisviel; they had made a vow to hold up the Grail together. She could not lower her head now; she knew this clearly in her heart.

But she could not win. Facing that man, that sword, there was no way to obtain victory.

'Arondight • The Indestructible Light of the Lake’—the counterpart to King Arthur’s ‘Sword of Promised Victory’, the most precious of swords that had been obtained by men from the fairy lands.

That sword had been dyed pitch-black; the prana from his body, filled with resentment, had caused the sword by his side to also fall to become the sword of a mad warrior.

He had been the unrivalled ‘perfect knight’ admired by the masses; he had been a flower that bloomed on the precipitous peak of the way of the knight. His form and his actions had once been the greatest treasure of all who had the ambition of becoming a knight.

And yet he had committed himself to madness. Hatred roiled within the red eyes; at the same time he gave out an animalistic howl.

He roared, I hate you.

He roared, I curse you.

Exactly how was she to avoid the sword that he brandished downward full of hatred?

She could not look at him directly. Her sight blurred in tears, her legs buckled down weakly. At this moment, all Saber could do with all her strength was to protect her body before suffering the fatal impact.

Sir Lancelot, Knight of the Lake.

Now that she thought of it, the clues to his identity were everywhere.

Once he had hidden his name for the sake of a friend’s honor, disguising himself to enter a horse race. Even though he had fallen into a trap, and faced the enemy’s sharp blades with only his bare hands, he had won the victory with his skilled fighting prowess using only an elm branch.

But even though she noticed, Saber would definitely not admit it. That he who had been the subject of people’s admiration would be reduced to a Berserker—how could he be that ‘Knight of the Lake’?

Saber had once believed that they were friends. Even if their armies had clashed because of some unavoidable reasons, their hearts were nevertheless still the same. One was a subject that upheld the way of the knight, the other, a king who upheld the way of the knight.

But was this sort of partnership also only a naïve fantasy of her own?

He had never forgiven, never accepted. Even after his death, he had still cursed with resentment that ending, that tragic fate.

Lancelot and Guinevere had loved each other—yet Arturia had not seen this inescapably unrighteous action as a betrayal; this had all happened because the King had concealed her gender. The one who had to carry the burden of this conflict all her life was Guinevere.

Arturia had understood the severity of this sacrifice, and expressed thankfulness to her (2). There was also guilt in it. But for Lancelot who had fallen in love with her, she had even felt relief. This person who had the same ideals as the King would not cause the country to fall into a dangerous situation; she believed that he would share the burden with her. And in truth, he had indeed done so. Though he had fallen into the dilemma of having stepped onto an unrighteous path, he had supported Guinevere from the dark, supported the King.

That he had been exposed like a piece of ugly news, causing the two to have to stand opposed, was the single-handed plan of the traitors who hated Camelot. Because Lancelot could not sit and watch as the girl he loved was killed, Arturia could not but deal with him in the capacity of a king.

No one was wrong, but precisely because everyone was right, a tragedy had occurred.

In that case, Arturia had always fought upright with the status of a King to the very end.

Therefore, when facing the battlefield on the hill that had been dyed red with blood, she was able to argue with Heaven about the unfairness of fate.

If one carried out all the paths of striving for something, but could not obtain the right result, then it was definitely Heaven who was at fault.

In that case, she could only forever lift her head up high if the Grail that can fulfil miracles existed. Precisely because she believed — therefore she fought.

But—

"▄▃▂▄▅▅▉▉〓！！”

Before Arondight’s relentless attack, Saber’s holy sword gave out a groan. Her sword of light that promised victory—it had long since become meaningless, in the hands of its owner who had lost the will to fight. Berserker constantly rebuked Saber, who was unable to counterattack and could only defend. At this point he had already completely unleashed his true ability, and his skill with the sword was completely incomparable with his previous level. Even if Saber had been uninjured right now, she might not have been able to withstand that strong momentum.

But in the face of her opponent’s ferocious attack, and the sense of pain in her hands and legs that had long since become numb, Saber remained unmoved. The enemy’s strong prowess that was many times greater than her own, and his merciless attack, were gradually causing her spirit to crumble.

''Ahah, my friend… Is this your true intention?''

''Do you despair thus at fate? Are you truly using hatred to curse the king and country that brought you despair?''

''Once we had embraced the same dream, and put our lives on the line for the sake of saving the country.''

''If there was no difference in our ambition, then why do you hate thus? Do you regret now?''

—One cannot lead by salvation alone—

''No. Tell me it is not like this.''

''Lancelot. Only you. I hope you can understand, because you truly are the people’s ideal knight.''

''I hope that you can nod in agreement that our methods are entirely correct…''

—Abandoning the people who have lost their way, desiring to become a saint on one’s own—

"Stop!!”

Relying on the last of her reason, Saber blocked the black sword that fell heavily down; at the same time, she used all her strength to shout.

"Stop… please…”

Within the sound of sobbing, her knees fell weakly to the ground.

She couldn’t move; she had reached her limit. There was no way to defend against the next attack.

Perhaps this was the only salvation.

Since he was thus unwilling, thus filled with hatred—in that case, apart from using her body to receive the sharp sword that he swung, there was no other method of recompense.

At the exact moment that Saber decided to completely abandon resistance—suddenly, Berserker stopped moving.

Saber and Berserker could not have known that about ten seconds ago, the Crest Worms within the body of Kariya — who was hiding in the equipment room of the underground parking area – had ceased their activity. In order to sustain Berserker in the physical reality, the prana in Kariya’s body — which had already been in short supply — was absorbed in great amounts, and this need for prana was multiplied manifold when the final Noble Phantasm was unleashed. Finally, the Crest Worms were exhausted by their too-heavy burden.

And the backup prana, that could originally have sustained the Servant in physical form for several hours in the circumstance that the Master was not around, had also been consumed completely in ten seconds due to Berserker’s outburst (1). In this instant, the prana that drove this killing machine suddenly dried up, causing Berserker to come to an emergency halt as if having malfunctioned.

In the abrupt silence, Saber’s hand could clearly feel Berserker’s gradually fading heartbeat. The hilt of her sword tightly gripped in her hand, the sharp blade of her beloved sword pierced the black armor.

This ending was truly too ironic; who could have foreseen it?

In this fleeting instant, the victory had been decided; a slight feeling of greed made Saber ashamed of herself, and she could not but shed tears.

She knew that she should not have killed him, but had nevertheless struck a killing blow on this person that should not have been killed. Now Saber was only a prisoner to an idea—just like Diarmuid had rebuked her at the last moment, she who had stepped over countless corpses desired only the miracles of the wish-granting machine. This was the truest face of Saber in this moment.

"Even thus, I still want the Grail.”

Tears fell onto trembling gauntlets, mingling with the blood of Berserker which had slid down the blade.

"If I do not do this, my friend… If I do not do this, then I will be unable to give you any sort of recompense at all.”

"—Saddening indeed. Things have come to this, and you still make excuses to fight?”

A voice that inspired nostalgia.

She raised her head to look across. The knight’s gaze was just as it was before, calm as the tranquil surface of a lake as he looked upon the King’s tear-stained face. Having discarded the contract with his Master, in the time before he vanished, he had been released from the spell of madness.

"Lancelot…”

"Yes… Thank you. Perhaps, this is the only way I can convey my longing.”

Looking upon the sword that pierced his body with a gaze filled with compassion, Lancelot smiled wryly as he continued to speak.

"Actually… at that time I had hoped that you would personally punish me. My King… At that time I really wished that you would denounce me out of your own anger…”

The traitor knight, Lancelot who was called the culprit of the split of the Round Table — thus he spoke with sorrow to his only friend, who had never blamed him even until the very end.

"If I could have been punished by you… If you had demanded recompense from me… Then I would definitely believe in redemption… I would definitely believe that one day I can find a way to forgive myself. … The Queen is probably the same…”

This was—the regret of one man and one woman. They embraced the same ideal as the King, but because they had been too weak, they had not been able to carry this ideal through.

And these two people had, even in death, not been able to obtain salvation. They had blamed themselves deeply for having betrayed a most important person, and the burden of this self-blame they had carried for a lifetime.

Pain such as this—to whom could it have been told? Exactly what kind of admonishment, and dealt to whom, could have given them respite?

Sighing deeply, Lancelot relaxed his body, falling into the embrace of the King. The body in her arms was very light; Saber could not but feel a lump in her throat. The Servant’s gradually fading body seemed to be almost weightless.

"Even though it is in this way, in the end I still did borrow your chest…”

As if dreaming during a nap, the Knight of the Lake quietly whispered and sighed.

"To die in the King’s arms, before the King’s eyes… haha, like this it is really… as if I am a loyal knight…”

"You - shouldn't say that - "

Saber anxiously answered. Before he disappeared, there was something that she needed to tell him. She hoped that he would understand.

Not ‘as if’. It was ‘indeed is’.

She wanted to tell him, you are a loyal knight. No one knows better than I—the sincerity you devoted to the country, to the King.

So there was no more need for self-reproach. Even if it had been a mistake that was not allowed to be made—your character is not something that can be overturned by a single mistake.

I don’t want to shame you; I don’t want to lose you. Precisely because I have this wish, I can truly deny this so-called crime that you have committed.

These were Arturia’s true thoughts, but—could not become that knight’s salvation.

The knight closed his eyes as if sleeping soundly; his body was gradually dissipating. Saber saw that he was about to vanish, but nevertheless could not think of what would be the right thing to say.

"Lancelot, actually you…!”

You are not a sinner—but what significance would such words still hold for him?

Even if someone denied his crime, the one most caught up in this wrongdoing was not anyone else, but Lancelot himself.

Why had she been unaware of this lonely thought of his? Why had she been unable to release the noble spirit of this knight from a self-reproach that bordered on madness?

—A King will not understand someone else’s feelings—

These words that she had heard as she left the Round Table—who had spoken them?

The knight’s dead body did not say anything more; alongside the last remaining light, he vanished.

"—wait… wait… Lance—“

Staring at the crook of her arm that had lost its weight and was now empty, Saber began sobbing.

She could not even make a sound. She did not allow herself to make even the slightest sound. In the last moment that she had been facing a loyal knight, she had actually been unable to say even a word of reassurance—then what right had she to cry now?

A King can only be lonely and proud—

This she had said to herself; as she searched for the path to her kingdom’s salvation, exactly how many people’s opinions and troubles had she neglected?

Gawain who had heroically sacrificed himself, Galahad who had lost his life in the line of duty—what did they think of, in their last moment? Did they leave this world with the same regret and unwillingness? Why was she so certain that that was not true?

Saber cried soundlessly, tormented as if countless thorns were piercing her heart.

Could it be that she as a King should never have been high above—

If things had been thus, would it not have brought about a broken end? Could everyone be saved?

"... It isn’t finished.”

From her sobbing throat—that was the determined voice of a constantly victorious King.

"It can be compensated for… It’s not too late… I still have the Grail. I still have the miracle that can overturn fate…”

Leaning upon the sword of victory, Saber stood up.

Even if she was unable to listen to the hearts of people, even if she was rebuked for being a proud and aloof King—none of that mattered at all.

Even thus, as long as she could win the victory for her homeland and her subjects with her own hands, it would be enough—this was what she asked of herself, what she must do as a ‘King’.

As long as she could obtain the Grail, everything could be made up for; all the previous mistakes could be righted.

Now this belief was everything to Saber who had chosen the path of the King.

Covered with wounds, Saber stepped forward.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Fate/Zero:Act_16_Part_6|Act 16, Part 6]]
| Return to [[Fate/Zero|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Fate/Zero:Act_16_Part_8|Act 16, Part 8]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Fate/Zero:Act 16 Part 8

2018-01-21T04:51:27Z

Toshiya: /* -03:52:07 */

=== -03:52:07 ===

The killing continued.

With bullets. With knives, with poisons, with explosives.

Piercing. Cutting apart. Burning. Drowning. Crushing.

He never doubted the meaning of it, not even once; he carefully conjectured the worth; the ones on the sunken side of the balance must be saved, and the other side must be emptied, so he killed. He kept killing, and killing, and killing.

Yes, that was correct. The many should be saved, and the sacrifices should be recognized. If the number of joys that were protected can go beyond the increasing number of misfortunes, then hasn't the world moved just a little closer to its salvation?

Even if innumerable corpses were accumulated at his feet.

As long as lives were saved. The ones that were protected were surely priceless.

"- That's right, Kiritsugu. You are correct."

Suddenly, he saw his wife at his side. With a smile filled with gentle kindness, she drew closer to him. Standing next to Kiritsugu, together on top of the mountain of corpses.

"I knew that you would come. I believed in you, knowing that you would arrive here eventually."

"Iri - "

It was a nostalgic and lovely face. Yet there was something that bothered him.

Was it the black dress that he had never seen before? There was that, too. However, he could not stop the feeling that he was overlooking something more important.

That's right; what happened to Saber? What happened to the remaining three teams of enemies? What happened to Kotomine Kirei? There were far too many questions. Which one should he start with?

Helplessly, Kiritsugu asked the question that came to his mind first.

"Where is - this?"

"This is the place where your wish is to be granted. This is the inside of the Grail you sought."

Irisviel answered with a welcoming smile. Kiritsugu was lost for words, and looked around him.

A pulsating sea of black mud.

Rotten corpses formed sunken mountains here and there.

The sky was crimson. Crimson like blood. In the descending rain of black mud, a jet-black Sun held up the Heavens.

The blowing winds were curses and resentment.

If one had to liken it to a word, then - how can this be anything but Hell?

"You're saying... this is the Holy Grail?"

"That's right. But you don't have to be afraid. This is still something like a shapeless dream. All it is waiting for is to be born."

Look, there - Irisviel pointed to the sky. At the center of this world, there was a swirl of deep black that he originally thought was a Sun, a "hole" that pierced the Heavens. A hole filled to the brim with a bottomless and heavy darkness. An incredible mass that seemed able to crush all.

"That is the Holy Grail. It has yet to obtain a shape, but the vessel has already been sufficiently filled. All that's needed is to announce the prayer. No matter what wish you may ask of it, it will choose to take a form most fitting to realize it. Then, once it obtains form and shape in the modern era, it will be able to go 'outside' for the first time."

"..."

"So please. Please hurry and give it a 'figure'. You are a human fit to define its nature. Kiritsugu, announce your wish to the Grail."

Kiritsugu wordlessly gazed at that repulsive "hole".

The thing that was there wasn't something that could possibly be tolerated by any human with proper sensibilities. So why was it that Irisviel can smile so calmly? Yes, more than everything, that smile felt out of place.

After all -

"...Who are you?"

Stifling his sense of dread with anger, Kiritsugu asked his wife who was standing before him.

"If the preparations of the Grail are in order, then Irisviel should already be lost to me. If that's the case, then just who are you?"

"I am Irisviel. There is no problem in thinking that."

The muzzle of the magecraft gun in Kiritsugu's right hand - the Contender that he had been grasping tightly the whole time since the battle with Kirei - was thrust at his opponent.

"Don't dodge the question. Answer me!"

Before the bloodthirsty muzzle, the woman in the black dress simply smiled with loneliness. As though she took pity on Kiritsugu for demanding such things.

"...True. I can't deny that this is a mask. If I don't put on an existing personality as a 'shell', we wouldn't be able to comprehend one another. I had to take this form in order to convey to you my desire.

But the personality of Irisviel which I recorded is unmistakably genuine. Just before she was extinguished, the last thing she touched was me. That is why I inherited Irisviel's last desire; because it is my duty to personify her wish to 'remain this way'."

With that confession, Kiritsugu understood, not as a theory but an instinct.

In this place that had been called the "inside of the Holy Grail", an existence which would call itself "someone who was no one" would be -

" - Are you, the will of the Holy Grail?"

"Yes, that interpretation is not incorrect."

The thing in the form of Irisviel nodded in approval. On the other hand, Kiritsugu further furrowed his brows in restless bewilderment.

"That's ridiculous. The Holy Grail can't be anything more than a colorless 'force'. There's no way it can have a will."

"That might have been so before. But it's different now. I have a will, and a desire. The will to 'be born into this world'."

"That can't be..."

Strange - something was strange.

If this was the truth, then this thing isn't the convenient "wishing machine" that Kiritsugu had sought.

" - If you have a will, then I'll ask you this. How does the Holy Grail plan to grant my desire?"

As though she was asked something incredibly strange, Irisviel tilted her head.

"That? - Isn't that something you, Kiritsugu, know better than anyone else?"

"...What did you say?"

"The nature of a human being like you is infinitely close to mine. That is why you can preserve your rationality even after being connected to me. The mind of a normal human would have collapsed the moment they are washed over by that mud."

Irisviel spoke, cheerfully, brightly, as though in celebration.

For some reason, that smile could not help but disturb Kiritsugu's heart.

"The way to save the world? Haven't you already understood that a long time ago? That is why I, as according to what you have built up, will inherit that nature, and achieve what you had prayed for."

"What are you - talking about?"

Kiritsugu could not understand. He did not want to understand, not even if he was mistaken.

"Answer me. What is the Holy Grail planning to do? What is it going to start if it descends onto the modern era?!"

At this exchange of endless disagreements, Irisviel sighed as though in resignation, and nodded.

" - It can't be helped. From now on, I will have to ask from inside yourself."

She held her white and graceful palm over Kiritsugu's eyes -

And the world blacked out.

Two ships floated on the ocean.

One ship had three hundred people. The other had two hundred people. There were five hundred crew members and passengers in total, as well as Emiya Kiritsugu. For the sake of argument, these five hundred and one are set up as the last survivors of the human race.

Now, Emiya Kiritsugu shall take charge of this role-play, and address the following propositions.

''Critically-large holes have opened up in the bilges of both ships at the same time. Only Kiritsugu possesses the skill to repair the ships. In the time it takes to repair one ship, the other will sink. Now then, which ship will you fix?''

"...The one with three hundred aboard, of course."

''After you make that decision, the two hundred aboard the other ship capture you and make this demand. "Fix this ship first". Now then, what will you do?''

"I..."

Before he could speak his reply, the Calico sub-machine gun appeared in Kiritsugu's hand.

Flames savagely spouted from its muzzle, as though the machine could act automatically; Kiritsugu watched over it, dumbfounded.

A single bullet spat out perforated four people, and in an instant, all two hundred people were massacred.

''- Correct. That is what's expected from Emiya Kiritsugu.''

Kiritsugu watched in a daze as the ship with a mountain of stacked corpses sunk. He got the feeling that every one of the corpses scattered on the deck had faces that he recognized.

''Now then, the surviving three hundred people abandon the damaged ship, split onto two new ships, and continue their voyage. This time, one ship has two hundred people, the other has one hundred people. And yet once again, holes open up in the bilges of both ships at the same time.''

"Hold it..."

''The one hundred aboard the smaller ship abduct you, and coerce you to fix this ship first. Now then, what will you do?''

"But... that's..."

With the flash of a naked sword, a bomb burst, and one hundred people disappeared into watery graves. That was the way of Emiya Kiritsugu. As according to what he in the past had built up, he had accomplished the slaughter.

''- Correct.''

"That's... that's ridiculous!"

What had been correct about this?

Two hundred people survived. Three hundred people died for them - that was the complete opposite of the scales' balance needle.

''No, the calculation was not incorrect. You certainly chose the path to save the many and sacrifice the few. Now then, on to the next quest.''

Indifferent to Kiritsugu's protests, the Game Master continued.

One hundred twenty and eighty were balanced on the scales. Kiritsugu killed every single one of the eighty.

Next, it was eighty and forty. The Magus Killer ascertained the death throes of the forty. He remembered every face. They were the ones who had been killed by his hands in the past.

Sixty and twenty -

Twenty-five and fifteen - the choices continued. The sacrifices continued. The mountain of corpses accumulated.

"This... is what you wanted to show me?"

Even as Kiritsugu recalled his nausea at the aim of this vile game, he listened intently to the thing that called itself the "will of the Holy Grail".

''That's right. This is your truth. The answer within Emiya Kiritsugu. In other words, the acts that should be carried out by the Holy Grail as a wishing machine.''

"No!"

Kiritsugu shouted, with his hands stained by blood.

"I didn't wish for something like this! I wanted some other method... that's why I had no choice but to rely on a miracle..."

''A method you yourself are not aware of could not possibly be included into your desire. You wished for the salvation of the world; therefore, it can only be realized by the means you are aware of.''

"To hell with that! How is... this a miracle?!"

''It is a miracle. What you had once aspired for, the deed that you were unable to achieve alone will finally be carried out on a scope unreachable by the hands of men. This is nothing if not a miracle.''

Five remained. They were all valuable to Kiritsugu. However, he was pressed to choose either the three or the two.

Whimpering in despair, he pulled the trigger. The face of Emiya Noritaka was blown away. The gray matter of Natalia Kaminsky was scattered.

"You... you're going to descend onto the modern era, and do... this to the entire human race? This is the realization of my ideal?!"

''That's right. Your desire is a suitable form for the Holy Grail. Emiya Kiritsugu, you truly are suited to bear Angra Mainyu.''

Three remained. Will he save the two, or choose the one? He grasped the grip of his knife with shaking hands.

He had already run dry of tears; with empty eyes like those of a ghost, Kiritsugu tore apart the body of Hisau Maiya. Again and again, he swung the knife down.

And now, there were only two who survived in the world.

Two equal values which did not need to be weighed on the scales, which could not be measured. The last hope that he protected to the end, exchanged with the lives of four hundred and ninty-eight people.

Everything having been accomplished, Kiritsugu, dazed and husk-like, was embraced by the warmth of a hearth.

In a nostalgic, gentle, warm room, smiles bounced between the faces of his "wife" and "daughter".

In other words, this - is the world of tranquility which he had sought.

There would be no more conflicts, no one will have to be hurt; a perfected utopia.

"Welcome home, Kiritsugu. You're finally back!"

Shining with a face full of joy, Ilyasviel swung her small arms around her father's neck.

The castle enclosed by clouds in the uttermost north; this was the only place of tranquility.

At the end of a bloodstained life, he found a kindness which shouldn't even exist.

If this modest child's room was by itself the entirety of the world, then there would no longer be a need for discord.

" - See? You understand, don't you? This is the Holy Grail's realization of your prayer."

Sharing this moment of utter bliss with her husband, Irisviel smiled.

All that was needed, was to pray for it.

His wife can be awakened. His daughter can be brought back.

Before an amount of prana as good as infinite, it would be a simple miracle.

The only thing left was bliss. As the last remnant of humanity on this planet of death where everything had perished, the family of three can continue to live together in eternal happiness.

"...We, can't go looking for walnuts anymore..."

There was not even a snowy landscape outside the window, but simply a swirling back mud, like the bottom of the sea. At Kiritsugu's absentminded murmur, Ilyasviel shook her head.

"No, it's all right. I'll be fine as long as Kiritsugu and Mother are together with me."

Petting and hugging the head of the daughter he frantically loved, Kiritsugu cried out surging tears.

"Thank you... Daddy loves you too, Ilya. I swear, if nothing else, that that's true..."

Only the hands had moved without faltering. As though they had been mechanically structured that way. Beneath the small chin of his beloved daughter pressed the muzzle of the Contender.

"- Goodbye, Ilya."

The head of the puzzlingly staring little girl exploded with the sound of a gunshot.

On Kiritsugu's tear-stained cheeks landed a piece of meat entangled with silver hair.

Irisviel screamed. Tearing at her eyes, tossing her hair wildly, she cried out in fury, without control.

"Wha - what did you do - ?!"

His wife came reaching out to him with the face of a devil, but it was Kiritsugu who pressed down on her instead, entwining his fingers around that small throat.

"The Holy Grail is something that can't exist..."

No matter "what" was inside this woman, the personality of Irisviel it wore as a shell was real. The despair and lamentation of her daughter's murder; the hatred for the husband who killed her own child; they were unmistakably what the real Irisviel would have bore, her genuine emotions.

Staring at it, accepting it, Kiritsugu put all his strength into his two hands, and squeezed down on the neck of his wife.

"What are, you... why did you, reject the Grail, reject us... my Ilya... no, why?!"

"- Because, I -"

The voice that leaked out from his mouth was simply empty, like a wind blowing in through a crevice from a hollow cave. There was no sorrow. There was no anger. It was obvious. There was no longer anything inside Emiya Kiritsugu. He turned his back on the miracle he had pursued, and relinquished even the compensation for that betrayal. It was impossible for there to be anything inside him now.

"I - will save the world."

The only thing left, persisting to the very end, was the words of his belief. How hollow those ringing words were.

Irisviel stared at Kiritsugu as blood congested on her white face. The crimson eyes that would always look at him with nothing but affection and admiration were now painted by bottomless curses and resentment.

"- curse you -"

The five small fingers that had been so graceful grabbed onto Kiritsugu's shoulder. From the five fingers biting into him flowed in a black mud.

"Curse you... Emiya Kiritsugu... to pain... to regret until death... I will never, forgive you..."

"Yeah, that's fine."

The mud dyed in hatred circulated in his veins, flowing into his heart. It drenched the soul of the man who lost everything. Even so, Kiritsugu did not slacken his hands. Forgetting even the meaning of the tears along his cheeks, strangling the woman in the black dress, he told her.

"That's all right. It's already been said - I, will bear you."

Within his shaking hands, the woman's spine snapped and broke.

And once again, the landscape was altered.

- As the dream that had deeply violated his heart ended, it seemed to have lasted only for an instant.

Before he realized it, Kiritsugu was standing back in the stage warehouse.

In his right hand was the Contender with its firing hammer still raised. Kotomine Kirei was before his eyes, having fallen unconscious while still kneeling.

Kiritsugu looked up to the ceiling and gazed at the black mud that was still dripping down all around him, charring the floor. Probably, it was that both Kiritsugu and, at the same time, Kirei, were washed over by the mud. It was very likely that their eyes saw the same thing.

If that mud was the content pouring out from the Holy Grail - then the vessel had undoubtedly continued the ritual of advent the entire time, on top of the Concert Hall stage on the floor above them.

He needed to hurry.

Kirei regained his consciousness, tried to stand, and was hindered by the muzzle of Kiritsugu's gun pressing on his back.

Immediately understanding the situation, a bitter laugh slipped out from Kirei's mouth at the ironic circumstances. They had been in such a hard-fought, life-and-death struggle; and in the end, what had decided the outcome was nothing more than simply who happened to awaken first by chance.

Or perhaps - it was logical that the one who ended the nightmare with his own will, would be the first to awaken.

"...You are such a fool that I can't understand it. Why did you reject it?"

It was a restrained voice, hiding his anger and hatred. For the first time, Emiya Kiritsugu heard Kotomine Kirei's voice directly.

"...Did that thing look agreeable to you?"

It was a dry and hoarse voice, so worn down it sounded hollow. For the first time, Kotomine Kirei heard Emiya Kiritsugu's voice directly.

They had both touched the thing that was submerged in the Holy Grail and understood its true form. Kiritsugu and the will of the Holy Grail had understood one another; Kirei saw that with his own eyes. And Kiritsugu's choice was, to Kirei, far beyond comprehension or tolerance.

"You... you must have arrived at this place by throwing it all away, sacrificing everything! It's something that you had to do all that to obtain - how can you just make it worthless now?!"

"The things that must be sacrificed for it are more severe than the things it can bring about - that's all there is to it."

"In that case, yield it to me!"

It was then that Kirei drew out the hatred from the bottom of his heart for Emiya Kiritsugu - for the man who he had once thought might bear a resemblance to himself, but who now was so very much his utter opposite.

"Even if it's unnecessary to you, I have a use for it! With ''that''... if that thing is born, it can definitely bring an answer to all my doubts!"

Kirei knew of Kiritsugu's intentions. He understood what this man, who had been so resolute in rejecting the wishing machine that he laid his hands on even his most beloved, would do next. And that, was something he cannot possibly forgive. All of Kotomine Kirei's wanderings up until this day were being put on the line.

"Just don't kill it! ''It'' wishes for its own life, to be born!"

Forbidden from even turning around, the priest implored intensely; the assassin looked down at him with an icy gaze.

"Yeah, and you - you're just too much of a fool to understand."

His finger slipped onto the trigger, squeezing it, and the firing hammer punched into the primer of the .30-06 Springfield bullet.

Gunfire and a thunderous roar flashed for an instant.

With a single faultless round, Kiritsugu shot Kotomine Kirei's heart from behind.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Fate/Zero:Act_16_Part_7|Act 16, Part 7]]
| Return to [[Fate/Zero|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Fate/Zero:Act_16_Part_9|Act 16, Part 9]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Date A Live:Tập 3 Chương 1

2017-12-27T23:08:20Z

Toshiya: Reverted edits by 162.158.178.42 (talk) to last revision by Nguyenduytuan52

Liếm đôi môi, cô cảm nhận vị của mồ hôi...

Kết giới bao bọc xunh quanh có thể kiểm soát được mọi thứ: trọng lực, độ ẩm, nhiệt độ, nói chung là vật chất trong vũ trụ này.
Tuy nhiên, nếu một ai đó muốn biết lý do mồ hôi xuất hiện, họ phải xem xét các yếu tố bền ngoài, ví dụ như nhiệt độ, độ ẩm, mức độ vận động...

Hoặc trong trường hợp này: Sự hoảng loạng!

"..........."

Tobiichi Origami nuốt nước bọt, có thể xem hành động đó là một sự cố gắng để tự điều chỉnh hơi thở của cô, đồng thời nắm chặt hơn chuôi của thanh kiếm laser <No Pain> trong tay.

Tại thời điểm này, trên người Origami không phải là bộ đồng phục học sinh như bình thường, mà là một bộ chiến giáp, các mạch đều được nối với Realizer, thiết bị dành cho những chiến binh hiện đại.

Họ đều phải trang bị thứ đó, vì nó là nguồn năng lượng chính cho áo giáp cơ giới.

Với những trang bị như vậy trên người, họ có thể mở rộng kết giới theo ý muốn, hoặc nói một cách đơn giản hơn, họ đã trở thành những siêu nhân.

Tuy vậy, tại thời điểm đó, trong tình huống như vậy, dù đã là siêu nhân nhưng Origami đã bị dồn vào một góc nhỏ.

"—Uwaaaaaaaa!?"

"......Tch."

Đáp lại tiếng rên rỉ của đồng đội từ thiết bị liên lạc, Tobiichi hít thở nhẹ nhàng nhưng sâu. Đúng vậy, họ là thành viên của AST, tuy đông nhưng đã bị một bóng hình quen thuộc áp đảo. Tất cả đồng đội của cô đều đã ngã gục.

"..........Ku"

Che giấu chỉ số thể trạng hiện tại của mình, Origami ngầm ra lệnh trong đầu cô.

Cùng lúc ấy, kết giới của Origami phát sáng, màn hình hiển thị những khoảng khắc mà thị lực của một con người bình thường không bao giờ có thể thấy được.

Đó là một đặc khu, gần Tenguu, nơi cơ sở JGSDF tọa lạc, cơ sở đào tạo đặc biệt.

Nơi đây là khu vực tập luyện của Origami và những đồng đội AST khác, họ chỉ vào khi đã trang bị CR-Unit, đó là một khu vực đặc biệt.

Và đứng ở trung tâm của đống đổ nát ấy, một cô gái với mái tóc cột búi gọn gàng đứng nhìn một cách bình tĩnh.

"Takamiya Mana"

Nhắc thầm lại tên của cô gái ấy, Origami quan sát một lần nữa người mà đang đứng với một thể thủ hoàn hảo trước mặt cô.

Tuổi cô gái ấy vào khoảng 14 - 15. Dưới con mắt bên trái là một nốt ruồi, hiện rõ trên khuôn mặt ngây thơ ấy.

Tuy nhiên, bao bọc lấy cơ thể nhỏ nhắn ấy là một bộ chiến giáp, khá đáng yêu nhưng hoàn toàn khác lạ với CR-Unit (chiến giáp mà AST sử dụng).

Đó là một thứ hơi khác với mô hình chiến giáp mà Tobiichi và đồng đội đang sử dụng. Trên vai là một thứ trông như lá chắn được cách tân. Nó (bộ chiến giáp) được làm từ mẫu mới hơn so với CR-Unit.

"Này, kẻ cuối cùng còn lại. Bất kể mi đang trốn ở xó nào, hãy ra đây mau!"

Mana nói một cách đơn giản, hoàn toàn không để ý gì tới những thành viên còn lại của AST đang nằm la liệt xung quanh nơi em ấy đứng.

Đó là một sức mạnh áp đảo tuyệt đối. Đún vậy, đó chính là sức mạnh đã tiêu diệt được một tinh linh.

Em ấy đã được đưa đến cơ sở này vào cuối tháng trước.

Mọi người nói rằng em chính là con át chủ bài của JGSDF.

Họ còn nói rằng, em ấy có kỹ năng kiểm soát Realizer hàng đầu trên thế giới.

Em đã giết chết một tinh linh.

Chỉ dựa vào tin đồn, điều này thật sự bất thường.

Tuy nhiên, ngay trong lần ra mắt đầu tiên, em đã thách thức mọi người:"Ở đây có ai có thể đánh bại tôi không?. Bất cứ ai?" Tất nhiên, những thành viên AST, vốn mang niềm tự hào mình là những chiến binh siêu đẳng ở khu vực này, không một ai có thể để yên vụ đó được.

Vì vậy, lấy cớ tìm hiểu khả năng của Mana, một cuộc tập trận một-chọi-mười đã được sắp xếp.

Thật ra, ban đầu Origami không quan tâm điều này....

".........."

Hoàn toàn im lặng, Origami nhớ lại cuộc trò chuyện của cô với Mna vào ngày hôm trước.

Ngày mà Mana được chuyển đến Tenguu, trong lúc Origami và mọi người đang xem lại những thước phim chiến đấu trước đó của chính họ.

Lúc đó, Mana đã nhìn vào màn hình trình chiếu và nói:

"Nii-sama!"

Origami quả thực chưa từng nghe đến chuyện Shidou có một người em gái như Mana. Sau khi trình bày vấn đề này với Mana, em ấy có vẻ bị sốc.

(Trung sĩ Tobiichi biết nii-sama? Ừm.. được thôi, điều kiện để tôi kể với cô về điều này, đó là hãy tham gia cuộc tập trận.)

Sau cuộc trò chuyện ấy, Tobiichi quả thực không còn lựa chọn nào khác.

Cuối cùng, cô đã tham gia vào cuộc tập trận.

Và kết quả là những gì đã diễn ra ở đây cho đến thời điểm hiện tại.

Chín thành viên trong đội đã khụy, chỉ còn lại một mình Origami, đã mất gần như toàn bộ trang bị trên người, chỉ còn lại thanh kiếm laser <No Pain>, công cụ chiến đấu xáp lá cà.

Ngược lại, Mana dường như vẫn chưa bị ảnh hưởng gì.

"Này, thời điểm quyết định sắp trôi qua rồi, cô biết không?"

Mana thở dài nói.

Không phải là cách hay khi cứ mãi trốn tránh, Origami đành phải bay ra để đối mặt với Mana.

"Oh, thế này thì xác cmn định nhé."

"..........."

Cầm chặt vũ khí duy nhất còn lại của mình, thanh <No pain>, Origami không còn lựa chọn nào khác ngoài việc đánh cận chiến.

Cô kích hoạt trình tự chiến đấu từ trong đầu mình, khởi động động cơ đẩy sau lưng. Nghiêng người về phía trước, cô như một quả đạn bắn vào không trung với một tốc độ kinh hoàng.

"Một đòn đơn giản. Tôi thích cô giống như bây giờ."

Nghiêng tới như một cánh hoa hồng, lá chắn trên vai Mana từ từ chuyển đổi, nó biến thành hai trang bị cố định vào cánh tay.

"<Murakumo>-Twin Blade Mode".

Ngay lập tức, một lưỡi ánh sáng hình bán nguyệt xuất hiện.

Dù vậy, Origami vẫn không ngừng lại.

Cô tăng tốc hơn nữa, ngắm thẳng về phía Mana.

Đưa <No Pain> lên ngang đầu...

Origami biết rằng cô sẽ thua nếu cứ tiếp tục thế này.

"Ngay lúc này!"

"........"

Ngay lập tức, kết giới của Orgami thu nhỏ lại.

Kết giới với bán kính ba mét chỉ 1s trước, giờ đây đã giảm xuống chỉ còn 1/10.

Tất cả những phần của động cơ phản lực ở bên ngoài kết giới lấy lại trong lượng ban đầu của chúng.

Cũng lúc đó, động cơ bị ngắt hoàn toàn khỏi khối năng lượng mà Origami mang trên lưng, thanh <No Pain> di chuyển sượt qua khủy tay của Mana.

"Cái....?"

Những điều này hoàn toàn bất ngờ đối với Mana, em mở to mắt nhìn.

Những động cơ bị mất điều khiển kéo Mana rơi xuống như một viên đạn khổng lồ.

"Tch! Còn non lắm...!"

Mana lấy lại bình tĩnh, dùng lưỡi dao laser cắt bỏ động cơ bị mất điều khiển.

Tia lửa bắn ra xung quanh, 2 động cơ đẩy của 2 người rơi xuống đất, bốc khói cuồn cuộn.

Nhưng đây mới thực sự là điều mà Origami chờ đợi.

Lưỡi <No Pain> tái xuất ngay phía sau Mana, nhằm vào phần năng lượng chính.

Đúng như mục tiêu mà Origami đã nhắm đến, lưỡi <No Pain> để lại một vệt sáng trên CR-Unit của Mana.

Tuy nhiên....

"Cái....?"

Origami không thể nói nên lời.

Ngay lập tức, lưỡi dao laser của Mana kết nối với toàn bộ hệ thống còn lại, cơ thể cô trong một tư thế như đang cọ xát với nhiều thứ, Origami đứng hình hoàn toàn.

"Fuu... Xém chết."

Mana quay đầu về phía Origami, nháy mắt.

Origami cực kỳ khó thở. Không thể nhầm vào đâu được, Mana đã ngắt hệ thống của Origami, chỉ với trang bị cá nhân còn lại.

Đó là điều mà không ai ngờ tới được.

Trong khoảng thời gian phản ứng của Mana, cô hoàn toàn có thể giết Origami chỉ với việc thêm vào một động tác đơn giản, ngay sau khi đã vô hiệu hóa chiến giáp của cô ấy. Lúc đó, Mana hoàn toàn ở bên trong kết giới của Origami.

"Quá tệ. Chiếu bí."

Mana từ từ quay người lại, kề lưỡi dao laser vào vai Origami.

Tiếng còi báo hiệu vang lên. Sau đó, tiếng nói từ noi nào không rõ vang vọng trên chiến trường.

"Tập trận kết thúc. Người chiến thắng là thiếu úy Takamiya Mana."

Sau cuộc tập trận.

Origami trở về kho chứa bên trong cở sở. Cô sắp xếp lại những ý nghĩ ngỗn ngang trong đầu, đồng thời, nhìn chằm chằm xuống đất.

Và khi nhớ lại cảm giác vài phút trước, cô nắm chặt nắm đấm.

"........"

Do đã tắt kết giới, cô cảm thấy cơ thể mình vô cùng nặng nề. Chỉ việc nâng cao cánh tay và và siết chặt nấm đấm thôi cũng khiến Origami cảm thấy khó khăn như đang bơi lội trong một chất bùn nhớt.

Và trong vô thức, Origami lại siết chặt hơn nữa nấm đấm của mình, có lẽ do cảm giác tồi tệ đó gây ra.

"Takamiya - Mana"

Như đã biết từ trước, cô ta có có kỹ năng điều khiển kết giới một cách linh hoạt và chính xác đến như vậy. Quả thực, Origami đã gặp phải một thiên tài, một đối thủ không thể thắng được.

Nhưng điều này cũng đáng để ăn mừng. Vì giờ đây Mana đã làm việc cho đội AST Nhật Bản, đội mà Origami thuộc về. Mana cũng có cùng mục tiêu như Origami: tiêu diệt các tinh tinh. Nếu có Mana hổ trợ,Origami sẽ sớm đạt được mục đích bấy lâu nay của mình.

Nhưng dù đã nghĩ như vậy, vẫn có một cảm giác khó chịu bên trong Origami, có thể nói đó là một sự thất vọng. Và nó đang ngày càng lớn hơn, sâu thẳm bên trong trái tim cô.

"..... Cô ta... thực sự quá mạnh."

Origami nói khi nhìn chằm chằm vào bàn tay nắm chặt của mình. Cùng lúc đó, có tiếng nói vọng xuống từ trên cao.

"Cô cũng ngon lành lắm, Thượng sĩ Origami."

Vội vàng ngẩn mặt lên, Mana, không biết từ khi nào đã đến gần, đang mặc trên người bộ chiến giáp với 2 cốc nước trên 2 tay.

"Đừng để ý."

Sau khi nói vậy, Mana đưa cốc nước ở tay trái mình về phía Origami.

"........"

Mặc dù vừa ngắt kết giới của mình, Mana trông như không có vẻ gì mệt mỏi hay khó chịu như Origami.

Origami nhìn Mana một cách ngờ vực, nhưng đồng thời lại nhận cốc nước trong tay Mana.

Mana gật đầu thỏa mãn, em nói tiếp sau khi uống một ngụm nước.

"Cho cô biết một sự thật, dù chỉ cách vài mm từ lưỡi kiếm của cô đến tôi, nhưng trong một thời gian dài trước đây không ai từng làm được như vậy.

Đó không phải là một lời mỉa mai, đó hoàn toàn chỉ là một lời đánh giá của Mana về khả năng của Origami.

"Tôi có thể làm gì để được mạnh như cô nhỉ??"

Origami hỏi Mana, trông cô như thể đang gặp rắc rối vì 2 đường chân mày nhíu lại đến mức chạm nhau và vướng vào nhau.

"Tôi nghe nói cô đã giết được một tinh linh. Cô có thể kể chi tiết hơn không?"

Mana dường như có phản ứng với từ "giết".

"Giết... một tinh linh. Ừm... điều đó không hẳn là sai..."

Nghe được một câu trả lời có vẻ không chắc chắn, Tobiichi nghiêng đầu.

"Sao cơ?"

"Ừm... trường hợp này có hơi khác biệt so với cái tinh linh khác. Cô vẫn muốn nghe chứ?"

"Bất cứ điều gì, dù nó nhỏ như thế nào đi nữa."

"Hmm... nó không quan trọng lắm. Mặc dụ điều này không được phép noi cho người khác. Nhưng trong tương lai gần, cô sẽ tìm thấy cơ hội cho chính cô để biết được điều đó. Tôi đã ghi chép vào đây cho vài lý do đặc biệt, dù bị cấm.

Tobiichi hiểu rằng Mana không được tiết lộ quá nhiều về điều đó, cô nghiên đầu một lần nữa.

“Tôi nghe nói cô được điều tới đây để cải thiện sức chiến đấu của đội chúng tôi?”

“Điều đó không phải hoàn toàn sai. Tôi được điều tới đây để kiểm tra và theo dõi một tinh linh đặc biệt.”

“Tinh linh đặc biệt?”

“Đúng. Tôi dành toàn bộ thời gian của mình để theo đuổi một tinh linh rất tàn ác. Mật danh của nó là…”

Mana đang nó thì.....

Bụp! Bụp!

Đầu của cả hai bị đánh một cách không thương tiếc.

“….ssssss”

“Á đau…”

Mana và Tobiichi cùng quay đầu sang phải cùng lúc.

Người đứng ở vị trí thực hiện hai cú headshot đó là đội trưởng đội AST, đang mặc quân phục của JGSDF, Kusakabe Ryoko, trong
tay cô là cuốn sách bìa khá dày.

“Cả 2 đứa…”

Các mạch máu trên trán cô đang căn ra, thể hiện một sự tức giận tột độ. Cô chỉ vào đống sắt vụng công nghệ cao được lấy ra từ bãi rác (à quên, chiến trường).

Đó là 2 động cơ phản lực mà Tobiichi và Mana đã dùng lúc nãy.

“Chị chưa hét với 2 em rằng đó chỉ là tập trận thôi sao? Tại sao 2 đứa lại phá hủy những trang thiết bị đắt tiền như vầy chứ?”

Cả 2 tránh nhìn vào mắt của Ryouko vào trả lời.

“Em dùng động tác giả để phục kích thiếu tá Takamiya nhưng không thành công.”

“Dù cho đó là tập trận, nhưng nếu không đánh hết sức thì không thể thu thập được dữ liệu chính xác về năng lực chiến đấu của
nhau. Em nghĩ là vậy.”

Thế là mỗi người được tặng thêm một cú đập thần thánh từ cuốn sách trên tay của chị đội trưởng.

“Thật là một cách nhìn sâu sắc thú vị. Thử nghiên cứu về khoảng tiền để bù đắp thiệt hại cho thiết bị mà 2 đứa đã phá hủy hôm nay
xem. 2 đứa cũng biết là ngân sách của chị đây có hạn mà.”

“Đã hiểu”

“Đã rõ”

“Nếu thật sự là như vậy….”

Ryouko nhún vai rời đi sau khi để lại một câu nói:”Lần sau nhớ cẩn thận hơn.”

Sau khi đội trưởng đi khuất, Mana bực mình bĩu môi.

“Thực ra mà nói, truyền trưởng-dono (???) còn khó đối phó hơn cả lũ tinh linh.”

“Tôi đồng ý.”

Origami gật đầu, thế là Mana vui vẻ cười toe toét.

“Tôi thấy chúng ta có thể chiến đấu cùng nhau rất tốt, trung sĩ Tobiichi Origami. Tôi là người khắc chế tinh linh và những kẻ thù tương tự nếu có. Nếu chúng ta hợp tác ăn ý, chúng ta có thể giành chiến thắng ngay khi có cơ hội.

Cô nhún vai sau khi nói xong.

Origami không nói gì, nhìn lại gương mặt của Mana một lần nữa.

Đúng như cô nghĩ, từ ngoại hình đến tính cách, cả hai đều hoàn toàn khớp với Shidou.

Nhưng… Shidou chỉ có một đứa em gái…

Dù cho không hề nói chuyện với nhau, nhưng chỉ cần nhìn thấy Isuka kotori một vài lần trước đây, Origami cũng đã có thể khẳng định rằng 2 người họ khác nhau hoàn toàn.

Tuy nhiên, theo dữ liệu ghi chép về Shidou của Origami, khả năng Mana là em gái của Shidou không hẳn là hoàn toàn có thể bị bác bỏ.

“Thiếu tá Takamiya.”

Origami hỏi một cách tự nhiên.

Hãy thực hiện lời hứa của cô. Nói cho tôi biết về mối qua hệ thực sự của cô và Shidou.”

“Shidou? Ai vậy?”

Mana nghiêng đầu hỏi. Điều này không bình thường chút nào. Origami tiếp tục trong khi khá ngạc nhiên.

“Vài ngày trước, lúc đang xem lại dữ liệu về trận chiến với Hermit, cô đã gọi tên người trong video đó. Cô hứa sẽ nói cho tôi biết về người mà cô gọi là Nii-sama nếu tôi đồng ý tham gia buổi tập trận.”

“……Sssss….. Nii-sama……….?”

Mana khẽ cau mày.

“Có chuyện gì vậy?”

“Không có gì, chỉ hơi đau đầu một tí..”

Khi nói như vậy, Mana ấn đầu mình ra phía sau.

Origami có cảm giác lần đầu tiên mà Mana nhìn thấy thành viên trong gia đình mình là vào tháng trước, lúc video được chiếu.

“….Ssss…. Xin lỗi…. Bây giờ thì không sao rồi. Àh, chuyện của Nii-sama.”

Mana lúc lắc cái đầu một cách nhẹ nhàng, như thể đang cố gắng làm văng cơn đau đầu đang đeo bám. Cô lấy từ trong áo ra cái mặt dây chuyền của sợi dây mà cô đeo trên cổ. Cô mở nó ra, bên trong là hình ảnh của một cậu bé và một cô bé.

“Shidou”

Origami nhẹ nhàng nói. Chắc chắn không thể lầm được, đó chính là Shidou lúc nhỏ. Và ở bên cạnh là một cô bé với nốt ruồi bên dưới con mắt trái, hoàn toàn khớp với Mana, ai cũng có thể nhận ra khi nhìn vào.

“Đây là….”

“Một một bức ảnh ngày trước. Nó là kỹ vật duy nhất có mối liên hệ liên hệ giữa tôi và Nii-sama.”

“Cô có thể nói rõ hơn được không?”

Origami nói. Và Mana gãi đầu một cách ngượng ngùng.

“Xin lỗi nhưng tôi không nhớ thêm bất cứ điều gì cả.”

“Tại sao?”

“Vì tôi đã mất tất cả những ký ức của mình lúc xưa.”

“Mất trí nhớ?”

“Có thể hiểu một cách đơn giản như vậy. Nhưng mỗi lần nhìn vào hình ảnh đó, nó lại gợi cho tôi một ký ức nho nhỏ. Hình như tôi đã gọi người đó là Nii-sama trong quá khứ.”

“Vậy tại sao cô lại đặt ra điều kiện bắt tôi phải tham gia cuộc tập trận?”

Origami ngạc nhiên hỏi. Mana thì bẽn lẽn cúi đầu.

“Vì… tôi muốn thấy khả năng thực sự của cô trên chiến trường. Trong đội này, dường như cô là người mạnh nhất. Nó nằm ngoài cả sự mong đợi của tôi.”

“………”

Origami im lặng nhìn Mana. Dù rằng Mana thắng và cô đã thua, nhưng khi Mana nói điều đó nằm ngoài sự mong đợi, Tobiichi có một cảm giác hồi hộp, cứ như là được khen vậy.

Mana ngước lên nhìn Origami và nói.

“À… Trung sĩ Tobiichi, hơi ngại nhưng tôi có thể yêu cầu cô một chuyện được không?”

“Có chuyện gì?”

“Có thể nó hơi riêng tư một chút… à… đó là về thông tin của Nii-sama… Cô có một ít phải không? Cô có thể nói cho tôi nhưng gì mà cô biết về anh ấy không?”

“………….”

Không biết kể từ khi nào, tình hình dường như đã bị đảo ngược. Origami gật đầu đồng ý.

“Tên: Isuka Shidou. Tuổi: 16…”

“Vâng…”

“Gia đình gồm cha, mẹ và em gái. Hiện nay cha mẹ đã di cư ra nước ngoài để làm việc. Cậu ấy chuyên phụ trách mọi việc vặt trong nhà…”

“Uhum…”

"Nhóm máu: AO RH +. Chiều cao: 170.0cm. Trọng lượng: 58,5 kg. Chiều cao khi ngồi: 90,2 cm, trên cánh tay: 30,2 cm, cẳng tay: 30,2 cm. Ngực: 82,2 cm, vòng eo: 70,3 cm, hông: 87.6cm."

“Okay…!!”

"Thị giác mắt phải là 0,6, mắt trái 0,8 , sức mạnh nắm tay phải 43,5 kg, tay trái 41,2 kg. Huyết áp 128/75. Mức độ đường trong máu 88mg/dl. Mức Urê 4.2mg/dl"

“Thôi… thôi đủ rồi! Tôi không cần biết những điều đó.”

“Thiệt hả?”

Origami đành khẽ gật đầu đồng ý để Mana thôi không la hét nữa.

“Những thứ mà cô vừa mới nói… ừm…. những thông tin cực kỳ chi tiết đó… là một trò đùa phải không?”

“Hoàn toàn không. Đó là những con số hoàn toàn chính xác.”

“……………” (Ca này khó! *người dịch*)

Origami trả lời với một gương mặt không chút biểu cảm. Mana giờ đây nhíu đôi lông mày của mình lại đến nỗi chúng trông như một đừng thẳng mộc mạc. Và với giọt mồ hôi chảy bên thái dương, cô hỏi.”

“……Xin lỗi…. Nhưng…. Chính xác thì mối quan hệ giữa Trung sĩ Tobiichi và Nii-sama là gì thế?”

“Origami trả lời ngay và luôn, không hề ngại ngùng, bối rối hay ngập ngừng.

“Người yêu.”

”Khoan đã, cô đang là gì với Nii-sama?”

“Hehh?”

Trong phòng khách, tại nhà Isuka Shidou, cậu là người hỏi câu hỏi này.

Với ruy băng màu đen cột tóc thành hai bím, trên người là một bộ đồng phục, cô gái ấy quay đầu lại, hai tay chống hông.

Đó là em gái của Shidou – Isuka Kotori (đang trong comander mode).

Đôi mắt to tròn nhưng không dễ thương (!!!), cây kẹo mút trong miệng, tay thì chỉ thẳng lên trời, trông như đuôi của một kẻ thù đáng sợ nào đó.

“Em đang làm gì à… Tất nhiên là đang chuẩn bị đi học.”

Shidou nháy mắt một cái để xác nhận sự xuất hiện của Kotori. Đang mặc trên người là bộ đồng phục THCS mùa hè, cái túi ở tay phải, bento ở bên trái, hoàn toàn bình thường, đó chỉ là một nữ sinh chuẩn bị đến trường.

Nhưng Kotori thì chỉ đơn giản lắc đầu, nhún vai, như thể đang đóng một bộ phim sitcom của Mỹ.

“Được rồi, để em tự giới thiệu một lần nữa về mình. Shidou, cái gì trong tay trái của anh vậy?”

“Chỉ là hộp bento.”

“Của anh à?”

“Không, cái này cho Tohka.”

Đúng là như vậy. Shidou để bento của mình trong túi xách. Hộp bento trong tay trái của cậu là cho cô hàng xóm trong chung cư kế bên: Tohka.

“Vậy anh dự định sẽ đưa thứ này cho Tohka bằng cách nào?”

“Anh định bỏ nó vào hộp thư của cô ấy…..”

Bởi vì không thể đưa trực tiếp cho Tohka tại trường, cậu dùng cách đặt bento vào trong hộp thư của Tohka mỗi buổi sáng. Bằng
cách đó, Tohka được tiếp tế lương thực mỗi ngày.

Đang giữa câu nói, Shidou kêu lên một tiếng “Ah!”

“Anh biết em lo lắng chuyện gì. Mùa này thời tiết khá là ấm áp. Em đang lo về an toàn vệ sinh thực phẩm phải không? Cứ yên tâm
đi. Anh đã bỏ túi chườm đá và tấm lọc vi khuẩn vào rồi. Có lẽ sẽ ngon hơn nếu bỏ thêm ít mận khô vào. Hm… Hình như Tohka ghét
mận khô thì phải…. Ouch!”

Đang nói giữa chừng, cậu bị Kotori tặng một cú đá. Shidou đổ nhào về phía trước, người cậu cong lại. Cái túi xách rơi xuống sàn
nhà, nhưng ít nhất thì cậu cũng cứu được bento của Tohka.

“Em làm cá…..”

“Em đã nói là sẽ giết anh nếu anh làm như vậy. Hết chổ rồi hay sao mà lại vứt bento vào trong hộp thư?”

“Vì…Vì anh không thể đưa nó cho Tohka. Hai đứa đi học khác giờ nhau mà.”

“Anh gọi đó là lý do à?”

Kotori hùng hổ lôi cây lolipop ra khỏi miệng mình, cắm mắt vào Shidou.

“Đã hai tuần kể từ khi Tohka dọn nhà. Trước đây anh và cô ấy đã bao giờ đi học chung chưa hử?”

“Err….”

Lúc lắc cái đầu, Shidou bắt đầu nhẩm tính.

“Nhắc mới nhớ, hình như chưa lần nào hết.”

Shidou nói trong khi đang gãi má một cách bối rối.

Shidou và Tohka từng sống chung nhà trước đây. Nhưng lúc đó, trong lớp lại loan ra những tin đồn và thắc mắc về mối quan hệ của
hai người. Vậy nên Tohka và Shidou phải đi học khác giờ nhau.

Nhưng hiện giờ thì khác. Họ thực sự đã là hàng xóm của nhau. Không cần phải câu nệ chuyện đó nữa. Thật tha thì họ còn đi về
cùng nhau.

Điều đáng nói ở đây là, không biết từ bao giờ, đã thành một thói quen, Shidou luôn đi học sớm hơn Tohka.

Chắc là vì Tohka yêu cái giường hơn Shidou (ý mình là ngủ nhiều hơn Shidou chứ không phải Tohka ko yêu Shidou ^^)

Kotori xoa trán một cách hoài nghi.

“Cũng khá khó khăn mới chuyển được Tohka sang nhà bên cạnh, hai người vẫn là bạn cùng lớp, không lý do gì để bỏ lỡ chuyện đi
học cùng nhau. Hơn nữa, trong tương lai, nêu các tinh linh khác xuất hiện, anh sẽ phải dành nhiều tình cảm cho họ. Vì vậy hãy
nhân cơ hội này mà iu Tohka nhiều nhiều 1 tí đi.”

$*%^@(@)%&^*@$........

Nghe như một tiếng rên….

Thế giới tại thời điểm này luôn bị không gian chấn (Spacequakes) đe dọa. Nó xuất hiện khá bất ngờ.

Khi không gian chấn xảy ra, năng lượng dồn nén lại đến cực đại, sau đó giải phóng ra một cách không kiểm soát, phá hủy mọi thứ
trong phạm vi vụ nổ, không gì còn sót lại được.

Dù cho công nghệ hiện tại đã phát triển đến mức có thể dự báo được không gian chấn và hoàn toàn khôi phục được những gì nó
phá hủy, nhưng đó vẫn là thảm họa cực kỳ nguy hiểm đối với nhân loại.

Dù không được tiết lộ, nhưng nguyên nhân thật sự của không gian chấn là do sự xuất hiện của những tinh linh.

Tinh linh không phải là những sinh vật trên trái đất. Họ được cho là đến từ thế giới song song. Bất cứ khi nào họ xuất hiện cũng đều
kéo theo một trận không gian chấn, tàn phá mọi thứ xung quang nơi họ đến.

Tất nhiên, con người phải lập kế hoạch để chống lại một thứ nguy hiểm như vậy.

Kế hoạch được chia làm hai loại.

Một, sử dụng vũ lực, khí tài quân sự để tiêu diệt tinh linh.

Và cách còn lại là….

“Hiểu rồi chứ Shidou? Lần sau, khi tinh linh xuất hiện, anh phải cưa tới khi họ đổ.”

“Hiểu -_-“

Shidou đã từ bỏ nổ lực phản kháng và trả lời trong tiếng thở dài.

Và đó chính là phương pháp còn lại.

Đến gần các tinh linh, trò chuyện với họ, và khi đã hoàn toàn có được lòng tin nơi họ, một nụ hôn sẽ phong ấn tinh lực của họ.

Dù không biết vì sao nhưng Shidou có một năng lực bí ẩn, có thể phong ấn sức mạnh của bất kỳ tinh linh nào.

Và tổ chức nhắm vào năng lực của Shidou là <Ratatoskr>, tổ chức mà Kotori đang làm việc.

“Vì vậy, hãy đi học chung với Tohka hôm nay.”

“Hmmm. Hiểu rồi.”

Đó là câu nói không hề có ẩn ý. Shidou nhặt cái túi xách lên và bước ra cửa.

“Khoan đã Shidou, anh để quên kìa.”

Được nữa đường, giọng Kotori vang lên .

‘Hur? Còn gì nữa?”

“Cái này.”

Kotori xòe bàn tay ra, trong đó là 2 thiết bị liên lạc.

Kotori làm một hành động hướng vào tai mình. Có nghĩa là cô muốn Shidou đeo vào ngay lập tức.

“Cái đó… Tại sao phải….?”

“Bởi vì thời gian có hạn. Anh vẫn sẽ được huấn luyện cả khi đang ở trường. Rồi, đeo vô đi.”

Vậy là, Kotori mỉm cười và đeo cái còn lại.

“Huấn luyện. Đó là cách gọi chính xác cho những chuyện này.”

“Đó có phải là…. là chủ để của ngày hôm nay, đối phó với cơn ghen của Tohka.”

Shidou lẩm bẩm…

Yoshino là một tinh linh khác, xuất hiện sai Tohka. Thế là Tohka bắt đầu ghen.

“Đó chính là vấn đề. Nếu anh thân mật với cô gái khác, Tohka sẽ cảm thấy khỏ chịu.”

“Er… Cá…. Cái gì?”

Khi Shidou thốt lên như vậy, Koroti nhìn Shidou như thể nhìn một thằng ngu với ánh mắt thương hại, cô thở dài.

“Dù sao đi nữa, nếu thấy anh thân mật với một cô gái khác, tinh thần của Tohka sẽ trở nên bất ổn. Hậu quả của việc đó là toàn bộ
sức mạnh tinh linh mà anh phong ấn sẽ chảy ngược lại Tohka theo mối liên kết giữa anh với cô ấy. Nếu điều đó xảy ra thì rất phiền
phức. Vì vậy…..”

Kotori trỏ ngón tay trên bàn tay đang tạo hình một khẩu lục về phía Shidou.

Từ hôm nay, khi đi học, nhân viên của from <Ratatoskr> sẽ hướng dẫn phương pháp cứu hỏa, nhiệm vụ của anh là dập tắt ngọn
lửa ghe tuông trong lòng Tohka.

“Phải làm như thế nào?”

“Đừng lo, sẽ ổn cả thôi.”

Dù Shidou đã thể hiện rõ ràng sự bối rối của mình, nhưng tất cả những gì mà Kotori làm chỉ là quay lưng lại, đẩy cửa.

“Sắp tới giờ Tohka đi học rồi đó. Nếu muốn biết chính xác hơn, hãy căng tai ra mà nghe hướng dẫn của nhân viên <Fraxinus>.

“Hur…Errrr… Chờ đã….”

Dù Shidou chưa hoàn toàn hiểu ra tình cảnh của mình, nhưng cậu biết rõ là không nên hỏi gì thêm khi Kotori đang trong trạng thái
chỉ huy (Commander mode). Thực tế là trong vòng hai tháng qua, Shidou ko có sự lựa chọn nào khác ngoài nghe theo mệnh lệnh
của Kotori.

Ngay lúc này, giọng Kotori một lần nữa vang lên từ phía sau Shidou.

“Ah, đúng rồi, còn một chuện nữa. Hôm nay chúng ta có khách. Dù chỉ là một lời chào đơn giản nhưng hãy thử nói chuyện với cô
ta nếu có thời gian.

“Khách?”

Kotori không trả lời mà chỉ bước lên lầu. Khi Kotori nói sẽ hướng dẫn thông qua tai nghe, rất có thể những người hổ trợ của từ
<Fraxinus> đang phục kích trên tần hai của ngôi nhà.

Dù không hiểu chuyện gì đang xảy ra nhưng cứ đứng mãi như vầy thì cũng không nghĩ ra được cách gì khác. Vậy là Shidou đành
mở cửa bước ra ngoài.

Mọi thứ rất đột ngột. Ánh sáng mặt trời chiếu thẳng vào làm lóa mắt Shidou.

“Uầy….”

Hôm nay, ngày 05 tháng 06. Bây giờ đang là mùa mưa, nhưng bầu trời hôm ấy khá quang đãng, cứ như là tháng trước đã trút hết
nước xuống mặt đất rồi.

Khác những năm trước, không còn mây bao phủ, cường độ ánh sáng mặt trời chiếu vào trái đất tăng mạnh, làm cho nhiệt đồ cũng
tăng lên theo.

Không chịu nổi cái nóng, Shidou cởi bớt áo khoác của mình ra.

Ngay lúc đó.

“Are…..?”

Người đó đứng quay lưng về phía nguồn sáng, vì vậy ngoài hình bóng ra thì Shidou không thể nhìn thấy rõ thứ gì khác.

Đó là một cô gái trạc tuổi Kotori.

Cô mặc trên người một bộ đầm mùa hè mát mẻ, cái nón mùa hè màu trắng che lấy đôi mắt của chủ nó. Mái tóc màu xanh dưới ánh
mặt trời gợi lên một màu như của đại dương, còn đôi mắt như hai viên ngọc, liên tục liếc nhìn về phía Shidou.

Ngoài những thứ đó ra, còn một cái ấn tượng ơn nữa, đó là một con thỏ bông bịt mắt như cướp biển, vung vẩy một thanh kiếm trên
tay trái của cô bé, nhìn khá là hài.

“Yoshino?”

Chắc chắn không thể nào có người quên được một cô bé như vậy. Shidou bước tới gần Yoshino.

“Yahoo – Shidou-kun. Cũng đã được 1 lúc rồi đó….”

Lúc này, con thỏ hải tặc trên tai trái của Shidou bắt đầu nói, miệng nói cứ mở ra-khép lại.

“Ơ… Yoshinon…. Chuyện là….”

Shidou hơi gật đầu, như để đáp lại con thỏ hải tặc. Thực chất nó là một con rối tên Yoshinon, và cũng là người bạn của Yoshino.

Ban đầu ai cũng nghĩ nó chỉ là một con rối bình thường, giọng nói của nó có lẽ là tiếng bụng của Yoshino, nhưng khi nghiên cứu kỹ
hơn, người ta mới biết đó là một nhân cách thứ 2 của Yoshino, biểu hiện ra ngoài thông qua Yoshinon.

“Có chuyện gì vậy? Buổi kiểm tra hôm nay của em đã xong chưa?”

“Ưm… Buổi kiếm tra diễn ra tốt đẹp, nhưng vẫn còn một đợt thực hành thể chất nữa.”

Yoshinon nói trong khi ve vẫy 2 cái tay bé nhỏ của nó.

“Thực hành?”

Cùng lúc Shidou nói điều đó, Yoshinon đột nhiên vươn tới chiếc mũ của Yoshino.

“……ssss”

Trông Yoshino có vẽ sợ hãi.

Nhưng sau khi trải qua giây phút bối rối ấy, Shidou mở đôi môi run rẫy của mình và bắt đầu lên tiếng.

“Buổi sáng tốt lành, Shidou-san.”

Yoshino nói với một chất giọng không phải của chính cô.

“Woah…”

Shidou mở to mắt, lùi về phía sau một bước.

Yoshino là một cô bé rất nhút nhát, ít khi giao tiếp một cách tự nhiên với mọi người mà chỉ dựa vào Yoshinon để trình bày vấn đề
của mình. Đây là lần đầu tiên mà Yoshino nói chuyện với Shidou với một giọng như thế này.

Ngay lúc đó, có một âm thanh nhiểu từ bên tai của Shidou. Sau đó là giọng của Kotori. Cô đã ở trên <Fraxinus>.

“Cái gì? Cô bé có thể sẵn sàng nói chuyện một cách tự nhiên với em và Reine từ lâu rồi anh có biết không?”

“Thật ư? Thật tuyệt vời.”

Sau lời khen của Shidou, Yoshino lại xấu hổ và kéo chiếc mũ xuống để che phần lớn khuôn mặt. Nhưng nhìn vào khéo miệng, có
thể thấy cô bé đang nở 1 nụ cười nhẹ.

Sau đó, đi kèm với âm thanh của cây kẹo nút trong miệng Kotori là lời nói.

“Dù có hơi sớm nhưng em muốn để Yoshoshi sống ở môi trường bên ngoài thay vì trong <Fraxinus>. Có Yoshino trò chuyện cùng,
Tohka bớt căng thẳng hơn. Điều này khá tốt, vì dù <Fraxinus> có cả một đội hỗ trợ tinh thần cho tinh linh, nhưng giải pháp này tốt
hơn. Cuộc trò chuyện của họ diễn ra tự nhiên hơn và hiệu quả giải tỏa tinh thần tốt hơn là những gì mà đội hỗ trợ làm được.”

“Uhum… Đó không phải là chuyện tốt hay sao?”

“Ừm, vì vậy, đó là lý do vì sao hôm nay chúng em để cho cô ấy tự giới thiệu bản thân.”

“Oh thật à?”

“Ngôi nhà đầu tiên của Yoshino bên ngoài tàu chiến.”

Sau khi nghe lời của Kotori nói, Shidou ngước nhìn một lần nữa căn hộ, đặc khu dành cho tinh linh.

Tòa nhà đó là nơi mà Tohka đang sống. Một kiến trúc đặc biệt xây dựng riêng cho tinh linh. Người ta nói rằng <Ratatoskr> đã thiết
kế ngôi nhà này để có thể chống chịu được sự phát tán bất thường năng lượng tinh linh, không để nó rò rỉ ra bên ngoài. Ngoài ra nó
còn rất chắc chắn, có thể chịu được những va chạm mạnh.

“Ừm… anh hiểu…”

“Nhưng Yoshino và Tohka vẫn chưa thể trò chuyện với nhau bình thường được…”

“A…”

Dù ở trong cùng một ngôi nhà, nhưng phòng của họ ở hai khu vực cách biệt nhau. Khó có thể nói được họ là láng giềng hay người
nhà.

Nhưng dù là trước đó, khi Tohka và Yoshino còn là tinh tinh, Yoshono đã có ấn tượng không tốt về Tohka và điều đó vẫn còn cho
đến bây giờ. Sẽ tốt hơn cho cả hai nếu họ có thể ngồi lại và nói chuyện với nhau.

Cánh cửa tự động của khu chung cư khẽ mở.

Một cô gái vẫn còn ngái ngủ, bước từ trong ra.

Mái tóc đen tuyền như màn đêm, dài bồng bềnh, ánh lên rõ hơn dưới ánh mặt trời. Sự xuất hiện của cô dường như khiến cho bất
kỳ ai chứng kiến có được một cảm giác thoải mái.

Đó là bạn cùng lớp của Shidou, Tohka Yatogami.

“………….”

Nhìn thấy hình ảnh Tohka, Shidou nín thở.

Tohka không còn mặc trang phục như trước đây nữa, thay vào đó là bộ đồng phục mùa hè, kèm theo một dải ruy băng.

Đúng vậy. Shidou cũng đang mặc đồng phục mùa hè nên không có gì đáng nói. Nhưng khi thấy rõ đường cong của Tohka hiện lên
dưới bộ đồng phục mỏng mang ấy, trái tim của Shidou như bị ai bóp chặt.

"Nn ......? Shidou?"

Dường như đến lúc này Tohka mới nhận ra sự có mặt của Shidou ở đó và hét lên.

“Ơ… ừm… Chúng ta ít khi gặp nhau vào buổi sáng…”

“Ừm.. chỉ là mình nghĩ đi học chung với Tohka không phải là một ý tưởng tệ đúng không. Có chuyện gì à?”

Shidou nói với hai má bắt đầu đỏ lên, cặp mắt đảo xoay tứ phía.

“Yeah… à… đúng. Đó ko phải là một ý kiến tệ.”

Tohka gật đầu một cách vui vẻ. Dù vậy, cô cũng có vẽ xấu hổ khi công khai thể hiện niềm vui ấy.

Shidou tự hỏi mình phải nói gì tiếp theo, vậy là cậu nhớ tới hộp bento của Tohka.

“À, đây là phần của cậu hôm nay.”

“Oh.”

Tohka cầm lấy hộp bento, và trả lại cho Shidou một nụ cười tuyệt đẹp.

“Hôm nay chúng ta ăn gì vậy?”

“Ừm, hôm nay có măng tây kèm thịt xông khói, thịt-trứng chiên, mì ống trộn salad và cà chua. Àh và cơm chiên thịt gà.”

“Cái gì?”

Sau khi nghe Shidou trình bày, Tohka có vẽ bị sốc. Cô lén lút nhìn quanh và kiểm tra hộp bento.

“Như vậy có ổn không Shidou?”

“Hur? Chuyện gì cơ?”

Shidou hỏi và Tohka đáp lại bằng một giọng thấp hơn nữa.

“Măng tây + thịt xông khói, thịt với trứng chiên và mấy món kia nữa. Sẽ rất rắc rối nếu mọi người biết về chuyện này. Có thể họ sẽ
nổi loạn vì hộp bento này.”

“Không. Họ sẽ không làm vậy đâu.”

“Thiệt… Thiệt hả? Vậy thì được. Như….nhưng cơm chiên với thịt gà hình như là hành động khủng bố, chúng ta sẽ bị bắt mất thôi.”

Tohka nói với một vẽ mặt rất nghiêm cmn trọng. Thực sự thì không ai hiểu được cô đã tìm hiểu những điều như thế này từ nguồn
thông tin nào trên trái đất nữa.

“Không, tất nhiên là không. Hay cậu không thích cơm chiên thịt gà? Nếu cậu muốn, mình có thể đổi bento với cậu.”

Thực ra là vì chuyện bento của cả hai giống nhau khiến Origami khá khó chịu. Vì vậy mà Shidou đã làm bento của hai người với hai
thực đơn khác nhau.

Vì hầu hết là thức ăn thừa từ đêm trước đó nên cũng không mấy khó khăn để chuẩn bị bento.

Nhưng trong khoảnh khắc mà Shidou đề nghị trao đổi, Tohka ôm chặt hộp bento của mình như con đẻ, miệng thì *fuuu*fuuu*fu*fu*,
đầu thì lắc qua lại với một tốc độ mà ai nhìn vào cũng cảm thấy lo lắng rằng nó sẽ rơi ra. (@_@)

Shidou nhìn cảnh tượng đó và nở một nụ cười méo mó. Ừh thì, miễn sao Tohka cảm thấy hạnh phúc là đã xứng đáng với công sức
mà cậu bỏ ra để nấu ăn hằng ngày.

Tohka, vẫn còn hơi hoảng, ôm cận thận hộp bento của mình, hít vài hơi sâu để lấy lại bình tĩnh. Đúng lúc đó.

“……..Nu……?”

Tohka đột nhiên mở to mắt, nhìn thẳng vào cô bé bên cạnh Shidou. Dường như bây giờ cô chỉ chú ý vào mỗi điều này mà thôi.

“Oh, Yoshino đây à. Lâu ngày ko gặp.”

Mỉm cười 1 cách ngây thơ, Tohka bắt đầu nói chuyện.

Mặc dù trước đây đã có nhiều chuyện xãy ra, dường như Tohka ko còn nghĩ tới chúng trong thời điểm này.

“…..Ss!”

Tuy nhiên, Yoshino bắt đầu run rẩy và lùi lại tư thế phòng thủ.

“Muốn oánh nhau hả?”

“sss…uuu….mm…”

Lời nói của Yoshinon như 1 sự kích thích, Yoshino lấy lại thăng bằng trên chính đôi chân của mình và *hít*, cô bé hít lấy một hời dài
và tiến bước về phía kẻ địch.

Như thể quyết tâm đã đủ vững chắc, lông mày cô nhíu lại đánh giá đối thủ.

"Aa......, amenbo, akaina, a, i , u, e, o......!" (Translation note here) [Nguyên văn bản Anh, ko hiểu thằng dịch muốn nói gì @_@]

Không hiểu tại sao, cô bắt đầu câu câu nói như thể triệu hồi linh trang.

“Đây là… gì vậy….? Mật mã gì à?”

“Không….. Yoshino?”

Shidou mỉm cười vả hỏi Yoshino. Yoshinon thì vẫy vẫy tay đồng thời tạo ra một âm thanh *PATA* *PATA*

“A, rất tốt, thực chiến hoàn hảo. Làm lại lần nữa, nhanh hơn 1 tí.”

Sau khi trò chuyện khẽ với Yoshinon, Yoshino bước tới phía trước Tohka một lần nữa.

“C….hào… bu….ổi sán..g.”

Một giọng nói rụt rè, khác hẳn với câu chào lúc nãy dành cho Shidou, nhưng dù sao thì vẫn có thể nghe vào hiểu được.

“Wooa, chào buổi sáng.”

“…………”

Hình dáng bé nhỏ của Yoshino run run, nhưng vẫn giữ được đủ bình tĩnh để lui lại.

Trong một khoảng thời gian, Tohka và Yoshino chỉ nhìn nhau mà không nói 1 lời.

Âm thanh sắc như dao bén lần đầu nghe được từ Kotori rót vào tai Shidou.

“Đừng có đứng đực ra đó chứ. Yoshino vẫn còn ngại giao tiếp, hãy khích lệ cô ấy 1 chút xem nào.”

“Eh… à… ừm…. “

Shidou như trả lời lại giọng Kotori, cậu liếc nhìn về phía Yoshino.

Tới bây giờ cậu mới chú ý điều đó. Yoshino nhìn có vẽ khác lần trước.

“Yoshino, hôm nay em đội nón che nắng à?”

Đúng vậy, lần trước cô ấy đội cái nón khác.

“À… vâng.. đúng ạ.”

Yoshino thực sự như muốn núp sau Yoshinon, nhưng điều đó mang lại kết quả ngược với ý muốn. Yoshinon đẩy cái đầu đằng sau
mình qua một bên. Cô nghiên đầu trả lời.

“Bởi vì… hôm nay hơi nắng, vậy nên, Reine-san cô ấy …. cái đó.”

“À, không có gì phải ngại. Nó hợp với em lắm. Trông rất dễ thương.”

“…..híc”

Sau khi nghe những lời đó thì bổng *Poom* Yoshino phải cố gắng giấu đi khuôn mặt đã đỏ lựng lên vì xấu hổ.

Có vẽ như cô ấy vẫn nhút nhát như ngày nào. Shidou bật ra một tiếng cười hơi khan.

“Chờ một chút, cô ấy đang trò chuyện với Tohka kia mà? Anh đang phá hoại cuộc trò chuyện của họ à?”

“Ahrr.. hình như vậy. Hey hey, Tohka, cậu xem xem Yoshino có xinh không?”

Hơi bất ngờ khi nhận lượt trò chuyện, cô trả lời Shidou bằng một giọng nhẹ nhàng, liếc nhìn Yoshino lần nữa.

“Ơ.. nhìn em dễ thương lắm, Yoshino.”

“….sss… Cảm ơn…”

Yoshino trả lời trong khi chuyển cái nhìn từ mặt đất sang Tohka.

“Toh….. Tohka-san cũng dễ thương lắm.”

“Óa, xấu hổ ghê.”

Tohka phồng má của mình và xấu hổ mỉm cười. Cô một lần nữa nhìn về Shidou, đố ai biết tại sao, má cô hơi đó.

“Shidou, cậu…. có nghĩ vậy không?”

“Hơơở….”

Sau những lời như vậy, nói đó lại hoàn toàn im lặng lần nữa.

“Nè, không ổn tí nào.”

“S…sao cơ?”

“Anh bị sao vậy Shidou? Việc tập luyện đang diễn ra anh có biết không?”

“Ủa…. ơ.. ý em là gì?”

Shidou thấp giọng hỏi. Kotori thở dài.

“Em đã nói với anh rồi, đó chính là mục tiêu của ngày hôm nay. Không được để cho Tohka cảm thấy ghen. Anh đã khen Yoshino
đúng không? Tại sao không nói điều tương tự với Tohka chứ?”

“Heeeeeee…..?”

Shidou bật ra một tiếng kêu ngu ngốc khi nhớ lại những hành đồng vào lời nói ngu xuẩn vừa qua của mình. Ngoài việc hỏi Tohka là
Yoshino trông như thế nào, cậu chưa hề khen Tohka tí nào cả.

“Điều đó có gây ảnh hưởng gì không…?”

“Tất nhiên là có chứ. Anh đi tâng bốc một cô gái khác, đại loại như “em dễ thương lắm” mà chẳng nói gì với cô ấy. Dù cho cô ấy
không chú ý đi chăng nữa thì mức độ tình cảm cũng sẽ bị giảm.”

“K…Kh..ông, nhưng Tohka sẽ không chú ý….”

“Em đã nói rồi.”

Kotori nói với một giọng mang vẻ cảnh báo.

“Tohka là một tinh linh, và cô ấy có thể khác vói con người một số thứ. Nhưng về mặt tình cảm là một trường hợp đặc biệt, cô ấy
không khác gì một cô gái bình thường hết.”

“………..”

Nghe Kotori nói, Shidou cắn môi hốn hận.

Mặc dù đã hứa rằng sẽ làm cho những tinh linh có được một cuộc sống bình thường, nhưng ở một mức độ nào đó, cậu vẫn xem
Tohka là một người đặc biệt.

Shidou thu nấm đấm, nhìn thẳng về hướng Tohka và nói.

“Tohka!”

“V..âng……?”

Đột ngột nghe thấy giọng điệu thay đổi quá nhanh của Shidou, Tohka trở nên bối rối, và kèm theo đó là vai cô cũng hơi run.

“G…Gì vậy Shidou?”

“Cậu moe quá!”

“Hử…hơ…”

Tohka đỏ mặt và thu mình lại.

Không hiểu tại sao, mặt Shidou cũng bắt đầu đỏ lên giống như vậy. Cậu cố không chú ý chuyện đó và tiếp tục nói.

“Yeah, rất dễ thương, bộ đồng phục mùa hè đó hợp với cậu ghê luôn á. Cậu đã làm mình bị ấn tượng mạnh khi cậu bước ra khỏi
chung cư! Mình đã không thể rời mắt khỏi cậu được. Lúc ấy mình quá choáng nên không kịp nói: cậu trông rất dễ thương.”

Lúc này thì Tohka đã phải xài tới tay để che miệng Shidou lại, ko cho cậu nói tiếp.

“uhh…uh….”

“Mình đã hiểu, vì vậy, đủ rồi.”

Tohka nói như vậy và nhanh chóng quay lưng lại với Shidou.

Những điều mà Shidou đã nói thật sự là những lời từ đáy lòng cậu. Tuy vậy, có vẽ như nó hoàn toàn hiệu quả.

Khi Shidou đang nghĩ về điều mình vừa mới nói, một tràng cười ằng ặc phát ra từ tai nghe.

“Muaaaaa hahahaha, haaha, hhahaahahahahah, hhaaaaahaah!”

Không cần phải hỏi, Shidou cũng biết đó là cô em gái chỉ huy của mình. Và dựa vào âm thanh phát ra, cậu cũng biết là Kotori đã bị
té ghé.

“T…ốt, tốt lắm Shidou, một thằng ngốc cũng sẽ làm y như anh vậy =))”

“Sh… im đi. Anh tự hiểu mà.”

Shidou rên lên, mồi hôi nhễ nhại trên tráng.

“Nhưng có vẽ như anh đã làm được. Tiếp theo phải làm sao?”

“Haa ả? Anh đang nói cái gì vậy?

“Hử?”

Mức độ tình cảm của Tohka tăng vọt và đã dừng ở mức tối đa rồi. Anh đã hoàn toàn làm chủ trái tim cô ấy. Sao anh không thử lên
phía trước và nhìn mặt cô ấy xem, sẽ rất rất rất là thú vị đấy!”

“Ờm… Cái zề??”

Shidou hỏi, nhưng Kotori không quan tâm nữa mà tiếp tục nói chuyện.

“Được rồi, em sẽ không phạt anh ngay khi chỉ mới bắt đầu. Tch… Đến lúc gọi Yoshino trờ về rồi. Còn anh, nếu không mau đi học
thì sẽ trễn giờ đó.”

Đúng như lời Kotori nói, Yoshino lên tiếng.

“Hôm nay… tới lúc em phải đi rồi. Nhớ tự chăm sóc bản thân nhé…. Shidou-san, Tohka-san.

“Uh, lần sau nhớ quay lại nhé.”

“T….Tạm biệt.”

Shidou và Tohka vẫn tay. Yoshino chạy đi khỏi đó với một âm thanh *PATA* PATA*

“Được rồi, giờ thì đi thôi nào Tohka.”

“Uh…”

Shidou và Tohka bắt đầu bước đi cùng nhau trên con đường nhựa, nhưng….

“Ơ… Khoan đã Tohka….”

Nhận ra Tohka đã có một sự nhầm lẫn, Shidou dừng bước.

Đúng vậy, bộ đồ mà Tohka đang mặc chính là đồng phục mùa hè. Có nghĩa là, bình thường thì sẽ thấy được mờ mờ dây đai của
bra (hỏi google nha, người dịch hơi ngại), nhưng….

“Nu…. Có gì không ổn à?”

“Tohka, cậu… cậu có nhớ mặc… mặc…”

“Mặc gì cơ?”

“B… br… bra!?”

Shidou nói, ngập ngừng cái từ đó ra, nhưng Tohka nghiêng đầu một cách ngây thơ và hỏi lại Shidou.

“bra? Là cái gì?”

Shidou nín thở, cùng lúc đó cậu kéo Tohka trở lại căn hộ.

“Ch…Chuyện gì vậy Shidou?”

“Điều này hơi bị rắc rối đấy, đừng có nói với mình là cậu không hề mặc nó từ trước đến nay.”

“Cái gì mới được chứ?”

“……………” (hơi bị đau đầu)

Shidou tap tap vào cái tai nghe, và Kotori đã nghe thấy.

“À… ừm… mặc dù bọn em đã chuẩn bị đầy đủ nhưng có vẽ Tohka không biết cách sử dụng chúng.”

“Dẹp đê, không phải lúc để thanh minh với anh. Nếu là đồng phục dày như mùa đông thì không sao, nhưng…. Với đồng phục mùa
hè thì…..”

“Yep! Bọn em để nó ở ngăn trên cùng của tủ quần áo của Tohka. Sao anh không thử đi và hướng dẫn cô ấy làm điều đó nhế ^^”

“A… anh à?!”

“Đâu còn ai khác quanh đó nữa. Đúng rồi, nếu không nhanh lên anh sẽ bị trễ học đấy.”

"......Aaargh, dammit......" (nguyên gốc câu chửi thề bên Mỹ)

Shidou nắn sẵn một gương mặt quyết tâm nhìn về phía Tohka.

“Tohka, cậu có thể… dẫn mình tới phòng của cậu không?”

“Ơ… được thôi… mình nghĩ là….”

Tohka có vẽ gặp khó khăn khi tìm đường đến phòng của mình. Có thể đây là sự phòng vệ tốt, bởi vì họ phải đi qua 3 lớp cửa với
tường dày như trong hầm của ngân hàng. Có vẻ như không gian thực sự bên trong căn hộ không lớn như bên ngoài vì những bức
tường quá dày này.

“Đây!”

Khi nói như vậy, Tohka mở cánh cửa phòng. Mọi thứ bên trong được sắp sếp như những căn hộ bình thường khác.

Shidou đóng cửa lại và nhìn kỹ hơn bên trong.

“Được… được rồi. Tiếp theo cậu có thể đem cho mình những thứ ở trên cùng tủ quần áo của cậu không?”

“Ơ… Hiểu rồi…”

Tohka cúi xuống cởi giày. Theo lời của Shidou, cô ấy mang tới một cái bra màu hồng nhạt, nhạt hơn 1 tí so với gương mặt Shidou.

“Có phải là cái này không?”

“Ơ…. Aa….. ưm….”

Chưa từng nhìn vào đồ lót của con gái, nhất là một cô gái cùng tuổi, Shidou vẫy tay chào Tohka với một gương mặt không thể đỏ
hơn.

“Ừm… Tohka…. Mang nó đến….”

Dù biết chắc rằng sẽ không ai có thể nghe thấy, cậu vẫn tiếp tục hạ thấp giọng khi nói.

Cậu ‘dạy’ cho Tohka cách làm thế nào để mặc một cái bra, vậy là mặt của Tohka cũng đỏ không kém gì Shidou.

“Cậu……. cậu đang nói cái quái gì thế Shidou?!”

Và tiếp tục làm theo những gì mà Shidou nói, Tohka lấy 2 tay ôm ngực mình.

“Đặt cái này…….. ngực…….. trực tiếp?!”

*FUUU* “Mình phải mặc nó à?”

“…..Đúng vậy….. Cậu sẽ….. gặp rắc rối nếu…….không mặc nó!”

“Vấn… vấn đề như thế nào cơ?”

“Ơ… bây giờ thì không sao…. Nhưng…nếu trời mưa hoặc cậu bị ướt…. nó sẽ………”

Một lúc sau, khi đã hiểu những gì mà Shidou muốn truyền đạt, gương mặt của Tohka lúc này hoàn toàn không có từ ngữ nào tả
được chính xác.

Nếu như đây là manga, có lẽ khói sẽ bốc lên…

“Cậu…. cậu đang nghĩ cái quái gì vậy?!”

Tohka gào lên, hai tay ôm chặt lấy ngực mình.

“Đó… đó là lý do vì sao mình muốn cậu mặc nó.”

Thế là Tohka nhìn chằm chằm vào ngực mình và rên rĩ…

“Mình hiểu rồi, mình sẽ mặc nó theo lời của cậu…”

Cô lạch bạch chạy ra hành lang…

“Fuuuu….. Nguy hiểm quá…”

Shidou thở phào nhẹ nhõm.

Tuy nhiên, Tohka xuất hiện trở lại một vài phút sau đó, gương mặt đỏ lựng.

“Shi…. Shidou, trông mình có ổn không?”

Tohka nói hết câu thì bỗng run rẫy.

Không hiểu vì lý do gì mà cô ấy lại… mặc ngược áo.

“To…Tohka, chuyện này là sao??”

“Làm…. Làm sao để móc cái này?”

“Aaaah……”

Chỉ một câu hỏi của Tohka, cậu đã hiểu ngay lý do của tình trạng này. Đây là lần đầu của Tohka khi phải xài tới bra. Có lẽ tự làm là
hơi khó khăn cho cô ấy.

Shidou suy nghĩ một cách điên cuồng…

“Đừng cố gắng suy nghĩ nữa anh zai yêu quý, nhào vô giúp cô ấy đi.”

Kotori nói. Dù chỉ là chuyện nhỏ, nhưng cơ thể Shidou đang có một phản ứng khá dữ dội bên trong.

Dù rất muốn phản đối lại, nhưng không còn cách nào khác. Shidou đành run rẫy nói.

“Mình…mình sẽ móc nó lại cho cậu! Quay lưng lại nào”

“Cái….?”

Tohka nhìn chằm chằm Shidou với đôi mắt mở to hết cỡ. Nhưng cô ấy có vẽ không biết cách làm. Sau một hồi do dự, Tohka từ từ
quay mặt lại với Shidou. Từ những khoảng trống giữa hai hàng cúc áo, Shidou có thể nhìn rõ làn da hồng hào trắng mịn trên lưng
Tohka. Không nhịn đc, Shidou nuốt nước bọt.

“Đừng….đừng nhìn chằm chằm vào mình như vậy.”

Tohka ngại ngùng liếc về mọi hướng khác mà cô có thể, hai tay thì giữ thật chặt chiếc áo sơ mi mặc ngược, như thể nó sẽ tự
động “bay” đi bất cứ lúc nào.

Shidou lắc đầu quyết liệt.

“Mình….mình hiểu….”

Cùng lúc đó, mồ hôi chảy dài trên gương mặt Shidou, cậu lẩm bẩm:”Chỉ là giúp đỡ…chỉ là giúp đỡ…” trong khi dùng ngón tay run
run để móc cái bra mà Tohka đang mặc.

Lần sau mình sẽ mua cái bra có móc ở phía trước. Shidou nghĩ từ tận đáy lòng mình. (Người dịch: để chú mày móc giùm nữa à?
Thằng này khôn =]])

“Ưm… mình cảm thấy không được thoải mái.”

“Cố làm quen đi nào, cậu sẽ quen thôi.”

“Muuuu…..”

Tohka có vẽ chưa quen khi xoay người. Shidou thì vỗ tráng liên tục, cứ như tự trấn tĩnh bản thân.

Cứ như vậy, 10p trôi qua trong sự im lặng.

Vừa bước tới ngã tư, cả hai nghe thấy tiếng bước chân ai đó đang cố đuổi theo họ.

“hả?”

Lông mày Shidou giật giật khi cậu quay lại và nhìn theo hướng mà âm thanh phát ra, nhưng đã muộn.

Phía bên trái, một cô gái trông như nữ sinh sơ trung, miệng đang gậm 1 cái bánh mì và hét.

“Trễ rồi! Trễ rồi!”

Cảnh này có vẽ khá quen thuộc trong các manga bình thường, nhưng cho dù là so sánh với manga đi nữa thì cô ấy đang chạy với
tốc độ khá là nhanh, và dù ngậm miếng bánh mì trong miệng nhưng vẫn phát âm chuẩn.

“Cái gì……..?”

Ý định thực hiện một cú nhảy tránh thần thánh bật ra trong đầu Shidou nhưng đã quá muộn. Cậu bị cô nàng sơ trung đó knock out,
té xuống mặt đường.

“Arr… Ouch….!”

“Cậu có sao không Shidou?”

Tohka cuối xuống, hỏi một cách quan tâm.

“Ừm, mình ổn cả, nhưng….”

Shidou phủi mông đứng dậy, đối mặt với người đã húc mình té ngã. Nếu như Shidou, một chàng trai chàng trai bị ngã mà đau đến
vậy thì chắc cô gái kia sẽ đau hơn nhiều.

“Úi… đau…”

Đúng như dự kiến, cô ấy bật lên tiếng kêu đau, tuy nhiên

“Nnwha…..”

Gương mặt Shidou dần chuyển thành màu đỏ, run run đôi vai.

Điều đó cũng hoàn toàn dễ hiểu, bởi vì trước mặt cậu, cô gái đã bật ngữa ra sau, và váy thì bị tốc ngược.

Không hiểu vì lý do nào đó mà cô ấy không phủ váy xuống lại khi có cơ hội, dường dư cô cố tình làm như vậy.

“____Kya!?”

Nhưng ý nghĩ của Shidou ngay lậy tức bị thổi bay bởi tiếng la của cô ấy.

Cô ấy che ngay lại phần không nên lộ ra, bối rối hỏi.

“Cậu… có thấy….có thấy…?”

“Không không không!!”

Trong khi Shidou trả lời một cách khó nhọc, cô gái đứng dậy và đến gần Shidou.

“Tôi đã bị một chàng trai nhìn thấy đò lót mất rồi. Tôi không thể kết hôn được nữa.”

“hả?? điều đó không…”

Lúc này, cô gái đó ép ngực của mình lên Shidou ngay lập tức.

“Hyiii….”

“Cái………?”

Không những Shidou mà ngay cả Tohka cũng không nói nên lời.

Tuy nhiên, có vẻ cô ấy không quan tâm điều đó. Cô ta lấy ngón tay mình vuốt ve ngực Shidou và hỏi.

“Liệu…. Cậu sẽ chịu trách nhiệm chứ?”

“Ơ… không… dù bạn có nói như vậy….”

Mồ hôi chảy ròng ròng trên khuôn mặt, cậu quay nhìn đi hướng khác. Thời tiết lúc đó cực kỳ nóng bức.

“Mình chưa thể để bạn đi được.”

Ngay lập tức, Tohka phản ứng lại, chộp lấy vai của cô gái đó. Nhưng cô ấy nhanh nhẹn né được.

“Nào, sẽ không mất nhiều thời gian đâu, nghĩ xem điều gì sẽ xãy ra tiếp theo?”

Sau khi nói vậy, cô ta chạy ngay về phía mà mình đến.

Sau khi thấy vậy, Tohka bỉu môi “Uu…” và nhìn Shidou.

“Chuyện…chuyện gì vậy Tohka?”

“Không… không có gì cả….”

Tohka quay đi và bước về phía ngôi trường.

“Tohka, chờ đã nào…”

Lúc này, tai nghe Shidou có tín hiệu.

“Shidou, ra………”

“Cái……….?”

Shidou nhíu mày lại. Kotori thì thở dài một cách thiếu kiên nhẫn.

“Shidou, anh biết anh đã làm gì mày. Đừng cố phủ nhận điều đó. Anh không được phép là Tohka cảm thấy khó chịu.”

Tại thời điểm này Shidou mới nhận ra tình hình.

“Đừng …. Đừng nói cô gái đó là….. nhân viên………”

“Đúng vậy, đó chính là một trong những nhân viên của tụi em. Có vẽ anh đang thất vọng nhỉ?”

“Guwaaaaaa….”

Mặt Shidou giật giật.

“Hầy, tại sao lúc đó anh không chịu làm bất cứ điều gì để cứu vãn tình hình nhỉ?”

“Cứu…cứu vãn?”

“Đúng, đại khái như là nhẹ nhàng nắm lấy vai Tohka và thì thầm vào tai cô ấy:”Đừng giận mà, mình không quan tâm bất cứ cô gái
nào khác ngoài cậu đâu.” Hoặc tương tự như vậy?”

“Làm sao có thể? Nhưng biểu hiện trên gương mặt cô ấy, nó có tác dung sao?”

“Hehe! Ai mà biết được, hên xui thôi. Nhưng đối với con gái thì họ lúc nào cũng thích nghe những lời như vậy.”

“Gud…”

“Được rồi! Nhưng điều quan trọng bây giờ là: Tại sao anh lại đứng đây như một thằng ngốc vậy? Tohka đã khuất bóng đằng xa rồi
kìa.”

“Oái….”

Shidou quay lại nhìn. Tohka đã mất hút đằng xa.

“Ôi không!”

Cậu chạy một cách điên cuồng vào trong trường, và may thay, cậu nhìn thấy Tohka một lần nữa.

Như đã tệp vào khung cảnh xung quang, Tohka đang đứng trong một góc, phụng phịu,

“Toh…Tohka!”

“….Nn. Đi thôi Shidou…”

Trông nhưng Tohka đã chờ nãy giờ. Nhưng nét hạnh phúc trên gương mặt cô ấy vẫn chưa biến mất.

“….Ooh, được thôi…”

Shidou trả lời ngắn gọn, đầu óc chạy đua.

Hớp lấy một hơi thở thật sâu, Shidou quyết tâm thực hiện điều mình dự định. Cậu đưa hai tay lên nắm lấy vai Tohka, liếc xung quanh một lượt và nói:

“Đừng giận mà, mình không quan tâm bất cứ cô gái nào khác ngoài cậu đâu.”

Không còn gì để mất, cậu chờ kết quả…

“……………”

Sau khi nói xong, Tohka mở to mắt nhìn chằm chằm Shidou.

“Cậu… cậu đang nói gì vậy?”

“Không…. Không có gì đâu, quên nó đi…”

Cùng lúc trả lời câu hỏi của Tohka, cậu cảm thấy vô cùng xấu hổ và chỉ muốn chết. Shidou đưa tay lên vẫy vẫy để che giấu điều đó.

“Mu….muuuuu.”

Không biết vì sao, Tohka lại rên rĩ và bước đi…… nhưng dường như bước chân của cô ấy đã nhẹ nhàng hơn lúc trước.

Từ nhà Isuka Shidou là một chặng đường đi bộ khoảng ba mươi phút. Nếu là bình thường thì Shidou đã đến trường lúc 8 giờ đúng,
nhưng vì sự cố với Tohka và mấy chuyện vặt khác, giờ đã hơi trễ.

Đồng hồ trên tay Shidou hiển thị 8:20. Còn 10p nữa là đến tiết chủ nhiệm.

“…….Chúng ta sẽ trễ nếu không nhanh lên…”

“Uh, cậu nói đúng….”

Khi nói như vậy, 2 người cùng bước vào. Đúng lúc này.

“Itsuka-senpai!”

Đứng chờ ở lối vào là một cô bé năm nhất, cũng là người đã gọi Shidou.

“Ơ… Tôi à?”

“Vâng!”

Cô gái ấy trông có vẽ khó chịu, chìa ra một lá thư một cách ngượng ngùng.

“Em thích anh từ lâu rồi… xin hãy vui lòng đọc nó.”

“ha…….hảảả?”

Shidou nhìn chằm chằm vào cái phong bì mà cô gai đó đưa ra, trên đó là một con dấu hình trái tim.

Đó chính xác là một bức thư tình.

“T…thư……t…tình?”

Cơ thể run lên, Shidou lùi một bước về phía sau.

Nhưng ngay lập tức, cậu nhận ra một điều gì đó. Không thể nào có chuyện trùng hợp như vậy xảy ra được. Rất có thế đây là một
trong những nhân viên của <Ratatoskr>. Nếu cậu không từ chối cô ta một cách chắc chắn, tiếng còi báo động tinh thần của Tohka
chắc chắn sẽ vang lên một lần nữa, và cậu sẽ phải nhận sự trừng phạt của Kotori.

Shidou nuốt nược bọt “ực” một cái, định cầm lá thư và xé nó ra ngàn mảnh. Nhưng khi nhìn vào đôi mắt đã rưng rưng của cô ấy,
cậu không thể kìm mình được.

Dù biết rằng cô ấy chỉ là nhân viên và hành động theo sự chỉ đạo, cậu vẫn cảm thấy khó chịu và ray rứt lương tâm.

Cậu đưa trả lá thư lại cho cô gái cùng với cái lắc đầu.

“Xin lỗi, mình không thể chấp nhận được.”

Shidou kết thúc câu nói. Cô gái trông như sắp òa lên khóc.

“Xin…. Xin lỗi vì đã quá đột ngột.”

Cô ấy quay đi và chạy nhanh theo hành lang.

“Araa, thật là đáng tiếc.”

“Nỡ từ chối một người đã thỗ lộ tình cảm đếm như vậy.”

“Dù bọn em đã có kế hoạch cho một lá thư tình giống như vậy, nhưng nhân viên của bọn này vẫn chưa hề hành động anh biết không?”

“Eh?”

Khuôn mặt Shidou lại giật giật.

Thế là Shidou nhìn xung quanh với gương mặt xấu hổ, và cậu thấy một cô gái khác, với lá thư tình trong tay. (Người dịch: Eo ơi!!
Thật là trớ trêu!)

“Đó… đó là……..?”

“Đúng vậy, nhân viên của bọn em.”

“Vậy… vậy còn cô bé lúc nãy?”

“Từ chối một bức thư tình từ đàn em thầm yêu trộm nhớ anh. Thật khó khăn cho cô ấy khi mối tình đầu đơn phương đã bị từ chối.”

“……………”

Shidou thẩn thờ nhìn quanh, không nói gì. Em ấy nói vậy là sao? Mình không hiểu…

“Vâng, ít nhất là anh không làm Tohka thất vọng.”

“Thật vậy à?”

Shidou trả lời bằng một giọng trống rỗng.

“Cô gái lúc nãy muốn gì ở cậu vậy Shidou?”

Câu hỏi hoài nghi của Tohka vang lên từ phía sau. Shidou lắc đầu.

“Không…không có gì.”

Ngay lúc này, cậu nghe thấy giọng Kotori một lần nữa.

“Tuy nhiên, điều đó không có nghĩa là anh không bị trừng phạt. Nỡ lòng từ chối một cô gái như vậy và làm cô ấy khóc.”

“Cái gì? Em đã lên kế hoạch để trêu anh đúng không?”

“Ừm… Em sẽ rãi ảnh của anh lúc nhỏ, khi anh bị dính sáp vào tóc, TRÊN TOÀN THỊ TRẤN!”

Khônggggggg! Đừng mà !”

“Còn vừa đủ thời gian từ giờ để đến lớp. Tiết chủ nhiệm sắp bắt đầu rồi đấy.”

Sau khi để lại câu nói đó. Tín hiệu biến mất.

“Ôi trời…”

Cánh cửa lớp học trượt mở ra, Shidou đi về chổ ngồi của mình. Và ở trên bảng là Tonomachi Hirito, đang nhìn Shidou.

“Ồh, tao đang tự hỏi vì sao mày đi học muộn, hóa ra là vì đi cùng với Tohka-chan U –Wa. U – wa.”

Cậu nói vậy và trên tay là một viên phấn, trên bản là hình ảnh một trái tim, bên trong là [Tohka – Shidou]

“Mày có còn là học sinh sơ trung nữa đâu mà đi làm như vậy chứ?”

Shidou lạnh lùng cười.

Tohka với một nét mặt khó hiểu lần lượt nhìn Tonomachi và Shidou.

“Ơ, bọn mình không thể đi học cùng nhau à? Mình không biết đó là điều cấm.”

Tonomachi hoảng loạng vung vẫy cánh tay, như thể đang cố gắng xóa những thứ trên bảng.

“Không, không phải như vậy. Làm thế nào mà Tohka-chan lại phải lòng mày cơ chứ. Mày thật là một thằng khốn số đỏ.”

Shidou trừng mắt nhìn Tonomachi. Nhưng cậu không hề cảm thấy sợ và, ngoài ra cậu còn nở một nụ cười to.

Shidou trở về chổ của mình.

Liếc nhìn về bên trái của mình, vẫn có một cô gái xinh đẹp ngồi ở đó như thường lệ.

Làn da trắng và vóc dáng trông như một con búp bê, cô tạo cho người khác cảm giác rằng cô không hề thuộc về thế giới này.

“Chào buổi sáng…. Tobiichi”

“…………..”

Một áp lực đè nặng lên Shidou.

“Chào buổi sáng, Origami.”

Ngay sau câu nói đó. Tobiichi Origami nhẹ nhàng gật đầu.

Ngày hôm nay có vẽ sẹ không kết thúc một cách dễ dàng. Origami liếc qua vai Shidou, và với một ánh mắt sắc bén, cô nói.

“Hai người đi học chung.”

“Hả…ơ…đúng vậy.”

“Thật à?”

Không biểu hiện bất cứ gì trên gương mặt, không một sự thay đổi trong giọng nói. Shidou cảm thấy một áp lực khá lớn.

“…………Nu?”

Cô gái ngồi bên phải của Shidou, Tohka, giờ đã nhận thấy bầu không khí u ám này. Cô đặt hộp bento và túi xách xuống.

“Sao? Cô muốn gì à?”

“……..Hừ.”

Không thể che giấu sự bực bội của mình, Tohka phát ra một âm thanh.

Đúng là như vậy. Bình thường thì Tohka sẽ không cư xử với ai một cách lỗ mãng, như cô gái này thì khác.

Origami thuộc JGSDF – AST, một tổ chức luôn tìm và diệt những tinh linh như Tohka.

Và thật ra mà nói, trước khi Shidou phong ấn Tohka, họ đã nện nhau một trận ra trò.

Hơn nữa, cha mẹ của Origami đã bị tinh linh giết. Nỗi đau đó đã hằng sâu vào tiềm thức của cô. Không một ai có thể hóa giải nó
được.

Đúng lúc này, tiếng chuông báo giờ vang lên.

“Được rồi, đến tiết chủ nhiệm. Tohka, trở về chổ ngồi nào.”

“…Nu? Vâng…….”

Tohka vội vàng ngồi xuống ghế.

Shidou thầm cảm ơn những sự tình cờ này.

Các học sinh trở về chổ ngồi của mình. Tonimachi cũng đã len lỏi chạy về chổ ngồi của mình lúc nào không hay.

Không lâu sau đó, cánh cửa mở ra và một phụ nữ tóc ngắn, xoăn bức vào.

Trông cô ấy có vẻ như là một học sinh, nhưng thực ra đây là cô giáo chủ nhiệm của lớp Okamine Tamea, 29t, biệt danh Tama-chan.

“Được rồi, cháo buổi sáng, các em!”

Sau lời chào đó, Tama-chan-sensei cầm danh sách học sinh lên và đột ngột dừng lại.

“À đúng rồi, có một chuyện cô phải thông báo với các em.”

Cô ấy đưa mắt dò xét lớp học 1 lượt.

“Chúng ta có một học sinh chuyển trường ngày hôm nay.”

Một khoảnh khắc sau khi Tama-chan-sensei nói xong, cả lớp bùng lên một lượt.

“Ohhhhhhh…………….!”

Điều này cũng dễ hiểu.

Nói về học sinh chuyển trường thì đó quả là một sự kiện lớn đối với lớp học. Thật ra, mọi người cũng đã rất vui mừng khi lần đầu
Tohka chuyển đến lớp này.

“……Nn”

Lúc này, Shidou nghiên đầu.

Tohka mới chỉ chuyển đến đây vài tháng trước, làm thế nào mà lại có thêm một học sinh chuyển trường nữa? Shidou suy nghĩ
mông lung. Ngoài ra thì số học sinh trong lớp cũng ngang bằng với các lớp khác.

“Được rồi, mời em vào.”

Suy nghĩ của Shidou bị cắt ngang bởi giọng nói dễ tính của Tama-chan.

Cánh cửa từ từ mở ra, học sinh mới bước vào. Ngay lập tức, lớp học chìm trong yên lặng.

Đó là một cô gái trẻ. Dù là vào mùa hè, cô ấy lại đang mặc bộ đồng phục mùa đông cùng với áo khoác đen và vớ.

Công thêm mái tóc đen dài, cô ấy trông như một cái bóng.

Cũng giống như Tohka, cô gái ấy sở hữu một cẽ đẹp thần thánh, bất cứ ai cũng khó có thể cưỡng lại được.

Âm thanh nuốt nước bọt của các nam sinh khác bay đến tai Shidou.

“Nào, tự giới thiệu bản thân của em đi.”

“Nn.”

Theo yêu cầu của Tama-chan-sensei, cô ấy gật đầu một cách duyên dáng và cầm lấy viên phấn. Nén chữ được nắn nót trên bảng
hiện ra trước mắt mọi người <Tokisaki Kurumi>.

“Mình tên là Tokisaki Kurumi.”

Và sau đó, với một giọng to hơn, cô ấy nói tiếp.

“Mình là một tinh linh.”

“……………”

“T…Tinh linh?”

Shidou có cảm giác như trái tim mình bị ai đó bóp chặt.

Các học sinh khác thì ồn ào bàn tán, duy chỉ có Origami và Tohka là có nét mặt tương tự như Shidou.

Dường như biết được điều này, Kurumi quay về phía Shidou và mỉm cười.

“…..ssss….”

“Ơ….cảm ơn em, một lời giới thiệu tuyệt vời.”

Có lẽ đã nhận ra rằng Kurumi đã hoàn tất lời giới thiệu, Tama-chan-sensei vỗ tay, các học sinh khác cũng noi theo cô giáo.

“Vậy thì, Tokisaki-san, em vui lòng đến ghế trống ở đó.”

“Nn. Tuy nhiên em muốn nhờ một chuyện trước, thưa cô.”

“Chuyện gì vậy?”

“Do đây là lần đầu em chuyển đến trường này, em muốn tìm hiểu thêm một chút về trường học. Em muốn ai đó đưa em đi xung
quanh khuôn viên nhà trường.”

“À..à… đúng rồi. Cô có thể nói với đại diện của lớp….”

Tuy nhiên, Kurumi đã đi xuyên qua dãy bàn học và dừng lại trước bàn của Shidou.

“Hey, mình có thể nhờ bạn chuyện này được không Shidou-san?”

“Errrr…..”

Đối mặt với sự việc bất ngờ này, cậu phản ứng lại bằng cách phô ra bộ mặt sửng sốt và đôi mắt mở to.

“Ơ… mình à? Sao bạn biết tên mình?”

“Bạn sẽ làm chứ….?”

Trông Kurumi như thể sẽ khóc nếu bị từ chối.

“Được, nhưng……..”

“Cảm ơn đã hứa. Mình sẽ nhờ cậu giúp đỡ sau, Shidou-san.”

Kurumi cười một cách ngọt ngào. Giữa cái nhìn tức tối và ghen tị của những người cùng lớp với Shidou, cô ấy đi bộ một cách thoải mái về chổ ngồi mà mình được chỉ định.

Date A Live:Tập 3 Chương 2

2017-12-27T23:08:17Z

Toshiya: Reverted edits by 162.158.178.42 (talk) to last revision by 123.25.83.77

Thời điểm mà Tama-chan-sensei rời lớp học, Shidou lôi ngay điện thoại ra và gọi cho Kotori. Sau âm thanh báo hiệu cuộc gọi đã được kết nối, giọng Kotori vang lên.

“Xin chào, Onii-chan?”

Một giọng nói vui vẻ và dễ thương. Đó chính là em gái bé bỏng của cậu, Kotori khi chưa vào trạng thái chỉ huy.

“Này, Kotori.”

“Thực ra mà nói thì… Tại sao anh lại gọi cho em vào lúc này chứ? Nếu điện thoại reo sớm hơn chỉ 10s nữa thôi, có lẽ nó đã bị giáo viên tịch thu mất rồi.”

“Đáng lẽ ra em phải để nó ở chế độ rung hoặc yên lặng chứ?”

“Ơ… tự nhiên bữa nay em quên mất.”

Kotori chán nản nói.

“Mà, có chuyện gì vậy?”

“Oh, ah đúng rồi…”

Khi Shidou đang nói, cậu liếc về phía Kurumi.

Cô gái này đã có một bài giới thiệu gây sốc với mọi người, tâm điểm của điều đó là câu nói:”Mình là một tinh linh”, thế là cô ấy được mọi người vây quanh và đặt ra vô vàng câu hỏi. Không chỉ có các học sinh trong lớp, mà ngay cả các học sinh lớp khác cũng đã đến vì lời đồn có một nữ sinh xinh đẹp vừa chuyển đến. Bất cứ ai nghe được tin đồn đều đã đến. Giống y như ngày mà Tohka chuyển đến lớp này.

Ngay lúc này, mắt của Kurumi và Shidou vô tình đụng nhau. Kurumi gửi lại cho Shidou một nụ cười nhẹ. Vậy là Shidou đỏ mặt và nín thở ngay lập tức.

“Onii-chan?”

“À…… à….. hôm nay lớp anh có học sinh mới chuyển đến, nhưng cô ta nói….”

“Nói gì cơ?”

“Mình là một tinh linh.”

“……………..”

Shidou nói xong, cả hai cùng yên lặng.
Thay vào đó là âm thanh xào xạc của quần áo. Nói một cách đơn giản thì Kotori có lẽ đang thay cái ruy băng cột tóc của mình.

“Nói chi tiết hơn được không?”

Giọng cô ấy đã thay đổi, bắt đầu từ câu nói này.

“Cho dù em có nói vậy đi chăng nữa…… anh cũng không biết nhiều hơn những gì anh đã nói với em đâu. Khi vừa ra mắt, cô ấy đã nói:”Mình là một tinh linh”……. Dù không có cơ sở gì để khẳng định nhưng anh lại có cảm giác rằng cô ấy đang nói với anh.”

“Anh không tự tưởng tượng ra điều đó chứ?”

“Uầy, quên nó đi. Nếu đã biết cô ấy có gì đó bất thường, tự anh sẽ điều tra thêm.”

“Oh, vậy làm đi…..”

Lúc mà Shidou kết thúc cuộc gọi cũng là lúc chuông báo giờ vang lên.

09:54, 19 July 2014 (CDT)

Ở một góc của thành phố là trụ sở Tenguu. Bên trong phòng quan sát tín hiệu của tinh linh. Trên màn hình xuất hiệu một làn sóng lan tỏa khắp thành phố, nguồn phát ra làn sóng đó là khu vực phía Nam Kanto.

“Điều này là không thể….”

Đội trưởng AST, Kusakabe Ryoko, khẽ cau mày khi nghe thấy tiếng đó.

“Này, có chuyện gì vậy?”

Người đàn ông đang thao tác ở tháp điều khiển trung tâm, Trung sĩ Ashimuara quay lại nhìn cô, lắc khuôn mặt đẫm mồ hôi.

“Tôi xin lỗi, dường như hệ thống quan sát đang gặp trục trặc, ngay cả khi đây là loại có độ chính xác rất cao….”

“…….Thật vậy à?”

Kiểm tra lại những con số trên màn hình một lần nữa. Sau khi đảm bảo đây không phải là nhầm lẫn, cô thở dài như để cố gắng thổi đi sự thất vọng của mình.

Hiển thị trên màn hình là một người mang số liệu cụ thể.

Không, nếu sử dụng vỏ bọc con người, máy móc có thể bị đánh lừa.

Dù sao đi nữa, những con số hiển thị trên màn hình đều chỉ ra một thảm họa diệt vong.

“Tinh linh….. chuyển trường…. đi học? Trò đùa này không vui tí nào…”

Điều đó hoàn toàn đúng. Hôm nay, lúc 9:00 sáng, cô nhận được tin nhắn mà Origami gửi về căn cứ.

‘Yêu cầu điều tra. Có một học sinh mới chuyển đến tự xưng cô ta là tinh linh ngay trong lớp học của tôi.’

Dù không tin nhưng Ryouko vẫn cho máy quét hoạt động, thế là…..

Ryouko lau trán, mồ hôi ướt đẫm cả tay áo. Dù cho điều hòa đang dược bật, là da mịn màng của cô đã rươm rướm mồ hôi.

Việc này cũng có lý do của nó. Để chuyển vào một trường cao trung thì phải có thông tin đầy đủ về gia đình và địa chỉ, và thông tin giả của cô ta có vẽ hoàn hảo.

Một sinh vật nguy hiểm có thể thổi bay đường phố chỉ với một cái búng tay, nhưng cô ta đã không làm vậy. Cô ta không giống các tinh linh trước, đã tự mình tìm hiểu mọi thứ về xả hội con người, và sử dụng chúng một cách có hiệu quả. Điều này khiến cho Ryouko không khỏi rùng mình.

“Chỉ huy, chị khỏe không?”

Ngay lúc này, một lời chào vang lên từ phía sau Ryouko. Chị từ từ quay đầu lại, và đó là Mana, đúng như dự đoán ban đầu.

“……Nn?”

Mana thể hiện một nét mặt nghiên trọng và nhíu nhíu lông mày của mình.

“Đây là…. Cuối cùng cũng xuất hiện, <Nightmare>”

“<Nightmare>?”

Ryouko ngạc nhiên hỏi. Còn Mana thì thở dài với đôi lông mày giờ đây chỉ còn là một đường thẳng liền nhau.

“Mật danh <Nightmare>, tinh linh mà em đang săn đuổi, kẻ giết người tan bạo nhất.”

“Tinh linh…. Tàn bạo nhất?”

Ryouko có vẽ hơi rùng mình khi lặp lại câu trả lời đó. Mana gật đầu.

“Tinh linh đó đã giết ít nhất là 10.000 người tính cho đến bây giờ. Đó là chưa kể đến số người chết không rõ thủ phạm. Nếu gộp tất cả lại, con số thực có lẽ phải gấp nhiều lần.”

“10.000… không thể tin được. Lẽ ra phải có báo động khi cô ta xuất hiện chứ?”

“Không hẵn.”

Như thể đang cố gắng ngắt lời Ryouko, Mana lên tiếng một cách mạnh mẽ.

“Những cơn không gian chấn mà <Ác Mộng> gây ra rất nhỏ, nhưng vẫn có nạn nhân. Con số có lẽ vào khoảng 100 người.

“Vậy… tại sao…?”

“Đơn giản thôi, cô ta tự tay giết người.”

“……………..”

Ryouko nín thở.

Các tinh linh khác như <Princess> và <Hermit> đã xuất hiện trước đây trong thành phố, tuy họ ra gây không gian chấn phá hủy nhiều cơ sợ vật chất nhưng họ không chủ động tấn công con người.

Tuy nhiên <Nightmare> thì lại khác. Cô ta đã chủ động ra tay.

Là một thành viêt AST, gương mặt Ryouko hiện lên một sự kinh hoàng mà ít ai có thể thấy được.

“Được rồi, chúng ta nên chuẩn những gì để đối phó cô ta?”

“Hả?”

Mana hỏi, kéo dài từ đó một cách nhẹ nhàng. Còn Ryouko thì chỉ lạnh lùng.

“Khi một tinh linh xuất hiện, không có biện pháp đối phó nào khác ngoài việc tiêu diệt nó.”

“Đúng vậy! Nhưng chúng ta không sơ tán người dân hay sao? Dù sao thì tình hình này cũng là…”

“Không cần phải lo lắng. Cứ để đó cho chị. Xử lý những trường hợp như thế này là sở trường của chị đây mà.”

“Aaa, khoan đã.”

Ryouko nắm cánh tay của Mana lại khi cô đang định rời khỏi.

“Không phải là đang có chuyện khẩn cấp hay sao? Tốt nhất là nên hành động thật nhanh.”

“Chị phải nói trước với em rằng, ở đây chị là người chỉ huy, đừng tự ý thực hiện bất cứ điều gì theo cảm tính của mình.”

Một thoáng suy nghĩ như thể đang cân nhắc một điều gì đó, cô giơ tay lên.

“Đã hiểu. Em sẽ tuân theo mệnh lệnh.”

Tuy nhiên, Mana đưa mắt nhìn lại Ryouko như thể đã đánh giá được con người này.

“Nhưng chị cũng đừng quên rằng em ở đây là để hỗ trợ cho đội, và điều này đã được sự cho phép của trụ sở.”

“……Chị biết mà…”

Ryouko xoắn lại một cách nhàm chán, trái ngược hoàn toàn với gương mặt của Mana.

09:54, 19 July 2014 (CDT)

Cây kim giờ của cái đồng hồ trên bảng đen chỉ ra rằng đã 3h trôi qua kể từ lúc đó.

Theo như thời khóa biểu của Shidou, đây là tiết cuối cùng trong ngày, cũng là tiết chủ nhiệm. Ngay sau tiếng chuông vào lớp, Tama-chan-sensei bước vào, trên tay cô là giáo án và bắt đầu buổi dạy.

Khung cảnh này có vẻ bình thường với các học sinh khác, nhưng Shidou thì lại có cảm giác rằng cậu đang bị tra tấn.

Lý do là vì…..

“………………”

Kurumi luôn nhân lúc giáo viên không chú ý mà liếc + vẫy tay với Shidou.

“Chuyện đó, ơ…..”

Cảm thấy sẽ thật là bất lịch sự nếu không đáp trả, Shidou đành cười và vẫy tay lại.

Nhưng Tohka và Origami, ngồi cạnh 2 bên của Shidou, thì không thốt lên một lời nào, và cũng không làm bất cứ hành động nào, chỉ đơn giản là gửi tặng Shidou những cái lườm cháy da mặt.

“….Mình phải làm gì đây……..?”

Shidou tuyệt vọng thở dài, Tama-chan-sensei thì đã đóng cuốn giáo án lại.

“Bài học hôm nay kết thúc. Àh, còn một điều nữa, thời gian gần đây, trên khu vực này thường xuyên xảy ra những vụ mất tích bí ẩn, thế nên cô muốn các em đi về thành từng nhóm, được chứ?”

“…………..Nn?”

Những lời căn dặn này cứ như dành cho con nít. Shidou nhíu mày.

Thực ra điều này đã được thông báo trên tivi và các bài báo. Mọi người trong thành phố Tenguu đã bắt đầu chú ý vấn đề này.

Shidou thì không sao, đơn giản vì cậu đã trưởng thành, nhưng còn Kotori thì….

Đúng vậy, cô em gái bé bổng của cậu, còn rất nhiều thứ cần phải quan tâm.

Đang mãi suy nghĩ về điều đó, tiếng lớp trưởng kêu đứng-chào vang lên cắt ngang dòng suy nghĩ của Shidou. Cậu đứng dậy và cúi mình. Trong vô vàng những âm thanh do bàn ghê bị xê dịch gây ra, cậu vẫn có thể nghe thấy những cuộc trò chuyện râm ran của bạn cùng lớp.

Bây giờ đã hết giờ học, tuy nhiên Shidou vẫn còn việc phải làm.

Lấy từ trong túi ra một cái tai nghe nhỏ, cậu đặt nó lên tai mình.

Ngay lập tức, một giọng hào hứng như muốn chọc thủng màng nhĩ của Shidou.

“Đến lúc rồi! Anh sẵn sàng chưa Shidou?”

Đó là Isuka Kotori, người vừa hét lên với cường độ âm thanh khá lớn. Cô đang trong chế độ chỉ huy.

Dù không được hỗ trợ trực tiếp nhưng kết nối liên lạc từ đây đến <Fraxinus> không có vấn đề gì gây cản trở, có thể xem đây là nguồn tự tin cho Shidou.

“Em không tin tí nào, về chuyện cô ta là tinh linh. Hãy tìm hiểu sự thật và chứng minh rằng nó chỉ là ý nghĩ sinh ra từ sự CDSHT của anh đi Shidou.”

“……Này….”

Ngoài việc nheo mắt khó chịu thì Shidou không thể làm gì khác để đáp trả lại câu nói của Kotori.

Nhưng nghi ngờ của Kotori cũng là có lý do. Cậu phải tìm hiểu sự thật vì cậu còn không tin tưởng chính mình. Liệu có hay không chuyện một tinh linh chuyển trường để đi học?

Kết quả quan sát và phân tích của Kotori về Kurumi được gửi đến điện thoại của Shidou vào giờ ăn trưa.

Và tóm lại, Kurumi thực sự là một tinh linh.

“Đây có lẽ là chuyện tốt. Phía bên kia cũng đã nhận được báo cáo tương tự về Kurumi. Chuông báo động vẫn chưa vang lên, điều đó có nghĩa là họ chưa được phép hành động. Đây là một chuyện tốt ngoài mong đợi. Bây giờ, hãy tập trung vào việc quyến rũ cô ta và làm cô ta phải lòng anh đi nào.”

“……..Nn. Anh nghĩ….. Em nói đúng.”

Shidou nói một cách miễn cưỡng.

Đó chỉ là lời nói một phía từ Kurumi. Tuy nhiên, động cơ thực sự của Kurumi vẫn không rõ ràng. Shidou đang cảm thấy khá bối rối.

“Sao vậy? Sợ rồi à? Chuyện hôn một tinh linh khác?”

“Không, không phải chuyện đó…..”

“Vậy thì tốt, bởi vì chúng ta không còn thời gian để tán dóc đâu.”

“Err…?”

Shidou hỏi lại một cách ngu ngốc. Vai cậu bị chọc chọc bởi ai đó.

“Shidou-san, Shidou-san.”

“Uơ….?”

Vì bất ngờ nên cậu giật mình.

“Xin lỗi, mình làm bạn sợ à?”

Kurumi đứng đó nhìn Shidou với một cái nhìn hối lỗi.

“To…Tokisaki?”

“Ufufu, bạn có thể gọi mình là Kurumi.”

“A…ơ…. Vậy thì… Kurumi.”

Sau khi nghe những lời của Shidou, cô nói tiếp với một nụ cười hạnh phúc.

“Cậu có thể dẫn mình đi xung quanh trường không? Nhờ bạn chăm sóc!”

“Oh, ohh, uh.”

Có vẽ như nhịp tim của Shidou đang tăng nhanh. Cậu đặt tay lên ngực mình và gật đầu.

Một vẽ đẹp quyến rũ con người. Một thái độ đáng yêu. Sự thanh lịch hiếm có. Năm giác quan của Shidou xác nhận và hằng sâu hình ảnh của Kurumi.

Giờ đây, Shidou dường như bất chấp tất cả để nhìn Kurumi, não cậu căng ra hết mức.

“E hèm…”

“…….?!”

Shidou tự trấn tĩnh bằng một cái ho giả vờ. Từ một ngã rẽ, Tohka bước ra và nhìn chằm chằm vào cả hai.

“Àh, về chuyện này….”

Shidou đã thấy Tohka, cậu cố gắng giải thích một cách vô ích.

“Vậy thì đi nhanh lên nào. Mình đang cảm thấy rất vui.”

Nhưng trước khi Shidou giải thích xong, Kurumi đã vượt lên trước và bước đi một cách nhanh nhẹn.

“Ơ, nà…..này!”

“fu fu fu, Shidou, nhanh lên nào.”

“Shidou, bây giờ Kurumi là ưu tiên hàng đầu của chúng ta. Nhanh rời khỏi đó trước khi tinh thần của cô ấy trở nên tệ hơn. Lúc về nhớ mua bánh mì cho cô ấy kèm theo lời xin lỗi.”

Tại thời điểm đó, giọng của Kotori thức tỉnh Shidou.

Nhìn sang bên phải, Shidou thấy Tohka đã nhập vào dòng người đang hối hả ra về và đi khuất khỏi tầm nhìn. Nhưng cậu không còn sự lựa chọn nào khác ngoài “Xin lỗi!” và đuổi theo Kurumi.

“Vậy thì, chúng ta bắt đầu từ đâu nhỉ?”

Kurumi đứng gần cánh cửa của một lớp học, nghiêng đầu và hỏi.

“À…à vâng….”

Cùng lúc đó, giọng nói của Kotori vang lên trong tai phải của Shidou.

09:54, 19 July 2014 (CDT)

15.000m phía trên thành phố Tenguu.

Không hạm của <Ratatoskr>, <Fraxinus> đang bay tự do.

Vật chất không xác định, những thực thể đã vô tình tàn phá thế giới, <tinh linh>.

Để làm cho họ rơi vào lưới tình, những nhân viên nhận lãnh trách nhiệm khó khăn nhưng không kém phần thú vị này đang ở trong cuộc chiến của chính họ.

Tại trung tâm liên lạc của <Fraxinus>, ba mươi nhân viên, bao gồm cả người chỉ huy, Kotori, đang cật lực làm việc.

Tất cả mọi người đang ở vị trí của họ, làm đúng nhiệm vụ của mình.

“Mức độ yêu thích là 45.5. Vẫn chư có sự thay đổi nào.”

“Trạng thái tâm lý màu xanh lá. Trạng thái ổn định.”

“Bước sóng tinh là 150.0. Sai số chấp nhận được là 3.4.”

“Ừm, tất cả chỉ có vậy à?”

Người hỏi là Kotori, cô đã ngã lưng trên chiếc ghế chỉ huy của <Fraxinus> ở trung tâm căn phòng.

Hiện giờ trên đầu cô là 2 dải ruy băng cột tóc màu đen. Trên người là bộ đồng phục chỉ huy của tổ chúc. Nhìn thì không sao, nhưng người ta lại có cảm giác cô gái này đang mặc cosplay vì nghiện anime.

Cô rời khỏi vị trí của mình, quan sát một lược tất cả nhân viên cấp dưới của mình rồi trở lại vị trí, chăm chú vào màn hình.

Đó là một màn hình lớn, hiện thị toàn bộ thông tin về tinh linh mà họ đang theo dõi.

Những chỉ số đo đạc từ thực tế, sau khi qua xử lý của các nhân viên, đang hiển thị lên màn hình đó và thay đổi theo thời gian thực.

Đúng vậy, tất cả hiện thị như một trò galge (game hẹn hò ảo).

Tại thời điểm ấy, Kurumi trên màn hình nghiên đầu và hỏi

“Vậy thì, chúng ta bắt đầu từ đâu nhỉ?”

“À…à vâng….”

Giọng của Shidou vang lên từ loa.

Kotori đã hiểu ra tình hình mà không cần hỏi thêm bất cứ điều gì từ bất cứ ai. Cô thở dài và ấn vào tai nghe để phát tín hiệu.

“Chờ một tí Shidou, để bọn em phân tích đã.”

Ngay sau lời nói của Kotori, một cửa sổ hiện ra trên màn hình. Đó chính là bản đồ của trường cao trung Raizen, noi mà Shidou hiện đang đứng. Toàn bộ các lớp học và các phòng khác trong trường được hiển thị. Vị trí mà Shidou và Kurumi đang đứng được hiển thị bằng một dấu chấm màu đỏ. Các đường sáng hiện lên dựa theo những phép tính về hành trình và tốc độ của họ.

Nơi đầu tiên nên chọn là

*Sân thượng* *Bệnh xá* * Căn tin*

“Một cơ hội tuyệt vời!”

Một giọng nói phát ra từ phía sau Kotori. Cô quay lại, đó là phó chỉ huy của <Fraxinus>, Kannazuki Kyouhei.

“Thật tuyệt vời khi có các đường mô phỏng hướng đi cho từng trường hợp lựa chọn. Nếu độ chính xác cao, nó có thể mang lại sự thành công ngoài mong đợi.”

“Uh, đúng vậy. Mọi người, chọn trong vòng năm giây.”

Sau khi Kotori nói xong, màn hình hiển thị kết quả lựa chọn.

“Oh, có vẻ có nhiều người lựa chọn ‘sân thượng nhỉ?”

“Đúng vậy! Có thể xem đó là nơi lui tới ưa thích của học sinh cao trung bây giờ! Một rơi họ có thể tự do thoải mái trò chuyện và ngắm cảnh! Không có sự lựa chọn nào thích hợp hơn.”

Kotori lẩm bẩm chuyện gì đó. Phía dưới đài chỉ huy, Nakatsugawa hét lớn.

“Khoan đã… bình thường thì sân thượng luôn được khóa đúng không? Vì nó quá nguy hiểm.”

Tuy nhiên, Minowa đang ngồi cạnh anh ta, xoa cằm và nói.

“Thật vậy à?”

Cùng lúc đó, Nakatsugawa định phản đối, nhưng tiếng tằng hắng của Kotori đã ngăn anh ta lại.

“Không vấn đề gì cả. Có rất nhiều nhân viên hỗ trợ trong trường, họ sẽ mở khóa cánh cửa đó trước khi Shidou và kurumi đến nơi.”

“Đúng vậy, sân thượng vẫn là sự lựa chọn tốt nhất!”

“Kh….khoan đã!”

Đúng lúc này, Kawagoe nhìn sang phải.

“Sao mọi người lại bỏ qua bệnh xá? Nơi đó có đầy đủ giường và cả rèm cửa chen kín căn phòng. Đó chẳng phải là nơi “kích thích” nhất trong trường hay sao?”

“Hừm… Nakatsugawa, sao anh không lau sạch máu mũi của anh trước khi đưa ra lời phản đối đó chứ?”

“Ha……!”

“Thật vậy à?”

Sau khi nghe cuộc tranh cãi giữa phe chọn sân thượng và phe chọn bệnh xá, Kotori nhìn vào màn hình một lần nữa.

“Nhắc mới nhớ, ai đã chọn căn tin?”

Kotori nâng một bàn tay lên và hỏi.

“…..Tôi!”

Một người phụ nữ, trông cô ta mệt mỏi như thể vừa chiến đấu với những con quỷ từ địa ngục, mở đôi mắt với những quầng thâm dày, nhìn vào người chỉ huy. Murasame Reine, nhân viên phân tích của <Fraxinus>, người mà Kotori luôn luôn tin tưởng.

“Là Reine à? Ngạc nhiên chưa. Cô có thể cho tôi biết lý do?”

“…à, cũng không có lý do gì đặc biệt, chỉ đơn giản là tôi dùng phương pháp loại trừ.”

“Tại sao lại loại trừ sân thượng và bệnh xá?”

“Không đơn giản chỉ là loại trừ. Bệnh xá luôn có một nhân viên y tế lui tới để kiểm tra. Nếu chúng ta muốn họ đến đó, chúng ta phải chờ thêm 30p nữa. Sân thượng cũng tương tự như vậy. Chúng ta phải chờ đến khi mặt trời lặn, khi đó sẽ có một cảnh hoàn hôn tuyệt đẹp. Chúng ta nên để họ đến đó vào buổi chiều thì thích hợp hơn.”

Sau khi nghe những lời thấu đáo từ Reine, Kotori nói vào thiết bị liên lạc.

“Shidou, anh có nghe rõ không? Mang cô ấy đến căn tin đi.”

“À… ừm……… Chúng ta sẽ đến căn tin vậy. Mình muốn bạn thử đến đó một lần cho biết.”

“Vâng, sao cũng được.”

Shidou nói xong, Kotori nhẹ nhàng gật đầu với một nụ cười trên môi.

Kurumi nhẹ nhàng đến bên Shidou.

“Vậy thì cùng đi nào.”

“Oo…Oh…..!”

Khá choáng với sự gần gũi này, Shidou bắt đầu bước đi một cách khó khăn.

Để đến được căn tin, họ phải lên cầu thang đầu tiên ở phía Tây. Cả hai bước xuống cầu thang một cách chậm rãi.

Lúc này, những học sinh đang trên đường về nhà lườm họ.

_______Waaa__ Cô gái đó… dễ thương quá__ Không phải đó là học sinh chuyển trường ở lớp 4, ngồi cạnh Isuka Shidou hay sao? Sao lại thế? Có vẽ như cô ấy muốn cậu ta đưa đi tham quan trường. Eh… đó chẳng phải là Isuka, chồng của Yatogami hay sao? Nhưng mình nghe nói là Origami của đã phải lòng cậu ta. Hình như họ còn hứa hẹn chuyện gì đó, người yêu thì phải…

Thật là, bây giờ cậu ta còn dính vào học sinh chuyển trường mới đến nữa. Thằng này cứ như là trai bao!

…….Dù mọi người xung quanh có nói gì đi chăng nữa…….

Với gương mặt đang co giật, Shidou cố gắng bỏ ngoài tai những lời xì xầm đó và bước nhanh hơn.

Một giọng khác, không phải từ đám người kia vọng trong tai Shidou.

“Nnnnnnnnnnn….”

“Có chuyện gì vậy Kotori?”

“Không, có hai người đang theo anh anh. Cẩn thận bị theo dõi đấy.”

“Eh… err….”

Đối mặt với một mối nguy như vậy, trông Shidou như thể sắp khóc.

“Im nào. Bọn em sẽ phân tích chuyện này. Còn anh phải tập trung vào chuyện của Kurumi đã. Mà anh đang dạo bộ cùng một cô gái đấy. Sao anh không thử trò chuyện với cô ấy?”

“Hả?? Anh….”

Vì quá chú ý vào những lời nói xung quanh cũng như sự căng thẳng khi dạo bộ với một cô gái, cậu đã quên mất Kurumi.

“….Ôi disss….”

Cậu lẩm bẩm và liếc nhìn Kurumi.

Đột nhiên tim cậu đập dữ dội.

Nhưng điều đó có lý do của nó. Kurumi đang nhìn thẳng vào cậu bằng con mắt không bị tóc che phủ.

Thế là ánh mắt của anh người chạm nhau. Trong khoảng khắc ấy, Kurumi nở một nụ cười ngọt ngào nhất có thể, cứ như cô đang rất vui trong lòng. Chắc cô ấy đã mong chờ Shidou nhìn mình từ nãy đến giờ.

“Ku…Kurumi, bạn nên cẩn thận và nhìn về phía trước lúc đang đi bộ chứ.”

“Oh, bạn để ý à. Cảm ơn vì đã lo lắng cho mình, Shidou-san.”

“Er.. Kh…Không có gì đâu.”

“Ồh không, có lẽ mình không nên nhìn chằm chằm vào bạn, cứ như mình bị bạn quyến rũ mất rồi.”

“Ơ……..”

Shidou thậm chí có thể cảm nhận được rằng mặt mình đang đỏ lên. C.. c… cô ấy nói gì vậy chứ? Quyến rũ à? Không, không, mình không hiểu gì cả. Mình chỉ nhìn cô ấy một cách bình thường thôi mà? Cậu đã tự nhận thức được sự thật này.

“Anh làm gì mà bước đi hùng hổ vậy Shidou?”

Tiếng thở dài của Kotori vang lên qua tai nghe.

“Ơ… à.. xin lỗi.”

“…..Chúng ta đang ở vào một tình trạng chưa từng xảy ra trước đây. Cô gái này dường như biết rõ mọi kiến thức về xã hội hiện đại của chúng ta. Có vẽ như cô ta đã phân tích thế giới này rất kỹ lưỡng.”

Kotori phát ra một âm thanh *UMU* trong lúc đang cân nhắc.

“Có lẽ bởi vì cô ta đã hiểu được sự thú vị khi tìm hiểu về thông tin của thế giới này. Bọn em tự hỏi cô ta đã làm điều đó bằng cách nào mà đạt được một kết quả tuyệt vời như vậy. Có vẽ như cô ấy đã làm điều này từ lâu rồi. Chờ đã…”

“………….”

Màn hình chính của <Fraxinus> trước mặt Kotori hiện lên một bảng lựa chọn.

* (1) Chuyện mà bạn nói lúc sáng, tinh linh ấy, bạn nói như vậy có nghĩa là sao?*

* (2) Kurumi, trường cũ của bạn như thế nào vậy?*

* (3) Kurumi, hôm nay bạn mặc quần lót màu gì vậy?*

“Mọi người, chọn đi nào!”

Ngay sau tiếng hét vang ấy, tất cả các nhân viên ấn phím lựa chọn cùng một lúc. Kết quả ngay lập tức được hiển thị trên màn hình.

“Hmm… đúng như dự kiến, lựa chọn thứ 1.”

Tất cả mọi người đều có lựa chọn giống nhau. Kotori chống cằm một cách thỏa mãn.

“Đó là một sự lựa chọn không thích hợp. Tôi nghĩ Shidou không nên vội vàng hỏi về điều đó. Nó làm như cậu ta chỉ đồng ý giúp Kurumi chỉ vì câu nói về tinh linh của cô ấy mà thôi. ”

Từ phía sau, Kannazuki phân tích 1 cách rành mạch.

“Ừm, có lẽ. Nhưng Kannazuki này, anh đã chọn cái nào thế?”

“Tôi chọn cái thứ 3”

“Tôi muốn nghe giải thích.”

Kotori xoay người lại và nói.

“Cô ấy đang mặc tất đùi một cách khiêu gợi, và bên dưới váy là kho báu mà toàn nhân loại hằng mong ước. Tại sao chúng ta lại không hỏi về đều đó?”

Koroti búng tay. Ngay lập tức, 2 gã cơ bắp trông như đầu gấu bước vào phòng chỉ huy, tóm lấy 2 tay của Kannazuki.

“Đem hắn đi.”

“Vâng.”

Cả hai người đàn ông lực lưỡng ấy cùng trả lời cùng một lúc và lôi xác anh đi.

“Ch….chỉ huy! Xin hãy thương xót… Xin hãy thương xóttttttttt……”

*Xì…* Cánh cửa đóng lại ngay sau đó.

Tại trung tâm của phòng liên lạc, Kotori thở dài và nói.

“”Kurumi, hôm nay bạn mặc quần lót màu gì vậy?” Mọi người nghĩ thế nào về cái lựa chọn này?”

“À, ừm, rõ ràng là chúng ta không thể dùng câu bẩn bựa đó để nâng cao mức tình cảm.”

Các nhân viên cấp dưới trả lời cô với nụ cười méo mó.

Đúng lúc này, lông mà của Kotori co giật.

Cô ấy ngay lập tức xoay người lại và phát hiện ra một sự thật: Shidou đã nghe thấy lựa chọn đó….

“Ku… Kurumi, hôm nay bạn mặc quần lót màu gì vậy?”

Shidou hoàn toàn nghĩ rằng đó là mệnh lệnh, buộc cậu phải chọn câu đó. Thế là cậu làm thật.

“Quần….quần lót à?”

“………..!”

Kurumi hỏi lại một cách sửng sốt. Và cũng cùng lúc ấy, Shidou mới nhận thức được điều mà chính cậu đã hỏi Kurumi.

“À, không….. đó chỉ là……”

Cậu vội vàng xua xua tay một cách ngớ ngẩn và gõ gõ vào cái tai nghe.

“Đồ ngốc, đó không phải là chọn lựa mà bọn em đã chọn!”

“Ha….hả…….?”

“Đúng vậy. Trước tiên chúng ta phải hóa giải sự hiểu lầm này. Hãy làm như nó chỉ làm một trò đùa ngu ngốc của anh….”

“Éc…..”

Shidou rên rỉ thảm thiết nhưng cố ko để Kurumi nghe thấy.

“À, chuyện đó……….”

Tuy nhiên, khi thấy những hành động của Kurumi, cậu không thể không dừng nói.

Kurumi ngước mắt nhìn Shidou và từ từ đưa bàn tay xuống váy của mình.

“Muốn xem đúng không?”

“Eh… không, đó chỉ là….”

Dù rằng Shidou không muốn nhìn, nhưng cậu không thể khẳng định 100% rằng cậu không muốn nhìn thấy…. của Kurumi.

Trong lúc Shidou đang đấu tranh nội tâm dữ dội, Kurumi đưa mắt nhìn xung quanh mình, sau đó lần bước vào trong một góc tường mà bình thường dùng để xếp chổi và các dụng cụ lau dọn.

“Ku….Kurumi……?”

Hai chân mày của Shidou như đã liền nhau. Đó là phản ứng của cậu khi nhìn thấy Kurumi làm như vậy.

Kurumi đỏ mặt và ngượng ngùng khẽ nói.

“Bạn biết đấy….. không sao cả. Nếu đó là Shidou-san.”

Và khi nói như vậy, bàn tay giữ váy của Kurumi từ từ nâng lên.

“Er…eh…”

Shidou mở to mắt, hoàn toàn bất ngờ trước điều này.

Trong khi Shidou đang vận hành hết mức đầu óc của mình để tìm cách ngăn chặn chuyện sắp xảy ra trước mắt, Kurumi đã nâng váy cao đến đùi. Trong cái khoảng khắc ấy, khu vực “tam giác cấm” đã dần dần lộ ra. Dù khuất sau bóng tối mờ ảo, nhưng có một thứ gì đó “màu trắng” từ từ xuất hiện.

“____________!!”

Ngay lập tức, Shidou nhắm tịt mắt lại. Kurumi thấy vậy nên bỏ váy mình xuống.

“Ara, ara.”

Kurumi kêu lên với cái nhìn hoài nghi.

“Sao vậy? Nếu cho Shidou xem thì mình không ngại đâu.”

“Không! Vậy là đủ rồi. Đi thôi nào.”

“ufufu, Shidou san nhát quá đi. À, nhưng nếu bạn muốn xem lại thì cứ nói với mình, bất cứ khi nào bạn muốn nhé.”

“………..!”

Nhận ra rằng mọi chuyện đã khá hơn, lúc này Shidou mới dám mở mắt. Nếu có bất cứ ai nhìn thấy những điều vừa xãy ra, họ đều cho rằng Shidou là một thằng hư hỏng chuyên đi tốc váy phụ nữ.

“Xin…. Xin lỗi!”

Kurumi đưa tay che miệng và cười khúc khích.

“Shidou, đừng sợ nữa, thả lỏng cơ thể đi nào.”

Lúc này, Kotori mới đưa ra chỉ đạo chính xác cho Shidou. Khi họ đang đi trên con đường dẫn đến căn tin, cậu hỏi.

“Ơ, Kurumi à, về chuyện ban sáng….”

“Nn. Sao cơ?”

“À, lúc sáng bạn có nói bạn là một tinh tinh. Chính xác thì câu nói đó có ý nghĩa gì vậy?”

Sau câu hỏi của Shidou, Kurumi có vẽ đờ ra trong một khoảnh khắc. Nhưng rất nhanh chóng, cô nở một nụ cười nhẹ.

“Ufufu, đừng giả vờ nữa. Bạn biết rõ chuyện đó mà, đúng không? Các tinh linh ấy?”

“……………….”

Shidou nín thở sau khi nghe hết câu trả lời của Kurumi.

“Cái gì? Cô ta……”

Kotori cũng ngạc nhiên không kém gì Shidou.

“Mình biết rõ về bạn và những gì bạn biết. Tinh linh và những gì họ gây ra cho thế giới này, bạn hiễu rõ đúng không?”

“Làm…làm sao bạn biết… về những gì mà mình biết được?”

“Fufu, đó là _____ một bí mật.”

“Hơ……..”

“Lý do mà mình chuyển đến trường này chỉ để gặp bạn thôi, Shidou-san. Vì sao à? Vì mình biết rõ về bạn, mình rất muốn được một lần gặp bạn. Chưa bao giờ mình ngừng suy nghĩ về bạn. Vì vậy, bây giờ mình đang rất hạnh phúc.”

Khi nói xong, 2 má của Kurumi đã bị nhuộm bằng một màu hồng nhạt.

“………….”

2 má của Shidou nóng bừng lên. Dù không thể nhìn thấy nhưng cậu có cảm giác như thể 2 lỗ tai mình đang xịt ra khói.

Tại sao? Tại sao lại như vậy? Dù việc này cũng giống như tán tỉnh Tohka và Yoshino trước đây, nhưng cậu lại có một cảm giác hoàn toàn khác. Kurumi dường như dễ thương ngoài mức mong đợi. Shidou đang bị cảm xúc chống lại chính mình.

Shidou giờ đây đã chìm vào dòng suy nghĩ miên man bất tận. Kurumi có lẽ đang tỏa ra một làn sóng cám dỗ mãnh liệt. Shidou thì như một kẻ nghiện rượu, nhìn thấy chai rượu đặt trong tủ kính, và mong muốn của cậu không gì khác hơn việc lấy ngay chai rượu ra khỏi đó, uống thật say và ngã lăng ra sàn nhà.

“Không thể tin được là tình hình bị đảo ngược như thế này. Ai đang tán tỉnh ai đây?”

“Hả……?”

Giọng nói của Kotori đã kéo Shidou trở lại với thực tại.

“Ơ… chúng ta đi tiếp nào.”

Shidou hít một hơi thật sâu, tiếp tục bước đi về phía trước và nhất định né tránh cái nhìn của Kurumi.

Lý do là vì…. nếu nhìn vào đôi mắt của Kurumi một lần nữa, rất có thể cậu sẽ choáng váng như say rượu và ngã lăn xuống sàn nhà.

(Người dịch: Kurumi quyến rũ ghê dữ vậy sao???)

“…Chà, có vẽ như quá khó đối với anh nhỉ? Nhưng chúng ta không có sự lựa chọn nào khác ngoài việc tiếp tục tán tỉnh cô ta.. Em không quan tâm anh hèn nhát như thế nào, vì dù sao đi nữa, chúng ta mới là những người cần phải kiểm soát tình hình.”

“Ax, im đi…”

“Hầy, thật là bực bội, chúng ta cứ như bị cô ta đắt mũi. Thử làm cô ấy do dự xem.”

Sau khi Kotori nói xong, màn hình chính ngay lập tức hiện ra những phương án lựa chọn.

* (1) ”Kurumi, mái tóc của cậu đẹp quá!” và hất tóc của mình.*

* (2) ”Ôi, nguy hiểm quá!” Giả vờ vấp ngã về phía cô ấy.*

* (3) ”Hey, đi đường này nè.” Nắm lấy tay cô ấy một cách tự nhiên.*

Kotori kéo lại cây Chupa Chus trong miệng cô ấy.

Các lựa chọn đều hiện ra một cách không có chủ ý. Dù có hơi mạo hiểm nhưng tinh thần của Kurumi đã ổn định, nên AI đã đưa ra những phương án này. Có lẽ nó thực sự hiểu quả để gây ấn tượng.

“Mọi người, chọn đi nào!”

Ngay sau khi nói xong, Kotori nhìn vào kết quả được hiển thị trên màn hình.

“ Cái thứ 3 à? Được rồi, có vẻ như đó là cách đơn giản nhất.”

“Ừm, nói như vậy thì 2 hơi sỗ sàng, trong khi 3 thì lại quá thẳng thắng.”

Lúc đó, Kannazuki lên tiếng, không biết anh ta đã trở lại đây lúc nào và bằng cách nào.

Mái tóc vàng thì rối bù, áo bị phanh ra ở ngực, còn cái quần anh ta thường mặc thì chả thấy đâu cả, thay vào đó là một cái quần thun không biết lôi từ trong thùng rác nào ra.

“Ara, có vẻ như anh đã thoát hiểm trong gang tấc nhỉ?”

“Phải, suýt nữa thì mất zin. Chính xác thì đó là bọn nào vậy?”

“Những bảo vệ dự bị cho tình hình cần thiết và cấp bách.”

“Vậy tại sao 2 thằng hentai đó lại cố lột đồ lót của tôi?”

“Chắc chỉ vì muốn tốt cho anh.”

“Ồh, nhưng bây giờ tôi đã an toàn ở đây rồi, hên quá.”

Kannazuki kết thúc với một tràng cười “Ha ha ha”. Nhưng giọng anh ta ngay lập tức trở nên nghiêm túc.

“Tuy nhiên, chú ý vào cơ thể cô ta xem, chúng ta có thể dùng cách khác để tăng mức tình cảm.”

“Nói ra xem nào.”

“Hà, trước hết hãy kêu Shidou-kn nằm ngửa ra trên hàng lang.”

“Rồi sao nữa?”

“Sau đó, hãy quan sát quần lót của tinh linh đó một cách cẩn thận từ nhiều góc độ khác nhau.”

“Hiểu rồi, muốn bị hấp nữa chứ gì?”

Kannazuki hốt hoảng nhảy tới chụp lấy hai ngón tay đang định búng ‘tróc’ một cái của Kotori.

“Tôi nói chưa hết mà. Cô ta sẽ cảm thấy xấu hổ nếu bị Shidou soi quần lót tỉ mỉ như vậy phải không?”

“Ừm….”

“Thế là sau đó, cô ta sẽ ngồi lên người Shidou ngay trên cái hàng lang ấy. Và rồi, trò S&M sẽ diễn ra một cách tự cmn nhiên.”

Ngay sau âm thanh mà Kotori tạo ra bằng hai ngón tay, 2 tên nhìn như côn đồ khi nãy xuất hiện, lôi Kannazuki ra ngoài.

“Tại sao? Tại sao vậy chỉ huy???”

Phớt lờ tiếng kêu thảm thiết đó, Kotori nói vào thiết bị liên lạc.

“Shidou, chọn số 3, nắm tay cô ấy đi.”

“Hiểu rồi.”

Shidou gật đầu sau khi nghe mệnh lệnh. Nhưng chưa kịp làm gì, cậu nghe thấy tiếng khóc của một người cứ như sắp chết. Không hiểu vì sao, nhưng cậu cảm thấy không nên hỏi về chuyện đó.

“………….”

Shidou nuốt nước bọt ực một cái, nhìn con đường trước mặt. Cầu thang ở ngay phía trước, bên trái của ngã ba.

Quả là một cơ hội tuyện vời. Ngay lúc mà hai người rẽ trái, cậu sẽ nhẹ nhàng nắm lấy tay Kurumi và nói “Ah, đường này nè.”. Viễn cảnh đó hiện ra và chạy tới chạy lui trong đầu cậu không biết bao nhiêu lần, nhưng….

“Hyii…..”

Shidou mở to mắt kinh ngạc. Ngay lúc sắp tới ngã ba, Kurumi đột nhiên nắm lấy tay cậu.

“Sao lại có thể như vậy được?”

Kotori kêu lên, ngạc nhiên không kém gì Shidou.

Nhưng Kotori lúng túng một, thì Shidou lúng túng mười. Bàn tay phải của cậu đã được bao bọc trong những ngón tay mềm mại, thanh mảnh và mát mẻ. Một áp lực đè lên người Shidou. Cậu có cảm giác như mình sẽ xịt máu mũi nếu không cố gằm kìm lại.

“Ku…Kurumi….?”

Đây không phải là CG, mà nó là thực tế. Shidou cố gắng quay đầu lại, trông cậu như một con robot bị rỉ sét.

“A….a….anh nên làm gì bây giờ?”

Cậu quay lại nhìn Kurumi, cô ấy vẫn nắm tay cậu nhưng lại cúi đầu xuống một cách bẽn lẽn và quay mặt đi.

“Đúng như mình nghĩ, mình đang làm bạn khó chịu phải không?”

“Không…không phải vậy đâu…”

Shidou nói xong, Kurumi trông như nhẹ nhõm hẵn ra.

“Ôi, cậu thật nam tính.”

Kurumi nói và mỉm cười e thẹn.

“Oh…. không…”

Với cảm xúc như vậy, Shidou đảo mắt tứ phía, không biết phải nhìn vào đâu cho ổn. Não của cậu trở nên rối loạn. Không phải. Kurumi không phải. Kurumi-chan thực sự là một thiên thần. Những ý nghĩ như vậy bắn tới tấp vào não Shidou.

“__________Này, Shidou-san.”

Đôi môi nhỏ nhắn của Kurumi chìa ra một chút.

“Gì….gì vậy?”

“Mình có một yêu cầu nhỏ cho cậu. Cậu có thể vui lòng lắng nghe được không?”

Cảm xúc trào dâng mãnh liệt. Cứ như thể Kurumi muốn bất cứ điều gì, cậu cũng sẽ gật đầu đồng ý.

“Aa…a…..”

Tuy nhiên, trong khoảng khắc đó.

“Woaaaaaaaa……….!”

“….Ss….”

Một tiếng la hét và một tiếng rên vang lên phía sau 2 người họ.

Những dụng cụ vệ sinh, bao gồm chổi và ky hốt rác rơi vương vãi khắp hành lang.

Và thủ phạm của sự lộn xộn này là hai nữ sinh nằm đó, chồng lên người nhau.

“To….Tohka, …… Origami?”

Shidou không thể không kêu lên, Đúng vậy, hai người đó chính là Tohka và Origami.

“Ara, ara. Hai người làm gì ở đây vậy?”

Kurumi nắm lấy tay của Shidou, ngã đầu ra sau một cách kinh ngạc.

Nhìn thấy hành động của Kurumi, Tohka và Origami đứng dậy ngay lập tức.

“Chuyện này… không thể chấp nhận được. Dù cô muốn Shidou dẫn đi tham quan trường nhưng không được phép có những hành động thân mật quá lố như vậy.”

“Tokisaki Kurumi, đi tham quan trường không nhất thiết phải nắm tay thân mật như vậy.”

“Đúng, đúng vậy đó.”

Tohka mạnh mẽ gật đầu. Đây là một trong những lần hiếm hoi mà cô ấy đồng ý với Origami.

“Ah…..”

Mãi đến khi có người chỉ ra, Shidou mới nhận thấy chuyện này. Tay của cậu và Kurumi đang dính chặt với nhau, cứ như dán bằng keo 512 vậy. Cậu ngay lập tức định dứt ra, nhưng Kurumi siết chặt bàn tay hơn nữa làm cậu không làm gì được.

Kurumi liếc nhìn Shidou trước khi chuyển ánh mắt sang hai người kia.

“Thật ra là mình bị thiếu máu. Mình đã bị choáng một tí nên Shidou đã cầm tay để giữ mình lại. Đừng đổ lỗi cho cậu ấy.”

Ngay lập tức, Origami khụy xuống sàn nhà.

“Origami, cậu sao vậy?”

Shidou bị một cú sốc bất ngờ.

“Thiếu máu.”

“…………”

Mặt Shidou giật giật, mồ hôi chảy dài trên trán.

“Mình không thể tự đi được nữa.”

“……….”

“Mình bắt đầu choáng vàng rồi.”

“…..Oo, oh…..”

Một áp lực không rõ ràng bắt Shidou phải đưa cánh tay trái của cậu ra.

“Có chuyện gì với hai cậu vậy? Thật là nực cười.”

Tohka nhìn chằm chằm vào Kurumi và Origami đang nắm 2 cánh tay của Shidou.

“_________Ha!”

Nhìn một lần nữa vào cánh tay Shidou, biểu hiện của Tohka đột nhiên thay đổi.

“Shi,Shidou, mình cũng thiếu máu nè.”

“Ơ……..”

“UMU, nói thật với cậu là mình bị thiếu thịt ở mông!”

(Chờ tí, tui cười xong rồi dịch tiếp cho.)

“Khô….Không, đó không phải là bệnh thiếu máu.”

Shidou cười méo mó. Trong khi đó, Tohka cố tóm lấy cánh tay của cậu một cách khó khăn.

“Dù..dù sao thì, mình cũng ‘muốn’!”

Sau khi nói, xong, Tohka cố một lần nữa. Nhưng những cố gắng của Tohka quả là vô ích. Kurumi và Origami đã chiếm lấy cả 2 báu vật đó, và nhất định không chịu buông.

“Guuuuuu………”

Tohka như thể sắp khóc. Cô chùn chân xuống và phụng phịu trước mặt Shidou.

“Này, này ____ Đừng có nói là…….”

Ngay lúc này, chuông điện thoại của ai đó vang lên.

“Moshi moshi!” ( ai không hiểu thì vào đây: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-I419HG6d3YQ/U8pneQw25BI/AAAAAAAAW_4/_bNMRXv09nY/s0/53ca6778dcb71.jpg )

Origami lấy điện thoại từ trong túi ra và bắt đầu nói.

Mặc dù giọng điệu không hề thay đổi khi trò chuyện nhưng cô ấy lại liếc một cái sắc lẻm về phía Kurumi.

“………..Đã hiểu.”

Ngay lúc đó, Origami cất điện thoại đi.

“Có chuyện gì đó rất khẩn cấp.”

Origami buông tay Shidou một cách miễn cưỡng và luyến tiếc.

Ngay lập tức, Tohka thế chổ của Origami.

“……………”

Origami liếc nhìn Tohka, và một cái nhìn hận thù khác cho Kurumi rồi bỏ đi mất.

Nhưng trước khi bước đi, cô thì thầm với Shidou:”Hãy cẩn thận với Tokisaki Kurumi.”

“Cái gì…..?”

“Shidou-san, không phải là chúng ta nên đi hay sao?”

“Eh… aaa………”

Sau khi nghe Kurumi nhắc, Shidou bước đi với hai cánh tay đã thuộc quyền sở hữu của 2 người khác.

……..Không cần phải nói cũng biết thái độ mà mọi người xung quanh dành cho cậu ra sao, nhất là bọn nam sinh.

09:54, 19 July 2014 (CDT)

Sáu giờ chiều ngày hôm đó.

Shidou đã dẫn Kurumi đi xem toàn bộ ngôi trường, Tohka thì phải miễn cưỡng buông tay Shidou ra kể từ cổng trường, để cho họ dạo bộ trên phố và ngắm hoàng hôn. Vậy là một cánh tay của Shidou đã được trả về cho khổ chủ.

“Đó là toàn bộ ngôi trường, bạn đã thấy rõ hết rồi chứ?”

“Nn, cảm ơn nhiều. Thật là tuyệt vời khi chỉ còn hai chúng ta với nhau.”

“Ha…..haa…..”

Shidou cười một cách cay đắng trước trò đùa của Kurmi.

Thật ra mà nói, Shidou rất biết ơn Tohka.

Có cô ấy đi bên cạnh, dù họ đã đến những địa điểm được chọn trước đó là sân thượng và bệnh xá, cậu cũng không cảm thấy bối rối như lúc chỉ ở một mình với Kurumi.

Nhưng, ngay cả khi cậu đã làm tăng mức tình cảm mà Kurumi dành cho cậu, vẫn còn chuyện phải lo lắng. Nói thật ra thì, nếu cậu và Kurumi ở với nhau tại một nơi mà chỉ có hai người, cậu sẽ phát hoảng như thể sắp bị ăn thịt.

Kurumi thực sự quá sứa quyến rũ.

“Không…không…..”

Shidou lắc đầu như cố trút đi suy nghĩ đó. Sao lại xem Kurumi như một co thú ăn thịt chứ? Điều đó quá sức thô lỗ.

Ngay lúc này……….

“Vậy thì, Tohka-san, Shidou-san, mình xin phép về nhà từ đây.”

Kurumi nói như vậy khi họ gần đến một ngã tư.

Shidou và Tohka vẫy tay, Kurumi biến mất vào ánh hoàng hôn rực rỡ.

“Lalala, lalala….”

Sau khi chào tạm biệt Tohka và Shidou, Kurumi hát khẽ một mình trên con đường ngập trong ánh chiều tà.

"I still can't——slightly, I couldn't bear it. It took so long for me to find it, I still want to enjoy school life for a while longer."

Sau khi lẩm bẩm, Kurumi xoay vòng một cách hạnh phúc.

“Ufufu, giây phút hạnh phúc này, mình sẽ để dành cho lần sau vậy.”

Kurumi đang nhảy chân sáo dọc theo con phố thì bỗng…

“………..”

Dồn sức vào đôi chân, Kurumi đứng thẳng lên và nhìn lại. Có vẽ như cô đã tình cờ đụng phải một gã đàn ông. Hắn ta đứng cùng với hai tên khác, cả bọn trông như một lũ côn đồ.

“Ara, ara, thật sự xin lỗi.”

Kurumi cúi đầu nhận lỗi và định đi tiếp, tuy nhiên….

“Này, chờ đã cô gái nhỏ. Đó hoàn toàn là lỗi của cô khi bất cẩn đụng bọn này, đừng tưởng xin lỗi là xong…”

Tên mà Kurumi đụng phải nở một nụ cười nham hiểm. Cả bọn nhanh chóng bao vây Kurumi.

“Ara, ara..?”

Kurumi nghiêng đầu ngạc nhiên, một tên bật ra tiếng hút sáo.

“Này tụi bây, trông nó cũng không tệ. Chúng ta quả là may mắn.”

“Này, tên cô em là gì thế? Anh chỉ muốn làm bạn thôi!” Sau phát hiện của tên kia, 2 tên còn lại cũng nhận ra điều tương tự. Chúng siết chặt hơn nữa vòng vây.

“Aaaa….”

Lúc này, Kurumi đã hiểu chuyện gì đang xảy ra với cô.

“Onii-san, đừng nói là muốn đi chơi với em nhé?”

Kurumi mỉm cười nhẹ. Cả bọn kia sửng sốt, chúng đưa tay lên xoa trán mình.

“Này, này, con bé vừa mới nói gì nhỉ? E—cch-i?”

“Nhưng đề nghị đó cũng không tệ. Mày cũng thích vậy mà phải không?”

“Nn, nhưng làm sao bây giờ nhỉ? Ở đây hơi đông người qua lại.”

Lời nói của Kurumi lúc này đang tác động mạnh lên bọn chúng. Chúng theo Kurumi bước vào trong một con hẻm.

Sau khi đã dồn Kurumi vào góc tường, tên mà cô đụng phải cười phóng đãng và đưa bàn tay của hắn lên.

“Được rồi, phải bắt đầu từ đâu nhỉ..?”

Nhưng hắn không chạm vào phía trên mà lại đưa bàn tay xuống phia dưới của Kurumi.

“Ah? Mày đang làm gì vậy? Nếu mày không có ý định làm điều đó, vậy thì hãy để tao…”

Tên đồng bọn của hắn nhún vai nói. Nhưng tên đang đứng gần Kurumi đã dừng lại. Lời nói của hắn bị gián đoạn vì hoảng loạn.

“Không, cơ thể tao đang….”

“Cơ thể của anh à……?”

Lúc này, đồng bọn của hắn cũng đã nhận ra.

Cái bóng từ chân của Kurumi nhanh chóng mở rộng ra, và từ đó là vô số cánh tay màu trắng nổi lên, tóm lấy chân của tên đó và kéo xuống. vùng tối không xác định ấy.

“Cái….cái quái gì đây?”

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…..”

Những tên kia bắt đầu hét lên nhưng đã quá muộn.

“Ufufu, fufu………”

Kurumi cười nhẹ. Vùng tối ấy mở rộng đến hai tên kia, và chúng cũng phải chịu chung số phận.

“Ừm, đúng là một lũ rác rưởi. Nhưng trước khi ăn món chính thì sao không thử bắt đầu bằng món khai vị trước nhỉ? Có lẽ nó sẽ giúp cho mình ăn món chính ngon miệng hơn. Bây giờ thì, xin lỗi nhé…..”

Kurumi vỗ tay và tạo ra một âm thanh *pap*

Ngay lập tức, tiếng kêu gào của bọn chúng biến mất hoàn toàn.

Kurumi nhắm mắt một cách thỏa mãn như thể vừa ăn xong một bữa ăn ngon miệng. Cô thở dài khoan khoái.

Ngay lúc này……

“Ara……….”

Gặp phải một điều bất ngờ, lông mày Kurumi giật giật.

Toàn bộ cơ thể cô như bị một thứ gì đó nuốt chửng. Dường như thứ nó lớn đến nỗi nó không cần nhai. Có lẽ bây giờ Kurumi đang cảm thấy như vậy.

Đó không phải là lần đầu tiên cô cảm thấy như thế này.

Một phong ấn ma thuật hiện đại của những chiến binh hiện đại, nhờ vào sự hổ trợ của Realizer, đó là một kết giới.

Đây là một trường hợp đặc biệt, đúng vậy, chính là cô gái đó.

“Tch- Có vẽ như cô muộn mất rồi.”

Như để đáp lại câu đó, một cô gái trẻ xuất hiện trước mặt Kurumi.

Mái tóc ngắn được búi lên cao, cô ấy trông như một học sinh trung học.

Dù cô ấy chỉ đang mặc một bộ đầm dạo bộ cùng với đôi giày pata, Kurumi trông như một con mồi gặp phải con thú săn mồi.

“Có vẻ như cô đã được thêm một bữa ăn nữa, <Nightmare>”

“Ara, ara…. Takamiya Mana đúng không?”

Và kèm theo đó là một tiếng *hừm*.

“Dù cô đáng được khen vì đã nhớ đến tôi, nhưng thái độ của cô làm tôi muốn phát nôn đấy.”

“Ara, vậy thì cho tôi xin lỗi.”

Kurumi cúi đầu xin lỗi một cách thành thật.

“Tuy nhiên, tên gọi cũng rất quan trọng. Tôi không thích bị gọi là <Ác Mộng>, cô có thể vui lòng gọi tôi là Tokisaki Kurumi được không?”

Khi Kurumi nói xong, Mana nhíu mày khó chịu.

“Tất nhiên là quan trọng chứ. Mật danh của cô mới phản ánh đúng bản chất thật sự của cô. Đó chính xác là lý do vì sao tôi không muốn gọi cô bằng cái tên mà cô tự đặt cho mình.”

“Thật là đáng thật vọng.”

“Im đi, <tinh linh>.”

Mana liếc Kurumi bằng một ánh mắt sắc lạnh.

Kurumi bắt đầu cảm thấy rùng mình.

09:54, 19 July 2014 (CDT)

Sau khi chia tay Kurumi, Shidou và Tohka cùng nhau đến một siêu thị mua thức ăn để chuẩn bị cho bữa tối.

Trong tay phải của cả hai là một túi ni lông nặng, họ bước đi cùng nhau trên con đường đã tối hơn lúc trước.

“Quả là may mắn khi chúng ta đã đến siêu thị này vào hôm nay.”

Một nụ cười chợt nở. Đúng vậy. Họ đã đến siêu thị này vào đúng ngày đang có chương trình giảm giá. Mọi thứ mua ở đó đều được giảm đến 50%. 2 người đã mua nhiều hơn bình thường 1/3 số thịt.

“Shidou, tối nay ăn gì vậy? Bò bít tết nhé?”

Một vài tuần sau khi được quyền chọn món ăn mình thích, Tohka vẫn còn cảm thấy vui sướng vì chuyện đó.

“Yeah! Em cũng muốn bò bít tết.”

Ngay lúc này, giọng Kotori từ trong tai nghe vang lên.

Shidou nhẹ nhàng nhún vai, nhếch miệng.

“Ah.. Mình nên làm món gì nhỉ? Hay làm hầm thịt cá lát với cà rốt và Shashoku donburi?” (Shashoku donburi hình như là món ăn gì đó, mấy bạn tự hỏi google nha)

“Mu, muu, dù đó không phải là một đề nghị tồi, nhưng bọn mình không thể ăn bò bít tết à?”

“Khoan đã, dù anh có nói gì đi chăng nữa thì trước khi em được đụng tay vào món bò bít tết, anh cũng sẽ không yên đâu.”

Tohka nói với cặp lông mày đã liền nhau, còn Kotori thì phản ứng ngay lập tức.

Phía trước, có một ân thanh gì đó như thể giày thể thao và mặt đường cọ xát với nhau. Shidou ngẩng đầu lên nhìn.

“Nn?”

Người đang đứng ở đó là một cô gái với mái tóc đuôi ngựa và nốt ruồi bên dưới mắt trái của mình. Trông như cô bé trạc tuổi Kotori.

Mặc trên người là một chiếc váy đi dạo, đôi giày bata màu trắng mà cô ấy mang đang nổi bật lên những vết lốm đốm, trông như… máu?!

“…………?”

Một gương mặt khá quen thuộc…. ít nhất là như vậy. Shidou nghiên đầu.

Cậu không hiểu vì sao, nhưng…. dường như họ đã gặp ở đâu rồi thì phải.

Lúc đó, Shidou mới nhận ra rằng cô gái ấy đang nhỉn thẳng về phía mình. Shidou, theo phản xạ tự nhiên, quay đầu nhìn xung quanh. Hình như cô ấy đã nhìn thấy một thứ gì đó gây sốc.

Tuy nhiên, không có gì hay ai xung quanh cả. Dọc theo con phố mà cậu đang đứng là những buồng điện thoại công cộng, những thùng rác và dãy hàng rào chạy dài.

Có nghĩa là, thứ mà cô ấy đang nhìn chính là Shidou.

Những suy nghĩ của Shidou dừng lại ngay lập tức:

“Nii”

Cô bé run rẩy nói.

“Nii?”

Shidou hỏi lại. Tuy vậy, cô bé không trả lời mà chạy ngay đến và ôm cổ Shidou.

“Cái…….?”

Cô bé ôm lấy cậu, sự xúc động hiện rõ trên khuôn mặt. Nếu có người khác nhìn thấy cảnh này, rất có thể họ sẽ nhầm lẫn rằng Shidou mới chính là người tóm lấy cô bé ấy. Có khi họ còn gọi cảnh sát vì một vụ ‘quấy rối…’ không chừng. Và rất có thể Shidou sẽ bị bắt. (Đoạn này hơi khó dịch, đại khái là Mana ôm Shidou rất chặt)

Tuy nhiên, những suy nghĩ miên man của Shidou bỗng dừng lại.

Cô bé vùi đầu vào ngực Shidou và gọi cậu:

“Nii-sama”

“Haảảả………?!”

Trong khoảng khắc ấy, tiếng kêu ngạc nhiên của Shidou, đang đứng trên con phố ấy, và Kotori, đang ngồi tại phòng trung tâm liên lạc của <Fraxinus>, vang lên cùng một lúc, hòa vào nhau.

Date A Live (Tiếng Việt)

2017-12-27T23:07:32Z

Toshiya: Reverted edits by 162.158.178.42 (talk) to last revision by My2ndAngelic

[[Image:DAL v01 cover.jpg|300px|thumb|Bìa Date A Live tập 1]]

'''''Date A Live''''' (デート・ア・ライブ), là một series light novel được viết bởi Tachibana Koushi(橘公司), và mình hoạ bởi Tsunako(つなこ), phát hành bởi [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujimi_Shobo Fujimi Shobo] dưới tên Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Tiểu thuyết được phát hành lần đầu vào tháng Ba 2011 và hiện có 11 Tập. Vào tháng Tư 2013, một anime dựa trên tiểu thuyết này đã được khởi chiếu. Một mùa anime mới hiện đang được làm.

Date A Live được dịch sang các ngôn ngữ sau
*[[Date_A_Live|Tiếng Anh (English)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_~Brazilian_Portuguese~|Tiếng Bồ Đào Nha của Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_(Indonesia)|Tiếng Indonesia (Bahasa Indonesia)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Russian|Tiếng Nga (Russian)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Russian_Alt|Bản dịch phụ của Tiếng Nga (Russian Alternative Version)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Spanish|Tiếng Tây Ban Nha (Spanish)]]
*[[Date A Live - Français|Tiếng Pháp (French)]]
*[[Date_A_Live_Polski|Tiếng Ba lan (Polish)]]

==Tóm tắt câu chuyện==

10 tháng Tư.

Hôm qua là ngày cuối cùng của kỳ nghỉ xuân, nên bắt đầu từ hôm nay, mọi người sẽ phải đi học lại. Sau khi bị em gái đánh thức, Itsuka Shidou nghĩ rằng hôm nay sẽ là một ngày bình thường như mọi ngày. Cậu ta không nghĩ rằng mình sẽ có cơ hội gặp một cô gái tự xưng là tinh linh.

Cả một phần thành phố hoàn toàn biến mất .

Và giữa đống đổ nát ấy có một cô gái.

“––Ngươi, ngươi cũng đến để giết ta, phải không?”

Cô gái đó là thảm họa của nhân loại, là một con quái vật không rõ nguồn gốc, là thứ bị cả thế giới chống lại. Chỉ có hai cách để ngăn chặn cô: tiêu diệt, hoặc trò chuyện.

Người đang mặc quân phục – Kotori, em gái của Shidou – đã nói với cậu ta:

“Đã vậy thì, hãy hẹn hò và cưa đổ tinh linh đó đi!”

“C…C…Cái gì!?”

==Dịch thuật==

===Trụ sở chính===

Nhóm dịch Date A Live tiếng Việt đặt trụ sở tại [http://hako.re/forum/23-thao-luan-light-novel/1158-project-date-live.html Hako].

Các bạn có thể vào thảo luận tại trụ sở chính.

[http://hako.re/forum/5-project-light-novel/915-tieng-viet-date-live-tiep-tuc-moi-nhat-tap-4-a.html Cập nhật mới nhất tại đây.]

===Đăng kí===

Bạn có thể vào đây để đăng kí dịch. 
- Tập 1 + 2: Team [Lexus, Haruaki, theblues_dn v.v...] - Hoàn thành 
- Tập 3: (Chưa có ai đăng ký) 
- Tập 4: (Chưa có ai đăng ký) 
- Tập 5: (Chưa có ai đăng ký) 
- Tập 6: (Chưa có ai đăng ký) 
- Tập 7: (Chưa có ai đăng ký) 
- Tập 8 + 9:
::Nhật Nguyên - Hoàn thành
::Bản dịch hoàn chỉnh của Oscar Cuong + Hibiki3190 - Đang tiến hành >> direct link sang Sonako 
- Tập 10: (Chưa có ai đăng ký) 
- Tập 11:
::Nhật Nguyên 
Các phần Ngoại truyện: (Chưa có ai đăng ký) 

===Định dạng chuẩn===
'''Mỗi chương (sau khi chỉnh sửa) phải phù hợp với định dạng chung.'''
*[[Format_guideline|Hướng dẫn định dạng/kiểu (tiếng Anh)]]
*[[Date A Live: Names and Terminology Guidelines|Các tên và thuật ngữ trong Date A Live (tiếng Anh)]] (Cảnh báo: có thể có spoiler.)
*[[Format_guideline_Vietnamese|Quy chuẩn Dịch thuật sang Tiếng Việt (Thuật ngữ + Xưng hô)]]

==Tiến độ==

Cập nhật [[Date A Live:Cập nhật|ở đây]]

==Các Template của dự án==

* [[Template:DateALiveVietnamNavbar| Navigation Bar phiên bản tiếng Việt cho Date A Live]]
* [[Template:Furigana| Định dạng Furigana]]
* [[Template:VietnameseNavigation| Navigation Bar phiên bản tiếng Việt]]
* [[Template:Trim| Trim]]

Các Template đều được thiết kế dựa trên thiết kế gốc của các tác giả trên Baka-Tsuki. Chân thành cảm ơn mọi người đã hỗ trợ.

 

==Date A Live - Fujimi Shobo==

<big>(Project chính thức sẽ đc post bên [http://sonako.wikia.com/wiki/Date_A_Live '''Sonako'''] - Nếu bạn muốn thưởng thức 1 cách trọn vẹn và hoàn chỉnh thì vui lòng về [http://sonako.wikia.com/wiki/Date_A_Live bên đó]. Cảm ơn bạn đã quan tâm!)</big>

===Tập 1 - Dead End Tohka===
[[File:DAL_v01_cover.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date_A_Live:Tập_1_Minh hoạ|Minh hoạ]]
::*[[Date_A_Live:Tập_1_Prologue|Bắt đầu: Cơ hội gặp gỡ -khởi động-]]
::*[[Date_A_Live:Tập_1_Chương 1|Chương 1: Cô gái vô danh]]
::*[[Date_A_Live:Tập_1_Chương 2|Chương 2: Bắt đầu trò chơi huấn luyện nào]]
::*[[Date_A_Live:Tập_1_Chương 3|Chương 3: Tên bạn là...]]
::*[[Date_A_Live:Tập_1_Chương 4|Chương 4: Cuộc hẹn hò bất ngờ]]
::*[[Date_A_Live:Tập_1_Chương 5|Chương 5: Sandalphon kẻ sát nhân tàn nhẫn]]
::*[[Date_A_Live:Tập_1_Epilogue|Kết thúc: Sống cùng với Tinh Linh]]

 

===Tập 2 - Puppet Yoshino===
[[File:DAL2_cover.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 2 Minh hoạ|Minh hoạ]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 2 Prologue|Prologue: Ngày mới bắt đầu]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 2 Chương 1|Chương 1: Nhiệm vụ: Chung một mái nhà]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 2 Chương 2|Chương 2: Cô bé mưa]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 2 Chương 3|Chương 3: Quá nhiều lòng trắc ẩn]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 2 Chương 4|Chương 4: Những lời thỉnh cầu tại nhà Tobiichi]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 2 Chương 5|Chương 5: Trái Đất đóng băng]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 2 Epilogue|Kết thúc: Quá khứ bắt đầu những hành động]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 2 Lời bạt|Lời bạt]]

 

===Tập 3 - Sát thủ Kurumi===
[[File:DAL3_cover.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 3 Illustrations|Ảnh Minh họa]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 3 Prologue|Prologue: Người viếng thăm mờ ám]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 3 Chương 1|Chương 1: Học sinh chuyển trường thứ hai]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 3 Chương 2|Chương 2: Lời thỉnh cầu của tinh linh]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 3 Chương 3|Chương 3: Sister War]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 3 Chương 4|Chương 4: Ba lần hẹn hò]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 3 Chương 5|Chương 5: Cơn ác mộng bản sao]]

 

===Tập 4 - Itsuka Sister===
[[File:DAL4_Cover.jpg|thumb|170x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 4 Illustrations|Ảnh Minh họa]]
::*[[Date a live:Volume 4 Chương 6|Chương 6: Ngọn lửa vượt thời gian]]
::*[[Date a live:Volume 4 Chương 7|Chương 7: Hội nghị của Kotori]]
::*[[Date a live:Volume 4 Chương 8|Chương 8: Swimwear Battle]]
::*[[Date a live:Volume 4 Chương 9|Chương 9: Cuộc hẹn cuối]]
::*[[Date a live:Volume 4 Chương 10|Chương 10: Kẻ báo thù từ 5 năm trước]]
::*[[Date a live:Volume 4 Epilogue|Epilogue: Chuyến hội ngộ trong đêm tối]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 4 Afterword|Lời bạt]]
 

===Tập 5 - Yamai Tempest===
[[File:DAL5_Cover.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 5 Illustrations|Ảnh Minh họa]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 5 Mở đầu|Prologue: Chinh phục ngược]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 5 Chương 1|Chương 1: Mưa đồ của DEM]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 5 Chương 2|Chương 2: Bạo phong thiếu nữ]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 5 Chương 3|Chương 3: Song diện tiếp cận]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 5 Chương 4|Chương 4: Tâm linh tương thông]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 5 Chương 5|Chương 5: Ánh sáng chia cắt ngọn gió]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 5 Kết chương|Epilogue: Shidou, Ta sẽ—]]
 

===Tập 6 - Miku Lily===
[[File:DAL6_Cover.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 6 Illustrations|Ảnh Minh họa]]

 

===Tập 7 - Miku Truth===
[[File:DAL v7 cov.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 7 Illustrations|Ảnh Minh họa]]

 

===Tập 8 - Truy tìm Natsumi===
[[File:DAL v8 cov.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 8 Illustrations|Ảnh Minh họa]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 8 Prologue|Mở đầu: Một Shidou khác - Doppelgänger]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 8 Chương 1|Chương 1: Lễ hội Halloween - Phù thủy của tháng 10]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 8 Chương 2|Chương 2: Kỳ án và 12 tấm hình]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 8 Chương 3|Chương 3: Mười hai giờ đêm - Ngày mới bắt đầu]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 8 Chương 4|Chương 4: Kẻ bị tình nghi - Chọn lựa liều lĩnh]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 8 Chương 5|Chương 5: Công việc của phù thủy - Phép màu]]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 8 Afterword|Lời bạt]]

 

===Tập 9 - Sự thay đổi của Natsumi ===
[[File:DAL v9 cov.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 9 Illustrations|Ảnh Minh họa]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 9 Chương 6|Chương 6: Những đứa trẻ tinh nghịch]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 9 Chương 7|Chương 7: Bóng tối vẫy gọi - Cuộc truy sát]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 9 Chương 8|Chương 8: Trang điểm - Lột xác]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 9 Chương 9|Chương 9: Các người đang nói dối - Tôi muốn tin điều đó]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 9 Chương 10|Chương 10: Vệ tinh rơi - Niềm hy vọng mới]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 9 Epilogue|Epilogue: Wizard của DEM - Là bạn hay là thù?]]
::*Lời bạt

 

===Tập 10 - Tobiichi Angel===
[[File:DAL_v10_cover.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live:Volume 10 Illustrations|Ảnh Minh họa]]

 

[[File:DAL v11 cover.jpg|right|frameless|x200px]]
===Tập 11 - Tobiichi Devil===
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 11 Illustrations|Minh họa]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 11 Chương 6|Chương 6: Đấu tranh]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 11 Chương 7|Chương 7: Ảo ảnh]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 11 Chương 8|Chương 8: <Devil>]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 11 Chương 9|Chương 9: Trực giác]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 11 Chương 10|Chương 10: Thiên thần trong đêm sao băng]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 11 Epilogue|Epilogue: Tobiichi Origami]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 11 Afterword|Afterword]]

 

===Tập 12 - Itsuka Disaster===
[[File:DAL_v12_cover.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date_A_Live:Tập_12_Minh hoạ|Minh hoạ]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 12 Mở đầu | Mở đầu: Quái vật của sự hủy diệt]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 12 Chương 1|Chương 1: Sự ăn mòn kỳ dị]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 12 Chương 2|Chương 2: Cuộc diễu hành của vua]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 12 Chương 3|Chương 3: Kỳ nghỉ lễ]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 12 Chương 4|Chương 4: Vũ hội]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 12 Chương 5|Chương 5: Tinh linh vũ]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 12 Epilogue|Epilogue: Phóng thích]]
::*[[Date A Live:Tập 12 Afterword|Afterword]]

 

==The ''Date A Live'' side stories by Tachibana Koushi==

===Date A Akihabara===
::*[[Date A Akihabara:Tohka (Tiếng Viêt)|Tohka]]
::*[[Date A Akihabara:Yoshino (Tiếng Viêt)|Yoshino]]
::*[[Date A Akihabara:Kurumi (Tiếng Viêt)|Kurumi]]
::*[[Date A Akihabara:Kotori (Tiếng Viêt)|Kotori]]

 

===Date A Live Encore===
[[File:DAL vE cov.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Minh hoạ|Minh hoạ]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Chương 1: Tohka GamerCenter|Tohka GamerCenter]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Chương 2: Origami Impossible|Origami Impossible]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Chương 3: Yoshino Fireworks|Yoshino Fireworks]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Chương 4: Kotori Birthday|Kotori Birthday]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Chương 5: Yamai Lunchtime|Yamai Lunchtime]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Chương 6: Kurumi Star Festival|Kurumi Star Festival]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Chương 7: Dating Preparations Case 1: Yoshino|Dating Preparations Case 1: Yoshino]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Chương 8: Dating Preparations Case 2: Itsuka Kotori|Dating Preparations Case 2: Itsuka Kotori]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Chương 9: Dating Preparations Case 3: Tobiichi Origami|Dating Preparations Case 3: Tobiichi Origami]]
::*[[Date A Live Encore Afterword|Afterword]]

 

===PS3 Special===
::*[[Date A Live: Rinne Bathtime (Tiếng Việt)|Rinne Bathtime]]
::*[[Date A Live: Rinne Bathtime Afterword (Tiếng Việt)|Afterword]]

 

===Blu-ray Special===
::*[[Date A Live: Tohka Working (Tiếng Việt)|Tohka Working]]
::*[[Date A Live: Yoshino Highschool (Tiếng Việt)|Yoshino Highschool]]
::*[[Date A Live:Origami Normalize (Tiếng Việt)|Origami Normalize]]
::*[[Date A Live:Kurumi Cat (Tiếng Việt)|Kurumi Cat]]

 

===Truyện ngắn===
::*[[Date A Live Short Stories Minh hoạ|Minh hoạ]]
::*[[Date A Live: Web Chapter (Tiếng Việt)|Web Chapter (Tohka and Shidou)]]
::*[[Date A Live: Tohka Fearful (Tiếng Việt)|Tohka Fearful]] (from Fantasia Bunko's 25th Anniversary Book)
::*[[Date A Live: Spirit King Game (Tiếng Việt)|Spirit King Game]]
::*[[Date A Live: Shidou Hunters (Tiếng Việt)|Shidou Hunters]]
::*[[Date A Live: Date A Quest (Tiếng Việt)|Date A Quest]]

 

===<Ratatoskr>'s Daily Observations===
::*[[Date A Live: Case 1|Case 1]]
::*[[Date A Live: Case 2|Case 2]]
::*[[Date A Live: Case 3|Case 3]]
::*[[Date A Live: Case 4|Case 4]]
::*[[Date A Live: Case 5|Case 5]]
::*[[Date A Live: Case 6|Case 6]]
::*[[Date A Live: Case 7|Case 7]]

 

==Staff==

===Biên dịch===

[http://vnsharing.net/forum/member.php?u=404264 theblues_dn] a.k.a [http://vnsharing.net/forum/member.php?u=563972 râu xanh]

[http://hako.re/forum/members/120/ Haruaki Yachi] a.k.a [http://vnsharing.net/forum/member.php?u=719600 Kuro no Kenshi]

[http://hako.re/forum/members/15/ Asakura Otome]

[http://hako.re/forum/members/36/ Yui2401] a.k.a [http://vnsharing.net/forum/member.php?u=368653 Râu Trắng]

[http://hako.re/forum/members/2007/ Chaosshadow]

[http://hako.re/forum/members/2398/ My2ndAngelic] a.k.a [http://vnsharing.net/forum/member.php?u=775839 xenonkms]

===Chỉnh sửa===

[http://vnsharing.net/forum/member.php?u=715665 Lexus Liperty]

==Series Overview==
*デート・ア・ライブ十香デッドエンド (March 19, 2011 ISBN 978-4-8291-3623-2)
*デート・ア・ライブ2 四糸乃パペット (August 20, 2011 ISBN 978-4-8291-3672-0)
*デート・ア・ライブ3 狂三キラー (November 19, 2011 ISBN 978-4-8291-3704-8)
*デート・ア・ライブ4 五河シスター (March 17, 2012 ISBN 978-4-8291-3744-4)
*デート・ア・ライブ5 八舞テンペスト (August 18, 2012 ISBN 978-4-8291-3795-6)
*デート・ア・ライブ6 美九リリィ (December 20, 2012 ISBN 978-4-8291-3835-9-C0193)
*デート・ア・ライブ7 美九トゥルース (March 19, 2013 ISBN 978-4-8291-3871-7-C0193)
*デート・ア・ライブアンコール (May 18, 2013 ISBN 978-4-8291-3892-2-C0193)
*デート・ア・ライブ8 七罪サーチ (September 20, 2013 ISBN 978-4-8291-3938-7)

[[Category:Light novel (Vietnamese)]]

[[Category:Vietnamese]]

Mondaiji-tachi ga isekai kara kuru soudesu yo (Indonesia):Jilid 4 Selingan 1

2017-12-27T23:01:30Z

Toshiya: Blanked the page

My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister

2017-12-25T23:31:21Z

Toshiya: full text page link and ebook

{{Status|Active}}
{{Web_novel|English}}

[[Image:Zombie and Vampire v01 cover.png|thumb|300px|right|]]
The '''''My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister ''''' (吸血鬼の姉とゾンビの妹) series is a web novel series written by Kamachi Kazuma (鎌池和馬) and illustrated by Mahaya (真早). Kamachi Kazuma is also known for several other light novel series, most notably the [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index|Toaru Majutsu no Index]] series.

==Story Synopsis==

“If a zombie and vampire went all out, which one would win?”

Those fateful words began a serious sisterly fight between zombie little sister Ayumi and vampire older sister Erika.

The entire city has been recreated using the environment simulator created by the main character and a virtual horror movie begins with the fleeing residents as the targets!

Characters:

Ayumi: Zombie girl.

Erika: Vampire girl.

Satori: High school boy with a zombie little sister and vampire older sister.

Maxwell: Support program developed by Satori.

== Web Novel ==

This web novel is currently hosted on Kamachi Kazuma's [http://dengekibunko.jp/author/kamachikazuma/novel/index.html#zonbi website].

==''My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister'' by Kamachi Kazuma==

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister Have Gotten Into a Pretty Serious Fight…Only in Virtual Reality Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/file/hoa35gv0ljbubxu/My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister_-_Volume_01.epub ePub])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v01_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Looking Over at me Like They Want to Join In…in Reality Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/file/667u9rb14afeg2o/My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister_-_Volume_02.epub ePub])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v02_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Completely Overshadowed by the Incredible Thing that Showed Up…Which One is it This Time? ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/file/10h1s05m9fpxr2m/My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister_-_Volume_03.epub ePub])===
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister Seem to Have Gone out into the World, so What do I do…I Have Bigger Problems This Time Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/file/l2mrb4btw1fc2bf/My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister_-_Volume_04.epub ePub])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v04_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Kind of Being Neglected This Time, so What do I do…This is a Legit Demon Lord Rush Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/file/wnuk3lg110qdb32/My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister_-_Volume_05.epub ePub])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v05_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Fascinated by the Hacker Festival, so What am I Supposed to Do?…This is Hardly the Time for That Though===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v06_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume6_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*Chapter 0
*Chapter 1
*Chapter 2
*Chapter 3
*Chapter 4
*Chapter 5
*Chapter 6
*Chapter 7
*Chapter 8
*Chapter 9
*Chapter 10
*Afterword
*?
 

== Project Staff ==

*Supervisor:
*Project Manager:

=== Translators ===

'''ACTIVE'''
*[[user:Js06|Js06]]

=== Editors ===

'''ACTIVE'''
*[[user:DasAuto|DasAuto]]

[[Category:Dengeki Bunko]]
[[Category:Kazuma Kamachi]]

My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume5

2017-12-25T23:15:25Z

Toshiya: full text page

=== Illustrations ===
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Illustrations|Illustrations}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_0|Chapter 0}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_1|Chapter 1}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_2|Chapter 2}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_3|Chapter 3}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_4|Chapter 4}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_5|Chapter 5}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_6|Chapter 6}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_7|Chapter 7}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Afterword|Afterword}}
==?==
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Epilogue|?}}

==Translator's Notes and References==
<references/>
<noinclude>

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| Return to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4|Volume 4]]
| [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister|Main Page]]
{{#ifexist:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume6 | {{!}} Forward to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume6|Volume 6]] }}
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</noinclude>

User talk:Toshiya

2017-12-04T09:19:48Z

Toshiya:

test

Madan no Ou to Vanadis

2017-11-28T02:41:35Z

Toshiya: typo

[[Image:Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_Volume_01_cover.jpg|thumb|300px|Cover of the first volume]]

Madan no Ou to Vanadis (魔弾の王と戦姫) is a light novel written by Tsukasa Kawaguchi (川口士) and illustrated by Yoshi☆o (よし☆ヲ), published by MF Bunko J. The series currently has 15 volumes published.A manga adaptation began in 2011, illustrated by Yanai Nobuhiko (柳井伸彦), published by Media Factory on Comic Flapper. An anime adaptation aired from October to December 2014.

The ''Madan no Ou to Vanadis'' series is also available in the following languages:
*[[Madan no Ou to Vanadis (Macedonian)|Македонски (Macedonian)]]
*[[Madan no Ou to Vanadis (Indonesia)|Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)]]
*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_~Russian_Version~|Русский (Russian)]]
(Note: Translation progress varies for each version.)

==Story Synopsis==

In times of war, set in Western Europe, Eleonora Viltaria, one of the seven Vanadis of Zhcted, leads the war into Brune. There are actually seven Vanadis, named like this because they each received a powerful weapon from the dragon, to reign over seven territories, each possessing their own. The power of the Vanadis causes dread and fear toward their enemies. An Earl in the service of the country of Brune, a young archer called Tigre, got a taste of it after he was defeated on the battlefield
by Ellen (Eleonora). However, Ellen decided to spare his life after seeing his skills. In exchange, he is asked to serve Ellen....

==Translation==

===Format Standards===
'''Every Chapter (after editing) must conform to the general format guidelines.''' 
'''All translations are to be in British English.'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]
*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Names and Terminology Guideline|Project specific Guidelines: Names and Terminology]]

=== [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Registration Page|Registration]] ===

'''Translators are asked to [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Registration Page|register]] which chapters they're working on.'''

=== Feedback ===
'''If you enjoyed the teasers, why don't you tell us in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5459 Feedback thread]'''

== Updates ==
*02 January 2016 - Volume 12 completed
*17 July 2015 - Volume 11 completed
*09 December 2014 - Volume 10 completed
*13 July 2014 - Volume 9 completed
*11 April 2014 - Volume 8 completed
*03 November 2013 - Volume 7 completed
*27 June 2013 - Volume 6 completed
*17 November 2012 - Volume 2, 4, 5 MTL completed
*25 October 2012 - Volume 3 MTL completed
*18 October 2012 - Volume 1 MTL completed
*8 September 2012 - Madan no Ou to Vanadis teaser project begun

==The ''Madan no Ou to Vanadis'' series by Tsukasa Kawaguchi==
{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_Volume_01_cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 1 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_01_-_MTL|Full MTL]] – [http://www.mediafire.com/?54nswoyy2kn0h16 MTL PDF] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/a8d781slkqhyij8/Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_-_Volume_01.mobi MOBI]) ===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume01_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume01_Prologue|Prologue]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume01_Chapter1|Chapter 1 - Encounter with the Vanadis]]
::*Chapter 2 - Leitmeritz [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_01_Chapter2_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 3 - The Vanadis' Invitation and the Maid's Prayer [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_01_Chapter3_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 4 - The Life of a Public Official [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_01_Chapter4_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 5 - The Vanadis' Castle [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_01_Chapter5_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 6 - Awakening of the Magic Bullet [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_01_Chapter6_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Epilogue [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_01_Epilogue_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:Vanadis V02 - Cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
===Volume 2 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_02_-_MTL|Full MTL]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?8weino2q111721k MTL PDF] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/ptx7h4qafbuept3/Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_-_Volume_02.mobi MOBI])===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume02_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*Chapter 1 - Dream of a Distant Day [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_02_Chapter_1_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 2 - The Two Vanadis [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_02_Chapter_2_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 3 - Territoire [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_02_Chapter_3_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 4 - {{furigana|Snow Princess of the Frozen Wave|Michelia}} [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_02_Chapter_4_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 5 - Cold Snow and Something Warm [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_02_Chapter_5_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Epilogue [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_02_Epilogue_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:Vanadis V03 - Cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 3 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_03_-_MTL|Full MTL]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?bd1zlew18lwohzh MTL PDF] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/e2fycqi2ffyf5xq/Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_-_Volume_03.mobi MOBI]) ===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume03_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*Chapter 1 - Black Knight [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_03_Chapter_1_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 2 - Ganelon's Plan [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_03_Chapter_2_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 3 - {{furigana|Brilliant Princess of the Light Flower|Presuvet}} [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_03_Chapter_3_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 4 - Sword of Invincibility [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_03_Chapter_4_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 5 - Tir na Fal [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_03_Chapter_5_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Epilogue [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_03_Epilogue_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:Vanadis V04 - Cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
===Volume 4 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_04_-_MTL|Full MTL]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?hb4i0u0go6r4b6g MTL PDF] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/ye1rkmmi009htrj/Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_-_Volume_04.mobi MOBI])===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume04_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*Chapter 1 - Temporary Farewell [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_04_Chapter_1_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 2 - Two Thousand and Twenty Thousand [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_04_Chapter_2_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 3 - {{furigana|[Rainbow Eyes]|Laziris}} [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_04_Chapter_3_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 4 - Gathering [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_04_Chapter_4_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 5 - The Revelation [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_04_Chapter_5_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Epilogue [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_04_Epilogue_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:Vanadis V05 - Cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
===Volume 5 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_05_-_MTL|Full MTL]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?72aixyfnbb552h8 MTL PDF] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/jp8ubjbahvmzfvx/Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_-_Volume_05.mobi MOBI])===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume05_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*Chapter 1 - March of Dragons [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_05_Chapter_1_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 2 - {{furigana|Fire Drake|Prani}} and {{furigana|Double Headed Dragon|Gara Dova}} [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_05_Chapter_2_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 3 - Interlude [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_05_Chapter_3_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 4 - {{furigana|Sacred Caverns of the Palace|Sangroel}} [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_05_Chapter_4_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Chapter 5 - Decisive Battle [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_05_Chapter_5_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
::*Epilogue [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_05_Epilogue_-_MTL|(MTL)]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:Vanadis V06 - Cover.jp.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 6 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_06|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/fhy0yrxwiyiieag/Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_-_Volume_06.mobi MOBI])===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume06_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_06_Chapter_1_|Chapter 1 - Emissary]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_06_Chapter_2_|Chapter 2 - The Blue World and the Traveling Girl]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_06_Chapter_3_|Chapter 3 - A Foreign Land]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_06_Chapter_4_|Chapter 4 - Tallard Graham]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_06_Chapter_5_|Chapter 5 - The Fall of Fort Lux]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_06_Epilogue|Epilogue]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:Madan no Ou to Vanadis V7 Cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 7 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_07|Full text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/b8h2z2d8j9x3wpx/Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_-_Volume_07.mobi MOBI])===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume07_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_07_Chapter_1_|Chapter 1 - Burning the Villages]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_07_Chapter_2_|Chapter 2 - Cornered, and No Way Out]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_07_Chapter_3_|Chapter 3 - A Ruler's Cruelty]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_07_Chapter_4_|Chapter 4 - The {{furigana|Princess of the Dancing Blades|Cortisa}}]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:Madan no Ou to Vanadis V8 Cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 8 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_08|Full text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/bdz3u04g3hgjjzk/Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis_-_Volume_08.mobi MOBI])===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume08_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_08_Prologue_|Prologue]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_08_Chapter_1_|Chapter 1 - Olsina]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_08_Chapter_2_|Chapter 2 - {{furigana|Bird of Fire|Phoenix}}]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_08_Chapter_3_|Chapter 3 - Successors]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_08_Chapter_4_|Chapter 4 - Behind the Scenes]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:Madan no Ou to Vanadis V9 Cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 9 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_09|Full text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/8pgjxa3fitbcnv6/madan+na+ou+to+vanadis+V9.pdf PDF])===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume09_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_09_Chapter_1_|Chapter 1 - Past and Fate]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_09_Chapter_2_|Chapter 2 - Before Dawn]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_09_Chapter_3_|Chapter 3 - Departure]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_09_Chapter_4_|Chapter 4 - Lebus' daily]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_09_Chapter_5_|Chapter 5 - Baba Yaga]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:MnOtV cover 001.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 10 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_10|Full text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/9z4pcvr0w162jc6/madan_no_ou_vanadis_V10.pdf PDF]) ===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_10_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_10_Chapter_1_|Chapter 1 - Those who return, Those who visit]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_10_Chapter_2_|Chapter 2 - Urz]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_10_Chapter_3_|Chapter 3 - The Witch]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_10_Chapter_4_|Chapter 4 - The Winter End]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_10_Epilogue|Epilogue]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:MnOtV vol11 cover 001.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 11 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_11|Full text]]) ===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_11_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_11_Prologue|Prologue]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_11_Chapter_1_|Chapter 1 - {{furigana|Sun Festival|Maslenitsa}}]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_11_Chapter_2_|Chapter 2 - Homecoming]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_11_Chapter_3_|Chapter 3 - Invaders]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_11_Chapter_4_|Chapter 4 - {{furigana|The Illusory Princess of the Hollow Shadow|Shervid}}]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:MnOtV vol12 cover 001.png|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 12 ([[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_12|Full text]]) ===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_12_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_12_Prologue|Prologue]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_12_Chapter_1_|Chapter 1 - Audience]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_12_Chapter_2_|Chapter 2 - Mischief]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_12_Chapter_3_|Chapter 3 - Rebellion]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_12_Chapter_4_|Chapter 4 - Determination]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_12_Chapter_5_|Chapter 5 - Leonhardt of the Lightning]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:MnOtV vol13 cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 13 ===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_13_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_13_Chapter_1_|Chapter 1 - Moonlight Knights Army's first defeat]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_13_Chapter_2_|Chapter 2 - What believe means]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_13_Chapter_3_|Chapter 3 - North, South, North]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_13_Chapter_4_|Chapter 4 - Battle of Montour]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_13_Chapter_5_|Chapter 5 - Epilogue]]
</div>
</div>
|}

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:MnOtV vol14 cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 14 ===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_14_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_14_Chapter_1_|Chapter 1 - Threat of War Approaching]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_14_Chapter_2_|Chapter 2 - Important people]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_14_Chapter_3_|Chapter 3 - Capital Offense and Defense]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_14_Chapter_4_|Chapter 4 - Battle of Severack]]
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Volume_14_Chapter_5_|Chapter 5 - Arrow, Fly]]
</div>
</div>
|}
 

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:MnOtV vol15 cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 15 ===
::*[[Madan no Ou to Vanadis:Volume 15 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*Chapter 1
::*Chapter 2
::*Chapter 3
::*Chapter 4
::*Chapter 5
</div>
</div>
|}
 

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:MnOtV vol16 cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 16 ===
::*[[Madan no Ou to Vanadis:Volume 16 Illustrations|Illustrations]]

</div>
</div>
|}
 

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:MnOtV vol17 cover.jpg.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 17 ===
::*[[Madan no Ou to Vanadis:Volume 17 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*Prologue
::*Chapter 1
::*Chapter 2
::*Chapter 3
</div>
</div>
|}
 

{| class="wikitable" width="280" ; style="float:left"
|- valign="top"
|[[Image:MnOtV vol18 cover.jpg|border|230px]]
|
<div style="float: left; width:700px;">
<div style="float: left; margin: 5px 20px">
=== Volume 18 ===
::*[[Madan no Ou to Vanadis:Volume 18 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*Chapter 1
::*Chapter 2
::*Chapter 3
::*Epilogue
</div>
</div>
|}
 

=== Short story ===
::*[[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis:Short Story|Short Story]]

 

==Project Staff==

*Supervisor: N/A
*Project Manager: N/A

===Translators===

:*[[user:EnigmaticAxiom|EnigmaticAxiom]] - Machine Script
:*[[user:Par74583|Par74583]] (short stories_CH)
:*[[user:‎Setsuna86|‎Setsuna86]]([http://setsuna86blog.wordpress.com Blog])

===Editors===
All editors who speak proficiently in English are welcome.

'''Inactive'''
:* [[User:Tasear|Tasear]] aka Mokata (Helping Leisurely on older chapters [MTLs]

'''Active'''
:* [[User:krytyk|krytyk]] (Illustrations Editor)
:* [[User:Dual Blades|Dual Blades]] (Editor on Setsuna's Blog as well)

== Series Overview ==

#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉 (25 April 2011, ISBN 978-4-8401-3857-4)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉2 (25 August 2011, ISBN 978-4-8401-3970-0)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉3 (22 December 2011, ISBN 978-4-8401-4339-4)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉4 (25 April 2012, ISBN 978-4-8401-4553-4)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉5 (24 August 2012, ISBN 978-4-8401-4685-2)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉6 (25 January 2013, ISBN 978-4-8401-4962-4)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉7 (25 July 2013, ISBN 978-4-8401-5187-0)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉8 (24 January 2014, ISBN 978-4-0406-6154-4)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉9 (23 May 2014, ISBN 978-4-0406-6749-2)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉10 (24 October 2014, ISBN 978-4-0406-7124-6)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉11 (25 March 2015, ISBN 978-4-0406-7477-3)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉12 (24 July 2015, ISBN 978-4-04-067720-0)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉13 (25 November 2015, ISBN 978-4-04-067958-7)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉14 (25 March 2016, ISBN 978-4-04-068180-1)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉15 (23 August 2016, ISBN 978-4-04-068601-1)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉16 (25 January 2017, ISBN 978-4-04-069014-8)
#魔弾の王と戦姫〈ヴァナディース〉17 (25 July 2017, ISBN 978-4-04-069348-4)

[[Category:Light novel (English)]]
[[Category:MF Bunko J]]
[[Category:Tsukasa Kawaguchi]]

[[Category:Genre - Action]]
[[Category:Genre - Ecchi]]
[[Category:Genre - Fantasy]]
[[Category:Genre - Harem]]
[[Category:Genre - Romance]]

The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume9 Chapter 4

2017-11-27T03:29:58Z

Toshiya: /* Chapter 4: Be Dyed in Red@??? */ typo

==Chapter 4: Be Dyed in Red@???==

===Part 1 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

Let’s go back over the conditions.

There are apparently two broad categories of Zashiki Warashi.

The normal Zashiki Warashi that preferred to wear a white kimono protected one’s assets and happiness.

The dangerous Zashiki Warashi that preferred to wear a red kimono brought bankruptcy and ruin.

It isn’t actually known whether they are entirely different species or if the clothing they wear changes depending on certain conditions and the timing. When it comes to Zashiki Warashi, there are even theories that they settle down alone and theories that they do so as twins.

Regardless, our Yukari preferred to wear a red yukata.

That meant she was the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi.

Normally, that would only wipe out the family from food poisoning or a fire. It would never destroy a country or the world. I think Majina had said the Jinnai family only lasted more than a century with the Zashiki Warashi with us because of our great fortune and assets. We had earned more than was being taken away. We had handled that misfortune just fine. Our ancestors had been monsters in their own way.

But that would not last forever.

For one thing, Yukari was not just “any old” Zashiki Warashi.

She was the Hyakki Yakou Prototype Ver. 39 Zashiki Warashi.

She was a special Zashiki Warashi that had been given the ability to distort the world’s destiny not just by Hyakki Yakou but by techniques they considered to be lost.

I had no idea why the Hyakki Yakou of the time had wanted to give something as dreadful as the Ver. 39 to Yukari who had been “red” from the beginning. She may have been the only sample they had to work with and they may have wanted to use the power of destiny for military purposes by intentionally spreading that ruinous power.

That didn’t matter now.

That combination had led to the current unbelievable situation.

The world would end if we didn’t do something.

The multiple credit rating agencies and the world’s inability to measure the value of government bonds was one way that would happen, but it was not the only way. Unless we dealt with this at a fundamental level, fixing the global economy would solve nothing. Ruin would arrive again in some other form and it would keep happening until it worked.

“So what exactly are you going to do?”

The Nekomata approached while I was looking up at the moon and thinking on the porch.

“You’re true to your desires, so I doubt you would be satisfied with a beautifully platonic ending of waiting for the end in your lover’s arms as the world falls to ruin around you. There’s still a lot you want to do, so what will you do about it?”

“I can’t mess with the Ver. 39.”

I quietly answered and my voice vanished into the night air that was a little chilly in just a hoodie and shirt.

“Not even the current Hyakki Yakou understands it, so an amateur high school boy can’t mess with it. The Ver. 40…Mei, was it? Anyway, things might be different if we had her body to look at, but even that wouldn’t help much. Besides, Majina was enough of an expert to create the Ver. 40 from scratch and even he threw in the towel. I doubt we can do anything on that front. I expect she’d either lose control of destiny or die of a ruptured organ. Both of those options are unacceptable.”

“Then you’re going with the other condition?”

“Yeah.” I moved my eyes from the moon to the Nekomata. “The dangerous Zashiki Warashi prefers red. Doesn’t it seem like we could figure something out about that rather than grasping at a cloud with the Ver. 39?”

“Does it? They both seem unlikely to me. Besides, what does it mean to prefer a color? If the Zashiki Warashi announces she’ll start wearing a white yukata from now on, will all this chaos settle down? Does she just have to avoid red day after day? I seriously doubt it’s that simple.”

Yes.

She had to switch from red to white.

The issue of preference was clear, but changing it would be difficult.

If a child hated carrots, it was still possible to make him eat them. You could discipline him until he would eat every last one. Or you could chop them up and mix them in with fried rice or Salisbury steak to get him to eat them without knowing it. But wouldn’t it be far more difficult to actually making him ''like'' carrots? In fact, was it even possible?

You often hear people say their tastes changed when they grew up, but that would be entirely up to coincidence. I didn’t think it was something you could intentionally cause by human means.

So if I was trying to distort that, there was only one way to describe it.

“Hey, Nekomata.”

“What is it?”

“I think I’m about to do the worst thing in the world. This might even be something Majina avoided, so I don’t care if you look down on me for it.”

“…”

“But don’t stop me.”

I spoke quietly yet powerfully to the silent Nekomata.

“If she’ll walk by my side and if there’s still a way of doing everything I still want to do, then I’ll do anything. I’ve finally found something that makes me think my principles can come second. So don’t you stop me. I’ll never give up before doing this.”

I heard a sigh that almost sounded like a laugh.

The cat couldn’t form facial expressions, though.

“Then do what you want. I haven’t exactly lived a praiseworthy life, but I have no intention of regretting it.”

“I see.”

Saying it and having someone else hear it seemed to have cleared things up for me.

What I was doing here was kind of like rejecting my past actions. I had run across many different Packages, analyzed their structure, determined the weakness of the Youkai being used, and turned everything around at the last second.

I had even defeated Majina, the leader of the old Hyakki Yakou, like that, but now I would be doing the opposite.

That is…

“I will create a Package.”

I said it.

I finally said it.

“I will personally create a Package that suppresses that dangerous trait so I can walk alongside the girl I’ve fallen for.”

The Nekomata did not curl up on the spot.

She continued standing tall and looked up into my eyes.

She was being courteous because this was not something to listen to while curled up.

“Oh? So this time your love isn’t shallow enough to joke about?”

“Well, I was always this serious at the time…”

“But you always ran off. Whenever you sensed you couldn’t deal with it any longer, you had a habit of backing out. That’s how you preserved your peaceful life rather than going for something akin to a heroic double suicide. You can’t deny that.”

“…”

“But something was different this time. You can actually face what you want to protect, even if that means burning away your own body. I suppose you could say the eggshell has finally fallen away from the chick’s tail.”

Perhaps so.

That may have been true.

I had no real proof, but I had a feeling that ''if the world tried to kill the Zashiki Warashi to protect its peace, I would not have hesitated to become a being that could destroy the world. And this wasn’t just an adolescent delusion. I really did think that might be the case.

“So where are you going to start? We’re talking about a criminal Package here. No matter how hard you work, you can’t do that on your own. You need dozens if not hundreds of people, specialized knowledge, and a Youkai to build into it. The Ver. 39 power is connected to the whole world, so you’ll have to keep this quiet. You can’t have someone slipping in a backdoor after all. You were already planning to get me involved, weren’t you? But who else are you going to use?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

I breathed in and looked up to the moon again.

“I’ll use everything I can.”

===Part 2 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

The answer had been in front of my eyes all along.

It had been hanging in front of my eyes since ten years ago.

“This construction paper?”

All of the Youkai except the Zashiki Warashi were gathered in the living room and I showed them the child’s drawing I had dug from the back of the closet. It was the original of what I had on my smartphone.

Humans and Youkai were smiling in a circle and the words “We’re All Friends” were written over their heads.

But that wasn’t the point.

That wasn’t what I wanted to take from it.

“Look at this, everyone.”

I pointed at one point on the edge of the construction paper.

Yes.

“Um, is that the sun?”

The Succubus looked puzzled. It was just a spiraling circle drawn in red crayon, so she looked skeptical that it could really help solve this worldwide problem.

But it could.

It was the key to the one and only right answer.

“That’s right. Think about it. The sun is red. I think any kid would draw it that way, but it’s weird if you think about it. If you look up in the blue sky, you aren’t going to see a red sun there.”

“Um…”

“But if you pass a kid a crayon, they’ll all use red to draw the sun. Why? Because they aren’t looking up at the sun to check on the color. It’s based on the image in their head. It’s a mass of fire, so of course they think it’s red. ''They redraw the actual scene with their imaginary color. That’s why they picture the sun as red despite what the actual scene shows.''”

Some of them seemed to be gradually catching on.

Marguerite the Witch cut in while rubbing her chin with her slender fingers.

“Those are called memory colors, right? The concept is widely used in the field of magic. Fire is red, water is blue, wind is yellow, and earth is green. By coloring your cards and weapons accordingly, you can picture things more easily during certain rituals.”

“The Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi prefers to wear a red yukata. We can’t change that part. After all, she’s been doing that for centuries and it’s indelibly stained her heart. Confiscating her yukata and throwing white clothes at her wouldn’t change the fact that she loves red, so it wouldn’t free her from the bonds of the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi.”

“So you’ll use memory colors?” asked the Aburatori. “You’ll have her focus on the color in her head over the color she sees? Wait, do you mean…!?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “What if the kimono she grabs, thinking its red, is actually white?”

Everyone there gasped.

It wasn’t an issue of her body. We were talking about her mind, about her perception.

This was the worst possible method, but it was the only way of overcoming this incident without anyone dying.

“We’ll overturn her perception of color. We’ll turn red to white and white to red.”

If this didn’t get through to them it was all over.

If they said it was unrealistic, unusable, inhumane, or cruel and then rejected it, the path would close off.

After all, I didn’t have the skills or manpower to do this. Convincing everyone was absolutely necessary to save the Zashiki Warashi.

But that was exactly why I had to tell them this. If I hid anything, I would never gain their trust, so I could only lay out everything I had and pray!

I was no hero.

I was saying I would be dragging them all into a criminal Package!

“With a Package like that, she would think she loved red while actually always choosing white! If it worked, she would unwittingly become a white Zashiki Warashi!”

Silence followed.

Had it worked?

Had it?

I had thought and thought until my mind boiled over to come up with this answer, but what would they think of it? It was absurd and silly, but had I built up enough trust for them to go along with it? Or would they flinch back at the thought of messing with her mind.

And then…

“Sounds good to me.”

The Aoandon spoke up slowly without thinking too deeply about it.

“I honestly thought my mama would end up being that human girl named Kotemitsu, but that’s your decision, papa. And I guess you could switch between a Youkai mama and a human mama. But based on what I’ve heard, it makes sense. If a Zashiki Warashi’s traits hinge on red or white, guiding her to choose the color of her own free will isn’t a bad idea. If we were talking about a human, I could just use this.”

She gently stroked the single horn growing from her forehead.

Its phosphorescent light provided a form of hypnosis.

This wasn’t an issue of good or evil and she was not empathizing with me. To her, manipulating someone else to one’s own end may have been a perfectly normal thing to do. It also might have helped that she herself was bound by the color blue.

“My thoughts on it are complex, but I can’t come up with a better idea,” said the Furutsubaki (Small). “And shooting down every idea while just sitting around won’t improve the situation. The only other options are to wait for the world to fall apart or to have someone else kill the Zashiki Warashi and I flatly refuse to do either of those. In that case, I can only bet on Jinnai Shinobu’s suggestion.”

“I call myself a guardian deity of children. A Zashiki Warashi is a collection of the young children killed during famines, so I don’t like the sound of treating her so crudely. But if you are shorthanded, just ask.”

Then the Aburatori gave his approval.

The Nekomata used her back paw to scratch her ear while sitting on the tea table.

“I’m more worried about the old woman than the Zashiki Warashi. She hasn’t had any time to rest since this unnatural age of mass consumption started. I’m willing to help if it will bring an end to that.”

“I would love to have a chance to learn about Eastern Packages rather than Western magic,” said Marguerite the Witch. “Plus, I’m nearly a refugee here, so I wouldn’t want to lose this home.”

“Well, you are my current master right now,” said the Succubus. “With our contract, I won’t stop you if you’re willing to risk your life on this. A demon will continue obeying as long as it continues to benefit her.”

The Yuki Onna was the last to speak.

“I don’t really like doing anything to help that filthy Youkai…”

The deadly Youkai sighed as everyone focused on her.

A diamond dust atmosphere glittered around her and she continued as if having given up.

“But abandoning her here would probably greatly change Jinnai Shinobu’s nature. It is truly unfortunate, but I do need to keep him in the form I want him…”

That settled it.

If we got down to who benefitted the most from this, it would of course be the Zashiki Warashi and me, but they would stick with me regardless. Creating a criminal Package was wrong. No matter what it actually did, the simple idea of “using” a Youkai could easily have filled them with disgust.

I could only bow my head to these idiots for gong along with my selfishness.

“Sorry, everyone!!”

“You need to proudly thank us instead. You’re going to take on the world for the girl you love, right? What about that requires curling up in shame?”

The Aburatori quickly corrected me.

When I raised my head, the Aoandon cut in.

“But what will you do? When it comes to knowledge and techniques, I would know a lot about Eastern stuff and Marguerite would probably know a lot about Western magic, but you’ll need more than that to build a Package. You need to observe the Youkai involved, accurately grasp her legends, distort or enlarge a portion to match your objective, build in symbols with specific physical items, and spiritually link them together. That requires at least a few dozen people and at most a few hundred. Do you have anyone you can rely on?”

“Sorry, but can you draw up the plans for the Package I want? I want to start recruiting help after we have the preliminary calculations done.”

“Fine, but where are you going to find these people? Surely you don’t mean the students at your school.”

I could not help but smile at that.

For the time being, I would cast aside all my principles and I could violate any taboo if it meant saving the world from this ruinous destiny and walking alongside the Zashiki Warashi once more.

So I said it.

“How many Youkai do you think I’ve dealt with in the past?”

“You don’t mean…?”

“I do.”

[[Image:Zashiki_v09_172-173.jpg|thumb]]

I had made up my mind. I would use everything I could. Giving up before I’d even tried, abandoning her in this crisis she was entirely unaware of, and then regretting it was the one thing I couldn’t do.

So I would bear any sin and I would accept any punishment.

I couldn’t hold up the pure goal of saving the Zashiki Warashi to dull people’s conscience and guilt as I dragged them into something as crazy as a criminal Package while remaining clean myself.

I placed my left hand on my right shoulder and rotated my dominant arm.

And I suggested something I really should not have let myself do.

“Youkai seem to like me, so I’m gonna intentionally use that for once.”

===Part 3 (3rd person)===

——It began inside Noukotsu Village.

“Hey, Umbrella, a letter just arrived.”

“Hm? It’s for the Youkai directly rather than our master or his mother? How rare. Let’s take a look.”

“Oh, my. Do you think we should call for the Mayoiga too?”

“Yes, Lantern. Let’s call the new Fuguruma-Youbi as well. This is a good opportunity for her to get to know everyone.”

“The Jatai and Kosode-no-Te are saying they want in too.”

——An old-fashioned postcard with an attached reply card arrived at a distant seaside town.

“H-hey, that’s a Shichinin Misaki, isn’t it? Don’t you die if you meet one…?”

“Shh! It looks like they’re distracted by something… Are they reading a letter? Anyway, we need to run away!! Don’t give up hope! This’ll work out somehow!!”

“But there’s a mermaid over there. Don’t you gain immortality by eating their meat!?”

“And how are you going to cook up a mermaid that’s immune to physical attacks? And let me tell you something more fundamental: The people who get greedy at times like this are the ones who die! So run!!”

——Another postcard arrived at the even more distant land of Okinawa.

A Shisa held it in his mouth while running to a familiar Kijimuna for advice.

“I am Shisa. That Jinnai Shinobu guy is in trouble. What should we do?”

“… (sway sway)”

The lion-like decoration and the Chinese banyan tree continued speaking like that.

——A middle-aged man gave a postcard a concerned look at the tollbooth for the Four Mountains Junction where multiple highways intersected.

“A postcard for Zenmetsu Village? Are you serious? This thing isn’t cursed, is it?”

When he looked away for just a moment, a snake about as thick as a pinky finger grabbed the postcard in its mouth and carried it away.

It was a Toubyou.

They were hiding all around and quietly discussing the postcard, but the middle-aged man was oblivious.

“What, is that thing really cursed!? I’ve got the night shift coming up, you know!?”

——A few postcards were delivered via the special casino district of Goldmine Island.

The first one was sent to the Gold Crane Inn that Jinnai Shinobu had stayed at.

“Oh? A postcard from a guest. How unusual. And it even comes with a gift.”

“Let’s see… A Zashiki Warashi? Isn’t that like a relative of ours?”

“It’s more like they’re the main family and we’re the branch families.”

They were a Notabariko, an Usuhiki Warashi, and a Kura Bokko.

However, there was actually another Usuhiki Warashi on Goldmine Island.

“Kyah kyah☆”

Her mini-yukata was worn off the shoulders, so the girl seemed to be wearing a tube top dress as she ran around behind the casinos.

She held an identical postcard in her hand.

One of the postcards was sent from Goldmine Island to the United States via airmail.

Hasukawa Yumi frowned when she saw the strange postcard that slipped through the gaps in the naval blockade.

(To think he would use the world’s top intelligence agency to relay a message…)

It was being sent to the Kechibi, Ubume, and Amanojaku at the base of the Package they had used.

If a Package was being made to interfere with the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi that was causing the global chaos, the CIA had a chance to add in whatever they might want.

Hasukawa Yumi thought for a moment about where to send the postcard.

(But unfortunately, I owe him one.)

She sighed just once.

She then erased a few records and sent the postcard along while making sure it would not be seen by Sid Clouds, her boss in name only.

Lastly, one was transferred to Shikoku from Kyushu’s Goldmine Island.

“Tanuki, Fox, Badger. You have a postcard.”

When the small girl called for them, three Youkai who looked like stuffed animals rushed out. It was a commonplace ready-built house, but a span of two generations from grandchild to grandmother lived there and it even had its own gardener, nurse, and bodyguard.

“Ohh, it’s from Jinnai Shinobu! I haven’t heard that name in a while!”

“My, my. But based on what it says, we can’t just rejoice about this…”

“Not a problem. I didn’t like being indebted to him anyway, so we should actually be thankful for this chance to repay him!”

——A postcard arrived for Ranzono Sachi at her juvenile hall.

When she read the text with the small centipede that crawled in through the gaps in the bars, her friend spoke to her.

“Sorry, Sachi. I know you’ll be lonely, but the time has come to repay that boy for what he did for us.”

“Hee hee. Even the picture books talk about your concept of repaying debts, so you don’t have to be so formal. More importantly, why not bring the others? The Tsuchigumo, the Nue, the Gama, the Uwabami, the Tesso, the Takebunkani, the Sarugami, and the Baku… Heh heh. They’re all really nice, so I’m sure they’ll help out.”

A small bird could be heard chirping, but it was nowhere to be seen.

“Heh heh. Yes, there was an Okuri-Suzume as well, wasn’t there?”

——Many a postcard were sent out over the country based on old memories.

“Oh, it’s been so long since I visited the Jinnai place… I never did get Shinobu-chan to carry me, so maybe I should stop by again!”

“Eh heh heh. I think it’s about time I approached Shinobu-chan about ‘that’.”

An Onbu-Obake and a Kaki Otoko were saying some dangerous things.

“Babuu.”

“This Ubu only ever says ‘babuu’ and ‘ogyah’, but the disobedient Tsuchigumo have a soft spot for abandoned kittens on a rainy day!!”

An Ubu and a Tsuchigumo moved their legs along.

“Heh. Ever since Shinobu-chan showed me a whole new world, I’ve always kept carbonated drinks in my head plate.”

“I am a Nopperabou, but I think people would actually be more surprised if I had eyes and a nose drawn on with black pen.”

A Kappa and Nopperabou were discussing something.

“Ho ho ho. He’s still such a spoiled child. Perhaps I, the Kyuubi, should pay him a visit.”

“C’mon, you wild fox, you just want to enjoy the festivities. As the Kuzunoha, I will make sure to train him properly.”

The Kyuubi and Kuzunoha.

“Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!! This is Tanuki☆Bayashiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Today, I think I’ll introduce you all to a passionate fan letter we receeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeived!”

“I’m more than willing to help, but I don’t want him to expect too much. The Nurarihyon may be known as the leader of all Youkai, but I was originally just an Umibouzu.”

“I’m an Oni! Not many homes only do the bringing fortune inside part, so I need that shelter for February 3!!”

There were even five Tanuki, a Nurarihyon, and an Oni.

“Scurry scurry (Playing house with Shinobu-chan was fun.)”

“That’s right. A God of Poverty like me probably should have been worshipped there originally.”

“I don’t know what an Akaname can do, but I’ll head there if he wants it.”

A Kodoku, a God of Poverty, and an Akaname.

“I am a Nurikabe. I came running when I heard Shinobu-chan was in trouble.”

“I, an Ittan-Momen, am here too.”

“Then quit blocking the road! Do you want a Yagyou-san like me to kick you with my headless horse!?”

“Now, now. Infighting won’t get us anywhere. How can you look a Dorotabou like me in the face and think otherwise?”

“I didn’t know a Dorotabou could walk on the road like normal. My single eye is quite shocked.”

A Nurikabe, an Ittan-Momen, a Yagyou-san, a Dorotabou, and a Hitotsume-Kozou.

——In neighboring Bozen City, a postcard arrived at the supposedly abandoned dog square.

“It hasn’t been long since that zombie outbreak, so what is it now?”

The creeped-out part-time delivery boy had considered throwing away the postcard countless times on the way, but he had been afraid that would get him cursed.

Then he saw a giant ball of light shoot up from the peak of the dormant volcano.

“Gyawah!! What!? Is that a UFO!!!???”

Few people knew the original form of the Youkai known as a Kasha.

——A few postcards were delivered to Shinobu’s Uncle Uchimaku Hayabusa rather than the Youkai.

“Hm? I’m supposed to deliver these to any Youkai I can think of?”

“Um, there was Zashou Island’s Funa Yuurei and Nure Onna, the Jinmensou from the Tsumada Mio stuff, and…well, we can ignore the Aoandon from Zenmetsu village and the Aburatori from the Tarot Girls 22 stuff, but there was also the Yamanba from the Ubasute Apartments, right?”

“Come to think of it, what ever happened to Toujou Miyabi’s Inugami?”

“Oh, right. And there was a Jorougumo too.”

——And a few more were delivered to Hishigami Mai.

“What kind of paranormal power did he use to deliver these to me when no one knows my real name!? Jinnai Shinobu’s gotten pretty good since I last saw him!!”

“Perhaps so. Munch, munch. This squid somen is delicious.”

“Hey, you damn Shikigami. Don’t tell me you’ve gotten so attached to him you’ve started leaking my information. First the detective and now the blond? How unfaithful are you!? I shouldn’t be having this much trouble controlling a Shikigami!”

“I have no idea what you are talking about. More importantly, what will you do?”

“Playing it safe would get Hyakki Yakou wrapped up in this…but it’s interesting that these came to me rather than the young lady. Is the boy already thinking about the power balance? ''Or is he telling us to do this on our own?''”

“And?”

[[Image:Zashiki_v09_184-185.jpg|thumb]]

“I think I’ll go along with it and then watch to see what happens. The only Youkai I think we could use are the Monk from Amemura-chan’s family, the Inugami Gyoubu Tanuki and Osakabe-Hime from that udon shop, the Kitsunebi and Tengu connected to Shinshou Hitsubatsu, and…huh? There really aren’t that many.”

“That’s because you go around killing all of them.”

“Anyway.”

“Yes.”

“''Can that young lady really pretend to not notice when her beloved Onii-chan is in danger?''”

——And lastly, back in the Jinnai home.

“Okay! We already have a Yuki Onna, a Nekomata, a Furutsubaki (Small), an Aburatori, and an Aoandon here.”

“Um, master? Aren’t you forgetting the Keseran-Pasaran and Azukiarai?”

“Heh heh. I’m glad to see you forgot about the big Furutsubaki. That’s what she gets for stealing my snacks!”

“And can you really just shove a demon like the Succubus and a witch like Marguerite into the occult category?”

“Not a problem. From the moment we make a contract with a demon, our souls are shut out of heaven but we become a being who can bring about supposedly impossible phenomena in this life.”

“But I want nothing to do with Tselika after all the torment she put me through. Come to think of it, what do we do about her? You should be able to contact her if you send a postcard to a coven in the catacombs.”

“No!! Please don’t do that!! I never want to see that Archdemon again!!”

There was little a single boy could do, but the path he had walked thus far had given him a definite answer.

He had done everything he could.

He felt definite progress each time.

But then…

“Eek!?”

He heard someone gasp.

There was “something” there that was gentle and yet stole away the entire advantage they seemed to have built up. It brought unease, fear, and a sense of danger. That invisible “something” spread through them all and seemed to reach the Youkai before a human like Shinobu. The five members of Tanuki☆Bayashi lay on their backs to play dead while the Umbrella and Lantern folded up and flattened their bodies of oiled paper.

The strange sense seemed to be arriving from the main entrance down the hall.

When Jinnai Shinobu gulped and hesitantly looked that way, he saw a familiar face there.

It was a girl of about ten with a purple kimono and black hair in a bob cut.

“Hafuri…?”

“Pardon my sudden visit, but surely you did not think Hyakki Yakou would fail to notice such a largescale movement.”

The Furutsubaki (Large) and Usuhiki Warashi clung to the boy’s waist.

They did not know much about the situation, so Hyakki Yakou may have looked like an organization that treated the disobedient with the attitude of the Yamato Imperial Court: kill them or force them to obey.

Shinobu exhaled, toyed with his hair, and patted the head of the white-haired Usuhiki Warashi clinging to his waist.

“I really didn’t want to get your help this time.”

“Yes, I understand your concern. If our predictions are correct, you are working to build up a strategy or Package to interfere with the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi. If Hyakki Yakou knew your methods, the risk of us including an unwanted backdoor would rise considerably. Before even worrying about the destiny of the world, you likely wanted to avoid having a third party mess with your lover.”

The Yuki Onna belatedly ran to the front entrance.

[[Image:Zashiki_v09_189.jpg|thumb]]

She covered her mouth with her kimono’s sleeve, but a dangerous light filled her eyes.

“You have guts interfering at this delicate stage. We all have our own complicated reasons to try to save the Zashiki Warashi, so if you do anything that would dull our resolve, I am prepared to take actio-…”

“What is with this short girl?”

“Mgyuh!?”

An exasperated-looking Hafuri pushed up on the Yuki Onna’s small nose with her index finger.

“Jinnai Shinobu, if you do intend to use this group, there is one thing you must consider first. Take command with a solid policy in mind. Even if you do intend it that way, the actions of any member of your organization can be taken as the intentions of the group as a whole.”

The Yuki Onna struggled and flailed her arms around, but Hafuri continued pushing on her nose and teasing her for nearly ten seconds before finally releasing her. The small jewels in her hair near the ears clacked together and produced a refreshing sound. The Yuki Onna collapsed exhausted to the floor and the nearby Tsuchigumo and Nurikabe trembled.

“H-hey, she’s one of the representative examples of a deadly Youkai, isn’t she? She’s something like the king of street fighting in the late-night back alleys, so how frightening does Hyakki Yakou have to be to defeat her so easily!? That girl must be like the gym teacher that patrols at night!!”

“I am a Nurikabe. Shinobu-chan, who is this girl? She’s giving off a scary aura, but she won’t bite, will she?”

Shinobu glanced back at the frightened Youkai hiding behind him and Hafuri breathed out through her nose.

She seemed to be used to this.

But at the same time, there was some envy in her eyes as she looked at Jinnai Shinobu…no, at that entire lineup.

“I have a suggestion.” Hafuri held a finger forward as Shinobu thought. “I would like to know what the Ver. 39…no, the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi is doing. But you do not want Hyakki Yakou to know about the Package you will be using to control her. …Thus, I will assist you as an individual, not as the leader of Hyakki Yakou. I will supply you with everything I have, but I will not take back anything I see here. How does that sound?”

“…”

“Can you not believe a young girl’s verbal promise?”

“No, I believe you. I mean, if you really wanted to kill her or capture her for experiments, she and I could have been ''spirited away'' before we left Mt. Boseki. I owe you for that. No, I guess I could say I trust you as a person thanks to that.”

Hafuri looked a little surprised even though it had been her suggestion.

And Shinobu did not notice the change in her behavior.

“But that aside, is your position really that convenient. I understand how you feel, but will those around you really allow it?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“Majina’s daughter and the leader of Hyakki Yakou. That’s my entire point.”

“And it was my entire point as well. Doesn’t it seem extremely unusual that I appeared here alone without a single bodyguard?”

The girl in a purple kimono grinned in a way very unlike her and toyed with the jewels by her ears.

“My blood is a mixture of the pure blood of a Hyakki Yakou leader and the blood of a Zashiki Warashi. That has allowed me to control destiny, even if only slightly. It was enough to slip past the hundred generals and Top 5 of Hyakki Yakou. You can ignore that solid organization for now. It is unable to function properly for some reason.”

But…

“Appeared here alone? I don’t want to hear that from a little girl who showed up at my house with her mother. And with matching hair accessories too. You must be close.”

“Eh? Huh? Ehh!? Mother!!”

Hafuri was confused at first, but she finally caught on after looking behind her. Yes, a sexy Youkai in a white yukata who had an almost ghostly lack of presence was standing right behind her.

It was Mei.

Without speaking a word, she looked Shinobu in the eye and silently nodded. She also gently rubbed her daughter’s head.

Meanwhile, Hafuri was anything but peaceful.

“How? What? Eh? But… Weren’t you confined to Hyakki Yakou’s most strictly guarded cell!?”

“I really doubt normal logic works with them. It feels like they can directly mess with the world’s destiny. Besides, settling down and leaving when they want is just what a Zashiki Warashi does.”

“B-but still!”

“More importantly, our Yukari apparently escaped Hyakki Yakou over a century ago. I think I’ve heard that was your golden age or something, so there’s already a precedent when things would have been even harder.”

“That’s not the point!! Why did you leave your cell and come all this way, mother? More specifically, was it to contact Jinnai Shinobu!? Depending on your answer, I might have to do everything I can to stop you as your daughter!!”

Hafuri snapped at her mother, but Mei simply patted her daughter’s head some more.

But…

“This means you got into Noukotsu Village just fine, doesn’t it?”

“Y-yes.”

“Yukari didn’t call for you, but you forced your way in. And it worked…”

''Could it be?'' wondered Shinobu.

He may have been too conceited. It may not have been his own doing that had allowed all these Youkai to conveniently gather, that had prevented coincidences that sounded like jokes from getting in the way, and that had kept the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi’s ruinous destiny from intercepting them. Hafuri and Mei may have briefly diverted Yukari’s power that Majina had analyzed as outdoing the Ver. 40’s during its brief spikes.

Shinobu had no way of seeing destiny.

He had no idea how exactly its threads were tangled together.

But could it be…?

“What will you do?”

The Nekomata had walked up to his feet at some point and she asked him that question.

Shinobu intentionally sighed.

“Well…”

After that word, he faced his inner thoughts again.

He had to remember his own catchphrase.

He muttered it below his breath: ''I can get along with any Youkai. You decided that already, Jinnai Shinobu.

So…

“Understood. You aren’t Hyakki Yakou’s leader right now. You’re just an individual and one of ‘us’. Is that okay?”

This time, Jinnai Shinobu had the necessary power in hand as he smiled and looked across them all.

It really was like the crude drawing on that construction paper.

Everyone had gathered at the entrance at some point.

There was no division between human and Youkai. They all smiled together as a single group.

At first, he had thought about having them all hold hands in a ring like a scene from an adolescent drama, but there were too many of them to do that now.

In other words…

“''I’m counting on you, Jinnai Shinobu’s Hyakki Yakou''! We don’t need to take over the world and immortality doesn’t matter!! I only want one thing: give me your help to save the girl I’ve fallen for and to keep her from becoming a villain!!”

For a brief time, that boy would be the leader of one hundred monsters.

The world did not matter to them.

The part of the world in the light of day and the part of the world hidden by shadows was no concern of theirs.

They had just one goal: protecting that boy’s beloved girl from every unreasonable thing the world could throw at her.

===Part 4 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

What I would use was simple.

I could get it all in half a day with a few clicks on an online shopping site.

A red pen, a compass, a hand mirror, a plastic ruler, a glass cutter, a cardboard tube, thin red paper, an origami set, a drill, scissors, a utility knife, glue, masking tape, and lastly some crepe paper to make it look nice.

“A kaleidoscope?”

I did as I was told by using the ruler to mark the hand mirror and then I grabbed the glass cutter. The tool looked like a tiny version of a pizza cutter.

“It doesn’t have any cables or wireless capabilities, so can it really act as the core of a Package?”

“Anything can as long as it has the proper symbolism.”

Hafuri answered me with a composed voice.

Next, the Aoandon readily agreed.

“To put it another way, what were the cores of the Packages you’ve seen already? Weren’t the blatantly suspicious ones the exceptions?”

She had a point.

When I thought about it, I realize it had all been things like the sanatorium user agreement or a toy revolver. They didn’t have to be digital and high-tech and they didn’t have to be filled with strange occultism either.

I cut the mirror in thirds and placed them together into a triangular prism. The mirrored side was on the inside. Then I filled the gaps with glue and held them together with masking tape until the glue could dry.

“We have a USB fan, don’t we? Would that help it dry faster?”

“No, any unnatural interference will create ‘lumps’. It’s best to let it dry naturally. Just leave it be. Rushing this will only lead to mistakes.”

Hafuri simply narrowed her eyes and watched me work. She would say something if I messed up, but she generally just observed without giving any instructions. That may have been what she judged to be “helping as an individual but not as Hyakki Yakou”.

“The key to this Package is the color deception. It makes red into white and white into red. It doesn’t matter if it’s complete sophistry; we still win if we can reverse the perception of those colors. Is that much okay?”

“Well, I was the one to suggest it.”

I used the compass to draw a perfect circle on the cardboard and used the utility knife to cut along the line. I had to open a hole in the center…but I decided I didn’t need the drill for that. I used the point of the compass to directly tear through.

On the Aoandon’s instructions, I placed the thin red paper on top of that.

“A kaleidoscope has two holes. One to peer inside and one to let light in. If you place the thin red paper over the light opening, the inside of the kaleidoscope will be red.”

“I see, I see.”

I pulled some red paper from the origami set.

It required patience, but I cut it up with the scissors. They were basically square dots or chips only a few millimeters long. The math worked out to 108 of them in all.

“Place white paper inside and it will be dyed red. You’re looking at white, but you see red. That’s stage one.”

After making sure the quick-drying glue had dried, I removed the tape from the triangular prism.

Hafuri sighed quietly.

“It looks fine.”

“It does.”

I placed the mirror part inside the cardboard tube and glued it inside. The bottom was covered by the circular lid of thin red paper.

I then poured the dots and chips of origami paper inside.

“But even if they’re seeing red, someone who knows the trick will assume they’re really looking at white.”

The Aoandon grabbed the rest of the origami set and flipped the paper over.

The front side was colorful, but the back was pure white.

In other words…

“But in truth, the dots are red on one side and white on the other. That means no one knows what color the dots inside the kaleidoscope really are. The ones you think are actually white might really be red. It might be something like that cat in the box. Anyway, that completes stage two. This one kaleidoscope turns red into white and white into red.”

That just left the details.

I cut a circle in the cardboard for a large peephole. It would look more the part with glass covering that hole, but I was afraid an amateur like me would leave some small fragments behind if I tried to do that with the glass cutter. That was especially scary with something you held to your eye. Instead, I cut off a piece of the clear cellophane bag the origami set had come in. After placing that cover over the remaining upper end, I covered the side of the cardboard tube with flower-print crepe paper I thought the Zashiki Warashi would like.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime endeavor, yet it looked kind of awkward.

But maybe that was for the best.

The “We’re All Friends” construction paper was the same and I knew something had definitely been saved by that.

The Aoandon reached out and traced her finger along the outside.

“That completes the core.”

“But I can’t imagine how we’re going to link this kaleidoscope with the Zashiki Warashi. Does she just have to carry it around with her everywhere?”

“You can leave those tricky calculations to the witch. A Package isn’t something a single person can do, remember?”

“Yes, and my mother Mei and I are here to watch over things. If there is a discrepancy between the Western and Eastern methods, we can correct it for compatibility.”

“Is that how it works?” I wondered while glancing over.

The Youkai were moving all about through the thatch-roof house.

“Heave-ho, heave-ho!”

“Sigh. This is more heavy labor than I was expecting…”

“We have to make adjustments all over and we have to get it done before nightfall! Even if we got permission to head out, our master will worry if we’re out too late!!”

I asked the Aoandon a question while watching the Umbrella and Lantern’s mouths moving.

“What are they doing? Aren’t they just renovating the house!?”

“We’ll do all the detailed calculations, so don’t worry about it.”

“A Zashiki Warashi settles down in a house, so they have a strong connection to the house. Making adjustments to that house is the easiest way of altering her bodily structure. I know it isn’t exactly a happy memory, but do you remember what happened in that Fuuka Village hotel? The hotel’s blueprints were used to interfere with the Zashiki Warashi then too.”

“Of course, we’re choosing areas that don’t move much so you humans won’t mess with this when you make your own renovations.”

I heard a commotion from the ceiling, but this did not sound like more renovations.

“Oh, honestly!! The attic is my territory! You don’t have anywhere else to stay? I don’t care! Go sleep in a tree or below the floor!!”

I called out to her before an actual fight broke out.

“Succubus, we have around a hundred Youkai in here now, so be a little flexible. Everyone’s making compromises.”

“Oh, that’s just mean!! You’re my master, so I can’t save face if you say that! And there’s no stopping them all now!!”

I saw a bunch of stuffed animal-like Youkai rushing up the stairs. From the look of things, they would be fighting over food too.

“So how long is this going to take? We’re generally welcome to Youkai visitors, but I think my dad will get suspicious if a hundred of them stick around for too long.”

“It won’t take that long. Although the trick will be to have the Akaname and Shichinin Misaki work while hiding from the humans.”

With that comment, the Aoandon spread a map out on the tea table. Hafuri filled it in with pink highlighter while checking on something. It was a map of my house and she seemed to be marking the areas where the work was complete. It was at about a third. She drew in what looked like wiring, but I wasn’t sure what that meant.

“Shinobu.”

The Zashiki Warashi in a red yukata slipped past all the working Youkai to approach me. She had to have no idea what was going on. In fact, she didn’t even know what her very existence was doing to the world. Her perception was shifted out of place. She looked around skeptically before looking straight at me.

“What is all this? I’ve never seen so many different Youkai in here. This is technically my territory, but there’s clearly some other Zashiki Warashi here.”

“What’s with you, Yukari? Are you jealous having all these Youkai around? Come to think of it, there are a lot of pretty good looking ones like the Nure Onna, Jorougumo, and Kosode-no-Te.”

“…”

“Eh? Seriously? That’s seriously why you’re upset? Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!! Don’t scratch me! Don’t scratch me all over! Are you like a pet cat that gets upset as soon as it has kittens!?”

We started playing around like that, but I could tell Hafuri and the Aoandon were slowly narrowing their eyes.

That’s right.

At this point, nothing was meaningless. We were trying to build a Package that would restrain the ruinous power of the Ver. 39. That power could bend the entire world’s destiny, so it could easily detect something like this. And for better or for worse, it would use destiny to crush our efforts. The rails switched over too seamlessly to notice and we were thrown into the labyrinth. We were not even allowed to choose to fight or not. We were simply diverted from the main track of destiny and all our efforts were ruined.

Even the Zashiki Warashi’s own will may have been irrelevant.

The ruinous power may have been manipulating her as well.

And if what the Aburatori and Aoandon said was accurate, then Noukotsu Village was surrounded by an invisible labyrinth and anyone who would get in the Ver. 39’s way (whether they meant harm or not) would be unable to approach. Even so, the hundred Youkai of my Hyakki Yakou had gathered here.

That of course had likely been helped by my special trait to gather Youkai as well as Hafuri and Mei’s ability to bend destiny as white Zashiki Warashi.

But if that was enough to utterly defeat the Ver. 39, then we wouldn’t need to build such a major Package and Majina wouldn’t have had to make himself a great criminal by causing a zombie outbreak.

In other words, all of this was insignificant.

The source of all fortune and misfortune was the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi.

As the Ver. 39, she was obstructing us as the Ver. 39, but as a Zashiki Warashi, she was trying to welcome my guests.

Something was diverging inside her as well.

I could not ignore that power.

If that divergence continued, I could not even guess what would happen. She might become a puppet of the Ver. 39 or her body might split in two.

“Don’t worry.”

I swallowed everything inside my chest.

I then embraced my girlfriend, gently rubbed her head, and softly repeated myself.

“There’s nothing to worry about. I promise you I won’t let anything you care about be destroyed.”

It did not matter if those words could not reach her within the bonds of the Ver. 39.

===Part 5 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

Chief Superintendent Mishima said it was urgent and called me to a large harbor region in the Tokyo subcenter.

“I’m surprised you showed up when they could ‘accidentally’ send a missile flying this way any day now, Mystery Freak.”

“You too, detective. I don’t think many civil servants would keep working once they aren’t getting paid.”

One of us was a plain man in a cheap suit and coat and the other was a showy girl decorated with ribbons wrapped around her body and a top and miniskirt made to look like whipped cream and chocolate.

We exchanged a glance and both laughed as if we couldn’t believe it.

The world was ending.

It was a little unclear if it was going to end soon or if it already had and no one had noticed, but according to the economic and investment experts, we had long since passed the point of no return.

The core of it all was the Zashiki Warashi and the only one that could stop it was my nephew Shinobu.

It sounded like a joke, but all my phone calls and emails mysteriously couldn’t get through to him. The trains and planes were all conveniently having trouble. I considered getting a rental car, but I was stopped by the ultimate “coincidence” of growing hesitant because I was afraid of getting into an accident on my own.

There was nothing we could do.

We could only wait for whatever result Shinobu and the Zashiki Warashi brought.

That said, I couldn’t just hole up in my room and pull the blanket over my head. After all, I was a police officer and problems both big and small were cropping up everywhere.

We could not stand in the center, but Shinobu could not reach the outer edges.

We each had our job. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrating, but finding something I could do myself was much more important and meaningful.

That way I could prevent as much unnecessary damage as possible.

“Let’s go.”

“Right.”

The city subcenter’s coast was near Hachi TV where my old upperclassman Atou worked, but we had not arrived at a waterfront office building or luxury apartment.

It was a cruise ship moored in the harbor.

“The Yakata-II. We haven’t seen it since Goldmine Island, detective. We never got to go inside then, though.”

“Huh? But didn’t something happen to that cruise ship at the end of all that…?”

At any rate, the Mystery Freak and I entered the ship. Fortunately, there was no dress code.

Mishima-san was enjoying some wagyu teppanyaki in the ship’s three-star restaurant. Although it was more like the food area of a larger party space than it was a dedicated restaurant.

“Hi there, Uchimaku-kun. Over here, over here.”

“What are you doing? Didn’t you say this was urgent?”

“Yes, but just like in hotels, I can’t help but go get some teppanyaki. It’s a lot like the urge to dive into a bed when you see one.”

That man in his fancy suit was living it up in his bachelorhood even more than me. He was really old enough to settle down too. And he was quite energetic about the meat when even the global burger shops were having trouble after the zombie outbreak.

“Were you thinking something rude?”

“No, not really. Now, about this cruise ship…”

“That’s right, Hayabusa-kun. You might not know all the details since you weren’t directly involved, but it had a hole in the bottom. It’s unclear whether it was the CIA or the Hishigami Woman that did it, though.”

“…”

“No need to be so nervous. Only the ballast tank was taken out, so it won’t sink as long as the inspection hatch is closed. It’s still careless to have 1700 lives riding on that, though.”

Things had gone beyond that.

They were intentionally hiding it. They were keeping quiet to make money, safety be damned.

They really were worshiping money.

“Troublesome, isn’t it? And we can’t get after them for it when all the related agencies have closed up shop. I might be at a wagyu teppanyaki place, but I actually like the abalone steak the best. Although I’m skeptical whether this is Intellectual Village meat like they claim.”

“So the magic trick using the network’s bonds is producing all sorts of moral hazards, is it?”

“I have something to discuss concerning that. Kotemitsu-san was supposed to give the details, but…hm, how should I put it? Her fights with her sister are pretty intense. I can’t exactly enjoy the company of the two beauties like this.”

“Yeah, that is what’ll happen if you shove Madoka and Seika into the same trading room. It’s like trying to raise a cobra and a mongoose together.”

Enbi gave her exasperated comment while dressed in her red ribbons, whipped cream and chocolate top and miniskirt, wafer ribbon tie, and shortcake hat on the side of her head.

A moment later, a door was thrown noisily open. I looked over and saw a square opening in the thick wall where there had been no sign of a door before. A woman and a girl stepped out.

It was college-aged Seika of the main Kotemitsu family and Shinobu’s classmate Madoka-chan.

“I can’t believe you would start selling there!! Why would you make manual changes when the autonomous investment program can see the optimal move!? You don’t gain anything besides stroking your own ego when you succeed based on your own decision!!”

“I think you rely too much on the machine. Investing is about reading the interactions of people’s hearts. Even if programs wearing the skins of user accounts are running rampant these days, the thoughts of the people building their algorithms will still affect things. You don’t understand the Kotemitsu style at all, Miss Error.”

[[Image:Zashiki_v09_210.jpg|thumb]]

“It pisses me off that you sum everything up using internet terminology! Is that in style these days? It wasn’t that long ago you used chess terminology to describe the family’s system!!”

“Noise that doesn’t fit the file format will not even reach my ears. If you wish to speak with me, then learn the Kotemitsu format first.”

“And why are you wearing that showy marching band outfit, you flat old lady!?”

“!! Mishima tricked me by saying this was a costume party!”

Mishima-san waved at me without looking back.

“Do something about this, Uchimaku-kun. You have no trouble going out for karaoke with a middle school girl, so you’re my final hope here.”

“I had a very good reason for that!! I just wanted a soundproof room for-…”

“That’s right. The detective dragged this innocent little girl into a private room where no one could see us or hear me scream.”

“It was so we could discuss strategy, you idiot!! That case had to do with the embassy, so we had no choice but to give up on more direct methods!!”

Seeing others behaving badly seemed to help people correct their own behavior. The Kotemitsu Sisters’ argument had heated up so much, but they calmed down when they saw our commotion.

Mishima-san sounded impressed as he chowed down on an abalone steak that used the large shell as a plate and was covered in a special sauce made from butter and its innards.

“Well done, Uchimaku-kun. You handled that so well I feel silly for wasting three hours with that. They say it’s best to go to the specialists and it looks like I should just leave all the young girls to you.”

“Who the hell is secretly manipulating the rails of my destiny!?”

I cried out while afraid of some invisible threads I felt were wrapped all around my body, but the rich bachelor wiped his mouth with a napkin and handed a black card to the waiter. He politely declined any dessert, finished paying, and guided me to the previous hidden room with a fancy coat in hand.

“The Yakata-II was built for the wealthy, so it has a satellite connection and card company servers linked to the casino and trading rooms. That makes it a perfect base for us.”

“But why use such a dangerous ship? There are plenty of nice rooms on the coast you could use.”

Seika-san answered my natural question.

“Those are so full of the newly rich that there won’t be an opening for years. It’s everyone from grade schoolers to housewives and even the elderly who have too much free time and pension money. Do you know what the most popular thing to get training in is these days? It’s apparently the investment business by a wide margin.”

“…”

''Ugh.

I still only saw investing as another word for gambling, so this new era seemed absolutely insane to me. I shuddered just thinking about people who couldn’t connect a computer to a printer in computer class diving into a world where they could blow a hundred million yen in a ten thousandth of a second, but that probably just meant I was too set in my ways.

Then again, feeling that way was an important thing now.

The hidden room was the size of two school classrooms. Two chairs sat back-to-back in the center. In all 360 degrees, the walls, ceiling, and floor were covered with flat-screen monitors supported by the kind of arms used for desk lamps.

Countless numbers and graphs moved about wildly on the screens.

There was data on wars, disasters, mergers, buyouts, weather forecasts, and even hamburger prices in different countries. There were clusters of windows displaying every single online news article that could even slightly affect the stock or foreign exchange market.

I just felt overwhelmed.

You could recognize a single ant as an insect, but once there was a thousand or ten thousand of them, they looked like a single wriggling mass or monster. This provided the same sort of pressure.

“Where am I even supposed to focus?”

“I think the trick is to view it all at once without focusing.”

Madoka-chan casually answered me in her sailor uniform. She did not sound entirely confident in her answer because it was such a natural thing to her that she might as well have been explaining how to breathe or blink.

“So what’s the problem?”

“This.” Mishima-san turned one of the arm-mounted flat screen monitors my way. “The national natural convenience stores I mentioned before are just barely being contained. They use a new cold storage service to transport perishables without damaging them, but Madoka-chan and Seika-san targeted that by claiming it violates another company’s patent. That said, it’s really just buying time. The moral hazard itself is continuing to spread as data. It won’t be long before this kind of thing is considered normal and a few of the people’s threads have already burned away. Look.”

“…”

“The people who gained a small fortune with the bonds magic trick are starting to reach elsewhere. They have nothing better to do since the natural convenience stores have stalled.”

“Um, what is this? They’re buying land on the moon and mars?”

The Mystery Freak sounded confused and Madoka-chan shrugged.

“If you can put a price tag on it and sell it, it doesn’t matter what it is. Do you know why pure gold and platinum are so valuable? Because there are a lot of people who find that convenient. And in this case, land on the moon and mars can’t fall victim to land speculation, can’t jump in value due to a sudden railroad expansion, can’t fall into a fight over sun exposure rights due to a high-rise building, and can’t have protestors stage a sit-in. And unlike gold and diamonds, thieves can’t run off with it. Once it has a price tag, there is no more stable savings box.”

“Plus, there are no international or national laws concerning the land of other astronomical bodies. Setting aside how effective it is, there’s no problem with buying and selling this land as data. These days, avatars in virtual space open up shops and sell digital products for digital money. Even if you can’t reach it, it might actually be a plus that there’s something physical attached to the deal.”

At this rate, they were probably going to pour a bunch of money into the candy of some nonexistent fantasy land.

I was utterly exasperated and Mishima-san showed me yet another window.

“But once all the land on the moon and mars has been sold off, those greedy people will move onto another market. This one’s growing pretty hot right now. It’s also space-related.”

“The satellite debris business?”

“Detective, if you include the ones of unknown nationality, there are currently one to two thousand satellites in operation. But their average length of durability – that is, their lifespan – is between five and ten years. And what do you think happens to a satellite that’s role has ended?”

“Well, isn’t it sent into the atmosphere to burn up on reentry?”

“With the controllable ones, yes.” Seika-san slowly sighed. “But when control is lost due to a malfunction, that can’t happen. There are an estimated seven to eight thousand ‘empty shells’ orbiting the earth. Include the separated parts, separated paint fragments, and small debris, and it’s rumored to be more like four to thirty million.”

The estimated range had grown quite a bit.

That must have shown how little anyone knew about it.

“So they’ve placed price tags on the trash orbiting the earth and acting like it’s as valuable as diamonds or platinum?”

“At first, but things have changed.”

Mishima-san held out the finishing blow.

It said the following:

''Don’t let the wealth gather at the top!! Help us distribute it to everyone!!

''We have started this group to bring an end to the satellite debris business that unfairly manipulates the value of money using formless economic activity. With help from civilians, we have begun developing a special type of small satellite. It is loaded with explosives and it detonates near the valuable debris floating in orbit to send that debris into the atmosphere.

''Satellite destroying satellites, aka killer satellites, are banned, you say?

''That treaty was signed between nations, so it does not apply to a borderless civilian nonprofit like us.

''Doesn’t it seem odd to all of you?

''Don’t you think the people diligently working up a sweat at their jobs should be making money too?

''If the country refuses to do anything about it, then civilians like us must act in their stead.

''We are not asking for monetary support. It can be message boards, blogs, SNSs, or whatever else, but please explain to everyone that what we are doing is right. The support of public opinion can’t be taken lightly. Your support will be our greatest strength.

::::::''Hishigami General Trading Group

“What…the hell?”

I could not help but groan.

When I saw the name Hishigami, I glanced over at the Mystery Freak.

The twintail girl quietly bit her lip.

“This is the problem with those Hishigami Men. They always go on and on about being reasonable, but as soon as what the country or the world considers reasonable becomes distorted, they raise the white flag.”

“Is this even possible? You mean it isn’t someone pretending to be them!? But the Hishigami Group is an international corporation with over two hundred thousand employees! Flip through the channels during primetime and you’ll see their ads pretty much everywhere!!”

“Those men will do anything if the concept of ‘reasonable’ has been distorted. Do you need to check a history textbook to know who it was that first started releasing tanks and fighters during wartime?”

“But still…”

Explosives on civilian satellites? Sending them to space and detonating them? Treaties between nations didn’t matter for individuals and civilians? That nonsense would never work. A rocket turned into a weapon was the very definition of a missile. If individuals and civilians used that without the military’s management, others would fight back. This seemed to be on the Hishigami Group’s website, but where were their headquarters located? If it was in Japan, then weren’t they essentially announcing to the international community that our island nation was a dangerous place that couldn’t manage its own ballistic missiles and could start firing them like crazy at any moment!?

“You couldn’t find a greater moral hazard, could you?” Mishima-san sounded disgusted too. “And there are two frightening aspects to this. First, the fact that the police have shut down and can’t act even with this nonsense going on. And second, that a fair number of people are agreeing with this.”

“…”

“…”

What look did I have on my face? It was probably the same as the one on the Mystery Freak’s face next to me.

A short text SNS said the following:

“Frappe: What’s wrong with that? I don’t really have anything against them, but it’s important to keep things in motion. Preventing stagnation will make everyone happy, so we need to give the economy a shot in the arm like this.”

“Round: I’ve got more news! It seems Hishigami is focusing a lot on the angle of entry. That way the abandoned satellites that are nearly whole can survive reentry and reach the surface. We can get all the rare earths we want from them. Yahoo!”

“House Mouse 21: It really is a redistribution of wealth. C’mon, we need even more of this. Really, having just a small part of the population gaining so much using fictional price tags was what made no sense. Now we’ll have jewels raining down across the globe. What a wonderful age we live in.”

No matter how much we scrolled, there were always more new messages.

Plus, the opinions were gathering in single direction. Out of the hundreds and thousands of short posts, there was not a single real rebuttal.

It felt like these were the residents of some creepy dictatorship.

“Amazing, isn’t it? This isn’t even an anonymous message board. Of course, the anonymity of those message boards only gets you so far, but still. They aren’t even trying to hide their identity with proxies. I’m impressed they can post this kind of thing under their own screennames.”

Madoka-chan really did sound impressed.

These kinds of posts would normally lead to suicidal levels of embarrassment, but no one seemed to care. No one was even flaming them. The moral hazards had already made it that far into the normal functioning of the world.

But not even that was the core of the problem.

“But detective, isn’t this really bad? I mean, whole satellites raining down? Wait just a second there. Satellites are designed to burn up on reentry, so they tend to have some pretty dangerous things inside. They tend to use nuclear batteries and the kind of rocket fuel that burns the skin on contact!”

“And that will be raining down across Japan…no, across the world…?”

The Intellectual Village brand name would collapse instantly.

In fact, the entire globe would be contaminated!

“The natural convenience stores that led to this new age must be panicking. If that ultra-valuable brand-name is destroyed, their stores lose all meaning. And it’s too late to try to stop each individual one now. Plus, there’s no guarantee this is the only moral hazard. At this rate, they’re sure to start popping up like bamboo shoots after a rain.” Mishima-san looked to the screen. “So let’s start a war void of morals using this network that connects the world. What can we buy and sell, what can we say, and what online news can we use to bring an end to this worst case scenario? That’s what I want all of you to think about.”

===Part 6 (3rd person)===

While the Package was being constructed, the Yuki Onna walked out into the yard, took a ladder from the shed, and placed it against the wall of the house.

“Eh heh heh.”

When she heard a bewitching female laugh, a tremor ran down her spine.

She could not believe it. She simply could not believe it.

When the short girl fearfully turned around with a cold sweat dripping down her face, she saw a most unwelcome vision.

“M-Mizore!? And Hadare!?”

She had no idea when they had arrived, but two similarly dressed Yuki Onna had locked onto her. They were old friends who had lived on the same mountain as her, but the Yuki Onna of the Jinnai household had a reason to be nervous.

Mizore, who had spiral glasses and two braids, spoke up hesitantly.

“H-Hyou-chan, we were all worried about you when you suddenly left the mountain in the heat of midsummer. We hadn’t heard anything from you since you said you were going to find a human husband, so we thought you might have ended up like a popsicle dropped on the asphalt during summer break.”

“Gulp…!?”

“And the seasons have finally changed, so we left to search for you. I’m glad you’re doing well. So Hyou-chan, did you meet a lovely person?”

Those 100% well-intentioned words stabbed into the Yuki Onna’s chest in rapid succession.

It was like going to a class reunion and finding out you alone had made no progress whatsoever.

(Gh-ghhh! Why did they have to show up now? …Oh, is this the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi’s interference that Jinnai Shinobu was talking about? Is her power ''shifting destiny off track''? I really want to kill her right now…)

Some steam started rising from her due to the pressure, but then the Yuki Onna named Hadare opened her mouth. She was a sexy woman with her light blue hair worn up.

“Heh heh heh. I told her you would be fine. I mean, you’re such an unusual Yuki Onna, Hyou. You can’t even make proper snow, yet you can bring down blocks of ice during the summer. Hee hee. You just don’t have the elegance of the snowscape.”

“Kh. Why you…!!”

“So how did it go? The Yuki Onna is the standard example of a beautiful Youkai, so after wandering around down here for about half a year, surrrrrely you’ve managed to snag at least one guy. Right, Hyou?”

Hadare’s confidence came from what she held in her arms.

Yes, she was a Yuki Onna that came with a baby.

Was it derived from the Ubume or had a similar story come about by coincidence? The white Yuki Onna was generally thought of as a symbol of virginity, but there were some that held a baby. They were a deadly Youkai that asked travelers to hold their baby and, if the traveler agreed, would crush them as the baby gradually grew heavier and heavier. Just like with the Onbu-Obake, it was a stereotypical Japanese ghost story of destroying oneself by taking on a burden.

Of course, one could not make a baby on their own.

Nothing could apply greater pressure on a marriage-seeking Youkai.

“She was just dying to show her to you, Hyou-chan. Her name is Sou-chan and it’s spelled with the character for frost. Isn’t she cute?”

“Sh-shut up! I did not miss her at all!! And I was really planning to turn that guy into crushed ice…”

“Hyou-chan, don’t you think we did a wonderful thing by stopping her?”

While plain Mizore wore spiral glasses and had a flat chest, the steam weakening effect gave her a dynamite body when she stepped inside an open-air hot spring. The hot water would make her dizzy, but since that made her harmless, beautiful, and carefree, she was ranked third or fourth on a list of Yuki Onna that skiers wanted to run across. Any old story or drama that included a silly Yuki Onna that could not seem to kill anyone and always failed was generally based on her.

And as the pressure bore down on her, Yuki Onna Hyou gathered all her strength and began fighting back.

“Heh…heh heh heh. What are you talking about? Of course I’m super popular. I have so many to choose from I might as well have my own harem. I was just late in reporting back to you because I was having trouble choosing from them all.”

“Ah ha ha! Of course. A Yuki Onna can capture a husband in a single ski season, so it would be pathetic if you couldn’t get a single guy after freely wandering around for half a year!! By the way, my husband runs an IT startup and owns the entire top floor of a Roppongi apartment building. He’s super rich from that bond trading that’s popular these days!! But I’m a Youkai, right? So I don’t like the city air much and I’ve had to reject his invitations even if it is a luxury apartment. Instead, I’ve settled down in a Karuizawa mountain villa. Oh, sorry about getting sidetracked on my boring old self. So what kind of person is your man? What’s his salary? I want to hear all about your luxurious and happy new life. Heh heh heh.”

“Y-y-y-y-you’ll be shocked when you hear it. But, um…oh, right! This would be a little much for a baby, so I will restrain myself for now. I’m definitely not making excuses. This is for your sake.”

“Ehh? That’s amazing, Hyou-chan!”

The spiral glasses provided dreadful supporting fire by innocently placing a hand over her mouth with that comment. The Yuki Onna was going to have to keep up the act until the end of the world now.

Steam started rising from her head as she continued.

“H-he is incredibly bold, and…”

“Yes, yes?”

“He’s so nice he invited me into his basement ice room when the summer heat was getting to me…”

“Oh?”

“I-I can’t even imagine living without him anymore…ah, this is too embarrassing! I’m melting. My body is melting!!”

She seemed to have reached her limit.

White steam burst from the already small Yuki Onna’s body as if she had used a ninja smokescreen technique. Mizore coughed and wiped off her steamed-up spiral glasses before putting them back on.

Then she placed a hand over her mouth.

“Huh? Where’d Hyou-chan go?”

“Heh heh heh. Oh ho ho ho ho!! The little girl couldn’t stand it any longer, so she ran off! Lie all you want, you can always smell the desperation in a bachelorette!!”

Hadare laughed loudly while holding the baby that symbolized a happy life while Mizore remained oblivious. They looked around to see where the other Yuki Onna had hidden and then they glanced to the open door of the shed.

They peered inside without actually going in.

“She isn’t here, Hadare-chan.”

“Honestly. This is what happens when you try to tell a blatantly made-up-…”

Hadare trailed off as she recalled Hyou mentioning her man introducing her to a basement ice room when the summer heat had gotten to her.

“Hm? Hmm? Wait. Does that mean Hyou was dizzily collapsed on the side of the road and he took her home to his private basement for a honeymoon?”

“Hadare-chan, why are you fidgeting?”

“N-no!?”

Hadare frantically shook her head, but it still bothered her. Was there maybe an entrance somewhere in the floor in the shed’s darkness and did it maybe hide some stairs down into a basement?

Her eyes were naturally drawn in that direction and then she spotted something.

Some rope was sitting in the back of the shed.

“Wait!!”

“Eek!?”

“No, no, no. That doesn’t mean…that doesn’t mean anything. There are all sorts of ways to use rope and a shed is a perfectly normal place to store it. It doesn’t mean that short girl has entered a dangerous territory not even I’ve-…”

She came to a stop when she saw something else.

She spotted a strange silhouette in the back of the shed.

Yes.

It seemed to be made from several different pieces of wood. It had four legs like a table, but the top was not a flat surface. The center line rose to a point like a doghouse roof. And it was quite a point too. The overall silhouette did look something like a simplified version of an animal, just like some kind of playground equipment.

Now, then.

It was made of wood.

The back was a pointed triangle.

And it was modeled after an animal…specifically, a horse.

What was such a device called?

“H-h-heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!? Is this the legendary…the legendary…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

“D-don’t yell, Hadare-chan! You’re making your baby cry!!”

Hearing the commotion the two Yuki Onna caused as they ran off, Shinobu’s small grandmother arrived with a confused look. However, the source of the noise had already left.

“?”

The shed door had been left carelessly open, so she approached to close it.

Then she spotted something inside that she had not seen in a long time.

“Oh, we haven’t used the fish drying rack in a while. I should drag that back out once the sun blesses us with its presence again.”

===Part 7 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

''Hm?

''Did I just hear some screaming out in the yard?

That bothered me, but I had my hands full in the hallway.

Yes.

The large and small Furutsubaki duo was fighting.

“I am far more useful to Jinnai Shinobu. I’m taller, so I can reach things.”

“Why you…! You’re only two millimeters taller!!”

“I don’t want to hear anything from an inelegant and flat-chested child.”

“I’ll break your trunk and eradicate your roots!!”

They started grabbing at each other which pulled their kiminos from their bodies in a number of places, so I stopped them.

I was pretty sure this was another example of interference.

“You be the judge! Jinnai Shinobu, you be the judge!! Which one of us has the better transformation!?”

“Mh. How exactly will he judge that?”

“It’s about who’s more human-like, so it’s a softness competition! We’ll have him feel our softness!!”

“Okay, but let’s make this thorough. No spot is off limits.”

“Ah, stop that, you idiots! The look in Yukari’s eyes is really scaring me!! Oh, god! She’s coming this way!!”

This had to be the Ver. 39 detecting the Package preparations and ''shifting destiny off track'' to interfere, so why was the Zashiki Warashi herself so jealous that she seemed to be growing horns!? She was being manipulated as much as anyone!

I fled the Zashiki Warashi’s roaring fists like a klutz who had accidentally knocked down a hornet’s nest and then I spotted small Hafuri sitting on the porch in her purple kimono.

The Aburatori sat next to her.

They seemed to be watching the Furutsubaki duo from afar, but they had yet to actually join in.

“Are you not afraid of me?”

“Unfortunately, I claim to be a guardian of children,” said the old man who hid his expression below a bamboo hat with an eye pattern drawn on it. “For the other Youkai, it seems to be an issue of how they view you…no, how they view the term Hyakki Yakou. Plus, I knew the man named Majina and saw what Hyakki Yakou was during his time, so to me it seems odd to fear Hyakki Yakou.”

“…”

Hafuri fell silent for a moment.

“That man plotted to usurp Hyakki Yakou and began a national zombie outbreak to split the organization.”

“That was only to oppose the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi and protect the world you live in.”

“But…wait, how could you possibly know that?”

“The human heart is easily drawn to evil, but is also easily bound to good. If something grows even slightly distorted, you can readily accept yours and others’ deaths. I know that all too well. I saw who Majina truly was ten years ago. They say people never truly change and I doubt he would have changed that easily. His actions must be strictly judged, but we cannot take away why he did it. Not even the gods in heaven can do that.”

What did those words mean to Hafuri?

Majina had had his reasons for his actions. Someone in Hafuri’s position would be able to figure that much out, but how many people were there who would accept Majina’s reasons? Hafuri and Mei’s opinions were biased as they were family. And the members of Hyakki Yakou worked for Hafuri, so their acceptance would sound like nothing more than kind words for her. But the Aburatori was looking in from outside and he had accepted Majina. Maybe not his crimes or his results, but he had accepted his humanity and what had led him there.

Then something moves past my feet.

It was the Fox, Tanuki, and Badger.

“My, my. What are you doing here? It’s time for tea!”

“Hm? You aren’t afraid of me?”

“A lot of the others seem to be, but we realized we had already worked with you at Goldmine Island. We already know you don’t bite.”

When the Fox held his front paw out as he spoke, Hafuri thought for a moment and reached out a hand.

She shook that tiny, tiny paw.

The Badger shook his head vertically as a nod.

“And we also realized you look a lot like our master’s granddaughter. We hear you’re helping as an individual instead of as Hyakki Yakou, so we felt there was no reason to hold back.”

“Eh heh heh. So leave it all to a wet nurse Tanuki like me! This is heated barley tea, so it has no caffeine. It’s perfect for young children.”

“I-I am not so young I need a wet nurse!”

Hafuri blushed and raised her voice, but the Tanuki smiled and said, “Oh, dear.” The Usuhiki Warashi joined in while shouting “kyah kyah” and started eating the tea cakes. She too may have been used to Hafuri after Goldmine Island and Hafuri scolded her a little when she started drinking the hot barley tea from the teacup Hafuri had reached for.

I also saw the Kura Bokko, Notabariko, and the other Usuhiki Warashi from the Goldmine Island inn gathered together.

“Wow. Being in the territory of a real Zashiki Warashi is making me nervous…”

“The red one and white one are both made by Hyakki Yakou. And then there’s the half-human one.”

“And I feel really overshadowed with that ‘kyah kyah’ girl acting like the representative of Usuhiki Warashi.”

The helpful Oomukade pushed on those three girls’ backs and they managed to join in.

The one-eyed Umbrella and Lantern must have decided Hafuri wasn’t that scary even if her emotions were a little rocky because they came out after observing from behind a sliding screen.

“It’s true she doesn’t seem that different from our master.”

“Nonsense! Hiro-sama is far cuter!”

That set a great wave in motion. The Keseran Pasaran, a white puffball said to bring good luck, floated over toward Hafuri and the Furutsubaki duo slowly inched closer.

It looked like things were going to be fine.

Then I heard the sound of a shifting panel overhead.

I looked up to find a square of the ceiling opening up and Marguerite the Australian Witch poked her head out.

“Jinnai Shinobu, could you hand me that duct tape? I need it.”

“Yeah, Westerners rely on crowbars and duct tape about as much as a knife and fork, don’t they?”

I grabbed the roll from the sunken hearth and Marguerite leaned further out. In fact, she crawled out so she hung upside down with just her feet caught on the edge of the square.

But…

“What’s this, Marguerite!? It looks like you have horns, wings, and a tail!”

“Oh, these?”

“And that’s one hell of a micro bikini! Man, it’s something else entirely when an authentic Westerner wears one!!”

“I guess you would care about that most.”

For some reason, the witch hat didn’t fall off even when she was upside down. And they must have been demonic parts because the blue fabric of the skin-tight gloves and knee socks was wriggling a little.

The exasperated sounding witch traced her index finger along the underside of the micro bikini top’s shoulder strap.

“I’ve temporarily fused with the Succubus to help the ritual go more smoothly.”

“Yahoo, master!” said the Succubus’s voice from somewhere. “If you miss me, just call for me. Your dreamtime partner is right here!”

“Well, her master contract is connected to you, but we added in a bypass to trick the contract. Demons don’t actually have physical bodies, but a Succubus is a rare exception. They have the power to construct their own body and we’re using that to hide her in my womb by-…”

“Hmm. Maybe it’s gravity doing it, but boobs have so much more impact when they’re upside down! And other than ‘that’ and I guess ‘that’ too, there aren’t many other poses that give you such a good view…”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“And did you say you messed with my demon contract? Succubus, this isn’t like opening a hole in the bottom of the bucket of my soul, is it!?”

“I wouldn’t screw up like that, master. It’s just sharing your senses a little. Oh, and your lifespan.”

“Hold up! Is there no going back on that!?”

“In some rare cases, it can fluctuate pretty wildly and end up something like a market crash.”

“Now you’re really scaring me!!”

I needed to calm myself down. And hadn’t she mentioned something about my senses?

“Nn.”

I tested it by touching my right ear and for some reason the upside down micro bikini woman gave a little jump. She pulled up her shoulder like something tickled and acted like she was holding something between her right shoulder and cheek. Yes, almost like someone had blown on her right ear.

“Oh?”

“Calm down, Jinnai Shinobu.”

“Ohhhh!? That means…what does that mean? What happens to Marguerite if I touch my own chest right now? I’m not doing anything to anyone, so there couldn’t be a problem, right? Because I’m not doing anything to anyone!!”

“…!!!???”

Marguerite trembled and blushed, but she squeezed her lips tightly shut to keep her voice from escaping.

Now, a question.

I had to calm down and think about this. Were my senses really linked with the blonde witch’s? Or was a silly boy getting all worked up on his own while he groped his own chest? Which was it!?

I figured the odds were 50% or greater that it was a lie. After all, this information came from a Western demon and lying was pretty much their job. And not the heartwarming and kind lies. They would heartlessly laugh at you afterwards.

“No,” said the Succubus’s voice. “Marguerite really is trying hard not to moan right now.”

“The entire point is that I can’t trust you. Here’s the tape.”

“Kh.”

The witch must have also enjoyed putting on deceptive acts because her shoulders trembled as she hesitantly took the roll of duct tape from me. Her breaths seemed strangely heated and seductive.

“Pant, pant. I thought I was prepared when I heard we would be mixing Eastern and Western, but the rules of the paranormal really do run on…well, it would be nice to call them rhymes, but it’s really more like puns.”

“Hm? Puns?”

“In Japanese, four sounds like death and nine sounds like suffering, so even adults will avoid those numbers. And Oni wear tiger striped loincloths because Oni are traditionally associated with the northeast, which is close to the direction associated with tigers. Power is more easily summoned by images simple enough for a child to understand, but you need to be careful because unintended associations can create new connections and allow the power to escape. It’s like how gathering water is easy but maintaining pure water is hard.”

“That does seem to be how it works. A lot of the legends about gaining eternal youth are based on wordplay. For example, there are apparently no religious rules behind the idea that eating soba at New Year’s helps you live a long life.”

“Have you seen those prayer charms for passing exams?”

“Crazy, isn’t it? But don’t worry. The Japanese know how silly it is. It’s like a special product for an annual winter festival.”

As we continued our chat(?), I heard a commotion from the living room.

Marguerite waved and ducked back into the attic, so I went to deal with the commotion.

The two red and white Zashiki Warashi were tilting their heads together in the living room.

I followed their gazes.

“How in the world did this happen?”

“Oh, papa.”

“I am Shisa. The Yuki Onna is in trouble.”

The Aoandon and Shisa spoke up as soon as they saw me.

As for the Yuki Onna…

“K-kyuuuuuuuuh…”

Why was she stuck on her back in the gap between the floor and the short-legged stand for the 50-inch flat screen TV?

I peeked on the other side which wasn’t cleaned often and had a lot of dust. I could see the Yuki Onna’s face and she looked about to pass out.

“We had to get behind the TV for the big renovation project, but she decided to climb below the TV stand because she didn’t want to move it.”

“And she got stuck?”

She must have struggled a lot on her own because her kimono had mostly come off of her lower body. While a kimono seemed to provide high defense, they didn’t have to move much for them to become entirely useless.

“Is it just me or have you gotten bigger, Yuki Onna!? Your size is completely off!”

“U-uuh… That lazy Youkai distorted destiny, so I ran into some old friends… Th-that got me fired up in a bad way, so my body ended up like this. That damage was like something from a tenth or twentieth year class reunion, so a child like you wouldn’t understand, Jinnai Shinobu.”

She was a little more sexy than usual.

It was possible she had gotten stuck because she wasn’t used to the size of her body.

“What should we do, papa?”

“Um, I take it from the state of her kimono that you already tried pulling her out by the legs.”

“I am Shisa. Her stomach or hips must be caught because she would not budge.”

“It’s my chest or butt!! I’ll kill you, you summer Youkai!!”

We could rescue her right away if we moved the TV stand, but I could understand why the Yuki Onna had wanted to avoid that. That proper method would be a huge pain. We would have to unhook the TV’s antenna cord, the power cord, the fiber optic wire for cable, and all the wiring for the DVR and game systems. Then we would have to move the equipment out of the way. Only then could we lift the TV stand.

So…

“Let’s leave rearranging the furniture as a last resort and go with the standards first. If we get her wet with detergent or something, she might slip right on out.”

“Heh. Eh heh heh. Jinnai Shinobu getting me wet!? Not bad. Yes, not bad at all! This is clearly an unnecessary detour set in place by the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi, but I don’t even care!!”

That was when the perfect Youkai, a Nure Onna, showed up. She must have been tired from the work because she was wetting down her body at the sink in the kitchen adjacent to the living room.

When I explained the situation, the woman with wet hair (and see-through clothing) simply pointed to the TV stand with a troubled look.

I looked back over.

“Eh heh heh. Eh heh heh heh heh. I-if you like you could use salad dressing or a mysterious sticky liquid that falls into the ‘joke goods’ category. Eh heh heh heh heh…”

“Ahh… Papa, I think the TV stand is starting to freeze. The gap below is probably entirely filled with ice. Throwing water on her would just freeze her in place even more.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

As I complained, I felt a tug on my sleeve.

Mei, the Zashiki Warashi in a white yukata, had silently approached at some point and she handed something to me.

It was a candle that had likely come from a disaster-preparedness bag.

“Ehh!? I kind of get using the fire element on the ice element, but isn’t a candle getting a little too kinky!?”

“(Jump!?) Eh!? A candle!? (Fidget fidget)”

The Yuki Onna struggled without knowing what was going on, but she had no way to resist while stuck there.

Perhaps because she too belonged to the candle element (?), the Aoandon tilted her head with her forehead horn glowing with its bluish-white phosphorescence.

“Huh? You’re not into that, papa? I thought for sure you’d be all for a chance to enjoy the Yuki Onna’s reactions.”

“Well, while I do want to sleep with as many women as possible, I can’t stand seeing a girl who honestly isn’t enjoying it. It’s a total turn off. But if she really wants to do it, then I’m prepared to do just about anything!!”

Yukari hit me for my honesty.

And she used her fist too! Aren’t girls supposed to slap you!?

“I am Shisa. So what do we do about the Yuki Onna? I feel bad for her like this.”

“…”

“Hm? What is it, Jinnai Shinobu? Why are you picking me up?”

“I-it can’t be…” said the Yuki Onna as she trembled on her back below the TV stand.

Yes.

“A candle might be a bit much, but rubbing a summer Youkai against her shouldn’t be as bad, right?”

“W-wait, Jinnai Shinobu!! That is a fatal combination, much like dropping a popsicle on the hot asphalt!”

“Ehh? The Shisa won’t work?”

“Yes, that’s right. He won’t work at all.”

“In that case… Hey, Marguerite.”

“Eh?”

“Do something about this. Witches are pretty general-purpose, so you can handle any element right? Use some kind of fire magic.”

“How will that help!? If a candle was too much, why would you think fire itself would be fine!?”

“Ehhh? It’s magic, so won’t it just all gently melt away?”

“Let her roast you a little first if you think that!!”

As she hung upside-down from the attic with her wonderful micro bikini, Marguerite thought for a bit and held out a strange item that looked like a magnet on the tip of a red-painted plastic umbrella.

“It’s cliché, but summoning a Salamander might work. I’ll restrict the amount of the gathered element to keep it at the size of a chameleon.”

“Hee hee hee!! What is that licking at my calf!? That isn’t a dog or a cat! That’s the creepy sensation of a lizard!”

“Didn’t I say it was a Salamander?”

“I-isn’t there…isn’t there a better way of warming my body!? Oh, I know! You could wrap a string of Christmas lights around me like this and that to tie me up tight.”

“And how are we supposed to tie you up when you’re stuck under the TV stand?”

“I-I have a hint: how do young men and women warm each other up inside mountain cabins in the winter?”

“No, thank you. If I embraced something that’s fifty below zero, I’d freeze to death. Ask me again once you’re a little weaker.”

“No, not the toes. Why is this animal licking between my toes so thoroughly!?”

''Oh, I think it’s working.

It was looking like I wouldn’t need to grab the Aoandon’s head and use her as a candle for the Yuki Onna. I had been worried her phosphorescence wasn’t really all that hot.

“Ah, ahh, ahhhhhh… Jinnai Shinobu is attacking me with an animal. It’s the animal that is tormenting me, yet Jinnai Shinobu’s will is working through the animal… H-how am I supposed to process these feelings? …I-it’s too much!!”

As the weird orange-glowing lizard or chameleon played around with the Yuki Onna’s calf and toes, the frozen TV stand gradually thawed. At the same time, the Yuki Onna shrunk.

Once her usual bodylines were back, she slipped right out.

We had finally rescued her.

“Sigh… That was extremely silly, but maybe we should see it as odd that we’re getting trapped by these silly things at this time of crisis. The Ver. 39’s curse is frightening indeed.”

“I feel like we’ve just started to blame her for everything unpleasant.”

“More importantly, papa, what do we do now?”

“?”

I tilted my head at the Aoandon’s question, so my far too well developed daughter clarified.

“For the big renovation project. We can’t move on until we finish behind the TV.”

“…”

We all turned toward the wet Yuki Onna.

She was the perfect size now and she would be slippery too since she was absolutely soaked.

“W-w-w-w-w-wait! Please don’t all push me at once! I just proved I don’t fit! Ah-ahhh!! Is this more of the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi’s interference!? Mgyuhhh!?”

===Part 8 (Hishigami Mai)===

“Anyway.”

“What is it?”

We were in a certain metropolitan area and I was a little chilly with just a jacket over my tank top and hot pants. The nature-loving Sunekosuri looked a little nauseous, so I started talking to distract him.

“Why are you still working for Hyakki Yakou? You found your wife Ohatsu, so you’ve returned your whole family to Gisuke. I don’t see any more reason to stick around.”

“I thought the same thing at first,” replied the Sunekosuri in my arms. “But when I started collecting my things, I felt reluctant to leave. I had finished everything I went there to do and there was nothing more of value for me to do there, but I was still hesitant. That’s when I realized that, while Ohatsu and Gisuke are important, that isn’t all that’s important.”

“Oh? So you found a new objective while working in this underground business?”

“I’m not sure. The era is going to change and Hyakki Yakou is going to run across all sorts of dangers, so they’ll want as much help as they can get. I just can’t bear to turn my back on Hafuri-sama and the others and leave on my own. My family is important and they need a peaceful life, but…but that isn’t all. I’m not just an accessory to my family.”

“Those are some dangerous words.”

“I know that. If Ohatsu heard me, she’d probably bite me for real. But I can’t just return to the peaceful world and abandon everyone I’ve fought alongside for so long. I want to remain their allies and I want to remain a part of Hyakki Yakou. I can’t lie about that.”

The stuffed animal changed the subject there.

“What about you, Mai-san?”

“Me? This is purely business for me. The young lady and the Ver. 40 apparently went to open a hole in Noukotsu Village, but they paid me a fair bit in advance. I’m only doing as much work as they paid for.”

“Even though the Japanese yen could be utterly worthless any day now?”

“…”

''Oh, I see.

''You’ve gotten some guts, Sunekosuri.

I carried my partner over to a tour bus with tinted windows parked on the side of a metropolitan road and I knocked on the door.

The Supplier who owned the special machine claimed it would let him survive even if an asteroid hit the earth and triggered an ice age, but now he was curled up in a corner of the giant vehicle.

“Mai-san, I screwed up. If I’d known this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have worked so hard to build something that could endure on earth. I would have built something that let me abandon the earth.”

“If you’re gonna go that far, wouldn’t it be faster to turn yourself into an octopus alien? I thoroughly modified my own body, so I could help you out.”

“Mai-san!!”

“Ah, don’t cling to me with tears and snot all over your face! I was joking! Just joking!!”

I did understand why the cowardly Supplier would be so afraid of the approaching extinction of mankind, though.

The Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi issue was ground zero, but the derivative moral hazards were nothing to sneeze at either. The commotion in the TV news, newspapers, and online news was only the tip of the iceberg. It had reached those of us in the underground businesses too.

Yes.

Underground businesses dealt in money as well.

It wasn’t generally known (in fact, the very existence of the businesses wasn’t), but the overall circulation of black money underwent changes too. That meant bubbles could form. Just like how the value of land and classic cars could skyrocket with no connection to the actual economy.

“So how are things going for you?”

“Probably the same as for you, Mai-san. Just looking at the requests I get makes me hate my life.”

“I figured as much. I’ve been getting more and more people approaching me without using any real middleman like they have a death wish or something.”

“Eh? Eh?”

The Sunekosuri seemed to feel left behind at my feet.

But I’m super nice, so I decided to help out the pretty Youkai.

“There have been a lot more requests to kill people. And the amount they’re paying keeps going up. Of course, there’s no real set price for underground jobs like theft and killing. It’s a world of market value and suggested value. But those have been jumping all over the place and we’ve entered an age where people buy a single burger with a stack of cash. Nothing good comes from giving idiots a ton of money!!”

“B-but aren’t you an agent that gets unofficial orders from Hyakki Yakou!? And they’re giving you jobs as casually as ordering a burger!?”

“Some want me to silence their nagging mama, some want me to attack a teammate so they can take the regular spot, and the list goes on. It’s like the price is skyrocketing while the value of the job is tanking. But if I don’t do anything, I bet some other assassin will show up to do it. After all, these jobs are far easier than attacking some strictly guarded VIP after investigating their transportation route and bodyguard arrangement. And they still pay plenty. Those other assassins are probably still cautious since these might be traps, but anyone can make a ton of money if they throw out their pride.”

The excessively high payments were probably stopping people for the time being.

People had a weakness for what they considered a fair price. For example, who would believe a 200 yen diamond was real? Before getting into the quality of the jewel, they would be blinded by the questionable price. The excessively high payments were the same. They would assume some ulterior motive and suspect something bad would happen to them when they showed up for the job.

But anyway.

Once the moral hazard burned through that normal suspicion, there would be no stopping it.

And did those amateurs innocently making requests like some kind of king realize that a client with no backbone could more easily make money by attacking them for everything they had than by actually doing the dangerous jobs? It was possible someone was already writing up a list.

“But that’s not the worst part.”

“Eh? Th-there’s more?”

The Sunekosuri trembled at the Supplier’s deep voice.

“The worst part is that the biggest increase isn’t in that kind of casual killing. Yes, yes. It’s been a while, since ''these jobs were coming in''. And I thought I’d forgotten how the dark side of society could drag an individual’s heart into such awful places.”

“There’s a lot of another kind of job,” I nonchalantly explained. “''Requests from cowardly people who want to be gently killed.'' It’s from people like politicians and presidents of major corporations. The country is still celebrating the greatest festival it will ever see, but those with real power understand that this is the end of the world. Those in control of the world have all thrown in the towel and are spending their personal fortunes on suicide. Pretty harsh, isn’t it?”

“…”

The Sunekosuri didn’t seem able to ask any more questions.

Or maybe he was afraid of getting any more answers.

As I wondered which it was, a call reached my satellite phone. He was persistent, I’ll give him that.

I hit the button to reject the call.

“A-are you sure, Mai-san?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t worry.” I waved my hand dismissively. “It’s just a VIP of the Hishigami Group asking me to kill him. I don’t have time to deal with his pathetic complaining.”

The Sunekosuri shook violently, but it was hardly a surprise for the Supplier.

“Oh, so they’re doing that ‘aboveground’ too?”

“I take it that means the same thing’s happening ‘underground’?”

“Juunin Toiro, Meikyou Shisui, Shinshutsu Kibotsu…and well, all the elders from groups like that. Although they have to maintain appearances, so they send the request under a false name and through several intermediaries.”

That was why we were visiting him.

Although the Sunekosuri didn’t seem aware of it.

“So that means…?”

“Yes.” The Supplier nodded. “They’ve used some tricks to hide it from the normal routes, but a few high-ranking members of Hyakki Yakou have made requests too. They feel they can (in a way) trust you, so they want you to kill them as if putting them to sleep. How long is this going to last?”

''Hmm.

''If people on that level have thrown in the towel, it might just last until the end of the world.

===Part 9 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

The work ended up taking two to three days.

I had been worried my impatient dad and grampa would drive out all the freeloaders (or that the Ver. 39 would manipulate destiny in that way to stop us), but they somehow managed to restrain themselves.

That was partially because I persuaded them, but it also had to do with help from my Youkai-loving mom and gramma. Then again, this too was probably due to the power to manipulate destiny.

But not the Ver. 39’s.

I mean Zashiki Warashi Yukari’s.

The two powers were in conflict. It looked like comical Youkai getting into trouble, arguments over whether to let them stay or kick them out, and a small-scale fight to save my girlfriend, but the scales actually held the runaway credit rating agencies, the collapse of the government bond system, and a global panic covering the entire planet’s population of seven billion. That was just how much power the Ver. 39 had.

I couldn’t let the adorable appearance of the local events fool me.

I couldn’t let my guard down around these exhausting events.

What I had to fear most wasn’t a ferocious beast’s giant maw that could bite through steel and it wasn’t a genius criminal with a nightmarishly clever mind. It was that I couldn’t even reach the actual battleground. We were going to all this effort just to stand on that same field. We were walking on and on through the labyrinth and being pressed to give up on our own.

I had to keep going until the very, very end.

I had to save my girlfriend Yukari by freeing her from her bloodstained trait and from the Ver. 39’s power which would bring ruin to the world.

I couldn’t let myself leave those rails. No matter what.

So…

“Jinnai Shinobu!”

The Youkai may have been able to sense it better than a human like me.

The Package was complete.

The Aoandon called out to me from the side.

Either due to her experience in Hyakki Yakou or her senses as a half-Youkai, Hafuri picked up on something and shouted a warning.

“Hurry up and use this!! A great fluctuation is appearing! At this rate, you’ll have at most one chance at this!!”

I glanced at what she threw toward me and saw the kaleidoscope spinning through the air.

The Aoandon and Hafuri were unable to say more.

Or maybe my sense of time simply vanished. I heard a sharp sound. Mei, the Zashiki Warashi in a white yukata, had started glaring intently at me in a way she never had before. She had done something. She had used the Ver. 40. But for what? I already knew she wasn’t our enemy, so it must have been to protect me from something.

Even if I wanted to see what it was, I couldn’t even turn my head while engulfed in the field of stopped time.

The kaleidoscope flew extremely slowly through the air and I sensed some new footsteps.

A red form approached from the tea room.

It was my beloved girlfriend.

It was Yukari.

But something wasn’t right. The Good-for-Nothing Youkai stood just ten meters away. She hung her head a little in her red yukata, but it no longer had a flower pattern. Instead, it had human handprints. But not adult ones. The countless eerie handprints were of small children.

And it wasn’t just that she had changed into a new yukata. The handprints moved freely along the surface of the yukata as if tracing themselves along my girlfriend’s seductive bodylines. It was like a projection mapping on a building wall.

“What…?”

Red was the symbol of the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi, so was this the Ver. 39 running out of control?

Once I realized that, the presence of the spinning kaleidoscope grew much larger in my mind. It was the first and last piece needed to seal away the Ver. 39’s ruinous power. Grabbing it would reject its destiny. That was why this paranormal phenomena had started and why the Zashiki Warashi had transformed. With each millimeter the kaleidoscope approached my hand, she had to be leaving reality at a quadratic rate.

The Zashiki Warashi’s yukata had become a sea of handprints. Her ankle-length black hair began to move. Something danced within that hair that had the luster of polished ebony. They were bones. Specifically, human skulls. These too looked like they belonged to small children. They swam freely through that sea of fine black hair like the moon reflected in a lake at night. Sometimes a skull covered her bangs, sometimes one circled behind her with the long black hair acting as a screen, and sometimes one clung to the side of her head like it was rubbing cheeks with her.

Then I recalled that the Zashiki Warashi was an aggregation of the children killed during famines and the like.

She took the form of a sexy Youkai, but if someone like Majina of the old Hyakki Yakou broke her down into her original phenomenon, countless deaths would cling to her.

These had not attached themselves to her. They were coming out from within her.

That was why we had built the Package.

That was why I was attempting to grasp that first and last chance.

And the skulls swimming through her hair used a low, low voice to give me a simple but absolute command.

The voice seemed to come from the headphones she always had around her neck.

“Die.”

It was filled with hopeless malice.

The almost childishly simplified statement was innocently sharp. That may have come from the mentality of those children killed to have one less mouth to feed.

Then the distorted sense of time came to an end.

My fingers finally touched the kaleidoscope.

I grabbed it.

“Yukari.”

I called her name, but I already knew deep down that I wouldn’t get an answer.

She changed again.

She passed some kind of limit.

She was now the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi. She was something meant to invite death to the world.

So I said more.

“I will bring you back. I will save you.”

My senses returned.

A moment later, everything vanished.

Except for the Zashiki Warashi and me, the entire world became a tatami mat floor that stretched beyond the horizon.

It went far beyond the concept of projection mapping. My ability to verbalize it was about at its limit. Her long black hair slithered like snakes and hid more than half her face. Small decorative jewels glared at me like twisted eyeballs. Countless handprints moved across the yukata that contained her bewitching body. The entire world had been blotted out as soon as they had dripped from the bottom of the yukata like drops of water and reached the floor.

“…!!!???”

The tatami mats were bright crimson, as if soaked with fresh blood.

The heavens were pitch black, as if dyed with evil.

Flames flickered atop tall candlesticks lined up at even intervals as far as the eye could see. Those flames were the only light source. Candles were commonly seen as symbols of life or a lifespan. There was also the eerie legend about a Zashiki Warashi predicting a fire before its family declined and fell into ruin.

It was all so colorful and psychedelic. Everything grounded in reality had been erased from this world.

But I kind of understood. I had no proof, but I felt like I understood since I’d been with the Zashiki Warashi all my life.

A Zashiki Warashi manipulated destiny.

But they were not destiny itself. They were just the controller or the terminal. In other words, there was something deeper. You could call it the main unit or the server. We had been dragged up from the world we normally lived in and had reached a higher “stage” where that server lurked.

You could call it the hidden side of the world.

Or maybe it was the source code hidden behind the browser that gave it a nice understandable visual form.

It was possible I couldn’t properly grasp what this place was using my five senses. It may not have actually been what I was seeing. It was just like how the ancient Greeks used a combination of animals when imagining a monster. I couldn’t deny the possibility that it was just so psychedelic that the resources in my mind could only throw together some kind of montage to show me.

This was probably beyond what the human mind could comprehend.

What did this look like to the Zashiki Warashi who was always in contact with this?

But to my eyes at least, something pulsed down the surface of the candlesticks with each flicker of the flames and then slithered along the crimson tatami mats. I could not help but understand that this was causing “something” to happen in the world we knew.

Messing with that would destroy all of the emotions of the people working so hard to live day in and day out.

Then it hit me what exactly the destiny controlled by the Zashiki Warashi really was. I didn’t even have to confirm it.

It came down to inevitable decline.

It was the idea that decline was inevitable for even the most prosperous person.

That concept had worked itself deeply into the Japanese psyche over a thousand years or more. Think of Dan-no-Ura, Honnouji, or Sekigahara. Even historic figures who influenced an entire era were forced to accept their own ruin as inevitable when the powerful, powerful fangs and claws of destiny reached them.

But there was nothing odd about it showing up here.

I mean, that’s just what a Zashiki Warashi was. They brought prosperity when they arrived at a house and they drove the house to ruin when they left. They were truly the messengers of inevitable decline. That was a concept you couldn’t remove or ignore when talking about a Zashiki Warashi.

There were beginnings and there were endings.

There was creation and there was destruction.

There was life and there was death.

There was no opposite pattern. It was inevitable, so it was only a matter of sooner or later. Whatever the speed, the gears could only turn in one direction and those gears were the true essence of a Zashiki Warashi. And as I was trying to forcibly turn those gears in the opposite direction with the kaleidoscope, the Ver. 39 seemed to speak to me.

It seemed to say I had successfully acquired your beloved and that was exactly why destruction must come to me.

It was truly awful.

The greater my success, the greater the absolute defeat that would follow.

It was the extreme form and original version of the childish idea that people had a fixed amount of luck so if something good happened, something bad was sure to follow.

Inevitable decline was a truly frightening sort of destiny. It was an unshakable malice and nothing could be more persuasive as every Japanese person understood it. Everyone assumed good luck would not last forever and often even wanted to see the successful suffer. The nail that sticks out gets hammered and we all fall equally. It was a subconscious aggregation of evil thoughts. It was a dark inheritance that no one had ever been able to throw out.

It could be the Taira clan and the Minamoto clan.

It could be Oda, Toyotomi, and Tokugawa.

Even if they had conquered Japan, that ultimate and solitary law would drag them down from the stage of history and force the end of an era onto them. In a way, it was a form of destiny that every Japanese person could picture just by closing their eyes.

But.

Even so.

That didn’t matter.

I didn’t care what it was. What I knew was simple but could not have been more critical. The Ver. 39 had been gently using natural shifts in destiny to interfere with us before, but it had finally decided drastic measures like this were necessary. It had brought out the handprints on her yukata and the skulls in her hair while showing off this hidden side of the world. This could not have been worse for me, but the same went for it. This dead end was also my best chance of turning this around.

''And turn it around I will, Ver. 39.

''I don’t give a crap about inevitable decline. I won’t let you turn this success into ruin. I’ll turn this ruin into success. You could only settle in and leave and you could only give out and take away fortune on a whim, but I’ll show you a new path.

That said, I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do with the kaleidoscope.

But when I reflexively took a step toward the Zashiki Warashi, a change assaulted me.

“?”

The skulls used her headphones to howl emptily at me.

“Die.” “Die!” “Fail.” “Ah ha ha!!” “You’re going to fail.” “Are you stupid?” “Ee hee ha ha ha!!” “Why are you taking this so seriously?” “Die!” “Give up.” “Everyone must die!!” “Stop.” “Shut up.” “You’re an eyesore.” “Shut up!” “The way you take this so seriously is just a pain.” “Ksh.” “Kssshhhh!!”

The deluge of noise lost all meaning and became a single cracked roar.

It was on the move. Faint drops of light ran through the Zashiki Warashi’s long glossy black hair.

As soon as that light dripped to the red tatami mats, an infinitely expanding ripple instantly flowed to the horizon in every direction.

That was when it happened.

The way was forcefully closed. Countless translucent and glowing red sliding screens closed in from the left and right between Yukari and me. Some symbols were drawn on the surfaces, but there were too many of them to make out any individual one. I simply saw the Zashiki Warashi standing beyond that red color.

It looked like less than ten meters, but the infinite number of ultra-thin screens created an absolute wall in my way.

They were red.

They were bloodstained.

They seemed to be refusing anyone that would shake her existence, her coloration, and her essence.

“To hell with that…”

What did those screens mean and what were they really?

Why would I bother thinking about that?

“To hell with all of this!!”

I gathered speed and prepared to kick through them rather than open them.

Immediately, I felt my sense of time die once more. This second time, it finally occurred to me that it was much like the feeling of running out into the road and finding a tanker truck approaching you. It was a lot like having your life flash before your eyes. When I felt that and had the incomprehensible phenomenon surround me, I finally realized what those translucent red screens were.

Each and every one was filled with just as much “death” as a speeding tanker truck. An endless supply was lined up before my eyes as a barrier that I couldn’t breach no matter how many lives I had.

===Part 10 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

We had no choice but to do it.

We used the Yakata-II cruise ship’s trading room to wage war with the Hishigami Group that was interfering with the satellite debris business by sending debris to the earth, including the nuclear batteries and tanks of dangerous rocket fuel. Seika-san and Madoka-chan bought up the rocket launch brokers they were trying to use while we made waves of posts on the message boards and forums people from that business used. We insisted that the Hishigami General Trading Group was doomed to fail and working with them would end badly.

There were plenty of ways to send something into space these days.

In addition to the rockets and shuttles managed by the government, there were projects by companies and universities that launched single-stage rockets from high-altitude airplanes or giant balloons that reached the stratosphere. Groups and organizations with the tech to leave the atmosphere were popping up like bamboo shoots after a rain.

That meant buying up and crushing each and every one would no longer work.

The infinitely expanding possibilities defeated our limited buying ability. We had to close off those many possibilities by informing the world that they would gain nothing by working with Hishigami. That was our only chance.

And yet…

“Warning: They’re doing this to help us all, so why would you try to make them sound dangerous? Do you just want attention? Are you shilling for someone?”

“Squall: And when the killer satellites detonate to bring down the debris, won’t the exploded killer satellites make new debris? It’s like a perpetual motion machine! It’s a never-ending lottery!!”

“Kitty Lion: If you’re against this, you must be one of those people getting rich off the satellite debris. Yes, yes. Pay them no heed. Better luck next time!”

…

…

…

“Damn, it’s no good! We’re telling the truth, but they make us out to be the bad guys. How can they rejoice at a civilian project that’s going to contaminate the entire world!? Do they want to see destruction that badly!?”

“You might not be that far off the mark,” muttered Enbi. “There isn’t some mastermind behind this. Hishigami is becoming something of a symbol, but they aren’t directly manipulating the information. This is the overall will of the internet. They’re averting their gaze from the destruction as they approach the cliff. Doesn’t it look like they’re enjoying the aesthetics of destruction? Just like how the ancient Greek empire had its fill of all kinds of entertainment and then decayed amid corruption and degeneracy.”

“I refuse to believe that,” I spat out.

It may have been true Japan was enjoying the festivities. The network and the bonds magic trick had given them plenty of money, they had bought everything they wanted, and they had nothing else to spend their money on, so they were pouring money into this nonsense.

But that wasn’t all.

In Intellectual Villages, there were plenty of farmers who created those valuable vegetables. There were also plenty of living national treasures. There were craftsmen whose metalworking could not be recreated by the precision machinery in the city and performers who continued the traditions of noh and kabuki.

In fact, it didn’t matter if they had special qualifications or a name everyone knew.

It could just as well be the people working hard at convenience stores or gas stations. Or the daily paper boy and the delivery service for old folks with weak backs. There were plenty of people working to keep the gears of society turning without getting involved in these festivities!

And you expect me to believe they were drowning in desire and wished for death?

Nonsense.

People were free to grow world-weary and let their hearts fester if they wanted, but I couldn’t let that subsection of the rich drag everyone else down with them!

This may not have been the core of the issue and it may not have mattered to Shinobu and the Zashiki Warashi, but no matter how far removed from the center this was, people were still suffering. Then how could I allow it to continue? I had to stop it here!

Enbi must have liked how I had replied so quickly because she giggled next to me.

And she spoke.

“Then let’s continue our futile struggle to the very, very end.”

Once the Mystery Freak said that, I heard a confused voice from Madoka-chan.

“We have some requests coming in. Um, they’re from…PSI_ver_RAIN and Anemura Kaede???”

“Finally.” The twintailed demon snapped her fingers. “One’s an online idol whose new songs reach thirty million views within twenty four hours and the other’s a regular member of the national idol group Tarot Girls 22. With them on our side, we can change the direction this is headed! We can destroy this disgusting mood of pessimism!!”

===Part 11 (Hishigami Mai)===

A tremendous blow hit the Supplier’s modified tour bus. The entire vehicle shook. My focus shifted to the handgun hidden in the heel of my boot. The large bus weighed a dozen or so tons on its own, so it wouldn’t budge from a normal vehicle collision.

That meant something just as big had hit it.

The Supplier had been driving it around, but now he gave a wide-eyed shout.

“Mai-san! A twenty ton truck is attacking! Any ideas who it might be!?”

“Oh, honestly…”

I looked out the tinted windows and a call reached my satellite phone.

I kept rejecting the calls, but he couldn’t take a hint!

“Hi, Mai. It’s your brother. I couldn’t bear it any longer, so I came to discuss it with you directly. Could you maybe destroy the Hishigami Group we’ve constructed!?”

“Kyou-chan, what happened to the reasonable-obsessed brother I knew? Not even the underground businesses crash their vehicles together like a Hollywood movie in this camera-filled city!”

“Hah hah hah. Didn’t I tell you? We can only obey what people consider reasonable. Look at the city around you. This is spreading without end. We’re approaching a world where this kind of dangerous driving is perfectly normal.”

I heard screeching tires.

But it did not come from our bus or Hishigami Kyou’s truck. A few fancy Italian cars had drifted through the intersection right in front of us. It looked like the drivers were college aged if not younger. And based on the roar of the engines, they had clearly been tuned to pro racing standards. These were not cars that should be driving on public roads.

If they lost control at that speed, the sidewalks would become a sea of blood in no time, but the crowds were cheering rather than screaming. They were starting to turn their smartphone and cellphone lenses toward the cars as they uploaded photos to their blog or gave commentary on a live broadcast.

It could not have been sillier.

“What counts as reasonable is only going to get more sickening.” The voice seemed to be cursing that fact. “Do you know what our company is doing now? We have no choice but to be dragged down with this god-awful moral hazard!!”

The heavy masses crashed together and sometimes knocked down telephone poles and streetlights, but I was focused elsewhere.

Specifically, the roof of the truck’s trailer.

The bodyguards with names like Zei and Akane wore the kunoichi-like Yozakura suits while hiding below cloaks covered in patterns that used the science of perception to divert attention away.

“This isn’t good. They’re going to board us, Supplier!!”

“So please do something about this!” said my brother. “Isn’t that your role, Mai!?”

With those words, red Zei, blue Akane, and yellow Ran lightly jumped between the two vehicles and smashed through the reinforced glass to get inside.

Youkai medicine had been used to artificially implant these monsters with Hishigami Women traits.

I ignored the storm of glass shards and took a breath to prepare myself while Zei tossed aside her cloak and spoke with no expression on her face.

“Assist us, original.”

“Oh, shut up. Unlike you artificial ones, I have no obligation to help a rich man with his hobby.”

“That is fine.”

I had not expected that answer.

Zei jerked her chin toward the truck.

“Throwing our lives away for Kyou-sama would be our greatest joy. His meeting with Uchimaku Hayabusa should have planted the seeds of a pleasant change inside him. We cannot allow that sprout to be trampled, even by Kyou-sama himself.”

“…”

I fell silent.

As a ferocious wind entered through the broken window, the Sunekosuri ran back and forth in confusion.

“What do you want me to do?”

“That truck is not meant to destroy the target by crashing into it. It is a special vehicle created to carry something.”

“Hold on. You don’t mean…!?”

“Ou.”

Zei spoke a name.

That name meant “slaughter”.

“She is a failure based on the anti-human Hishigami Enbi. If she is activated here, this city of thirty million will be destroyed. Kyou-sama’s rational side is just barely holding him back now, but if the reasonableness afflicting him grows any more distorted, there will be no stopping it. We want you to cut the storage pod from the truck before that happens.”

===Part 12 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

“…”

I still didn’t know what the screens were.

But the Zashiki Warashi’s Ver. 39 power to control destiny had likely done something.

It was getting in my way, keeping the kaleidoscope away, and protecting its system.

It was using the law of inevitable decline to rob me of success.

“See?” “You failed.” “You’ve failed.” “No chance of success remains.” “You will die.” “You will fail.” “You will lose everything.” “You tried to act cool.” “You tried to act important.” “But you only embarrassed yourself.” “So watch as you lose everything.” “Reach for it.” “Realize you can’t reach it.” “Die.” “Die!” “Die!!” “Ksshh!!”

The skulls displayed in the Zashiki Warashi’s black hair mocked me through her headphones. They were saying I’d fallen for their trap and stepped onto the rails of ruin on my own. And they did so with a childish sort of evil.

But…

“Ha ha.”

''You little brats.

''Do you really think you can steal my girlfriend from me?

''You might as well have already given me the answer.

If the Ver. 39 was working this hard to keep me away, there had to be a good reason for that.

I didn’t know how to use the kaleidoscope.

I knew nothing about occult Packages.

If it hadn’t done anything, I might have wandered aimlessly until I ran out of time.

But it had pointed my compass in the right direction.

And in the most difficult direction.

''Thanks for telling me I just need to get close to the Zashiki Warashi, Ver. 39!!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

I gathered enough strength in my body to break free of the seemingly stopped time brought on by the fear of death.

It felt like the very space around me was cracking.

But then red filled my vision.

——And deep within the rising fear, “it” truly assaulted me.

After a bright flash, I found myself somewhere other than the infinite expanse of tatami mats.

I saw nothing but gray dust for as far as the eye could see. It was a rural scene filled with every form of contaminant imaginable. In this land of the end, simply breathing in and out and simply blinking my eyes filled me with such intense pain that I thought fire was bursting from every hole in my body.

“Gblgh!! Agweh!! Glgah!!!!”

I somewhat understood.

This was the Hyakki Yakou Prototype Ver. 39 Zashiki Warashi.

She could control not just the current destiny, but create a brand new branch of destiny.

Those barriers.

Each and every screen contained an image of hell. It was those images that Buddhist monks drew on screens as a simple warning of what would awaited those who were excommunicated. Those screens of light had a thickness approaching on zero and they were filled with images of failed destinies, mistaken worlds, and hells.

So this was a parallel world that could have happened. It was the result of a mistaken choice on my part. For example, ''if I had relied on the CIA at Goldmine Island and the national suicide Package had activated, this is what would have happened to the Japanese archipelago.

The pain rushed at me all at once.

I coughed up blood, my blood vessels seemed to crawl below my skin, and I clenched my teeth.

Even so, I moved forward.

I bore the pain of an entire world and moved further forward.

——And “it” wasn’t just the one.

I saw the world after the archipelago filled with zombies according to Majina’s plan. The living dead grabbed at my arms and legs, bit into my flesh with teeth that reeked of decomposition, and tore me apart. Finally, I felt the fear of having my body rot from within.

I was swallowed up by that fear.

But I didn’t care if my arms and legs were torn away or if my organs were dragged out.

I just had to move forward.

I had to keep going.

As I clenched my teeth and worked against the powerful headwind, I suddenly wondered what my enemy was here. I knew it wasn’t the Zashiki Warashi, but it might not have been the Ver. 39 either. Countless handprints oozed out onto her yukata and skulls swam through her glossy hair. They would sometimes circle around to the back with her black hair as a screen, they would sometimes cover her bangs, and they would sometimes move the side of her face as if rubbing cheeks with her. But even they may have been a broken safety device running out of control. Inevitable decline. The hidden side of the world where forgotten destinies gathered. The fragments of the ages gathered here, from past events like Dan-no-Ura, Honnouji, and Sekighara to the “what ifs” where mistaken choices had led to ruin for any number of reasons. The entire world was swallowed and chewed to pieces, and the fragments gathered in this graveyard. Had this awful “something” been dragged toward us because the Ver. 39 had carelessly reached it and contacted it?

In that case, this fight wasn’t about good or evil.

It was about putting a lid on the ruinous power pouring down on us. It was about closing the floodgates in a world of neither good nor evil.

I would do it.

I understood that. I understood it now.

It didn’t matter what I was up against.

I would reach my one and only beloved Yukari no matter what!!

——“It” had a seemingly infinite number of layers.

In a world where I had failed to stop Archdemon Tselika Wien Alpha Chelydia Lumidrier who did not quite qualify as one of the seven deadly sins, I was swallowed up by such great sweetness that my entire vision grew bright red and I convulsed with blood pouring from every hole in my body.

“Gah…bah!! Khah!? Cough!!”

In a world where the Aoandon’s plan had succeeded, I learned true exhaustion and weariness as I wandered endlessly through an empty rural scene where none of the Japanese remained.

“Ah, ahh, ahhhhhh….”

In a world where the worst of the deadly Youkai, the Aburatori, had taken control of time, space, and destiny, I nearly went mad from the psychedelic scene of organs hanging from the branches of every tree as far as the eye could see.

“Gyahhh!! Gyagahhh!?”

In a world where Kawabata Megumi, the old woman who had created the Aoandon in Zenmetsu Village, had succeeded with her plan, I felt the intense pain and fear of having my body thoroughly chopped to pieces by Kusanagi which precluded all defense and evasion.

“Oh, kh…! Khah!!”

In a world where Australian Witch Marguerite Steinhols had obtained the Succubus, I was continually afflicted by the dreadful sensation of having my soul rot thanks to Western magic.

“Ah, ahh…”

In a world where the Akki Rasetsu agent named Saijou successfully modified the Umbrella Obake and Lantern Obake, she controlled all Youkai and filled me with the despair of having my body utterly devoured.

“…”

In a world where the coup d’etat of Hyakki Yakou had succeeded, I was overcome with the tremendous heat of all my body’s protein boiling as the Illness Magic User took over the Fuuka Village hotel.

“…………………”

——No matter how far I went, “it” never ended.

Worlds created by a wrong decision were slammed into me one after another.

As all the pain rushed to a single point, my body trembled so violently I thought I would bite my own tongue.

I had no idea how much time had passed.

I felt like I had been wandering for a hundred if not a thousand years.

But the true despair did not come from the pain or the fear itself.

I noticed something.

Even after all that, I noticed I had only moved forward a few centimeters.

“……………………f………”

How much farther did I have to go?

How long would I have to do this before I could reach the Zashiki Warashi? In fact, who had even guaranteed that this would end after making it a certain distance? If the Zashiki Warashi…no, if the inevitable decline controlling her decided on a whim to take a step backwards, this infinite hell would grow even longer.

“He’s given up.” “He’s given up!” “He’s given up in front of his woman.” “Throw him out.” “Let’s throw him out.” “He’ll break.” “He’ll break now!!” “Kee ha ha!!” “Yes.” “You can’t reach anything.” “You can’t reach it.” “You’ll just die.” “Die!” “Give up.” “Break already!” “Now.” “Now!” “Now!!”

The white skulls swimming through her glossy black hair looked at me and mocked me through her headphones. Countless handprints crawled along the yukata that covered her ample bodylines. Her hair slithered like snakes and covered her face as jewels glared out like twisted eyeballs. This power did not hate anyone. It was not fixated on anyone. It was inevitable decline. It simply took and simply ruined. It viewed that itself as its goal, like it was appreciating some elegant aesthetic.

Could I really do something about that?

Could I overcome it?

I bit my lip, tasted blood in my mouth, and stared straight ahead.

The Zashiki Warashi was only ten meters away, but she seemed infinitely distant and would not approach me.

Could I endure this that far?

Wouldn’t I crumble away into something like a lump of tar?

I would break. I would be destroyed.

If I let go, it would all fall into ruin. The world’s destiny or evil spirit that was this law of inevitable decline would only give me a momentary flash of dark joy. I knew that, but I could not stop my heart from heading in that direction.

It was like a growing stomachache on the train when the next station was a long way off. It was like the rapidly growing thirst discovered the instant you stepped out of the sauna and saw the vending machine. The wall of my limit was approaching with tremendous speed. The last ten minutes I had overcome were nothing compared to the next minute I had to overcome. The strength it had taken to endure for a minute might be used up in a single second afterwards. The curve of rapid exhaustion seemed to have quadratic growth. Time itself seemed to be wearing down my fragile soul.

My very self wavered.

And even if I tried to rely on “someone else”, I was trapped inside this subspace where the red tatami mats continued as far as the eye could see. The Zashiki Warashi stood before me in this alternate dimension that trapped me in dark death, symbols of ruin, and inevitable decline.

Was it hopeless?

What I sought was right in front of me and I held the kaleidoscope needed to overturn this, but I still lacked something needed to cover those ten meters. And I could never find whatever it was in this never-ending world of isolation!

But as soon as I thought that…

“I see.”

I heard a voice.

I heard a definite voice in this world where I should have been alone.

“And? I hope you aren’t foolish enough to add ‘so I might as well give up’.”

It arrived like a gust of wind that swept away the disturbing heat filling my head. Moving just a few centimeters had exhausted me to the point that I thought it would fry my brain, but now someone stood next to me.

''What? Me?

He had a more solid build than me, he wore a lab coat over a suit, and he wore glasses that really didn’t suit him. More importantly, his eyes were reminiscent of a thick swamp and he had some people standing next to him: Madoka, the Succubus and a short gray demon.

''Wait…it can’t be. Are you saying he stuffed Tselika in a machine and tamed her!?

But even though everything was wrong, I still reached a certain conclusion.

That was me.

It was Jinnai Shinobu.

I had never known that name could be defined so broadly.

“Is that anything to be surprised by? This is the singularity where the threads of destiny gather. It’s the rule-breaking land where all parallel worlds are concentrated. So what’s so strange about a meeting between two people who never should have met?”

I was dumbfounded, but then something else happened.

On the other side from him, I saw another new form. It was me, Jinnai Shinobu. However, this one was half my height and looked only five or six.

As soon as I noticed this alternate version of myself, I sensed a great presence behind him.

I didn’t have it in me to look back, but I more or less knew what was there.

There had to be Jinnai Shinobus as far as the eye could see. Some might have failed in something and some might have succeeded in something. In the past or the future, they had each taken a different path than me. And altogether, we created a group of nearly infinite number to face those hellish parallel worlds.

“Each individual ruin is an individual death. If the combined failures of the individual named Jinnai Shinobu are the strongest barrier against this personal hostility, then we only need to negate each and every one. To put it another way, each world can only kill one of us.”

“…Yeah.”

“Simple, isn’t it? It has to be. At least compared to the suffering of losing your beloved before your very eyes.”

“Yeah!! I know that much!! I know the Jinnai Shinobu standing here…the Jinnai Shinobu that made it this far has to be one hell of a lucky guy!!”

We didn’t need a cue.

Our thoughts were united.

“So I’ll go for even the cruelest of options. Lend me your strength, Jinnai Shinobu!! I’ll show you the gentle conclusion of the Jinnai Shinobu who can call her Yukari!!!!!”

===Part 13 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

“PSI_ver_RAIN: If you actually think about it, this doesn’t really make sense, does it? A group that wants to ban speculation on debris is going to send that debris down so people can collect it. Aren’t they just admitting it’s valuable? Won’t the speculation just heat up more the more they do that?”

“Anemura Kaede@Empress: Um, and is it really safe to have satellites falling down to earth? It would have to hurt if a piece fell on you, and even if that requires the same bad luck as getting hit by lightning, that would still mean some definite victims every year. Can anyone who knows more about it tell me the details?”

Those short posts changed everything.

The stagnant water began to flow.

“It doesn’t look like a perfect solution, though,” said Madoka-chan in her sailor uniform. “Those Hishigami people have set up a donation site. They’re trying to raise as much money from supporters as they can to fund a launch as soon as possible! Even if the other companies are reluctant, this will let them buy a free pass with the power of money!”

“It’s all over once they reach a certain amount of money. They’ll be able to keep going no matter how much opposition there is.”

“Like we’ll let them do that.”

“And how do you plan to fight them?” asked Mishima-san.

I gave a succinct answer.

“Fundraising on the borderless internet is actually a gray zone. If they’re suspected of illegally transferring money, they’ll have trouble finding supporters. We just have to hit them with suspicion. If people think they’ll be complicit in something illegal if they take part, the donations will stop. Even if the police aren’t functioning, the brand-name of the guardians of the law should still be effective!”

“Detective, don’t tell me you’re planning to post under your real name in this freely expanding internet society. The winds may have begun to change, but stir up people’s animosity and they’ll dig up all the data on you they can find!!”

“I’ve already asked civilian middle school girls to do the same thing.”

I smiled a little and looked to the two posts from the girls who had helped out.

“The adults can’t get cold feet now. These people are trying to send nuclear batteries and dangerous rocket fuel tumbling down to earth, so stopping them comes first!!”

===Part 14 (Hishigami Mai)===

Things had gotten bad.

The large bus and truck were still crashing into each other. Plus, the back of the truck contained Ou, a failure who would slaughter ''at least'' thirty million people. I needed to cut away that container to eliminate the possibility of her waking, but the problem wasn’t the 80 kph car chase. It was all the eyes of Tokyo.

Working for an underground organization could be tricky.

So…

“Zei, Akane, Ran. Which one of you is the most useless?”

“…”

“…”

“…”

[[Image:Zashiki_v09_286.jpg|thumb]]

“Don’t glare at me like that. And don’t start grabbing at each other either! Okay, I’ll be borrowing one of those camouflage cloaks that use the science of perception to trick the human brain and program analyses. I don’t care what happens to you afterwards. You can grab at each other’s hair to settle things amongst yourselves once and for all if you like. The weakest one who loses the game of musical chairs can stay here!!”

“Wait, Mai-san. A fight between women scares me even more than an asteroid! This is going to be absolute carnage!!”

The cowardly man’s cries didn’t matter.

I pulled the cloak over my head, picked up the Sunekosuri, and jumped out the broken window and onto the truck.

“U-u-um! Why did you throw me out here too!?”

“Stop it, partner. Did you think you could get out of this without playing a role?☆”

We stood on the joint connecting the front of the truck to the container on the back. The heavy metal connector was accompanied by a mess of cables to send signals to the rear wheel breaks and such. No, there were too many of them for just that, so they may have been related to Ou’s storage tank.

Anyway, I just had to remove the cut-away safety lock and pull the lever, but…

“It’s completely broken!? And there are marks from a gas burner being used!!”

“How can he say he loves being reasonable? He’s completely insane.”

If Ou awoke, thirty million people would die. That was certain. Plus, it was unknown how far the carnage would spread beyond that. And that of course meant he would die first there in the driver’s seat. But anyway…

“So what do we do, Mai-san? Oh, you have a gun hidden in the heel of your boot, don’t you?”

“That small caliber handgun can’t break such a thick metal connector. And that’s too much effort. I’ll just break it with my bare hands.”

“Waaah! You’re as much of a monster as ever!!”

Although I had remade myself to deal with Youkai and not things like this, so I didn’t recommend doing these things that would break my own body.

Then an irritated voice reached me over the satellite phone.

“Mai, are you ready? I would really rather not use Ou as a bargaining chip!!”

“Shut up, you stupid brother!! Do you know how messed up things have to have gotten for me to be the straight man!? And I can hear you grinning while you say you’d rather not use her, you unreasonable bastard!!”

“Yes, yes. So you still have that kind sort of reasonableness. I’m jealous. Yes, so very jealous.”

He was hopeless He was completely self-absorbed.

There was no real reason to waste effort chatting with him.

I grabbed the metal connector with both hands and it produced an odd creaking sound. I prepared to pull it out, but…oh, dear. That wasn’t good at all. My shoulders and back were creaking too. I was going to have to replace all of my arteries and muscles afterwards and probably check over my entire skeleton too. For a normal person, it was like swapping out everything but the brain and heart!

But my efforts weren’t wasted.

The joint was like a mechanical dinosaur’s backbone, but it was definitely beginning to change shape.

Just a bit further…

“Hishigami Mai!!”

Red Zei shouted to me from the bus where she was grappling with the others like her.

A moment later, something ran down my spine.

“!?”

As soon as I swung my head to the side, the container’s thick wall was broken through from within. A wet and swollen translucent hand that almost seemed made of liquid pierced straight through the spot my face had just been in. It was not a fist or stabbing fingers. The hand simply grabbed at empty air. It was shaped like a child’s small hand.

But I could tell what that stinging sensation was.

It was death, it was slaughter, it was Ou. If that touched me, it was all over. No defense or knowledge would help. This had nothing to do with the methods or efficiency of killing. It was death on the fundamental level of one’s soul or core.

The flabbily swollen arm pulled back.

A pair of eerily glowing eyes pierced through me from the darkness within the hole.

If the hand had been pulled back, it would be coming again.

Just like an arrow fired from a drawn bowstring, the next attack was coming.

How much of the original Hishigami Enbi did this reproduce? 20%? 30%? Even with the Youkai medicine, I doubted it was even half the original. And this was what she could do? Sister, just how much of a genius are you!?

Sweat poured from my entire body, but I couldn’t stop working now.

Once the steel egg cracked open, she would be freed.

At this point, she could still be contained.

So…

“Oh, ohh.”

To be honest, Mai-chan probably didn’t really need to go along with all this.

Thirty million people would die? So what?

Japan would be destroyed? What did I care?

I could always leave Tokyo, flee Japan, and pull out a beach chair and parasol to enjoy the final paradise on the other side of the globe. A Hishigami Woman could pull off that kind of unfair method.

But even so…

This wasn’t about the Hishigami Women and it wasn’t about business or the rules of our underground industry. I recalled what the Sunekosuri had said. His wife Ohatsu and son Gisuke were important, but that wasn’t all. He wasn’t just an accessory to his family and he had gone to Hyakki Yakou of his own free will.

Yes.

This must have been something that I personally wanted to do.

“Oh, ohh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

===Part 15 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

All the Jinnai Shinobus moved at once. They charged toward the “things” that were thinner than the thinnest paper and would hit you with an apocalyptic level of pain, fear, and despair when you broke through them.

With each Jinnai Shinobu’s sacrifice, one layer was broken and we moved forward.

One after another, the parallel world barriers were breached and we continued on.

Every mistake was accounted for and every wrong decision was accepted.

No.

That wasn’t quite right.

It was true that most of the Jinnai Shinobus had not made it this far.

But they had had their own endings.

[[Image:Zashiki_v09_292-293.jpg|thumb]]

——To overcome the worst case scenario of Japan being sold off, one had made a contract with Archdemon Tselika, made an enemy of the world, and finally been reunited with the Zashiki Warashi who waited on that contaminated archipelago.

——One had left the small world of Japan with Madoka and spent his time engaging in financial battles with demonic investors who seemed to embody the seven deadly sins.

——One had gained the direct fighting strength of the Yuki Onna, defeated and neutralized extremely deadly Youkai like the Shuten-Douji and the Nine-Tailed Fox, and used them as Shikigami.

——After the death of Nagisa’s beloved dog had driven her insane, one had stuck with her to the end, managed to regain her sanity, and used nothing but human power to face the nationwide Youkai controller constructed by Akki Rasetsu.

——One joined forces with Marguerite and the Succubus and managed to rescue the other soul that had been hidden in her womb.

——One had stopped the Aoandon’s rampage by teaching her of kindness back in Zenmetsu Village, had taken up the sword Kusanagi, and had fought alongside his “daughter” in the battle over the three Imperial Regalia.

——When Majina had completely stolen Hyakki Yakou away from Hafuri, one had used his Youkai-attracting trait and swore to the sobbing girl that he would create a new Hyakki Yakou that would never hurt her.

——One had built a time travel Package around the Aburatori, used it to prevent the Hyakki Yakou coup d’etat in advance, and truly protected a certain family.

——One had gone the widow route, fallen for Ver. 40 Mei rather than Ver. 39 Yukari, and retrieved her heart with a device that provided salvation.

——One had successfully seduced both Mei, who did not age, and Hafuri, who had grown up, and thought he had won the legendary oyakodon…right up until Majina’s ghost came back from the depths of hell during the Bon festival and punched him.

——One, one, one, one…

They may have been different from here, but that didn’t mean they were failures. Those were the results of the decisions they had made, but I had mistakenly seen them as obstacles and viewed them as hells. That had pissed them all off. They were insisting that they would take care of and look after their own worlds.

So I just had to look at my own world.

I had to look beyond all those other worlds.

I had to look to the Zashiki Warashi!!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

I ran once more with the kaleidoscope in hand.

“No.” “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” “Break.” “How can you still stand!?” “No.” “Wait.” “Stay back.” “Stay away!” “I’ll crush you.” “We’ll crush all of you.” “I’ll crush every last possibility!” “We don’t need those bright things.” “I don’t want to see them.” “Because.” “It wasn’t…” “It wasn’t enough to save us!!”

The children’s skulls displayed in the Zashiki Warashi’s black hair used the headphones to threaten us. The handprints moved about her yukata with none of their previous confidence. The twisted eyeball jewels rolled around inside the sea of hair covering her face. It was filled with impatience, anxiety, and rage. But that hostility sent out by the inevitable decline told me everything I needed to know. The end was near. I…we…Jinnai Shinobu was on the right path!

The many Jinnai Shinobus caught up. They passed me by. They smiled as they moved ahead and were burned by those many ruined parallel worlds and by their true hellfire that lay beyond different decisions that, to me, looked mistaken.

So the fear faded.

My sense of rivalry overcame it.

Even if we were all Jinnai Shinobu and even if we all wished to save the Zashiki Warashi, she was mine.

I wasn’t going to let any other Jinnai Shinobu touch her!! I wasn’t going to let them save her in my place! Even if none of those other conclusions were any better or worse, I was the one that had chosen this and made it this far! So how could I let them take the best part? I was the only one that got to take that Good-for-Nothing Nee-chan in my arms and call her Yukari!! Let me have that much pride, you idiots!!

I clenched my teeth.

I raced desperately forward and reached out my hand.

I broke through all the screens and all the red-dyed images of hell.

I raced across the countless battlefields.

And at the very last moment, I thought I felt a push on my back. I didn’t have time to look back, but I had a feeling someone was smiling there. Another Jinnai Shinobu who had made a different decision and couldn’t reach this point was leaving something with me.

He was telling me to make my dream come true, to not let her cry, and to put the biggest smile on her face.

Then that seemingly endless distance shrank to nothing.

I held the Zashiki Warashi in the red yukata tightly in my arms.

She was as limp as a doll.

The small skulls and handprints wriggled across her.

No one had told me what to do with the kaleidoscope.

I didn’t know how Youkai worked, I didn’t know the details of the Package, and I didn’t know what kind of techniques or tools supported them.

But the destiny of inevitable decline had wanted to reject that salvation. The skulls in her hair, handprints on her yukata, and jewel eyeballs in her serpentine hair had most wanted to keep me from approaching her. It had put all sorts of obstacles in my way to keep me from doing that. It was like throwing a detective with brilliant deductive skills onto a battlefield with shells flying everywhere or throwing a veteran martial artist into a gag space. Having me fight out of my element had acted as a barrier.

That was what the infinite parallel worlds had been.

They had been nothing more than distractions to get me to lose sight of my goal.

So I just had to stay focused. I just had to look to the Zashiki Warashi and seek what I wanted in the very beginning. It didn’t matter if it was out of place, inappropriate, or embarrassing. That kind of self-restraint was nothing more than interference from the destiny of inevitable decline. When I was trying to continue forward like normal, the magnetism and attraction of the situation would guide me off track.

I couldn’t let it affect me or sweep me away. I had to stay true to myself.

It didn’t matter how pathetic or silly it was.

This had to be the one and only correct answer in this world that was scattered with as many options as there were stars in the sky. I had to trust in myself after my decisions led me this far!! I didn’t have the power to save the world, but I had managed to choose the one path that the million other Jinnai Shinobus hadn’t been able to. So I needed to be proud of that! It was something I could truly be proud of!!!!

Further strength entered the arms that held the Zashiki Warashi.

I felt her pulse.

The countless handprints didn’t matter and the white skulls had fallen silent.

I focused on her face as she looked unsteadily up at me.

We weren’t enemies.

She wasn’t a threat I had to defeat.

I couldn’t forget that.

Yukari was my girlfriend.

And when I was with her, I just had to do what I most wanted to do.

With that alone in mind, I gently placed my lips on hers.

It was like a switch had been thrown.

I heard a deafening sound and the never-ending world of red tatami mats was immediately blown away.

The handprints on her yukata, the skulls in her hair, the serpentine hair, the jewel eyeballs, the inevitable decline, and everything else were gone.

The unpleasant noise from her headphones had grown silent too.

===Part 16 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

I gulped with the Mystery Freak and the others as we viewed the screens in the cruise ship’s trading room. We focused on the message boards that had grown quiet, as if the previous commotion had never happened.

“Does this mean…?”

===Part 17 (Hishigami Mai)===

In a certain metropolitan area, I watched the container roll away after it broke through the chain link fence of an industrial complex. I wiped the sweat from my brow while clinging to the rest of the truck with the Sunekosuri. That monster was only sleeping and I doubted that would be enough to kill her, but…

“…It’s over for now?”

===Part 18 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

I kissed the Zashiki Warashi.

What purpose did that serve?

Perhaps it was important that the creator of the kaleidoscope made physical contact with the Zashiki Warashi it was targeting.

I didn’t need to know the answer. It had worked and that was all that mattered.

Her full body weight leaned against me.

The next thing I knew, we were inside the familiar tea room of the thatch-roof house. We were surrounded by the Umbrella, Lantern, Tanuki, Fox, and plenty of other Youkai and the Zashiki Warashi seemed embarrassed having so many creatures around her. I could feel her squirming in my arms.

We were back.

We had faced inevitable decline in the graveyard of the world built by the remains of the countless destroyed eras that lay beyond an endless labyrinth of “what ifs”.

But we had escaped that terminal of intersecting destinies and returned to our normal life.

“Shinobu, this is a little embarrassing.”

“Ha ha. Sorry, sorry.”

“And I thought something tasted rusty, but you have a cut on your lip.”

She brought her finger to my lip and looked at what got on her finger.

“''See? You have all this white blood on there.''”

When I heard those words, I pulled her close again and pressed her head to my chest.

“Sorry…”

I had messed with her head.

And I hadn’t wanted her to see the look on my face when I accepted that fact.

“What is it, Shinobu?”

That considerate question could almost be called innocent.

But I was unable to answer her and simply held her tighter in my arms.

Then I bit my lip again and said more in my heart.

''Even if it meant dirtying my hands, I just couldn’t accept a future without you.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume9_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
| Return to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume9_Epilogue|Epilogue]]
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</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Shuuichi Akiyama's Closed World (I)

2017-11-27T01:29:06Z

Toshiya: formatting

== Shuuichi Akiyama's Closed World (I) ==

“People are like garbage.”

Whenever I saw people gathered, this line from a famous animated movie<ref>Castle in the Sky. This particular quote was simply replaced by laughter in the dub.</ref> sprung to mind. And I suspected that there were no shortage of people who shared my sentiment.

While this may not hold true for individuals, when people come together in groups it is due to hatred. They perceive other people as combustible waste and drop bombs in the place of incinerators. In any case, they can’t help their desire to set garbage alight.

Let us suppose that the entity known as God truly exists. That He is a being that transcends humanity and gazes out over Earth from above. If we hold that to be the case, then it follows that chaos and disorder please Him. God does not desire tranquility. This is surely because He is displeased when such inferior creatures lose themselves in delusions of grandeur. With His invisible hand, he leads humanity to the slaughter. He does this not for amusement, nor to stave off boredom, but because of a visceral disgust, much the kind that you or I would feel upon gazing on an outbreak of insects.

I suddenly noticed that my reverie had delayed me in my task of duplicating the words on the blackboard, and I began frantically scrawling.

I reflected upon my irregular thoughts. These thoughts were certainly not desirable. Perhaps the reason I was having them was because we had been learning about how the strong systematically weeded out all others across history?

That was divergent from my ideals. The strong and the weak certainly did exist. That was why I was determined to become strong and, instead of plundering from the weak, extend them a hand of salvation. To lead them justly. That was the only method by which true peace could be attained.

What stood in my way, then, was the kind of evil that would consume mankind in irrationality. I had to destroy it. ...I see, my thoughts just now were the result of my hatred towards evil becoming misdirected towards humanity itself.

Evil, huh.

I gazed at the seat behind me. It appeared he was absent today, so the seat was empty. It was the seat belonging to a man who could very well be described as evil incarnate.

In my sixteen years of life, I had never met a man so thoroughly twisted as Masato Yahara. The reason for that lay not in his depravity, nor in his stupidity. There were likely countless men more opposed to society and more idiotic than him.

But upon drawing Yahara’s jeers, I recognized wicked nature for what it was. Masato Yahara was quite literally a monster. He consumes people in as direct a way as possible. His tentacles reach deep within people’s souls. His value system is so warped that the only way he can confirm his own existence is through the destruction of others.

The runaway train that is Yahara long since became derailed. And he believes that by running people over, he can right his course. But such a thing is of course absurd. A derailed train cannot find its way back onto the tracks. It will simply destroy and kill everything in its path, only stopping once it crashes and destroys itself.

If left to his own devices, he will no doubt continue consuming people. Like a candy he’s grown bored of, he will chew up and spit out those precious, irreplaceable souls.

Modern-day laws are too lenient on such wrong-doers. But even though we all harbor such feeling of dissatisfaction, society refuses to change. A rotten human cannot be rehabilitated and will continue to rot, and much the rotten orange from a line in a certain school-based drama<ref>Akiyama is referencing Kinpachi Sensei, a Japanese drama from the late 70s. The line in question is effectively "one bad orange spoils the bunch," but Akiyama seems to have missed the message of the two episodes in question (Season 2, Episodes 5 and 6) which was that people and fruit shouldn't be judged along the same metrics. I had to track down and watch those episodes so I could get the reference. You're all welcome.</ref> will rot everything around it as well.

But the filthy rabble of our world continue wriggling about with nary a care. It’s repulsive beyond belief.

Thus the strong have a duty to root out evil. In that act, they elegantly save the weak.

Ahh, it’s almost embarrassing how much I love justice, how much I want to become a hero.

On that night, I spotted Masato Yahara on my way home from prep school.

In the end, I tested him. It was a test to determine if his life had worth. He failed spectacularly; in fact, he scored zero points.

And so I justly killed him.

The first thing I had to figure out was how to dispose of the body. No matter how just my actions were, even if everyone approved of them, today’s laws would never acquit a murderer. Thus I had to cover it up.

Because he was planning on killing me in the first place, Yahara was kind enough to die in a place where he would not be quickly found. The optimal outcome for me would be for his death itself not to come to light and for him to simply be treated as a missing person, with nobody knowing the truth of the incident.

But it was difficult to imagine the body going forever without being found. This defunct factory had traces of people coming and going, with lanterns and blankets and such lying around. The people who came and went were likely filth of Yahara’s ilk.

It would be best to dispose of the body somewhere harder to come across. If the body was found like this, it would be treated as evidence of a crime, autopsied, and the entire affair would then be handled as a murder investigation.

Ideally the body wouldn’t be found, and it wouldn’t become an incident. If I could dump the body in the mountains without being seen, I could avoid being caught.

But because I was only sixteen, I didn’t have a driver’s license. I couldn’t think of any way to transport my grim baggage without being seen.

I needed an accomplice. But who? My parents... even if they acknowledged my justice, the sight of a corpse would cause them to lose their nerve and recommend that I turn myself in. Even if they held strong convictions, people who were faint of heart wouldn’t do.

I could think of a few adults I respected, but any of them would get cold feet once they saw a corpse, and without looking at the big picture would recommend that I turn myself in. Nobody had as strong a sense of justice as I did, nor would helping me provide any benefit for them.

I was at a loss. I couldn’t think of anyone.

I couldn’t figure out my next step, so with some reluctance I temporarily left the scene. If somebody happened upon this place, that alone would be curtains for me.

I wiped up the blood from the knife and wiped down the places I had touched with a handkerchief to get rid of my fingerprints. Thankfully, you couldn’t see the spurts of blood against my black uniform. After leaving the factory, I was able to make my way to the station without running into anyone.

All in it, it was quite a mental burden on me. As soon as I got home and layed down on my bed, I slept like a log.

I woke up. Instantly, the gears in my head began turning. The first thing I did was check on my smartphone to see whether or not Yahara’s body had been discovered. I checked a number of news sites, but there didn’t appear to be any articles indicating as such. A real-time search didn’t show any traces either.

After descending the stairs and offering rushed greetings to my family, I hopped in the shower. As I lathered my hair, I racked my brains for a way to dispose of the unfortunate corpse.

I could dismember it. But while that was the conventional way to transport a body, I wasn’t exactly inclined to. Even if it was originally the monster that was Yahara, it was unmistakably a human body. The psychological burden would likely be substantial. And in the one-in-a-million chance the body was discovered, the fact that it could no longer pass for an accident was another strike against this method.

So I was back to wanting to transport the body as it was to somewhere people wouldn’t find it, then disposing of it. That conclusion hadn’t changed.

There was no school on Saturdays, so I ran searches for terms related to the incident on my phone while watching the news in the living room. It was odd for me to be fiddling with my phone instead of studying, so my family seemed somewhat suspicious, but I doubted they suspected me of murder. I needn’t pay them much mind.

I wanted to transport the body by vehicle, but I still couldn’t come up with an accomplice. Although it was of course too late at this point, events already proceeding as they were, I began to regret having killing Yahara. If I had killed him in a more thought-out manner, I could have avoided this whole mess.

The next time I have to kill someone, I’ll make sure to think it out first.

Someone I have to kill, on the same level as Masato Yahara. I wonder who that could be?

“―”

With that thought fresh in my mind, I thought of a partner. Returning to my room, I began to think of ways to sway him to my side. At the moment, he and I had essentially no common ground.

But then I thought of an extremely simple method.

I spent the rest of Saturday preparing, and then it was Sunday. At three in the afternoon on the dot, I stood in front of a local convenience store. I entered the shop, and after a few uses of the ATM had successfully withdrawn a million yen<ref>~$9000</ref>. After consistently saving my allowance and my New Year’s money, that sum amounted to my net worth.

Not seeing the man I was searching for, I headed outside and was greeted with the sight of my target wearing the shop’s uniform and listlessly taking out the trash. He didn’t seem to be on break, but he was smoking regardless. Because I lived nearby, I happened to know that he would be working part-time at this hour on Sundays.

“Yamazaki-senpai.”

Ryuusuke Yamazaki turned to me while holding his cigarette in his mouth, his expression sullen. At any rate, it looked like his vulgar blond hair was taking a few points off his IQ.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Shuuichi Akiyama, the representative of class 1-2.”

“No, like, who the fuck are you? What business would a high and mighty class rep like you have with someone like me? Don’t fuckin’ tell me you’re gonna rat me out to the school for smoking.”

Ignoring his idiotic question, I got straight to the point.

“I heard that you know how to drive. Do you have your own car?”

I had seen him drive a black station wagon to get her, but I wanted to confirm it just in case.

Likely excited to brag about his car, Yamazaki’s face lit up.

“Yeah, I’m working here to pay ‘er off. ...What’s your deal, you like my car? You wanna go for a ride in the passenger seat, huh? Sorry man, that seat’s reserved for chicks who put out. I’m not into that fag stuff.”

Not wanting to play along with his vulgar banter, I pulled out the million I had just withdrawn and handed it to him. At the sight of such a large quantity of cash, Yamazaki’s eyes went wide.

“Wha... You...! The fuck’s this cash for?”

His reaction was exactly what I expected, and I struggled to stifle my laughter.

With his mouth hanging open and a stupid expression plastered on his face, Yamazaki didn’t even wait for a proper explanation to begin counting the bills. With his glittering eyes and his agitated, wild breathing, he was the very image of a swine unable to contain itself at the sight of slop. Unable to defy his brain’s newfound addiction, he would no doubt act exactly as I needed him to.

“I have a favor I need to ask of you. Would you be willing to undertake it?”

Yamazaki stopped the car in the parking lot of a defunct convenience store near the site of the factory. I was slightly concerned about being seen, but thanks to the various illegally-parked cars we weren’t exactly conspicuous. If we didn’t stay long, I doubted it would be a problem.

“So Akiyama, you’re really gonna pay me a mil for one day’s work? Also, where the hell are we?”

After stopping the car, Yamazaki was understandably on guard as he surveyed the area.

“I didn’t lie. More importantly, did you prepare everything I asked you to?”

Wanting to avoid creating links between myself and Yamazaki, I hadn’t told him my phone number or LINE ID. He seemed like a somewhat careless man, so I was concerned he hadn’t bought everything I had requested.

“Yeah, it’s all in the trunk. Whatcha gonna do with all that?”

I verified the contents of the trunk. Inside was a large black vinyl sheet, a roll of cloth tape, and some rope. Tools to transport a corpse.

“Everything seems to be in order. We’ll be carrying it all to the site of that factory.”

“...No complaints here, I guess.”

Although he had some misgivings, the million yen sapped his desire to object and he walked inside the building.

“Fuck, it stinks in here!”

Just as Yamazaki said, the moment we stepped inside we were greeted by a smell reminiscent of a mound of rotting fish. It was so like Yahara to resemble trash to the end. Of course he would stink if he rotted — and as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I reflected. I left the corpse here all this time, but due to the smell the odds of it being discovered were higher than I had projected.

“Wait, that’s-”

The body was lying there, wrapped in blankets. The blankets were stained red with blood.

“It’s a corpse.”

Yamazaki’s face initially contorted, but eventually settled into a vulgar grin.

“I get it. Now I get what you’re havin’ me do.”

On the off chance that he had gotten cold feet when faced with a corpse, it was thinkable that he would reject my request. Showing him the cash up front was a countermeasure against that. While people can put up with losing an opportunity to gain something, they exhibit extreme resistance to giving up something they initially thought was theirs.

But it seemed my fear had been unfounded.

“Makes sense that you’d pull out that mil, then. Hell, you’re practically gettin’ off cheap.”

I hadn’t been expecting him to suggest I turn myself in. So that was his response, hmm. He didn’t examine my complexion, nor did he take interest in the corpse itself — his first instinct was to try and wring more money out of me.

Thank goodness he was so faithful to his desires.

“You the one who offed him?”

“That was the result, yes. It was legitimate self-defence, but there isn’t anybody who can verify that.”

“I getcha, I getcha. So you got no choice but to hide it.”

The corners of his mouth upturned, Yamazaki drew near the corpse with no sign of hesitation. To my surprise, he turned over the blankets himself. His lack of resistance made me doubt whether or not he might be a psychopath.

“Huh? ...Yo, Akiyama! This fucker’s Masato Yahara!

“That is indeed my classmate Masato Yahara. You can piece together why I had to come all the way out here, I gather?”

“This guy jumped you, and when you fought back he ended up eatin’ it, something along those lines, right? Damn, I always had him pegged for one of those guys who wouldn’t die even if you killed ‘em, but he up and died pretty damn easily, huh?”

“Did you and Masato Yahara know each other?”

“Nah, I just heard that he was one bad motherfucker and steered clear of him. Y’know, there were those rumors that he took down a whole gang and that he was the leader of some prostitution ring. And I heard that one of my senpai’s friends tried to get up in this guy’s business for being cheeky or some shit, and this guy almost stabbed him.”

I was assaulted by waves of repugnance. It would appear my decision to kill him had been correct.

“So what’s up next, boss?”

“First, we’ll conceal the body in the blankets and vinyl sheet and carry it out. We’ll take the weapon with us too. I’m pretty sure I wiped off all the blood already, but I’ll double-check so that on the off chance there’s any left I can wipe it off. Once all that is finished, it shouldn’t be possible for anyone to narrow the scene of the crime down to this location.”

“Other than me, that is.”

I wondered if that was a veiled threat.

“Heh heh.”

Without thinking, I laughed inwardly.

He reacted just as I suspected he would, without a micron of deviation.

Ahh, thank goodness.

Choosing Ryuusuke Yamazaki as my partner truly was the right decision.

Once we had loaded the body into his trunk, I left the transportation and disposal to Yamazaki and headed home. After travelling by train, bus, foot the previous day, I had found an ideal disposal site deep in the mountains. If Yamazaki followed my instructions and dug a hole and buried him in it, it was unlikely Yahara’s corpse would ever be discovered. Leaving that task to Yamazaki alone caused me no end of anxiety, but it was less dangerous than me being seen in his car, so I didn’t have much choice. In a perfect world, nobody would think that Yamazaki and I had any relationship.

But one of my calculations was off.

I had underestimated how incompetent Yamazaki was.

One week had passed since Yamazaki took the body up into the mountains. It was Monday morning, and as had become a habit for me I was scrolling through a real-time news feed on my phone when my drowsiness was blasted away. There was a posting about a body being discovered in the aforementioned mountains. Leaping from my bed, I ran into the living room and clung to the television. The news was reporting that Masato Yahara’s body had been discovered by a hiker. I listened in shock as the announcer described how his identity had been confirmed by the student ID card in his pocket.

Ryuusuke Yamazaki. Not only did that incompetent not bury the body, he even ignored my order to strip it. And on top of that, he left the student ID? How incompetent could one man be? If he had thought about it for half a second, he’d realize just how problematic that was! Even if dumping a body was a crime, just how overactive was this guy’s sense of danger?

“Shuu! You look awful, what happened?”

My mother shouted in a shrill soprano. As always, her voice rattled around in my head.

Frantically controlling my breathing, I spoke with feigned composure.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Mother. ...I’ll be heading to school now.”

But my voice was trembling. Just as my mother had pointed out, my face was white as a sheet.

“Don’t be ridiculous! With you looking like that, there’s no way there’s nothing wrong!”

In reality, I was fighting back fury. Fear and anxiety were secondary. Contempt. Hatred. Resentment. Such emotions were the cause of my trembling.

All that filth can do is weigh down the excellent, it seemed. Far beyond being useless, they were hindrances. Their very existence soiled the earth.

“Shuu... You’re staying home today.”

Upon seeing my abnormal condition, my mother, who would normally insist I go to school even if I had a fever, commanded me. While this was odd in and of itself, it was surpassed by the suspicion I would no doubt arise if I didn’t attend school today.

I took a deep breath to settle myself.

Visions of that defunct factory invaded my mind. Ever since I stabbed Masato Yahara, I couldn’t break my mind free of that place. It was like it was binding my soul against my will. Why should I, who acted in accordance with justice, have to go through all this?

Suddenly, my mind was plunged into black and white and I was assailed with pain deep within my eyes. Black and white particles crawled along my skin and penetrated my pores, filling me with an itching sensation as they violated me.

Ahh, back at that factory there was a press I couldn’t figure out the purpose of. What was it capable of crushing? What was it capable of crushing?

What did it want to crush?

A gigantic press. A press to thoroughly crush them. A press to thoroughly crush their eyeballs and their bones and their nails and their organs and their genitals and their blood into pulp. We could collect up that formless meat with bulldozers. Splat, splat, splat. We could intentionally do it loudly. The noise is pleasantly obscene, after all. Splat, splat, splat. We could envision their soundless screams as we gleefully make meatballs from their meat. Perhaps the meatballs would be black, or red, or pink. It would be cannibalism. We would force-feed them the meatballs. While crying, they would break out into a mad dance at how delicious they were. They’re delicious, aren’t they? All squishy and sticky and squishy. While making vulgar noises, they would feast. While descending into madness, they would feast. Once they realized what the meatballs were made of, they wouldn’t even wait for the press before consuming their comrades. They would be so tasty they wouldn’t be able to help themselves. They would be unable to help themselves when faced with their desires. They would be eaten alive. They would scream in pain. Nobody would save them. People like them have no empathy, so they can’t comprehend the pain of others. I would laugh as I gazed out upon them. Meatballs. In the end, you filth were nothing but meatballs. Just like the giant meatball there, you all are nothing but bundles of meat. Bundles without souls. The final survivor of the cannibalism would cry out. Where are the delicious meatballs? He would ask me. Please bring me more! Please bring me more meatballs! He would entreat me. And I would point to where the meatball was. And he would eat the meatball I was pointing at. He would eat it with great relish. He would eat with delight, he would eat with madness. He would eat his own meat. He would eat himself. I would clutch my stomach and laugh. Indeed. All you people do is consume yourselves. I would point that out out of kindness. I would point out what kind of beings you are.

“Shuu!”

My mother’s shout brought me back from my world of delusions.

“It looks like you’re right, I’d better stay home today...”

After whispering that, I tottered back to my room. I couldn’t walk straight. And as if I had released too much energy in that last vision, I couldn’t think straight either.

As I layed on my bed, I took deep breaths to settle down my heart. But the electrical signals in my brain were going haywire, and I was so itchy I practically scratched my head off.

I couldn’t settle down. The grotesque images wouldn’t stop.

A thousand knives. A shower of blood. Flesh warped like clay.

I shook my head to try to drive out the delusions. If my mind went blank, they would get inside me!

—Get inside me?

Wouldn’t that imply that they weren’t my thoughts in the first place?

I could sense it myself. The fact that these thoughts were both dangerous and abnormal. That they were undesirable. So why wouldn’t they stop?

I didn’t know. I myself didn’t know.

“Heh heh heh...”

Suddenly, I could hear laughter. Contemptuous, disparaging laughter.

“Man, how defective are you? You don’t know?”

Leaping out of my bed, I scanned the room.

I was at a loss for words.

Where was I? What was going on?

It felt like I was standing atop the heart of a tremendous beast. Everywhere I looked was reddish-brown and pulsing. Magma that smelled of blood was spurting. It smelled like something was decomposing, too. The air was filled with refuse, making it impossible to see clearly. Something important to the world was clearly stagnating.

Ahh, it was so unsightly it make me sick.

And yet something strangely excited me. My breath grew wild, and I wanted to leap in the air.

I see, this must be that factory. Is this real? Is this a delusion? I don’t know. The boundary between the two seemed vague.

“You’ve done yourself a pretty good job of crushing us, I see.”

Masato Yahara stood in front of me. His entrance was abrupt, but to me it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

“I crushed you. Certainly, I did crush you. But what of it? All of this is simply a delusion.”

“A delusion, huh? Quite the fucked-up delusion you cooked up there. Weren’t you supposed to be all upright and clean handed and shit?”

Yahara’s face contorted into a sneer.

“...Shut your mouth, meat-man. If this is the world of my delusions, everything should go according to my whim. I’ll simply crush you into delicious meatballs.”

“Heh... Just fuckin’ try, I dare you.”

He put up no resistance, and I dropped the massive press on him. Splat! The sound of something soft being crushed rang out, and the vicinity was painted red. It was over too soon.

My being crushed was over too soon.

“Why?”

There was no consistency or anything in my mental image. Yet I ended up being crushed. Despite no longer having vocal cords, I whispered “why?” one more time.

“It’s one fucked-up delusion, right?”

Why, even though it was a delusion, had it come to such a grotesque end? Why was Masato Yahara standing there as if it were natural?

“It can’t be...!”

I finally understood the meaning of Yahara’s words.

“You got the feeling that you were being violated a minute ago, right? It’s simple. I don’t have a body, so it’s easy as hell for me to get inside you.”

Yahara’s discontent sneer didn’t fade.

“This ain’t your delusion. Your thoughts ain’t your own. You ain’t even yourself any more.”

I was no more than a piece of meat now, and he trampled me underfoot.

“I’m in control of this world now.”

I opened my eyes. I felt awful. I had an unpleasant dream, but I couldn’t remember what it was about.

Why was it, I wondered? I was certain the dream had been unpleasant, yet I felt oddly refreshed. It was like the exhilarating sensation you got after overcoming a nasty fever. But it was clear to me that I had lost something in exchange for that exhilaration. I had lost it entirely. And I could never get it back.

But that was fine. I had been freed from a needless attachment. People were creatures that feared change, but that reaction was no more than an unthinking dismissal.

My strict adherence to ethics vanished.

Ahh... it welcomes me.

It was opening in front of me—

—a new world.

Perhaps that odd dream was a gift from God? From then on, everything I did went perfectly. Solving problem sets, my reading comprehension, advancing projects I was working on, everything was going brilliantly. My ability to concentrate was clearly improving as well. Not letting it get mixed in with the noise, nor getting distracted, I could immerse myself in a single task.

It was like I finally had my priorities all in order. It wasn’t anything conscious. But it felt like I had built a solid set of unconscious rules.

It was after school. The classroom was illuminated by the setting sun, making my classmates’ shadows stand out. But I could no longer make their faces out from each other. My mind shirked its duties, deciding that this point was of little importance.

Amongst them, one person’s face remained clear.

I had to verify his character.

“Hiiragi, I have something I would like to ask you. Could I have a moment of your time?”

Kouta Hiiragi. As far as I knew, he was Masato Yahara’s one and only friend.

From his appearance he was the epitome of normality, far removed from the kind of person I was obligated to eliminate. But his closeness to Yahara merited caution.

“When he was still with us, would it be correct to say that you were the one who with the closest with Yahara?”

I began probing him. If he was of the same breed as Yahara, it naturally fell upon me to cull him.

“I wonder, was it true that Yahara was involved in some rather unwholesome affairs? Well...I refer to affairs in the broad sense, by the way. Perhaps that alone makes it not unusual he was involved in this incident. There were various things published about him in those periodicals, weren’t there? Were you completely unaware of all that?”

“I knew about the stimulants. But he never mentioned anything about any gangs or prostitution rings or anything. He didn’t show any signs of being involved with them, either. I’m pretty sure that’s all just misinformation.”

“Perhaps you weren’t close enough to Yahara to involve you in things like that? Are you saying that he never to bring you into his group of delinquent companions?”

“Pretty much. He didn’t involve me in sketchy stuff like that. He never even ate lunch with me, let alone tried to get me to smoke or anything. If we were around each other we’d chat, if the timing worked out we’d walk home together. But he definitely never tried to coerce me, and he never invited me anywhere. That was about the extent of our relationship. I’m sure that if I ever stopped wanting to spend time around him and started avoiding him, he wouldn’t have so much as spoken to me.”

I scrutinized his words, but other than the fact that he had kept silent about the stimulants nothing he was saying seemed particularly problematic. However, there remained the possibility that he was playing dumb so as not to fall under suspicion.

Furthermore, the fact that had adored Yahara was clear.

My initial conclusion was that there was no need to prioritize marking him. Something along those lines.

“So, why do you ask?”

A phrase floated to the front of my mind.

It would not be so strange for you to be killed as well.

He might be evil enough to warrant elimination.

Indeed, it was imperative that I identify those people that warranted elimination. That was the decree I had been given upon killing Masato Yahara and evolving past the ordinary.

But putting that to words would be problematic. Although I had utmost faith in my sense of justice, I was under no pretenses that the rest of the world would accept it so readily. Long ago, Galileo was put to trial for his advocacy of the heliocentric model.

“I suspect that the reason that Yahara was killed was the fact that he was sticking his hand in dangerous places. Following that reasoning, I felt it was possible that you, as his friend, might be in danger of meeting a similar fate. Am I mistaken?”

It was possible he would misconstrue my reply, so I followed up with my true feelings.

“In fact, I was thinking—that it would not be so strange for you to be killed as well.”

Hiiragi wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, so I thought it unlikely that he would pick up on my true goal.

But contrary to my expectations, Hiiragi reacted to my words.

“...What makes you space out so?”

“I, I’m not-”

Perhaps he was more clever than I gave him credit for? Was he simply assuming a facade of mediocrity? Had he been hiding the fact that he was of the same breed as Yahara, that he was a person that I needed to eliminate?

It seemed that my guard had been too lax a moment ago.

In any case, it would be best to end this conversation peacefully, in order to keep up appearances. But the moment I thought to make preparations to depart, something unthinkable happened.

“Oy, is Akiyama around?”

That incompetent loudly called out for me.

You have to be joking. After all the warnings I gave him about avoiding been seen together, for him to brazenly show up like this... My opinion of him as incompetent remained unrevised.

But I couldn’t simply ignore him. Leaving Hiiragi with some empty words, I headed to Yamazaki.

Saying that he wanted to go somewhere away from others, Yamazaki lead me to the audiovisual room. Normally the door would be locked, but Yamazaki threaded a wire into the keyhole and the door opened in no time. The long desk was already adorned with open snack wrappers and empty bottles, so I conjectured that Yamazaki and his compatriots made frequent use of the room.

Standing in front of a large projector, Yamazaki spread his hands like a politician giving a speech.

“Let’s chat about my circumstances a bit. My mom and I live alone. She got tricked by some jackass who ghosted her, and had me when she was just seventeen. Around that time, her folks, meaning my gram and gramps, cut ties with her, so she had to raise me all by her lonesome. She’s running fuckin’ ragged, man, she mans a register at a supermarket in the afternoon and has to work a nightclub in the evenings. I just wanna treat her, you feel me? Like, I wanna take her out for barbeque or somethin’. That’s where I’m comin’ from.”

A story the world could do without hearing.

“Would you mind if I helped you cut to the chase? To put it plainly, you’re looking for more money, correct?”

“Damn, you catch on quick! That’s our favorite class rep for ya’!”

I could tell from his reaction to seeing the corpse that he would eventually try to extort more money out of me. Here it was.

Of course, I had no money left. The million I had already given him was my entire net worth, the result of years of scrimping and saving.

“Yamazaki-senpai. I do not have any more money.”

“Oh?”

“And although it pains me to point out the failures of another, the body was discovered because you failed to follow my instructions and bury it properly. While we both have our dissatisfactions, shall we simply call it good at that?”

“The fuck? You got any damn proof I didn’t bury it right? Who knows, maybe some wild animals dug it up or somethin’? And besides, there’s no need to get your panties in a bunch. If they can’t figure out where the guy was offed, there’s no way in hell they could pin it on you.”

Had this man never heard of crisis management?

“Well, I guess if I hadn’t transported it for ya they’d have figured you out in a heartbeat. And now I gotta deal with all this guilt and shit. It’s keeping me up at night, man. The fuck kinda person are you, tellin’ me to go dump poor little Maa in the mountains. Fuck, now I feel like turnin’ myself in.”

“Senpai, we would both be in a deal of trouble of the truth of the incident came out. Dumping a body is a serious crime, you know.”

Yamazaki laughed mockingly.

“Don’t make me fuckin’ laugh. Yeah, I’d be in some trouble. But who gives a shit about that. But you absolutely can’t let the truth get out. That’s the only thing you can afford to give a shit about. Even if it’s the tiniest fuckin’ chance, you can’t ignore it.”

Apparently his cunning was the only thing this man was good for. As he surmised, my previous words had been a hollow threat. It was like telling a man holding you at gunpoint that he’d go to jail if he shot you. It went without saying who had the initiative.

“...How much do you want?”

“Another million, for now.”

For now.

Those words stuck in my head, words that indicated that more demands would eventually be forthcoming.

“Do you really think a high schooler like myself could quickly come up with a sum like that?”

“You say some funny shit, man. The hell’s that got to do with me?”

The bell rang. Yamazaki smirked as he thumped me on the back.

“I’m countin’ on ya, killer.”

After saying that, he raised one hand and left the audiovisual room.

The sound of the door closing echoed throughout the room, cutting through the silence. The silence in the room felt like it was reproaching my own silence, so I forced my mouth open.

“Haha...”

My joy leaked out.

And when it did,

“Ahahahahahahahahahaha!”

It was too funny.

“The hell does that have to do with him? The hell does that have to do with him indeed!”

Yamazaki hadn’t doubted me in the slightest. He hadn’t doubted that he was on the side doing the taking. A million yen? There was no way I would pay such a sum. Yamazaki said some amusing things. I absolutely couldn’t let the truth get out. That was the only thing I could afford to give a shit about.

Quite so.

Nothing, least of all money, has anything to do with a man who is about to die.

I had decided on it from the very beginning. When I couldn’t find a noble individual to request transportation from, when I couldn’t find an accomplice, I realized something.

As long as the transporter was also someone I could eliminate, I wouldn’t have any problems.

Yamazaki, the finest scum known to man, was the last piece of evidence I needed to destroy. There would be nobody left who knew the truth.

But for him to mistake himself for being in a commanding position, oh, how precious I could laugh.

Ryuusuke Yamazaki.

You will fall into the hole I dug and die.

It’s that factory. I was at that defunct factory again.

Just like last time, I exterminated him. I wielded a knife with the intent to kill him.

Not hesitating with the knife, he provoked me by stabbing at my heart. But that wasn’t enough to cause me to draw back. I had resolved to kill him from the get-go.

I thrusted back and stabbed him in the chest.

There was almost no resistance. But I could sense that it was the real thing. Human flesh was softer than I had expected, and it gave surprisingly little resistance.

I quietly drew the knife from Yahara. Blood spurted out. The blood got on my face, covering up my sight. The warm liquid was sticky and unpleasant.

Yahara’s body toppled to the floor.

“You needed to be eliminated. The world would be better off before you committed a sin that could not be undone.”

“Is that so?”

“What...?”

His wound should have been fatal, but he simply stood back up as if nothing had happened.

“What, you don’t follow? I’m saying you ain’t able to do stuff like that.”

Although he was still dripping with blood, Yahara looked down on me.

“Just shut up and die already, damn you!”

I stabbed him again. Actually, unsatisfied by his flesh’s give, I stabbed him over and over.

But Yahara just stood up again and again, laughing like a madman all the while. He seemed completely unfazed by his countless wounds.

“Quit messing with me... Why won’t you die! Just die! Die! Die!”

Stab. Stab. Stab.

Rise. Rise. Rise.

“Why... why, goddamnit!”

No matter how many times I stabbed him, Yahara refused to die. He was vomiting blood, his bowels were hanging out, yet he just kept gazing at me with his protruding eye and sneering.

“You can’t kill me. Not as long as you’re alive, anyway. That’s just how it works.”

He spoke with his tongue hanging out and pointed at me.

I gazed down at myself in suspicion.

“Wh-!”

My body had been ripped to shreds. Similar to Yahara’s... no, exactly like Yahara’s.

“Why? Why is this happening to me! What did you do to me, Yahara?”

“Wait, I did something? Heh... I didn’t do jack shit, man.”

“Then... then what’s going on? Why am I covered in wounds?”

“Well hot damn. You still don’t know what’s going on? Who’s the one holding the knife here? Who’s the one stabbing away? Who’s the nutcase here?”

It went without saying, it was—

“Right, it’s you. You’re the one fucking yourself up.”

Yahara caressed my cheek with a blood-soaked hand.

“C’mon, brother. If you wanna kill me, all you gotta go do is drag your sorry ass to the top of a cliff and take a dive.”

Once I realized the meaning of his words, my dumbfounded face must have been quite the sight. Unable to hold it in, Yahara clutched his viscera-drenched stomach and gave a booming laugh.

“Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!”

He kept laughing.

“Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!”

Before I realized it, I was laughing too.

It was so funny I couldn’t help but laugh.

It was the same thing, after all.

Yahara laughing and me laughing were the same thing, after all.

Our voices overlapped and joined into one. They were the same from the very start. There was no way Yahara, who didn’t have a body, could laugh, which meant that I was simply laughing by myself.

If you put the two of us side-by-side in a mirror, we were reverses of each other. We were like opposites. But when looked at from the right angle, opposites were actually identical. It was like how hatred, the opposite of love, was close enough to its counterpart that they could practically be called the same emotion.

Black and white assimilated with each other.

In recognizing that, I made it my strength.

I had affirmed who I was.

I found a suitable “stepping stone,” so I set my plan into action. It wasn’t something I had planned, but rather a stroke of good fortune. My mind was clear, and I wasn’t about to let a chance like that slip away from me. All that was left to do was fasten a rope to the roof and place Yamazaki atop the “stepping stone”.

Exalted at this favorable turn of events, I was beginning to make my way home when I spotted something that surpassed all my expectations.

I gasped reflexively.

Was that Kouta Hiiragi and Ririko Matsumi having a conversation?

Ririko Matsumi. One of the people I was cautious around. While she wasn’t exactly evil, she was an inorganic substance whose existence held no meaning. Because she was inorganic, she couldn’t interact with humans.

But even in the face of such an inorganic entity, Hiiragi was speaking to Ririko Matsumi as if they were old friends.

What exactly was going on here?

This wasn’t something I could simply overlook. I rushed over to Hiiragi and asked him about his relationship with Ririko Matsumi.

“I don’t know about close, but we’ve talked a few times.”

He’s talked with that inorganic substance “a few times”? How was that even possible?

An odd sense of unease washed over me. The fact that Hiiragi was abnormal in that regard was a conclusion I arrived at not from reason, but from instinct.

“Do have a habit of getting involved with people like her?”

Concealing my emotions, I dug deeper.

“‘People like her’?”

“Forgive my wording, but people with problems. Ririko Matsumi, Masato Yahara, and perhaps we should count Miki Kouzuki as well.”

“It’s not like I’m intentionally hanging out with weird people...”

“But you’re awfully close to a number of them. And you don’t seem to be particularly close to anyone else.”

“I mean, it’s true that I don’t have many close friends...”

“And you say that you don’t seek those kind of people out deliberately? If that’s the case, then perhaps you hold some sort of fascination from their perspective?”

Hiiragi was the kind of person who seemed harmless at a glance. His interactions with Masato Yahara initially put me on guard, but if it hadn’t been for that I likely wouldn’t inspected him at all.

But that was exactly why it was such a serious problem.

If it turned out that Hiiragi was truly a man who needed to be eliminated like Yahara or Yamazaki, then that meant that a problem individual was hiding within somebody I couldn’t currently get a read on. If that was the case, then that meant that the range of people I needed to kill was much wider than I thought. There would be no end to them.

How long would I have to carry this purge out for?

Suddenly, Hiiragi realized that I was looking at him with wide eyes. That wouldn’t do. My emotions were showing.

I exhaled and calmed my expression.

“I apologize. It would appear I’ve said some rather untoward things. Please forget I said any of that. I guess the incident has just made me a little high-strung.”

If I was simply high-strung, how high-strung should I be?

The first thing I needed to consider was why Hiiragi had gotten so close with Yahara. There were as many detriments to being around him as there were stars in the sky. As a matter of fact, Hiiragi had earned the trepidation of his classmates, and had been unable to make any close friends since. And by spending time with a delinquent, he found himself in the teachers’ bad books as well.

But in spite of all that, he had gotten close to Yahara. Such a thing would be unthinkable would proportionally large benefits.

Occam’s razor would dictate that there was some manner of utility value in that relationship.

—Utility value. Was he was interested in the stimulants? Was he interesting in sleeping with women Yahara could provide him? No... a man with desires so base would have been outed as evil in an instant. The fact that he was not obviously evil was the problem.

What other benefits could there be, then? What could Masato Yahara even be used for, save stirring the flames of his homicidal urges in order to have him kill somebody? And nobody save a demon would wish for—

—wait, have him kill somebody?

Was that line of thinking truly so irrational as to be worthy of immediate rejection? At any rate, I myself was on the brink of being killed. That was the unwavering truth.

...What if, and this is only a hypothetical, what if it was possible to manipulate Yahara’s actions?

I had to remember the scene I had just seen. Kouta Hiiragi was talking familiarly with the machine girl, Ririko Matsumi. He was even going out with the self-proclaimed magus Miki Kouzuki. Was it possible that the two of them had been teaching him ways to manipulate others? Was I leaping to conclusions? ...But even if it wasn’t to that extent, the fact that Hiiragi’s circumstances were peculiar was true beyond a doubt.

Indeed, something about Kouta Hiiragi was clearly making me uneasy. There was something about him that was different from other people.

“I’m worried about you, Hiiragi.”

With those words, I tested Hiiragi. If he was the kind of person I needed to worry about, he might understand what I truly meant.

I prayed that Hiiragi would take my words normally. I didn’t want to believe that there was a strain of evil in this world so wily that I couldn’t immediately identify it.

But much to my regret, Hiiragi’s face scrunched up at my words’ disagreeable nature. He had clearly picked up on their implication.

“What do you mean by ‘worried about’?”

Perhaps trying to trick me, he asked an innocent-sounding question.

“Hmm? I mean that I’m worried about you getting caught up in this incident, of course. What else might I mean?”

I considered Hiiragi’s reactions up until this point. It seemed likely that he possessed powerful mind-reading abilities. There were too many things that didn’t make sense otherwise.

Now, let’s examine the facts once more.

Would it have been possible for Hiiragi to have been manipulating Yahara?

The answer was that it would. Given his level of mind-reading ability, it would be possible to anticipate how the other party would react to what you did and said. If you applied this knowledge, you could intentionally say and do things to influence the other party.

I wasn’t sure as to what extent this ability could accomplish. But there was one thing I was sure of.

Kouta Hiiragi would have been capable of meddling with Masato Yahara’s murder.

The motive was straightforward. When possessing that much power, it would be only human to want to test it. And it went without saying that manipulating a deviant like Yahara would be far more entertaining that manipulating an average person.

Hiiragi was putting his revulsion towards me on full display, so I asked him a question.

“What’s the matter?”

“...I have to get going.”

He left without answering, practically fleeing. He might have caught a glimpse at my thoughts just now.

I didn’t know the degree to which Hiiragi had influenced Yahara’s actions. But the conclusion was clear.

—The fact that I was almost killed was Hiiragi’s fault.

A difficult wrong to forgive.

A villain I needed to eliminate.

“...He’s next.”

After Ryuusuke Yamazaki, the next person I would eliminate was Kouta Hiiragi.

Now then, a decision becoming reality warrants but a short digression.

That night, Ryuusuke Yamazaki fell from the school roof and died.

He died because he had to die.

That’s all there was to it.

As I emotionlessly watched Yamazaki’s fall from the school parking lot, I considered how best to corner Kouta Hiiragi.

<noinclude>
==Translator's Notes and References==
<references />

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</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (II)

2017-11-27T01:22:17Z

Toshiya: formatting

== Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (II) ==

As I put my textbooks in my bag, I thought back to what had happened at lunch.

Miki had clearly been acting strangely. I didn’t mind the fact that she had been lying to me. Everyone has things they don’t want to tell others.

But why had she seemed so afraid of me?

Was there some problem with me? ...Well, it wasn’t impossible. She did mention something about her magic getting less potent. It was clear that something about me had changed.

But I didn’t know what exactly had changed. In fact, I didn’t know what kind of person I was to begin with.

And on top of that — I didn’t really care.

As I was standing to leave, the voice of a man I once thought called out to me.

“Hiiragi, I have something I would like to ask you. Could I have a moment of your time?”

It turned out that Akiyama had simply been in poor health on that day. But what did he want with me now? We’d never held a meaningful conversation before.

Also, I felt like Akiyama’s countenance had changed recently. It was like he hadn’t been sleeping much; his eyes had bags under them, and his skin looked awful. His eyes glinted with a dim light, and his image had taken a slight departure from that of an honors student.

“When he was still with us, would it be correct to say that you were the one who with the closest with Yahara?”

“Huh? ...Uh, more or less.”

“That must have been a harsh blow for you.”

He probably didn’t have any bad intentions, but it was clear he was holding back. In reality, I was likely only one mourning Masato’s death.

Upon realizing that, I finally understood.

Masato’s homicidal aspirations were the real deal, and he had every intention of carrying them out.

So ever since he died, I had been contemplating what the largest thing keeping him from committing murder was. Was it his conscience? His morals? His antipathy? Fear? The effect it would have on his future? After thinking about it, I realized that it was none of those. Anything within him that held him back would have simply be discarded if he fell into despair and abandoned himself.

So there had to be something outside of his heart that kept him from killing. Namely, his environment.

If someone committed a crime, their family would face repercussions as well. Even if he was a minor, his name would eventually come out, and the internet would expose the location of his house. And rather than receiving sympathy, the assailant’s family would be treated as jointly responsible. You could easily imagine such a thing happening.

Masato wasn’t so unimaginative a person as to ignore what would happen to his family, nor did he lack a sense of empathy. He wasn’t some natural-born serial killer.

So Masato took it upon himself to create it. An environment where he could kill without regrets. A world filled with nothing but enemies and strangers.

Of course nobody would mourn his death in such an environment.

“And? What was it you wanted to ask me?”

“Ahh, I simply couldn’t help but take an interest in Yahara’s incident.”

“Out of curiosity?”

“No, more like out of a sense of justice. I felt like there had to be something I was capable of doing.”

I felt like Akiyama’s words sounded rehearsed.

“I wonder, was it true that Yahara was involved in some rather unwholesome affairs? Well...I refer to affairs in the broad sense, by the way. Perhaps that alone makes it not unusual he was involved in this incident. There were various things published about him in those periodicals, weren’t there?”

Although their authenticity was dubious, a number of magazines had published articles about how Masato was abusing stimulants, involved in the prostitution of minors, and was affiliated with an anarchist organization.

I didn’t know how best to answer that, and Akiyama drew closer in response to my silence.

“Were you completely unaware of all that?”

“I knew about the stimulants. But he never mentioned anything about any gangs or prostitution rings or anything. He didn’t show any signs of being involved with them, either. I’m pretty sure that’s all just misinformation.”

In order to prepare the environment for his murder, he likely intimated himself in things like that intentionally.

“Perhaps you weren’t close enough to Yahara to involve you in things like that? Are you saying that he never to bring you into his group of delinquent companions?”

“Pretty much. He didn’t involve me in sketchy stuff like that. He never even ate lunch with me, let alone tried to get me to smoke or anything. If we were around each other we’d chat, if the timing worked out we’d walk home together. But he definitely never tried to coerce me, and he never invited me anywhere. That was about the extent of our relationship.”

Bringing up the one time he called me out to that park late at night would be misleading, so I felt it would be better I not bring it up.

“I’m sure that if I ever stopped wanting to spend time around him and started avoiding him, he wouldn’t have so much as spoken to me.”

“I see...”

His expression seemed somewhat dissatisfied. Had he been hoping I’d say something different?

...What had he been hoping for?

“So, why do you ask?”

I had a hunch that Akiyama didn’t really want to hear about the incident. An odd feeling caught on my mind.

Putting his hand on his chin, Akiyama answered.

“I suspect that the reason that Yahara was killed was the fact that he was sticking his hand in dangerous places. Following that reasoning, I felt it was possible that you, as his friend, might be in danger of meeting a similar fate. Am I mistaken?”

I see. So my sense of unease was because I had the hunch that he was more interested in hearing about me than about Masato.

“In fact, I was thinking—”

“—that it would not be so strange for you to be killed as well.”

What was that?

I just had the oddest sensation.

Far beyond any of the unease I had been feeling up until now, it had bordered on outright discomfort.

“...What makes you space out so?”

“I, I’m not-”

Akiyama furrowed his brows in confusion.

“Well, I can hardly blame you for being a little out of it after having something like that happen to a friend of yours. You have bags under your eyes.”

The fact that he had bags under his seemed to be lost on him. Was Akiyama also plagued by something related to Masato’s death? Was that why he was asking me all this? But if that was the case, what would he, who got along with Masato about as well as dogs got along with cats, have to worry about?

The unease got stronger. Something was off.

As I pondered such thoughts, I heard a loud, rude voice.

“Oy, is Akiyama around?”

Peering through the door was, for some reason, Yamazaki. The man who had been harassing me and Miki the other day.

I wouldn’t have thought Akiyama would willingly spend time with a person like Yamazaki. In fact, he grimaced more than he had during our whole conversation.

“I’ll see you later, Hiiragi. Do be careful, now.”

Raising his hand uncomfortably, Akiyama turned his back on me.

“Um, are you okay? That senpai isn’t forcibly dragging you around or anything, is he?”

“Hm, well... He isn’t exactly doing me any favors by coming to my classroom like this, but... It’s no cause for concern.”

Akiyama walked briskly to where Yamazaki was waiting. After exchanging a few words, Akiyama lead the two of them out of the classroom.

Everything about this was suspicious. But Akiyama wasn’t looking for help, so I had no way of getting involved. And besides, I didn’t particularly want to get involved, nor did I want to help him.

Masato’s body had been discarded deep in the mountains. The autopsy found the cause of death to be a stab wound in his chest. The body was about a week old when it was discovered, so the crime was estimated to have been committed somewhere between May 25th and May 28th. The fact that Matsumi couldn’t get reception on Masato’s information on June 2nd corroborated that. The range on reception was this city, and by then Masato wasn’t in this world, let alone the city.

The investigation was also going poorly. First of all, they didn’t even know where he died. On top of that, his acquaintances were largely unknown, and it was difficult to narrow down who might have had a motive. The group he had been interacting with hadn’t even known his name.

The last person to interact with him, a female company worker, gave an anonymous interview about him calling out to her near a subway station. She claimed that he had been acting oddly, saying things like “I’ll kill you.” That was what lead to the inference that he was using some manner of stimulant.

But that wasn’t it. I had seen firsthand how he had begun acting strangely in response to Matsumi-senpai’s scanning.

The mass media had also gotten fixated on the idea that he might have intentionally put himself in some sort of dangerous situation. But if Masato had fallen into despair to the point of taking suicidal actions, he would have killed someone instead. I had grasped Masato to the point of being sure of that.

Masato’s murderous impulses wouldn’t have been directed at himself. Only people who saw life as cheap wouldn’t differentiate between killing themselves and others. And the high value Masato placed on life was the reason he longed to kill in the first place.

So getting killed certainly wasn’t part of Masato’s plan. Perhaps the killer was someone he knew, someone he didn’t expect?

If nothing else, his killer was an amateur. After they disposed of the body in the mountains, it was found relatively easily. And they didn’t even bother making it look like an accident or a suicide, which lead to it being investigated as a murder and the subsequent autopsy.

I was on classroom cleaning duty, and my musings kept me from finishing until it was rather late. Miki had been dragged off by some friends and had already returned home.

I headed for the front gate alone. The throngs of reporters, who had been crawling all over the school when the incident first came to light, had more or less dispersed.

If I had to compare, it seemed that the world at large was much less concerned with the details and perpetrator of Masato’s death and more with criticisms of his life. However, the fact that Masato was a victim wasn’t under dispute, so most of the major news companies recognized that Masato may not have had any direct involvement in the case and weren’t focusing much on his circumstances. That meant that most of the people still gathered in front of the gate were journalists from gossip magazines of questionable repute.

“...Excuse me.”

Someone called out to me from behind. Although I initially thought to ignoring them, thinking that they were a member of such a publication, I eventually turned around after realizing that the late hour made it unlikely that the question would be of that tone.

Before me stood a girl from another school. Her face was plain, and she didn’t make much of an impression. She bore a dark expression, and her eyes repeatedly glanced for side to side. But as if by habit, her mouth alone was upturned.

“Is this... the school where Masato Yahara went?”

“It is...”

“It is, isn’t it...”

On that note, she trailed off. There was clearly a follow-up question, but he was hesitating.

Thinking that perhaps I had met her before, I observed her face, but I had no recollection of her.

“Sorry to bother you. That’s all I wanted.”

In the end, she never gave her follow-up. Looking downwards, she quickly left.

What was that? Was she an acquaintance of Masato’s or something? Even so, she was acting rather suspiciously...

Tilting my head at the bizarre encounter, I gazed at the female student. Then suddenly, a small back that I did remember appeared next to her.

Ririko Matsumi.

That’s it! Matsumi-senpai might know something about the incident!

With that flash of inspiration, I ran after that small back.

“Matsumi-senpai!”

Matsumi-senpai had taken some sort of interest in me, so she would probably greet me with a smile. At least, that was what I expected.

“...”

But not only did she not turn and smile at me, she didn’t turn my direction at all. Even when I got close enough to stare at her, she just kept plodding on slowly and ignoring me.

“...Senpai?”

Thinking that perhaps she hadn’t noticed me, I tapped her on the shoulder. As a result, she finally saw me. But her deadpan expression didn’t change.

I then remembered how Matsumi-senpai had collapsed and began vomiting after reciting the information from Masato’s scanning. Perhaps she hadn’t fully recovered yet? Or maybe she was angry at me for backing away from her before I eventually set her free?

As if she had truly turned into a machine, Matsumi-senpai gave no signs of life.

“Senpai, it’s me. Kouta Hiiragi.”

“......hm.”

At the sound of my name, she finally gave a slight response, slightly raising her eyebrows.

“Hii...ragi?”

“That’s right! I’m Kouta Hiiragi! I have something I wanted to ask you!”

“Hiiragi... The white Hiiragi...”

Although Matsumi-senpai was staring daggers at me, her eyes seemed like they were out of focus.

“No.”

“Huh?”

“No. You’re not Hiiragi.”

“What are you talking about, Senpai? Of course I’m Hiiragi.”

But it didn’t look like Matsumi-senpai even head my rebuttal. Looking away from me, she resumed her plodding.

I wanted to stop her, but decided against it due to her strange demeanor. One way or another, it didn’t look like I’d be able to communicate meaningfully with her.

I sighed heavily.

Was she simply an “apparatus” after all?

Unable to hold back my laughter, I looked up.

Once I did, I was met with a surprise. Standing right next to me with eyes wide open was Akiyama.

“Huh? What are you...?”

“Are you and Ririko Matsumi close?”

He was asking rather intently.

“I don’t know about close, but we’ve talked a few times.”

Akiyama gazed at Matsumi-senpai’s receding back. His expression was clearly warped with disgust. His hatred for Matsumi-senpai was quite evident.

“Um... did you finish helping that blond senpai?”

But instead of answering my question, he returned with one of his own, the disgust never fading from his face.

“Do have a habit of getting involved with people like her?”

“‘People like her’?”

“Forgive my wording, but people with problems. Ririko Matsumi, Masato Yahara, and perhaps we should count Miki Kouzuki as well.”

“It’s not like I’m intentionally hanging out with weird people...”

“But you’re awfully close to a number of them. And you don’t seem to be particularly close to anyone else.”

He said such rude things so casually.

“I mean, it’s true that I don’t have many close friends...”

“And you say that you don’t seek those kind of people out deliberately? If that’s the case, then perhaps you hold some sort of fascination from their perspective?”

Irritation? Or maybe it was impatience? As Akiyama continued prattling on, it became more and more clear that something about him was off.

He seemed to realize this, and quietly exhaled while calming his expression.

“I apologize. It would appear I’ve said some rather untoward things. Please forget I said any of that. I guess the incident has just made me a little high-strung.”

Akiyama spoke.

“I’m worried about you, Hiiragi.”

Again.

It was happening again.

That strange sensation.

“What do you mean by ‘worried about’?”

“Hmm? I mean that I’m worried about you getting caught up in this incident, of course. What else might I mean?”

Thinking about it logically, no other meaning made sense.

But I knew.

This man didn’t care at all about my well-being.

He hated me, and was on high alert.

It was all a deception. The expression he was twisting his face into, one of outspoken concern, was nothing more than a mask.

Akiyama was concealing his true nature. Or perhaps he wasn’t aware of it.

But I could see his filthy, corrupt true form, like a swamp of illegally dumped oil.

Ahh, I finally understood why Masato hated Akiyama so much.

Akiyama was like Masato’s opposite. Masato had turned his back on the world. Whereas if necessary to traverse the world, Akiyama would readily use others as stepping stones.

“What’s the matter?”

Akiyama’s smile was warped. No, his expression was the same as before. But even if it hadn’t changed, once you knew his true self the connotation changed. If you peeled off a single layer of his skin, his evil nature would be plainly visible. Although up until now I had thought of him as nothing but a simple intellectual, I could no longer sense anything from those bespectacled, slit eyes but cold-blooded evil. If it was for his own sake, this man could commit any crime while still thinking himself pure.

It was like an optical illusion. Once you had looked under the facade of an honors student, you couldn’t see him any other way. You stopped being able to see him as anything but cruel and self-righteous.

His smile was a sneer. His sympathy was cajolery. His kindness was wiliness.

“...I have to get going.”

I left Akiyama, practically fleeing.

This was the first time I had felt this emotion. I had never harbored this emotion towards myself or towards another. And what’s more, it was strong enough to make my head throb dully.

I was perplexed. I couldn’t believe that I, of all people, could feel this way.

But I was certain of it.

I—

—despised Shuuichi Akiyama.

“So, like, the sky above the hot spring was twinkling like crazy. We’d heard that there were a bunch of fireflies nearby, so we figured that it was fireflies got really excited, but it seemed kinda unnatural so then we realized that it wasn’t. So, what do you think those lights were?”

As planned, I paid Miki a visit at her house on Sunday.

I suspected that her room would be ominous and packed with magical paraphernalia, but I was completely off-mark. Although her bookshelves did feature a number of books on magic, the room was painted a uniform white. If anything, it seemed a bit plain for a girl of her age, sacrificing stylishness for a wholesome atmosphere.

On a similar note, despite Miki’s gorgeous looks she never wore makeup, and the plain clothes she was wearing were casual and not conspicuous in the least.

“Would you believe it! Those lights were the flashes of smartphone cameras! Apparently some boys got a room above the open-air bath, right, and they were having themselves a photo shoot! They’re the worst! And what’s worse, now those dumb boys have seen my soft fair skin! You don’t have a monopoly on it any more! Oh, I feel so sorry for you! And to think how my chest and such swelled at the thought of you eventually being the first one to see me naked! ...Ah, but there’s some good news on that front! When that happened, I had a towel firmly wrapped around my chest! And we all lived happily ever after!”

I felt like the room and her outfit didn’t really mesh with her boundlessly bubbly personality.

She was putting no small amount of effort into consciously manufacturing that personality. I had initially been tricked by her audacious conduct, but in reality she was quite shy. If she couldn’t get a decent read on the other party, she tended to freeze up. Along those lines, the reason she hadn’t immediately approached me when school started up could have been that she was trying to carefully examine me first.

But why would she go so far to create that bubbly personality?

Thanks to her amiability, she could get away without being hated despite being seen as a weirdo. In order to receive that benefit, I assumed she was intentionally making use of her smile.

Did this too have something to do with Miki being a magus?

“...Kouta, you aren’t listening to me, are you?”

Miki puffed out her cheeks cutely.

“...Sorry. I had something on my mind.”

Normally that would be the end of that line of discussion, but Miki pressed her lips firmly together. Worrying that I had killed the mood, I said “sorry” again.

After a little while, Miki spoke in a low voice.

“Those eyes, they’re awful.”

“Huh?”

“They’re awful, it feels like they’re analyzing me.”

With a serious look on her face, Miki went on.

“I mentioned this before, but Kouta, you’re getting worse at taking in my magic. Do you have any idea why?”

“Umm... is it because I’ve grown accustomed to it, maybe?”

“That’s not it. The reason you’re not taking in my magic well is because of the extent to which your attribute has changed. Someone other than me started staining you with their attribute. That’s why my magic can’t reach you. ...You know who that is, right?”

“Not really...”

“You weren’t conscious of it? ...Well, I guess that makes sense. Self-consciousness isn’t really something you’re capable of. You yourself don’t know what kind of person you are, so you wouldn’t have any way of noticing changes. Then I should put this clearly. Kouta, you’re becoming stained in Masato Yahara’s attribute.”

“Masato’s...?”

“It’s to a pretty severe degree; you’re already starting to think kinda like him. That’s what those analytic eyes are expressing.”

“But, Masato’s already dead. There’s no way for him to influence me. Why, after all this time...”

“To the contrary, it’s like it’s because he died... Here, let me explain. Right now, you’re evoking him.”

Another new word sprung up.

“You’re making a face like you don’t get it. But it’s like, you don’t want to forget about him, right?”

“Of course I don’t.”

Everyone would soon forget about Masato. Without even trying to, even his parents would likely forget he had ever existed. Masato didn’t have any human connections. That was the environment he himself crafted.

Which meant that if I forgot about Masato as well, he would truly disappear from this world. He would disappear without a trace, as if he had never existed in the first place.

That’s why I spent so much time thinking about him. So I could still stand face-to-face with him.

“You want to remember him so badly, you’re calling him to your side. That’s what evocation magic is.”

“Hold up a second. If I can use magic, doesn’t that kinda mean that I’m taking on your attribute, Miki?”

“It doesn’t. I told you that anyone can use magic, remember? And I told you that you had magical talent, right?”

She had mentioned that.

“If you took on my attribute, you’d be able to comprehend and master magic. But that and just being able to use are two totally separate things. For example, Yahara was a powerful magus. But he couldn’t control it. Magic is like a chained beast - it can lash out at any time. I don’t know if Yahara knew how powerful his influence was, but it looked like he tried really hard to keep other people from getting involved with him...”

In a way, him minimizing his influence was probably connected with him creating an environment in which he could kill.

“You know, Kouta, you have a talent for mimicry. In fact, I’ve never met someone who could imitate people as precisely as you. You don’t just copy their attribute, you copy their capacity as well. I guess it’s kinda like being able to copy someone’s results just by copying their batting form? That gets across how amazing it is, right? And it gets across how insane it is too, right? ...So I realized that I had to split you two apart so you couldn’t use that monstrous magic of his.”

Even without processing it through the lens of the value system of, I could tell that continuing to spend time around Masato was dangerous. So I understood why she had been so worried.

Kouta, you’ve already completed the first step of evocation, which is creating an artificial astral body. ...Um, to put it in a way that’s easier to understand, you created a firm ‘image’ of Yahara himself in your head. Am I wrong?”

She... wasn’t wrong.

The image I had of Masato in my head was developed enough for me to hold a conversation with him.

“Normally, that ‘image’ won’t do anything. When an author keeps images of their characters in their head, the worst that’ll happen is they’ll come across as a bit odd. But your ‘image’ of Yahara is, regardless of your will, going and acting on its own. It’s leaking into the outside world. You can tell if you just look.”

Without thinking, I stared at my hand, but of course nothing about it was any different from normal.

“That ‘image’ of Yahara is trying to entrench itself in you in order to exist. After you evoke it, it’ll possess you. Your barbarous name<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarous_name</ref> - it’s like an incantation, but if he learns it, and speaks it, you won’t be able to stay yourself any more.”

So, in other words the kind of thing a psychic would refer to as “possession”?

“...What should I do?”

As far as I was concerned, not having been aware this was happening in the first place, I didn’t much care what my image did.

But I knew that Miki saw this as a huge problem and wanted to stop it. And I wanted to help her to the extent of my abilities.

“You don’t have to do anything, Kouta.”

Miki pursed her lips, displaying her resolve.

Her entire body was giving off energy, and it felt like she was at the center of a swirl of light.

“I’ll stop it for you.”

Miki moved her hand behind her head. Her hair fluttered gently, filling the room with the smell of shampoo. My first, out-of-place impression was that her hair was surprisingly long when she let it down. She had unfastened the red hair band that always held up her ponytail.

Why was it, I wondered, that her eyes were fixed in place at if she had been hit over the head with a log. Was she trying to perceive something? Was she trying to appeal to me? As a result, I couldn’t get my thoughts straight. I just stared at her dumbfounded.

While I was stunned, Miki drew her face close to mine. Extremely close.

Huh?

I couldn’t even let out a surprised voice.

Because.

Miki’s lips were blocking mine.

As if a switch had been flipped in em, my thoughts forcibly ground to a halt.

The image in front of my eyes felt like something far off, something unrelated to me. My sense of reality vanished, as if I had been sucked into the other side of a television.

But the sensation was still there. Miki’s lips were soft. They felt nice.

Miki drew away.

As the pleasant sensation faded, the implication of what had just happened finally hit me.

That was a kiss.

Miki kissed me.

[[File:We Don't Open Anywhere In-Text Illustration 2.jpg|thumb]]

The moment I realized this, it felt like explosions were going off inside my head. Like a baby that couldn’t hold its neck steady, my head bobbed about frantically. My eyes were having trouble focusing on Miki, who was right beside me.

“You’re still shaking. I made you shake. Now it’s fixed.”

Simply seeing those lips move was bewitching, and I began to feel dizzy.

Meanwhile, Miki fastened the red hair band she had removed from her hair around my left wrist. It made a sharp sound as it snapped tight.

Snap.

That noise echoed inside my head as if I were standing in a gigantic hall. The The pain from the snap wasn’t just in my wrist, it spread throughout my entire body in tandem with a certain sense of comfort. As the pain diffused, suddenly my swelling head felt as though it were deflating. My head, which had been on the brink of boiling from the heat before, felt like it had been suddenly thrown in the Arctic Ocean.

Was I back to normal?

“Miki...?”

“I’m sorry.”

Perhaps thinking that my soft utterance of her name had been a rebuke, she went on.

“I know this wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t think of any other way. I couldn’t think of any way to save you without using magic. Even if you didn’t want me to, I had no choice but to do it by force...”

“Magic...? That was magic just now?”

“Yeah. I’m really sorry.”

I see. That wasn’t a kiss just now.

She was just putting our lips together.

I was overcome with surprise. I didn’t know what to think of it. I didn’t really mind that she had used magic.

But I was beset upon by an unfamiliar emotion.

I didn’t know what “it” was. It felt similar to a blend of rage, sadness, dejection, exasperation, and disappointment, yet it was different. One thing was certain, though. “It” wasn’t a pleasant emotion.

“Kouta, make sure you don’t take off that band, okay?”

Not having reached a conclusion regarding my emotion, I glanced at my left wrist.

“That’s a charm containing my full-strength magic. If any fate tries to influence your will, this will definitely change that fate for the better.”

From the looks of it, it was the same as any other hair band the shops nearby would sell. But I could feel it tightening not just on my wrist but deep, deep within me.

“Can you feel it? Then I guess maybe I didn’t need the warning. You shouldn’t be able to remove it by your own power.”

There was no way that was possible. Let’s try taking it off, shall we?

“......Huh?”

...It was no good. I couldn’t do it. ...And for that matter, I didn’t want to.

I knew that I was at least physically capable of removing it. But I was oddly reluctant to. Even if I knew logically that the work required to do so could hardly be called work, it felt like I were being sent to a battlefield and was hardly inclined to go. It didn’t feel like I was being compelled not to, removing it simply seemed tiresome. I couldn’t be bothered to.

So this was Miki’s magic. So it was capable of doing this much.

“It’s not like I could just do that to anyone. I was only able to do it to you because of how much time we’ve spent together.”

Miki should have been glad that her magic worked, but instead she looked almost depressed.

“...Let me give you an excuse, at least. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to. If it was anyone else, I wouldn’t have even considered it.”

She wasn’t lying. I could tell by her expression. Miki held me in good favor, and I likewise.

But in the end, that kiss was for the sake of magic.

If she hadn’t had that reason, it was something she couldn’t have done.

“Sorry, Miki. I’m going to head home for the day.”

Her face going white, Miki grabbed my hand as I stood to stop me.

“I’m sorry. ...I’m sorry!”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not mad at you, and I don’t hold you in contempt or anything. If anything, I thought that was pretty Miki-like of you. But if we’re together any longer today, it’ll just get awkward. So I’m going to head home. That’s all there is to it.”

Upon hearing that, Miki softly let released my hand. But she didn’t look relieved, and she didn’t lift her eyes from the ground.

She probably realized it as well. That our relationship couldn’t possibly continue in the same way as before.

Without uttering another word of reassurance, I headed for the door.

“Can I just ask one thing?”

Miki’s lips were trembling pitifully.

“You don’t hate me now, do you...?”

But when I heard that, the last of my sympathy vanished.

“You don’t have to worry about that. But—”

My next words might be unkind. But if I didn’t say them, I wouldn’t able to settle my raging emotions.

“I have to wonder, why do you spend so much time confirming my feelings without voicing your own even once?”

Taken aback, Miki’s eyes widened as she tried to keep her mouth under control.

I was never wrong when it came to inferring other people’s emotions. Normal people make sure conjectures through the lens of their own value system, distorting the result, but because I had no such filter I could make accurate evaluations.

But for whatever reason, my sensors seemed to be amiss when it came to Miki.

Miki held no romantic feelings towards me.

I had been under the misapprehension that she felt something similar. But she had just told me quite clearly that she didn’t.

The reason I was mistaken was because she did harbor affection towards me. But it was likely similar to the emotion one would feel towards an abandoned puppy. Miki was a kind person, so if she saw an abandoned puppy she would probably take it with her against her better judgement. She would then become emotionally attached to it, and in return for her affection it would probably come to love her.

But the world had no shortage of abandoned puppies.

There were plenty of people who could replace me.

I hadn’t realized. At some point, I had come to expect things of her. I felt that if anyone could locate my nonexistent contents, it would be Miki.

“I won’t avoid you or anything like that. If you talk to me, I’ll talk back. If you come visit me, I’ll be happy. I would never come to hate you. I know just how nice of a person you are, Miki.”

But I had to say it.

“But let’s not play at being lovers any more. We’re different people, after all.”

I wasn’t just talking about Miki. My family was other people. Masato was another person. No matter how close we were, we were different people. People were all in confined worlds created by their own value systems. Worlds that other people could never enter.

“But if we do that, Yahara will-”

“It’s not your fault, Miki. It’s mine. Of course it is.”

I spoke as if to interrupt her. Perhaps my voice came out a bit loud.

“Later.”

I left her room.

Miki was likely on the verge of tears. I was extrapolating from experience.

But that might not be true. After all, I didn't know the first thing about Miki.

I was scared of confirming it, so I didn’t turn around.

If she hadn’t been tearing up but instead smiling, I wouldn’t know what to believe any more.

But that was the magnitude of the misunderstanding I had made. If I had kept going out with Miki after that, a conclusive contradiction would have been born. One that couldn’t be taken back.

So I put an end to our farce of a relationship before that could happen.

In the end, Miki’s actions might have ended in failure.

After all, she made me aware. Aware of the fact that I was under Masato’s influence.

A negative chain reaction had started. The domino effect. Once a piece fell, the paradise we had so miraculously constructed all came crashing down.

Another corpse showed up at the school.

I had no idea how long this chain reaction would continue. But there was one thing I did know.

“...Kou, can you hear me?”

Even “I<ref>"Boku". See Miki Kouzuki's Closed World (I) for more details.</ref>” would be a target of that negativity.

<noinclude>
==Translator's Notes and References==
<references />

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</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Afterword

2017-11-27T01:11:24Z

Toshiya: formatting

== Afterword ==

There was a time when I didn’t want anyone to read “We Don’t Open Anywhere.”

Before my stunned eyes, the work that I had stubbornly written for submission had been announced for publication, and despite my feeling decidedly unlike a pro was circulated throughout the country and exposed to the public. I was so much an amature and unfamiliar with the industry that I’d never heard the phrase “light novel,” and the idea of being criticised had unbelievably never crossed my mind. When it went on sale, of course, there were many opinions on it, and they overwhelmed me and filled me with despair. Although many kind readers gave me positive comments, I felt as though I was being mocked from every direction. I wanted to wipe away the memories of everyone who had read it. I truly resented the fact that this world of our lacks the kind of reset buttons you would find in video games.

To be able to remake and re-release such a work just proves that the world is full of surprises. In fact, I now wanted the work that I once didn’t want read by anyone by be read by as many people as possible. It’s so embarrassing that I couldn’t bear to say it aloud, but the basis for Kouta Hiiragi was my nimbly drifting, self-lacking high school self. And the basis for Masato Yahara was my truly murderous middle school self. The original novel’s jacket branded it as controversial on the jacket, and the published refused to put illustrations in it. But even though people called it “imprudent” and “dark” and “unsettling,” I truly wrote it praying that it would instill hope in the readers. ...No, seriously.

The market has recently been flooded with these resplendent, dazzling tales of adolescence, but most people didn’t have such youths. I myself found my school years rather painful. I was decent with people, and I had quite a few friends, but even so the bad memories far outweigh the good ones. I never want to go back to such an unpleasant time. When I wrote “We Don’t Open Anywhere,” I wrote it with the fervent desire to save my oppressed adolescent self. To the me of that era, all the stories filled with themes of love and romance and camaraderie and justice and adolescence felt like they were full of bullshit. It felt like I was looking at someone else’s feces and vomit. I wanted a story written for me, an earnest story that wasn’t filled with platitudes.

And even if the world’s changed a bit since then, I’m sure there are still many people like that. And I thought people like that might find this novel worthwhile. So I can’t help but hope that this story touches somebody.

I also feel that deconstructing “We Don’t Open Anywhere” and rewriting it was crucial for me going forward as an author. If you’ll allow me to brag a little, my technical skills have definitely improved since my days as a rookie, but at the same time my honest, unfiltered zeal has faded bit by bit. I feel like this rewrite has helped me regain my old power, even if just a little bit.

At the same time, there are people that found this novel important to them, and their voices reach me even today. It’s thanks to them that I was able to rewrite and re-release “We Don’t Open Anywhere” like this, and it’s thanks to them that I have the self-confidence to continue living as an author. All I can do is thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

I pray that this rewritten version of “We Don’t Open Anywhere” will become important to someone.

Fall 2016

Eiji Mikage

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</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (III)

2017-11-27T01:05:15Z

Toshiya: formatting

== Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (III) ==

According to Miki, the school has a barrier around it.

Apparently it’s designed such that people that aren’t related to the school just naturally avoid it. This applies equally both in the afternoon when students were there and at nights when they weren’t. Although alumni, who had a built-in resistance to the barrier, could sneak in during the summer to set off fireworks, in general the more common sense a person had the less likely they were to enter the school.

So it made sense that there wouldn’t have been any witnesses when Ryuusuke Yamazaki fell to his death.

The police didn’t find anything resembling a note or a will, so it was determined that the likelihood that it was a suicide was low. It didn’t look like it had been caused intentionally either, so it was essentially being investigated as a accidental death. As evidence to support this theory, the fact that the old fencing had been removed so that it could be replaced was brought up, as this meant that it was easy for an accident to occur.

How half-assed. I’d like to hear one respectable reason for someone to visit the Building One roof late at night, and an explanation for what exactly he was trying to do when he took his spill. I didn’t want to just fall back on the explanation that it was just possible because he was a delinquent.

No matter what the police said, he had been murdered. And by the same guy who killed Masato, no less.

I was sure of it, despite lacking a shred of evidence. Any other possibilities were unthinkable.

Was I delusional? And even if I was, was there anything wrong with that?

After being closed for a week, the school reopened. The day the school opened, yesterday, it seemed that everyone was spouting unfounded rumors regarding Yamazaki’s death, but by today his death had more or less faded as a topic of discussion. It had faded from people’s interest fast than the latest celebrity scandal.

It was just like what happened with Masato. Because he was perceived as a delinquent who didn’t involve himself with them, they didn’t have any stake in his death.

If you turned on your phone, social networking sites would let you instantly get in touch with huge numbers of people. Between a person you’d never met but had exchanged messages with on the daily and a delinquent who went to the same school as you but you’d never talked to, who were you closer to? In order to survive in our increasingly connected society, the art of apathy was a necessary one. Treating Masato and Yamazaki as the “other” was comparatively straightforward. Online or in real life, if somebody was annoying you you could just block them.

The classroom grew lively as the school day came to a close. As I silently cleaned the floor, Miki’s face greeted me from the window facing the hallway. Ever since that day, she had never done up her hair, instead leaving it hanging down.

“See you later, Kouta.”

Saying only that, she left without waiting for me like before.

Since the day she had kissed me, our relationship had changed. We hadn’t walked home or eaten lunch together once since then.

It wasn’t like we had formally broken up or anything. Our relationship up until now had simply been an unnatural creation of Miki’s. The amount of distance between us now was entirely appropriate.

I finished my cleaning and made for home.

How best to proceed from here? Naturally I wanted to find out who killed Masato, but what could a layman like myself hope to accomplish?

Once I reached the front gate, I was greeting by something of a crowd. Were the news crews here again? Even people who weren’t part of the throng were sneaking glances as they passed by. Not wanting to be left out, I stopped to look as well.

Cowering in the middle was not a news crew but a girl from another school with an agonized look on her face. It appeared that the onlookers were at a loss for what to do, and as to whether or not they should help her.

“...Huh.”

Wasn’t that the girl who had been asking around about Masato the other day?

On account of her hearing my unintentional remark, her eyes met mine. Her face was deathly pale, and when she saw who I was, her eyes grew wide in surprise. As a result, the crowd’s attention turned to me.

“Kouta... Hiiragi, right?”

Although I was confused that she knew my name, I nodded.

“The Kouta Hiiragi who knew Masato Yahara?”

Sitting perpendicular from each other, the two of us were the only ones in the old-fashioned coffee shop aside from a single old man puffing away at a cigarette. Increasing feeling out of place, I observed the girl as I sipped at my water.

Apparently the reason she had been squatting earlier was because she had been assailed by a sudden bout of vertigo. Although she looked to be over it now, she was still trembling nervously.

“Um... my name is Shiho Sudou.”

Her name was unfamiliar.

“This is the first time we’ve met, right? Why do you know mine?”

“That’s—”

For some reason she looked away guiltily before going on. “Your name came up because I was gathering information on Masato Yahara.”

Her words seemed strained, but I didn’t think she was lying.

“I came looking for you because I thought you might know about him, being his friend and all.”

“Even though you’re in such bad shape?”

“...I’m sorry. I haven’t been feeling well lately, and I keep getting these dizzy spells.”

“So basically, in spite of your condition, you want to find out about Masato?”

Sudou quietly nodded.

“Why do you wanna know so bad?”

“...The murder happened pretty near me, so I kind of got caught up in my curiosity—”

“That’s a lie.”

There’s no way I would fall for such a transparent lie.

“You’re too frantic to chalk it up to mere curiosity, Sudou. You definitely have a more serious reason for wanting to know about him.”

At my rebuttal, Sudou paled again.

I then realized something. What if she knew something about Masato’s death? Was that why she was so invested in the incident?

“Could you keep what I’m about to tell you a secret? Actually, I was talking to him just before his estimated time of death. It was a Friday, the 26th. And, um... we actually weren’t just chatting, I was hanging out with him.”

“What? If you were hanging out with him, does that mean you were a friend of his?”

Sudou shook her head.

“I... well... Masato Yahara kind of... picked me up or something along those lines, and we were messing around. That was the first time I had met him. Um, I normally don’t do stuff like that! But I kind of had a lot going on that day, so...”

I didn’t care about her excuses. But her testimony was important.

The last time anyone had seen Masato was supposedly on May 25th, when he had threatened to kill a female company worker. Sudou had met him the day after that. And if they had been hanging out, it was unlikely that she was mistaken.

“But I didn’t want it to get out that he picked me up and we were messing around, so... I couldn’t tell anyone. But the fact that he was killed after we split up... When I think about it like that, I just can’t get it out of my head... I have to find out what happened... I feel like I have to find out what happened...!”

It seemed that she too was obsessed with Masato.

The reason she was willing to go so far was because she was spurred on by doubts as to whether the truth of the incident would ever come out. It was like the killer had forcibly stolen a piece of herself. As long as the incident remained unresolved, she could never reclaim it, which was why she was prowling around like a zombie.

“I’ll help you as much as I can. But I’ll need to ask you a couple things in return. On that day, did anything about Masato seem off to you? Did he give off any signs that he was going to get involved in this incident?”

“...No.”

“Cut the lies.”

“Eek!”

I replied instantly, and she froze in fear. For a moment she simply pressed her lips together and trembled, but at my continued gaze she eventually gave up on her silence. She faltered, but spoke nonetheless.

“...Actually, right before Masato Yahara and I split up, we ran into an acquaintance of his. From what they were talking about, I think they were classmates. He was skinny and about average height, and he was wearing glasses.”

“So just like you, he saw Masato after that lady that testified did, right?”

“...I suppose so.”

Then why didn’t he come forward as a witness? Did he also have personal circumstances involved, like Sudou did?

“What was his name?”

“...I don’t know.”

Her reply was clearly evasive.

“What kind of mood did you get from their conversation?”

“...They didn’t seem to get along. It felt kind of like they both held the other in contempt or something...”

Masato would have acted like that towards anyone. That half wasn’t useful.

But as for the other party...?

“Wait, the person Masato was talking to also acted like they held Masato in contempt? He was actively antagonistic to Masato?”

“Well... that’s what it looked like to me, at least.”

Sudou had said that the spectacled man was probably a classmate of Masato’s. Even if she was mistaken about that, at the very least that meant that he was an acquaintance of Masato’s of about the same age.

If that was the case, then their behavior was abnormal. Most would instinctively flinch at the dangerous atmosphere Masato gave off.

“What kind of impression did the bespectacled guy give off?”

“Well... He seemed smart, and really diligent. But he was also a little bit creepy.”

“Diligent, and creepy?

Normally people didn’t give off both of those impressions at once.

“In what way? For example, did he seem like he was looking down on others?”

“Yeah... He kind of gave off that impression. But that wasn’t what caught my attention... Um, he was saying some really respectable things. He was giving this really sound reasoning with a straight face. I don’t know if I’d say that I found it strange... or that it was annoying... he kind of just gave off this odd unpleasant vibe. Oh... I’m coming across as weird, aren’t I?”

“Don’t worry, you’re not.”

I thought it odd that a guy our age would be casually spouting “sound reasoning”. Most adults have little sympathy for stout-hearted public statements. When faced with sophistry that the speaker themselves doesn’t believe, the default response is generally backlash. And high schoolers despise such shallow adults despite feeling themselves become more and more like them.

Although adults have no choice in the matter, anyone our age who would willfully voice such reasoning must be somewhat distorted.

Ah, yes — the distortion called an honors student.

“Did that person... speak really formally?<ref>Kouta is asking about what version of "I" they used, specifically whether or not it was "watashi," which is an oddly formal pronoun for a guy their age and the one that Shuuichi uses.</ref>”

Ahh.

The image of a certain man springs to mind.

“Really formally? Um, I think so, probably...”

I knew that I was jumping to conclusions. But the answer I had arrived at stuck in my brain like a piece of gum that had been run over by countless cars.

The answer.

—Shuuichi Akiyama killed Masato Yahara.

—Shuuichi Akiyama killed Masato Yahara.

—Shuuichi Akiyama killed Masato Yahara.

That infinitely-repeating thought resounded in my mind, creating a fissure in my head when I could bear it no longer. Something that felt like it was boiling flowed out, bubbling with heat and viscous to the touch.

“—aaAAAA!”

Flickering. Lights. Flickering. Lights. It broke. My lines of sight crossed and split the world in two. Flickering. “I’ll kill you.” A red stain that expanded without limit. Or perhaps it was ultramarine. A hue stained in nothing but black. The ultramarine expanded. The despair expanded.

For some reason, something metallic was twining around my body. It clicked and clacked as it pressed down painfully on my body. But more than painful, it was unpleasant. Click clack, clickity clackity.

“—Kou, can you hear me?”

Yeah.

“I<ref>"Boku"</ref>” could hear him.

I wouldn’t ever forget him.

“Are you alright? D...did something happen?”

I returned to my senses.

Sudou was gazing at me with a little bit of worry and a lot of discomfort in her eyes.

“It’s nothing.”

Somehow stuffing “that” back into my head, I turned my focus to the person in front of me.

“More importantly, why didn’t you tell anyone about the bespectacled guy? You had to have had a reason, right?”

Even though she had said so much already, she seemed to be taken by an odd hesitation. She was hiding something from me.

“I... I was scared... I saw him.”

“Start from your main point.”

“Ah, I’m sorry... You just seemed kind of scary there for a moment... Another person from your school died the other day, right? A guy named Yamazaki. It turns out, I was actually at your school the night he died.”

“At the school? Even if you went to the school late at night, you wouldn’t expect to find any clues, would you?”

“Umm, I wanted to check out Masato Yahara’s seat and belongings and stuff. But that’s not important... What I’m trying to say is, the bespectacled guy was at your school that night.”

The bespectacled guy — Shuuichi Akiyama was at the school the night Yamazaki was killed?

And although I wouldn’t have thought the two to have any common ground, I myself saw Yamazaki call Akiyama over for some reason.

“You didn’t see the moment he pushed him off or anything, did you?”

“Of course not... You see, the thing I’m worried about is that the bespectacled guy might have seen me. After all, he never testified to the police about Masato’s death or about that Yamazaki guy’s death! Doesn’t that basically mean that...”

“I see. So you’re saying that the bespectacled guy was involved in both incidents. And if he is the killer, you’re worried that he might come after you to seal your lips, given that you were a witness to both of them.”

Sudou nodded rapidly.

“What should I do... What should I do...”

Sudou, whose complexion still hadn’t improved, scratched at her head.

Her best option at this point would be to simply forget about Masato and not get any more involved than she already was. But that would be inconvenient for me, so I kept my mouth shut.

After all — if I used her correctly, I could definitely get to the bottom of all this.

“I actually have a hunch as to who the bespectacled guy is. Maybe I should go ask him why he was on the roof when Yamazaki died.”

“Ah, wait a second! That’s not right!”

“Not right? What isn’t?”

“When this Yamazaki fell, he wasn’t on the roof. He was in a parking lot near the campus.”

We left the coffee shop and headed back to the school to check out the parking lot she had seen the bespectacled guy at.

Sudou’s face was so white that it looked like her blood had just straight-up forgotten that it was supposed to flow, but I pretended not to notice and continued listening to her.

Back when Sudou had been trespassing on the school, she had heard someone shout “Gyah!” at pretty much the same time she spotted the bespectacled guy in the parking lot. Despite her misgivings, she headed towards the location of the scream and found Yamazaki’s corpse with its head split open. Baffled and terrified, she fled the scene without calling for help. Due to having her hands full with fleeing, she didn’t have time to look for the bespectacled guy again.

That was her testimony.

“What kind of scream did it seem like?”

“Huh? Um... a normal scream, I guess.”

Unable to contain my irritation, I followed up. “What do you mean by normal?”

“Well... normal is like... they were scared, so they raised their voice, you know? I don’t remember anything too specific, really. I was pretty frantic.”

She wasn’t going to be of much use. Based on the texture of the scream, it would have been possible to discern if it was an accident or a murder.

But if he was screaming, it probably wasn’t suicide.

“I guess the bespectacled guy might not be the killer after all... I mean, you can’t really make somebody fall from where he was.”

This parking lot was indeed quite far from the Building One roof, where Yamazaki had fallen from. But there was a clear view of that roof here, and although the lights were unreliable they would indeed have let you seen the fall from here.

“If our bespectacled friend isn’t the killer, why didn’t he give his eyewitness account? Unless he ran away in fear like you did, it would make sense for him to report it.”

“Maybe he just didn’t notice the scream? Like, if he was deep in thought or something.”

Well, that example aside it was conceivable that there were some circumstances that kept him from noticing. Assuming that he was related to the incident just because he was at the school was too simplistic.

But the killer was Shuuichi Akiyama.

I had already decided that.

Was there a way to make somebody fall while you were down here? In mysteries, you sometimes saw timed traps that used ice, but... no, if the method was timed, there wouldn’t have been any reason for him to come all the way out to this parking lot. If he was at home with his family, it would make for a better alibi.

So there must have been some reason why Akiyama had to be here.

“I guess it really is impossible... Which means that he won’t really come after me...”

As I remained silent, Sudou spoke as if to reassure herself.

I tried to put up with it out of sympathy for the fact that she had gotten involved in a murder case, but I was at my limit. She was getting under my skin. Her insecurity and indecisive personality played a large role in that, but they weren’t the only things about her that made me uncomfortable.

“...Sudou. Would you mind if I took some of your time tomorrow?”

“Hm? Why? I...I don’t really have any more reason to spend time with you...”

“You want to know the whole story about Masato’s murder, don’t you?”

“O...of course...”

She gave a cautious affirmation.

I grinned and responded.

“If you come again tomorrow, I’ll explain everything.”

Sudou’s eyes went wide. There was no doubt that she was possessed by Masato. If I phrased it like that, no matter how fishy she thought it sounded she would be unable to refuse.

Now then, the sacrifice was secured.

I had a pretty good handle on the answer. I wasn’t the protagonist of a detective novel, nor was I a policeman who needed evidence before he could issue an arrest. I had no interest in elegant tricks, and I had no need for proof.

But even so, I knew the truth. With the materials I had, I could use this “apparatus” to find out the truth whenever I wanted.

Anyways.

My objective had never been to find the truth anyways.

After promising to meet tomorrow and parting ways with Sudou, I headed for home. In the shutter town where I had last spoken with Masato, signs of uniformed students had all but vanished. In fact, despite the time there were no passersby whatsoever. It was like a ghost town. I stood still under the flickering, near-dead street lights, and the air around me swarmed with bugs.

—Ahh, I could finally reach it.

An ominous sense of exaltation bubbled up within me. I could feel a painful burning sensation deep within my eyes. My heart was pulsing violently, as if I had just ran with all my strength. An impetus. Right now, I was being assailed by some manner of impetus. Had I always had this inside me?

That impetus became like a large wall closing in on me. After being thoroughly crushed and scattered to the winds, I sought a means of reformation. I faced the impetus and became one with it.

I wanted to escape. I wanted to get out. Unable to bear it any more, I began running. Ignoring all the red lights, I ran. The impetus resembled lust, and I lost my ability to ignore it. Cracks formed all along my body, I shattered, and it leaked out.

The world turned on its head. Everything was upside down.

Impetus. IMPETUS. I-M-P-E-T-U-S. Guns were built to shoot people, simply waiting for a reason to have their triggers pulled. Waiting and waiting for their moment to burst into action, intoxicating us with their sweet temptations.

When? When was it that this impetus took root within me?

Where did it come from?

“Huff...huff...”

Having been running for no reason, the pain in my feet and my labored breathing caused me to stop once more. Because I stopped, it caught up. My impetus caught up with me.

When it did, I could hear it.

I could hear it. I could hear the sound of metal. Where was it ringing from? It sounded like it was coming from everywhere in the world. It was the first time I had heard it, yet the sound was strangely nostalgic.

The sound that had always bound me. The sound that had always bound Masato Yahara.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

The sound — resembled that of chains.

People don’t need reasons to continue liking or disliking things. Once you’re attached to something, you don’t just keep liking it, your affection often ends up growing.

I couldn’t stop hating Shuuichi Akiyama. His looks, his tone of voice, his personality, I interpreted everything about him in the least favorable way, distorting my perception.

I, who was supposed to be ambivalent towards all other people, learned something for the first time.

This was what it meant to hate someone.

“Hiiragi.”

So when he called out to me during the break after first period, I wanted to let out a groan. He seemed to talking to me an awful lot lately.

Although I let my resentment show on my face, Akiyama paid it no need.

“I apologize for bothering so many times, but I had another question relating to Yahara that I wanted to ask you.”

That was fundamentally the only business Akiyama had with me. Although recently, it seemed like he was merely using it as a pretext to measure something about me.

“This line of inquiry may seem a little peculiar, but please bear with me. Hiiragi, have you ever felt that you were being manipulated?”

I wasn’t sure what he was asking about, and I wasn’t sure why he was asking it.

Akiyama was putting on an air of nonchalance, but something deep within his eyes was burning dimly, refusing to overlook any slight change in my emotions.

“Let me put a little more straightforwardly. Hmm... Let’s suppose that across a person’s life, there are several junctures where crucial choices are laid out for them. Of course, their choice is left to their own will. But even if they don’t perceive it immediately, they will always be left with a nagging doubt. Was that truly my own will? Or was I simply induced to choose what I did?”

“...I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at.”

“For instance, choosing which high school entrance exams to take. Although you are of course the one who makes the final decision, your family, your friends, and your middle school teachers all influence that decision as well. There’s no way to tell the extent to which your true desires were reflected in your decision. You could say that, to a certain extent, the influence of your surroundings lead you to whatever school you ended up attending. And the number of times in a person’s life where their decisions are influenced by others in this manner are countless.”

“Would you mind putting it a little more simply?”

“No problem. Have you considered that Yahara’s actions may have been brought about by a third party’s intervention? The circumstances are of course complicated, but it is possible that somebody exerted a great deal of influence over him. If that influence was wielded intentionally, he could very well be said to have been manipulated.”

“...What exactly are you saying?”

To my disgust, Akiyama was no longer making any effort to conceal his observation and was staring straight at me. It was unsettling.

“What I’m trying to say is this. There is a real possibility that Yahara’s death was brought about as a result of somebody’s manipulation.”

“Almost like magic, huh.”

Akiyama didn’t notice my sarcasm.

“I agree. But upon thinking it over again, something else caught my attention. In the days before he died, Yahara hadn’t been attending school, correct? He wasn’t emotionally stable. In that unstable state, it would have been relatively easy to induce him to take certain actions. At worst, if the person manipulating him was somebody close to him they made have even taken steps to create that instability. Of course, no normal person would be capable of such a thing. But for someone specialized in manipulation, such a thing might not be unthinkable.”

—Wait, what did he just say?

If anyone but Akiyama had said it, I could have written it off. But because it was none other than Akiyama, there was no way I could let that sentence slide.

He wasn’t emotionally stable.

That might be speculation due to Masato’s absence from school. But it wasn’t. The certainty in his words could only be the result of firsthand experience.

Ahh, I was certain of it. Akiyama had run into Masato after he’d stopped coming to school. I was certain that the bespectacled guy Sudou had been referring to was Akiyama.

But he was keeping silent about having seen Masato. He hadn’t breathed a word. And such an action couldn’t possibly mesh with an honors student’s sense of duty.

Which meant that he had to have a reason for doing so.

“Hiiragi, is something the matter? You appear to be trembling.”

Akiyama asked his question while concealing his animosity behind a mask of a smile. He acted as if my response was exactly in accordance with his expectations.

The two of us didn’t mesh with each other. We stared at each other with distrustful eyes filled with naked hostility. Ahh... good grief, we truly are locked away in our closed worlds. We’re looking at the same things, but interpreting them completely differently.

What’s the next stage this man has prepared?

Who does he plan on killing next?

“Akiyama.”

I suddenly recall a conversation I once had at a park in the dead of night. What pattern did he see in the moon?

Feels like there’s a monster baring its fangs above me.

“Akiyama, what do you see when you look at the moon?”

Akiyama answered with a puzzled look on his face.

“At the moon? I see a rabbit pounding mochi, isn’t that obvious?”

Of course. Akiyama could answer like that without a shred of doubt in his mind. Out of the infinite possible interpretations, he applied the one that hewed to common sense.

I responded without thinking.

“You make me fuckin’ sick.”

The same jeer someone else had used before.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

I could no longer get that noise out of my ears.

<noinclude>
==Translator's Notes and References==
<references />

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| Forward to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Miki Kouzuki's Closed World (II)|Kouzuki Miki's Closed World (II)]]
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</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Miki Kouzuki's Closed World (I)

2017-11-27T00:58:03Z

Toshiya: formatting

== Miki Kouzuki's Closed World (I) ==

I was talking to Kouta, who was occasionally staring off into the distance, amidst the hustle and bustle of the pre-homeroom classroom.

It was June 19th. Two weeks had passed since Masato Yahara’s body had been found.

The murder, king of all scandals, sent ripples throughout the school. But contrary to my expectations, the ripples faded within a week. The reason was that Yahara had always been something of an untouchable delinquent, avoided by his schoolmates due to being perceived as an abnormal individual. Thus the event was simply perceived as an “abnormal individual” becoming involved in “abnormal incident,” allowing interest in the entire affair to quickly fade. It was like a gangster getting killed; insufficient to pique the interest of the public.

The school had already returned to its daily routine, everything working normally.

But there was one exception.

The fact that that exception was Kouta went without saying.

Kouta, Yahara’s sole friend, was dragging out his death.

“Looks like they still haven’t caught the killer, huh.”

It would be too sad for Kouta if he didn’t feel that I least I felt sentimental towards Yahara’s death.

“Yeah. They still haven’t been caught.”

But given Kouta’s abilities, he likely realized that my sentimentality was simply a pretense. But he nodded all the same.

...To be quite honest, I couldn’t muster any sadness at Yahara’s death. Although I felt pity for him, that was the extent of it. And I suspected most others would feel much the same way I did. Even his parents didn’t look particularly sad. To the contrary, they seemed rather glad that a nuisance had disappeared from their lives. Every way you looked, people were simply feigning sadness, and most were doing a dozen times worse of a job than I was.

It seemed this fact came as a shock to Kouta. He was trying not to let it show, but... actually, knowing Kouta, he may not have realized it himself.

“Kouta...”

“...hm?”

Even his responses were delayed. He had been like this a lot recently.

“Well, if you’re able to... I’d like you to try to stop thinking about Yahara.

“Why?”

“It might be dangerous.”

Kouta’s eyes widened in puzzlement.

I wasn’t confident. But it looked to me like Kouta’s state was changing by moment to moment. And Yahara was no doubt the cause of that.

The dead can’t use magic.

But a person’s magic is most powerful in the moments before their death. In order to leave behind traces of themselves within another, they can use “agglutination” magic. People put down their defenses when faced with the dying. No matter how much of a sinner that person was, people inevitably forgive them, stop resisting them, and accept their influence. Depending on who their partner is, the living may even unconditionally take on the will of the dead and agglutinate. It’s not dissimilar to succeeding the will of the departed.

And Yahara clearly left something in Kouta. If Kouta were a normal person, even if he agglutinated he would only extract the parts that were useful to him, so he himself wouldn’t change. But this was Kouta we were talking about. The pinnacle of indifference, not only would he not notice changes within himself, he wouldn’t even care whether they were for good or for evil.

So if he kept thinking about Yahara, he was in danger of agglutinating.

He was showing symptoms already.

“Recently, my magic hasn’t been as potent.”

Kouta wasn’t supposed to have an attribute, but he was beginning to take someone else’s on. He was drifting away from mine. As for whose attribute he was taking on, it should go without saying — Masato Yahara’s. If things continued on this way, at worst Kouta might end up becoming a powerful, evil magus like Yahara was.

“Everyone, note that the bell has rung. I would appreciate it if you took your seats.”

At the same time as the bell rang, their class representative’s voice called out. Their class’s distinctive routine.

Thinking it rather unpleasant as I looked at said representative, I somehow felt a sense of displeasure from him when our eyes crossed. Was he trying to tell my to get out of his classroom?

“...I have to get going. Let’s give it our best this week, okay?”

“Yeah.”

On account of Yahara’s incident, we had postponed his home visit until this week. I had until then to think of a way to resolve this situation. I shouldn’t be in so much of a hurry. My foe was powerful, but he was also dead. Even if this situation continued, my foe couldn’t draw any more magic.

“See you later, then. Bye bye!”

Although my hand was trembling, I smiled as sweetly as possible. A smile has the power to forcibly bind a person. That’s why I made sure to never forget to smile.

My bedroom. It was both my territory and within a boundary. It was the place where my magic was amplified the most. In there, there should be no shortage of ways to dispel Yahara’s magic.

After I returned to my classroom, I scowled as if I were glaring at a blackboard and thought about Kouta.

I had to reanalyze the individual named Kouta Hiiragi.

Kouta had low magic resistance. He took magic magic in without resisting in. The reason for that lay in his efforts to avoid possessing an attribute of his own. His entire life was makeshift. Changing his attribute from moment to moment, he spent his days noncommittally. There were plenty of people who lived like that. Heck, I had been that way once too.

But most people wouldn’t go so far as to forget their own attribute. Even if they changed themselves on the outside to match their partner, they would be loath to accept them inside their very attribute.

But Kouta had no such reaction. He would take people in not just superficially but to the bottom of his heart.

What I was most concerned about was that attribute taking hold after being accepted so.

It was practically a miracle that an attribute hadn’t taken hold in him yet. As proof of that, he had already started becoming stained in mine.

Attributes are largely determined by one’s family environment. When you’re young, your family helps form the basis for your attribute. Whether you try to rebel against your parents or ingratiate yourself with them, through that process your attribute takes its form.

But for whatever reason, Kouta never created a baseline personality. He wasn’t influenced by his family.

As for the reason no attribute had taken hold in him yet, it was likely due to the fact that he had never had any particularly deep relationships outside his family either. Given his disposition, despite his ability to make friends he was probably unable to make close friends or a girlfriend. In order to form deep relationships, people have to lay themselves bare. But Kouta had nothing to lay bare. He was empty. He had no way of forming such relationships. Although he didn’t realize it himself, he had a habit of keeping others at an arm’s length so as to avoid forming such deep relationships.

That was my hypothesis.

So with that to work off of, I contemplated how to save him from Yahara’s clutches.

I had to first discern how exactly he had changed. But understanding that, I could uncover the properties he didn’t have naturally, correct them, and bring him back to normal. As long as I could do that, everything would be fine.

I was left with a nagging sense of discomfort.

But what specifically made me uncomfortable?

In order to collect my thoughts, I focused my vision on the tip of my mechanical pencil. You often saw people in manga and such close their eyes to focus, but my approach was the opposite. I would open my eyes wide and focus on a single point. It was even better if that point was something with traces of my magic in it. My mechanical pencil, which I used every day, fit that definition to a T. I stared at the tip for so long it got burned into my retinas. With that as my signal, my thoughts sharpened.

But right in the middle of all this, someone poked my back several times, breaking my concentration.

“C’mon, Sayuri! What do you want?”

Whispering so the teacher wouldn’t hear me, I turned to glare at the culprit, Sayuri.

Her dyed-brown hair wash in a straight perm. Her loose sweater intentionally concealed her hands. And wearing a short skirt that accentuated her universally-esteemed legs was my classmate Sayuri Taneoka. Her willful, almond-shaped eyes shone with self-esteem and strong intent. From the first day of school I realized that she would be the center of attention in class, so I make sure to curry favor with her.

Sayuri’s personality was strict, which I was fond of. And she wasn’t the type to put others down. So even though I called myself a magus, we still got along quite well.

“You haven’t taken any notes in forever. You’ve got something on your mind, right?”

She went on, grinning for some reason.

“It’s about a guy, right?”

...Well, she wasn’t wrong.

“Ooh, looks like I nailed it. If that’s the case, did Makino confess to you?”

“...Makino?”

That wasn’t the name that was on my mind.

“Oh, that’s not it? It got out that he had the hots for you, so I figured he must have finally confessed.”

Hearing this, I glanced at Makino’s seat. He happened to be glancing at me as well, and as our eyes met I returned his smile.

Makino did act over-familiar at times, but... was that really the case?

“Besides, doesn’t everyone already know that I’m going out with Kouta?”

“Yeah, but isn’t that, like, you know? Aren’t you two one of those fake couple-type deals? You know, where you go out with some random guy to keep the rest of the guys away? You know he doesn’t suit you, he’s like a background character or something.”

While that wasn’t true, the fact that we weren’t a normal couple was. But getting into the details would be messy, so I just laughed ambiguously.

Although she seemed to want to drag the conversation out and began poking me again, I simply ignored her.

Good grief, Sayuri... or rather, all high-school-age girls seemed to love talking about romance. Perhaps that was a simple form of magic.

Kouta.

Kouta. Kouta.

I want to protect him. No matter what.

At long last, it was finally lunch break.

We sat in the courtyard as always, each eating our own sandwiches. After my initial failure with the homemade lunches, I decided that I would try again once I had practiced a little more. Granted, I had only practiced once since then, but... sooner or later!

With Yahara’s glare no longer present, I was a little concerned that Yamazaki or whatever his name was would come hassle us again, but in the two weeks since the incident had come to light he hadn’t shown up once.

I had decided that during this lunch period, I would take a different approach from this morning. In order to root out the cause of my discomfort, I wanted to see Kouta in as flat a condition as possible. To do that, I had to hide my concern and act just as bubbly as always. Given Kouta’s disposition, no matter how down he was over Yahara’s death, he would probably match my behavior and interact with me just as he always did.

Just as I expected, Kouta was talking perfectly normally. As we conversed, we laughed together, and I would occasionally unilaterally touch hom on the back or shoulder.

“So in other words, you really are collecting lizard tails and hanging out with black cats, aren’t you, Miki?”

As far as Kouta was concerned, this conversation didn’t particularly have any deeper meaning.

“I don’t, I’m telling you. I try to avoid following any formal conventions or anything. Although, it is true that certain rituals can strengthen magic’s power.”

“Are you saying that there’s things you wouldn’t do for the sake of magic?”

I was at a loss for words.

At my abrupt change, Kouta looked at me with worry on his face.

“Yup. After all, there are some things that if you go too far with, you become unable to go back.”

...That’s right. Ever since “that mistake,” I had been suppressing my magic. Compared to how I was back then, I had much more common sense and much less power.

Is Kou even the one you’re really tryin’ to protect? ...Heh, you can’t even refute it. What you’re tryin’ to protect by force-staining Kou’s ass Is your flimsy-ass, brittle little closed world.

I suddenly recalled the words Masato Yahara spit at me.

I had no retort for him. After all, I couldn’t proudly puff up my chest and proclaim it to be false.

Even now, I wasn’t certain that staining Kouta with my magic was the right thing to do.

“What do you mean by ‘unable to go back’?”

After I had gone silent, Kouta asked me a question as a follow-up.

So with all my effort, I put on a smile.

“Well... you know how integrating into everyday society is pretty tough, right? You know that it’s not something that just anyone can do, right?”

“You’re right. My sister refuses to go to school, and a couple of my relatives are shut-ins, so what you’re saying kind of resonates.”

“I see.” You being the way you are makes me worried for your sister as well, but I’ll set that issue aside for now. “The more a person holes themselves up in their closed world, the more powerful their magic becomes. So if you’re completely compatible with normal society, you can’t use it. But if you entrust everything to magic, your closed world becomes all-encompassing. If that happens, the people around you will see you as a weirdo or a freak.”

“Like Matsumi-senpai?”

“...Ahh, maybe.”

I had heard about Ririko Matsumi from Kouta. Although the scanning she used surpassed my ''interpersonal magic'', I knew how to explain parts of it.

She fixed her eyes in place and let out a strange voice that sounded like a machine noise. It was self-hypnosis that let her raise her powers of concentration to the extreme. A ritual designed to open her magical circuits. Normally to accomplish that you’d have to draw a magic square, mutilate yourself, or do some other form of large-scale preparation, but it seemed she didn’t need to. This was probably because she believed in her magic implicitly.

Ririko Matsumi had isolated herself from society.

A commonplace worldview leads to relatively weak magic. Furthermore, it lacks appeal. Most people recognize that they’re going to die without accomplishing anything or leaving behind and notable traces. Because it’s so unappealing, some people want to discard it. There’s plenty of types of dubious, half-baked kinds magic, like cults, that try to quietly drive away commonplace worldviews.

Ririko Matsumi is a person who discarded her commonplace worldview.

“Miki, do you know anyone who became unable to go back?”

I did.

I knew of someone other than Ririko Matsumi.

And the person who drove her to that point was none other than myself.

“Nope. I just know this all in the abstract.”

I lied.

I didn’t have faith in myself to explain it right now.

“Huh.”

Kouta casually saw through my lie. He had to have seen through it. But because he was Kouta, he didn’t follow up on it.

And yet—

Discomfort.

The discomfort I had been looking for was right here.

“Miki, is something wrong?”

Kouta gazed at me worriedly. He was staring at me. It was like he was trying to peer into me.

That’s it. Those eyes. Kouta’s eyes weren’t like that before. Kouta was analyzing my responses.

Kouta excelled at understanding others. But he never cared about their motives. He simply understood things as they were. It was precisely because he didn’t care that he didn’t have an attribute.

“Miki? What’s going on? Is it something I <ref>This... doesn't translate super neatly. Essentially, Japanese has a number of variants on the word "I", with Kouta generally using a more polite, reserved masculine I ("boku") and Masato using a less polite, aggressive masculine I ("ore"). Throughout the story, all instances of "ore" are going to be and have been bolded, as those both plot-relevant and sort-of bolded in the original text.</ref>did?”

I knew. A man whose eyes looked like that.

A man who called himself “I” like that.

Masato Yahara.

I lightly touched the red hair band, which appeared completely ordinary, that was keeping up my hair. It was an inexpensive hair band, the kind you could buy anywhere. But because it held up my hair, the place in my body most densely packed with magic, almost every day, it had gradually changed into something special. Perhaps if the right person looked at it, it would appear to glow orange.

I had a means to release him from the curse. For Kouta’s sake, I resolved to use this hair band in the most effective way possible.

But, why?

Even though I was doing it for Kouta’s sake, it felt like I was betraying him.

<noinclude>
==Translator's Notes and References==
<references />

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| Back to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Masato Yahara's Closed World (I)|Masato Yahara's Closed World (I)]]
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| Forward to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (II)|Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (II)]]
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</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Masato Yahara's Closed World (I)

2017-11-27T00:52:12Z

Toshiya: formatting

== Masato Yahara's Closed World (I) ==

I watched someone get murdered once.

It was back when I was still in kindergarten. Both my parents worked and were away from home a lot, so my grandma usually ended up taking care of me. My parents married late, which meant that my maternal grandma, who was a widower in her seventies, was firmly in the “geezer” camp. Having to take care of me probably put a toll on her.

Despite my parents’ neglect, though, I was a pretty satisfied kid. In retrospect, that was probably thinks to my grandma working her ass off. The two of us were as thick as thieves.

On that day, the two of us were looking after the house as always. I had roped grandma into playing hide-and-seek, forcing her into the role of seeker. Opening a closet’s aged, poorly-fitted door, I found and wedged my five-year-old body into a pile of densely packed futons and muted myself.

Grandma was having a difficult time finding me and was noticeably flustered. Watching her from a crack in the door, I laughed silently to myself.

Suddenly, the front door could be heard opening.

Thinking that perhaps I had run outside, Grandma hurried to the entrance.

Immediately, I heard a scream. And at the same time, an unfamiliar, threatening voice.

At my young age, all I could do at the unsettling atmosphere was tremble anxiously.

I could hear two sets of footsteps drawing near, one belonging to my grandma. Instinctively, I balled myself up among the futons and held my breath. But at the same time I was assailed by a strange sense of duty, as if it were my responsibility to observe what was about to happen.

I could just barely make out my grandma and the man from the cracked door.

“Dammit, the place was s’posed to be empty...! Oy, hurry it up!”

Driven by the man’s angry voice, Grandma opened the chest of drawers. She was likely looking for cash or the bankbook, but as she didn’t know where it was and was panicking, she just opened and closed drawer after drawer. All the while, the man was growing gradually more irritated.

After a little longer of this, Grandma handed the man a stuffed envelope. It was likely filled with cash.

“No hard feels, grams. Just can’t be lettin’ myself get caught. Blame yourself for being home on the wrong day.”

The man took out a sharp object (I think it was a pocketknife or a kitchen knife, but in my panic I didn’t pay much attention to the particulars). In alarm, Grandma screamed something incomprehensible. This earned her even more ire from the man, who pinned her arms behind her back.

Grandma screamed.

“Help me... Maa, help me!”

Although a kindergartener like myself would hardly be able to accomplish anything here, she screamed frantically nonetheless.

But even in the face of my beloved grandma’s bawling, I didn’t leave the closet.

“Maa! Help me! Help me!”

Watching my grandma scream my name over and over, I wanted to remind her, “We’re playing hide-and-seek, so I can’t come out until you find me.”

The blade swung.

A death wail.

A moan.

A weak, self-derisive laugh.

Tears.

A pool of blood.

Until it was all over, I kept perfectly still. I was still playing hide-and seek.

I was playing hide-and-seek to this day, unable to return to the real world.

“You’re Masato Yahara, right?”

As I was putting my indoor shoes in the worn-out shoe rack, a girl called my name. I recognized that voice. Having a bad feeling about this, I heaved a sigh.

“...You sure you’ve got the right guy? Kou’s still back in the classroom, right?”

“Please don’t try to blow me off.” Miki Kouzuki glared at me with trembling fists.

I’d suspected that she had something she wanted to say to me. Without meeting her eyes, I spoke.

“Is this about tryin’ to get me to away from Kou?”

Having the words stolen out of her mouth, Kouzuki knit her eyebrows.

“He doesn’t have shit for magic resistance. If I, a magus unaware of my own powers, am around him I’ll be a bad influence and stain him in my attribute. And that wouldn’t do anyone a lick of good. Something along those lines?”

Kouzuki’s eyes widened in surprise.

What the hell? I thought her value system was gonna be something more interesting, but it ended up being something even I could come up with.

Rapidly losing interest, I set my loafers on the floor.

“So I’m a magus, huh. You’re givin’ me too much credit. Anyways, everyone would just run away from me before I could cast a spell on ‘em anyways.”

“Y...you understand magic?”

“Who knows. I just translated what I was sayin’ into your gibberish.”

“I...if you understand that much, please just stay away from Kouta. You said that everyone just runs away from you, but there’s one exception.”

There was no need to clarify who she was talking about.

“Staying away from him would be for Kouta’s sake. If he keeps being surrounded by my magic, he’ll take on my attribute. He’ll be able to avoid getting stained in a poor attribute like yours or Matsumi-senpai’s.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

I glared at Kouzuki unconsciously. Knowing what kind of person she was only amplified my rage.

“You’re full of yourself. Who the fuck do you think you are, going around babbling about how you’re going to protect Kou or some shit. Did Kou ask for that? He didn’t, did he.”

“...I thought that would be for the best-”

“For the best? Pretty words from everyone’s favorite freakshow. Keep your fucking self-satisfactory bullshit in check, wouldja? Is Kou even the one you’re really tryin’ to protect? ...Heh, you can’t even refute it. What you’re tryin’ to protect by force-staining Kou’s ass...”

I spit it out.

“Is your flimsy-ass, brittle little closed world.”

It seemed that her self awareness didn’t extend that far. Her face went white at my words.

I drew close to Kouzuki, who was slowly shrinking away from me, and lifted her up by the collar of her uniform.

“But by talkin’ to you like this, I realized that something I don’t need to worry about. You just aren’t worth my time.”

Fear appeared for the first time on Kouzuki’s face. ...Nah, that ain’t it. Since the moment she called out to me, her fists had been trembling from how hard she had tried to hide her fear. That’s how powerless a person she was.

“He’ll just come to hold you in contempt, and that’ll be that. Later.”

I didn’t want to so much as look at her any more. Releasing her collar, I walked away from the shoe rack without sparing her a second glance.

With all the rumors swirling around her, I figured she’d have a little more of a backbone in her. But she was just another person with no faith in their own damn world. She just wanted Kou in order to reinforce her world.

She was just like all the others. She gave off the sound of chains.

Her chains were quieter than others, maybe, but that was all there was to it. She was just another nobody, far removed from the ideal I strived for.

She was just as much a nobody as I was.

Chains.

I started seeing the chains when I was in ninth grade.

In contrast to my peers, who were grappling with entrance exams and relationship woes, I could feel myself growing distant.

The contents of their worries even drove some of them to cut their own wrists, but I couldn’t see at as any more serious than whether a sand castle was knocked over or not. After all, even if they wounded themselves they didn’t plan on dying. I — I, who truly knew death — could tell that those wounds were nothing more than a tool to highlight the extent of their woes.

Once I became a complete bystander, simply gazing on them in observation, I noticed something.

Everything they held dear was created.

With so much information flowing down the muddy stream of our world, a simple papier-mâché construction is enough for them all to implicitly believe it.

They were being controlled.

Made to dance in perfect harmony, they were being controlled by fiendish, brutal chains.

Then, I became able to see those chains. And from the materialized chains, I could even hear noise. The rattling noise they made was raucous. The noise was so raucous it sapped all vitality from me. Once that was finished, I began losing my ideals as well. Lost in the pursuit of cheap pleasure, I no longer cared if the world was in color or monochrome, or if it was real or simply the inside of an image. To that end, I engaged in a string of unethical activities. Pleasure was all that was real to me, but it was merely ephemeral, and in the end time simply passed while nothing else changed. My world was peeled apart by the chains. It was a simple, complete excoriation.

When I finally managed to regain a grip on my peeled-up world, a thought suddenly floated to my mind, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I wanna kill someone.

Murder had taken the color from my world and reduced my reality to the state it was in today. Ironically, as a consequence of its gravity, it was also what lay just beyond my outstretched hand. No matter where I reached out towards, I would run into those homicidal urges. Like a butterfly trapped in a spiderweb, no matter how much I struggled I couldn’t move. From where I was, I couldn’t see anything else.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

Wanting to flee from the chains and the noise, I reached out my hand. This time, my hand got caught on those homicidal urges. They began controlling me.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

But even then, I would never have believed it.

That there could be a person unfettered by those chains.

“Kusukusu... you two really are interesting, aren’t you?”

I could tell that the girl, who had a childish face and and looked somewhat off-balance, was different from the moment she started speaking to us.

Her smile seemed like it was free of any influence from the events of the outside world.

“Whaddya want?”

Who was she? Like Kouzuki, was she trying to take advantage of how fragile Kou’s chains were?

“Oh, Ririko was just thinking how she wanted to become good friends with Hiiragi!”

She didn’t react even a little to my display of animosity. And she didn’t give the sense that she was playing dumb. Humans are creatures bound by fear. Anyone would react to the presence of violence.

Then what was wrong with her?

It seemed that “different” didn’t cut it. She was clearly lacking something fundamental.

“What’s so interesting about you two are the call signs you’re giving off.”

She spoke as if her peculiar words were commonplace. That was something neither I nor Kouzuki was capable of. This girl didn’t desire salvation, and she had no doubts in her own world. In actuality, she was basically rejecting interaction with the rest of mankind.

Inside a closed world that was like a perfectly sealed-off room, she had no need to grow.

I’d heard rumors about this. Rumors about an upperclassman who had been coming and going from a psychiatric hospital since she enrolled.

“Hey, are you that Ririko Matsumi chick?”

“Oh, yes. Ririko is Ririko, of course.”

According to the rumors, she lacked boundaries. Unable to tell where her “self” began and ended, she supposedly saw everything outside her body as simply parts of herself. She was under the misapprehension that not just her body but everything she could more or less freely manipulate was part of her. Although it was a bit more allegorical in my case, I’d certainly had times where I felt unable to put down my phone, as if it were a part of my body. But as far as she was concerned, her unification with her electrical devices was no allegory. To her, using electrical signals from her brain to move her limbs wasn’t just the same as using a remote to change the channel on TV, the remote and the television themselves were just parts of her body.

It was a world beyond comprehension. But regardless, it was the world she lived in.

A different world from the rest of us.

“Interesting, aren’t they? White and ultramarine, huh. Aren’t most people orange? But you two are different. Ririko likes white, you know. Makes me want to do something.”

I had no idea what those colors meant in her code. All I could tell was that they were code for something else.

I glanced at Kou. Even though he’s confused, he wouldn’t reject another, even if that person is Matsumi. But even Kou likely won’t be able to grasp her world.

...Actually, is that really true? This is the same Kou who’s spent a whole month getting to know me, after all.

“Hey, hey, can Ririko read you?”

“Read me?”

“Oh, that’s right. Most people can’t do scanning. But, but, you see, Ririko can do scanning!”

Maybe Matsumi, who blurs the boundaries between electrical devices and her own body, is deluded into thinking she can fulfil the role of an electrical device herself?

But something quickly makes me realize that that perception was halfhearted.

“Beep bibibi, bip bip bibeep.”

It’s not a delusion. It’s something far worse. In that instant, Matsumi became an electrical device.

That’s right. Why didn’t I notice it sooner?

This chick doesn’t have any chains at all.

The moment I realized that, it felt as if the false machine noise was causing the world to violently lurch. I couldn’t keep my footing. The world was slanting simply because I had become aware of my own change. Unable to remain in place, I began tumbling. I was rolling. Rolling and rolling. Rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling.

How did this happen?

...Ah, because I didn’t believe. I didn’t believe that a person without chains could even exist. That’s why my world was doing an about-face.

“Beep bibibi, bip bip bibeep.”

The sun went out. What illuminated my world in its place was Matsumi’s eyeball. Within those dead-fish eyes, her pupil was focusing like the lens of a single-lens reflex camera. Taking on heat, her eyes began to sear me. It burns! It burns! It burns!

Beep bibibi, bip bip bibeep.

The noise pursued me and, as I spun through space, bored its way into my body. From near and from far, the noise continued to ring. I had long since lost track of where it was ringing from. I was becoming to create the noise as well.

The lens was simply floating in space.

Those eyes turned towards me.

“Ah-”

What part of me were they looking at?

They were looking at me burning and tumbling through space. I’m begging you, don’t expose this hackneyed end of mine. Those pitiful limitations of mine. Those banal thoughts of mine.

“...don’t.”

I didn’t want to know.

“Beep bi—”

I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know.

“DON’T!”

As I scream, the floating eyeball lens vanishes. In that moment, I’m assailed with vertigo and the world goes black. Once the light returned, I could see Kou looking concerned and Matsumi pouting.

“You don’t have to shout like that, you know...”

“Excuse me, Matsumi-senpai, what was that just now...?”

“Hold on, hold on. Ririko’s going to put it into words now.”

Matsumi stopped being human again.

She somehow got information about Kou, and she’s translating it such that we can understand it as well. A computer turning binary into letters and images.

“Unconsciously rejects his mother due to her hysterical temperament. Receives mixed messages from his father. Neither parent approaches parenting with any degree of consistency. His sister enjoys killing cats. Has been ordered by his family to deal with the cat corpses. Will listen to anything he is told. Susceptible to brainwashing. Versatile. Abnormally good at understanding the value systems of others. Has no self, so regards others with-”

“Th... that’s enough! Matsumi-senpai, please cut it out!”

She returns to being human.

“So? So? How was that? How’d you like my scanning? Did Ririko get that all right?”

“Senpai, can we go now?”

“Whaat? But Ririko wanted to chat more! He’s white, after all! He’s the only one!”

“Sorry, but we got places to be.”

“Ririko understands... Well, Ririko guesses it can’t be helped then. Ririko guesses she’ll see you later then, Tanihara.”

Not thinking, I stopped in my tracks.

People read my last name, “谷原,” incorrectly all the time. So the mistake itself wasn’t particularly notable.

“Huh? Aren’t you Tanihara?”

“It’s read ‘Yahara’, Senpai.”

So in other words, that’s what that meant.

Matsumi’s “scanning” gathers information visually.

We strolled through an abandoned shopping district, shuttered up as a result of its inability to compete with a large nearby shopping mall.

I gazed at Kou in silent shock.

Even when faced with Ririko Matsumi, he didn’t give up on trying to comprehend her. If we hadn’t gotten lucky, he would have completely taken her in.

It would be fine if he got invaded by Kouzuki. He’d be treated as a freak, sure, but at least he’d be able to keep on living. But Matsumi was no good. If he took in something broken, he’d become broken as well. It would be like downloading a malicious app.

“Get this through your head. Don’t talk to that birdbrain again. She’ll be a bad influence on you. Got it?”

Kou nodded. But it wasn’t because he was convinced, it was because he felt the situation called for it.

I didn’t what his true intentions were. ...Hell, I didn’t know if he had any intentions in the first place.

“Masato, did you understand what was going on with that scanning thing?”

Scanning.

Based on the fact that she got the information visually, I had a hunch as to what the trick was. But it was tough to put into words.

I suspected the reason she was able to guess my name was because she subconsciously knew it already. Even though the time she spent in the hospital kept her from showing up at school much, she was still a fellow student of ours. There was plenty of times she could have run across our names.

The only abnormal part was how she went about recalling that information.

Normal people quickly forget information they don’t need. For example, we don’t remember the faces of every person we pass on the street.

But what if this “scanning” let her pull out memories from deep in her brain, memories that anyone else would have lost? If that were the case, then simply having passed us in a hallway would be plenty for her to know our names.

It then followed that her being able to put names to faces, as well as dredge up all that information about Kou, was simply the result of outstanding insight born from her recollection, observational, and analytic prowess. Of course, she couldn’t do that all the time, but only when she was in a trance state from putting herself under the self-hypnosis called “scanning.”

Seen from the outside, a skilled fortune-teller would appear to be able to trace the steps of another’s life. Hell, even I’d be able to guess whether someone’s a virgin or not a good chunk of the time. But Matsumi was on another level. She was able to come up with his personality, his familial structure, and even where he lived. It was practically a superpower.

It was abnormal.

If I told told Kou all this, nothing good would come of it. It would just end up driving him towards taking her in.

“... not even a little.”

So I dodged the question.

Even if Kou didn’t believe me, he neither pressed me nor showed signs of dissatisfaction. Ahh, now that I think about it, there’s something wrong with this guy too.

The light in front of us turned red and we reflexively stopped.

“Why the hell’d we stop?”

“The light was red, wasn’t it?”

“There ain't any cars here.”

Ahh, I can hear it. I can hear that noise again.

Just beyond my field of view lay those chains. Beautiful chains that acted as if they owned us, designed to stop us from moving.

I couldn’t help but despise the chains. They bound me and were the cause of everything that drained color from my world.

...or so I thought.

And because that’s what I thought, I yearned to be a person without chains. I truly thought I desired release from those chains.

But then I met such an unfettered person.

And what did I feel, upon gazing at that person?

Fear.

I was scared of that person without chains. I felt fright. A feeling that implied unimaginable distance.

There was no chance I could become a person without chains.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

As if flaunting themselves, the chains’ noise echoed.

You will never be released.

Shut up.

You will be bound until the day you die.

Shut up!

But you already knew that, right? The reason these chains will never be torn off is because you yourself have no desire to tear them off.

I SAID SHUT UP!

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

The noise keeps resounding.

The sound of chains. The sound of common sense. The sound of morals.

And the sound of my desire to kill.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

“Ahh... I wanna kill someone.”

After parting ways with Kou, I was unable to muster the urge to return home and inside took the train into the suburbs. While the area around the station was prosperous in comparison to the shutter town I had just left, the dust and general atmosphere made it clear that it was past its prime.

I wandered about aimlessly. A department store that would likely be demolished in a few years. A old-fashioned movie theater that looked wholly unfit to bring a date to. A bookstore that had been repurposed into a shop for otaku goods. The town, which was connected, bound, and encircled by power lines, stunk of sewage. If you boiled down all the mud, the sludge, and the coal tar, it seemed like it like it would make for delicious, piping hot ramen broth.

I sat on a bench in front of the station and observed the passersby. The people waiting by the station were like marionettes, each and every one of them glued to their smartphones. Social networks, forcing them into round-the-clock surface-level pleasantries. Aggregation sites pushing morals upon them that are neither right nor wrong. Blogs flooding with comments, not from individuals but from their very souls. All an horrifying gambit to strengthen the chains. A colossal trap.

The definition of people who would be better off dead.

Let’s suppose that that definition was “people who are detrimental to society.” If that’s the case, people who killed innocents would be better off dead. People whose contributions to society were outweighed by the harm they cause to others would be better off dead too. People whose deaths would be rejoiced at rather than wept at and people who inspire anarchic thoughts, those people would obviously be better off dead. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we just rounded up all those brutes and left only the good people?

...It probably would. With fewer recessive genes around, of course humanity’s going to be wiser. If, hypothetically, the world was in peril and we had to trim the population, you can bet your ass that the morals around protecting the weak and disadvantaged are going to be the first to go and there’d be large-scale massacres. ...Well, it doesn’t have to be something as over-the-top as that. All I’m trying to get at is that there’s plenty of people who could die and no one would mind.

“Yo.”

I call out to a passing woman in an immaculately-pressed suit, likely on her way home from the office.

In that instant, I got the impression that although she works hard and contributes to society, she frequently tramples on the feelings of others. Huh, maybe I’m awakening intuitive powers like Matsumi’s? Or maybe it was just a delusion of mine? I don’t much care either way. As far as I cared, she was a detriment to society - someone who was better off dead.

“Are you speaking to me?”

“Yeah, anyone’s fine. There’s plenty of ya around. Now, a riddle. When’s a door not a door?”

“When it’s ajar... Excuse me, what did you want?”

“Who ordered you?”

“Huh?”

“Who ordered you to say ‘when it’s ajar’?”

The woman stopped in her tracks, fear spreading across her face.

“Nobody ordered me to do anything... what’s going on...”

“That’s right! No one ordered you to do shit, right? Then why does everyone answer the same fucking way? There’s gotta be plenty of other reasons why a door wouldn’t a door, right? Then why’s it gotta be ajar and not a dormant volcano or somethin’?<ref>The original joke here went about as follows:
* Masato: "What kind of pan (bread) can you not eat?"
* OL: "A frying pan?"
* Masato: "Why'd the answer have to be frying pan? Why couldn't it have been A-kyuusenpan (class-A war criminal)?"</ref>”

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

Ah, shut up. This chick’s chains were particularly noisy. Women tended to have grimmer, sturdier chains than men.

“You’re pissing me off. You want me to fucking kill you?”

“Wh...what are you talking about? Is there something wrong with you?”

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

“Get outta my sight. If you don’t, I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

Not bothering to hide her repugnance, she quickly ran off.

Heh. Once I considered what I just did objectively, I give a strained laugh.

It would seem I’d developed a bug.

Walking around is too much of a pain. After clenching my teeth and somehow dragging myself to a nearby park, I layed down on a bench. Overheating to an unbearable degree, my brain forcibly entered a shutdown state. My consciousness faded away dreamlessly.

I opened my eyes.

The blue sky flooded into them.

I couldn’t form thoughts. The sun’s blinding light assaulted my eyes, and the painful stimulus gradually restored my consciousness.

My back flared up in pain, and I remembered that I had been sleeping in a park. I reached for a cigarette, but found to my dismay that my pack was empty. What a fucking joke.

I clutched my head, slowly recalling the events of yesterday.

There’s something wrong with me.

I was aware of how desperate I was getting, but I was able to keep a cool head for now.

But it seemed unlikely that I would be able to fully get back to normal. Upon learning of the existence of a human without chains, I stopped be able to brush away my homicidal urges, which were now simmering to the point of boiling over. I could go mad at any moment. There was even a part of me that wanted to go mad, knowing that there was a chance that doing so might grant me the impetus to commit murder. From that small reason alone, I knew I was past the point of being able to contain these urges. It was past the level of sexual desire, and was more akin to a hunger that scalded my throat. There was no chance the urges would subside.

I would either kill or go mad.

It could only be one or the other.

I decided to return home briefly. I had no idea what my parents would say at this point, but if I didn’t they were liable to file a missing person report out of obligation and a desire to leave a paper trail. And I was out of money. I knew of a method to solve both those problems at once. A method I had used often since middle school.

Kicking aside an empty can as I entered the house, I noted that my parents weren’t home. After fishing through the shelf where grandma pulled the envelope from before she died, I slipped two ten-thousand yen<ref>~$180</ref> bills into my wallet.

But where should I go? I had no destination in mind. But in this state, I couldn’t stay at home, nor could I go to school.

For a moment, I briefly contemplated going to school. Thanks to my reputation, at least all the jackasses I wanted to avoid would stay away from me.

And Kou was there.

Kouta Hiiragi. A man with no firm sense of self. Generally, people analyze what kind of person they themselves are and form a sense of self around that. In a certain sense they label themselves.

But Kou doesn’t. As a result, his self doesn’t settle into any one shape. I dunno what made him like that, but based on Matsumi’s scanning the cause probably lies with his family circumstances.

Because his self isn’t set, Kou tends to take on whatever form his partner wants him to. Every time he interacts with someone, his personality changes little by little. As a result, he’s become able to truly understand others, and not just on a superficial level. He’ll probably grow accustomed to Kouzuki’s magic in no time, and he fully understands my madness as well. He doesn’t resist it, either. That’s why if he’s careless, he’ll end up understanding Matsumi as well and taking her in.

That reminds me, Matsumi likened Kou’s color to “white.” I get it, that kinda makes sense. Kou can take on any other color. That in and of itself is dangerous. That’s why Kouzuki is being all meddlesome and trying to stain Kou in her color; she’s trying to prevent him from getting stained in a malicious color like mine.

Being accepted by others feels good. I learned that for the first time when I met Kou.

Kouzuki’s probably the same. That’s why she trying to keep him for herself.

I guess I can’t go to school after all.

It’s dangerous for me because Kou is there.

Kou is the ultimate sympathizer. He would no doubt accept even me, who’s enveloped in homicidal urges. Upon being accepted by him, I would stop perceiving myself as abnormal, lose my last bits of resistance, and eventually take action. I could picture it easily.

I grabbed a pack of cigarettes from my room and lit one with a shaking hand. The nicotine settled me down a bit, but the urges were unabated.

I slipped a butterfly knife into my pocket as a de facto tranquilizer. I could kill at any time. I could make that call whenever I wanted. Knowing that somehow helped me preserve my sense of reason up until now. But that bit just now was simply meaningless. It simply served to rile me up.

A paper-thin line was all that kept me from using this knife up till now. But that paper-thin line held within it a world of difference.

But I knew.

As I was now, I was liable to cross that line.

When I came to my senses - when I truly came to my senses - it was already night.

Once again I found myself wandering through that deteriorating suburb.

While I knew little about killing time, I knew quite a bit about killing. All I had to do was noncommittally indulge myself. My mind simply sought pleasure without applying any deeper meaning to anything. In other words, I was deteriorating as a human. I was an animal with intelligence but no use for it. There are a surprising number of humans who fit that description, so I didn’t lack for companions. Hip! Hip! Hoorah! Other people were necessary for the pursuit of pleasure. Transient relationships were best. Human garbage was best. If they were men, though, they’d sooner or later commit some kind of sexual assault, so I tried to avoid that. I wasn’t into fucking chicks while they screamed, and taking risks for something I wasn’t into was right off the table.

So I looked for women. Chicks who were into give-and-take relationships. Animals who sought only pleasure like I did. Some of them got clingy, but their kind feared rejection, so once dealt with none of them pressed the issue. Once they got hooked on drugs and drowned in pleasure, any chick would become almost disgustingly docile. Once I was done with with them, they would without fail use every word and action at their disposal to wail about how lonely they were or some shit, but I couldn’t give less of a fuck about their pitiful emotions.

“You’re pretty good.”

One of those women spoke up to me when I was playing darts at an amusement center. What was her name again? I think she told me, but I forgot.

“Do you play darts a lot?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

Through this meaningless conversation, I got authorization to step into her territory. It was obnoxious, but a necessary ritual nonetheless.

The chick wasn’t a so-called “gyaru<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyaru</ref>”. She was no beauty, but her face was attractive enough to put her on the receiving end of gossip. She wore a cheap-looking black dress with hideous pink frills. I could tell from experience that she was available.

The ritual had gone on plenty long enough to move to the next step.

“Anywhere you wanna head after this?”

“Nah, not really, I guess.”

“Follow me, then.”

Although she no doubt knew what was to follow, she simply followed me without putting up any opposition.

Where should we do it? The park? Nah, my back hurts, so a cheap hotel would be better... Such thoughts filled my head as we boarded the elevator.

Leaving the building, we neared a tunnel running underneath the railway. Right as I put my hand on her back as a lip service, I heard an unexpected voice.

“Is that you, Yahara?”

There stood the class representative, carrying a plastic folder and clearly on his way home from cram school — Shuuichi Akiyama.

I was planning on feigning not being able to hear him due to the train passing, but when I reflexively looked over my shoulder, our eyes met.

“What do you intend to accomplish by not coming to school. Your friends are worried about you, you know.”

His words were exemplary yet insincere. It was almost as if someone was making him say them. First of all, did this guy even think I even had friends?

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

Oh, shut up already.

For some reason or another, my earlier hedonism had been enough to temporarily silence the chains. But in the face of this man, that was impossible.

His chains were grotesque, grimmer and sturdier than any other’s.

Feeling an onset of vertigo, I plunged my hand into my pocket and grasped my knife, my de facto tranquilizer.

“What will come of you continuing to neglect school? You will simply idle away your days. If you fail to put in the effort now, many paths will become closed to you, and you will regret it fiercely. Even you should realize such a simple thing.”

“The fuck are you going on about? Don’t go judging everything according your values.”

“I believe my values are extremely commonplace values.”

“Don’t I fucking know it.”

And that’s the thing I hate more than anything else.

“You know it, yet you rebel against it. Don’t you think you’re acting a little childish?”

Akiyama pushed up the bridge of his glasses.

Maybe what he’s correcting with his glasses isn’t his eyesight, but him himself? He was extreme enough to harbor such delusions. He could only see the corrected, beautiful world. Unimportant things didn’t even enter his view. It’s like he’s forgotten that when he takes off his glasses, the blurry, hard-to-grasp world in front of him is the real one.

Akiyama’s gaze shifted from me to the girl. Faced with the honor student Akiyama’s reproachful gaze, she uncomfortably lifted the corners of her mouth.

“Your girlfriend? Won’t you be imposing on her, dragging her around at this hour?”

He spoke unaffectedly. He likely doubted that there was any woman who would willingly spend time around me.

“She ain’t my girlfriend, though.”

“She isn’t?”

“Just some chick I picked up off the street. We were thinking of going and fucking. Get it?”

“Excuse me?”

At his confusion, the girl gave an embarrassed smile. Of course he’s not going to be able simply nod and accept something like that.

Glancing sidelong at Akiyama, I give a snicker.

Hey, look, he can’t even hide it. Inside that disgust-filled expression, he’s jealous that I’m getting laid. That fucker’s so fastidious he probably wouldn’t admit he even had desires like that.

“You... have quite some nerve, saying such immoral things so brazenly.”

“Jealous?”

“I’m well aware of how proud of your faults you are. May I ask you a question, though? How often do you do things like this?”

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

Oh, this isn’t good. Shut up. This guy’s chains just won’t shut up.

“All the fucking time, man. What, you want to get in on this shit? I can teach you how to. It’s easy, all you gotta do is lie about your age to register for dating sites. Studying ain’t good for shit, you feel me? You know, if we all just gave in to our primal desire for pleasure, we could all just live as happy-ass animals.”

Akiyama just glared at me silently.

“...Um, I just remember something I have to do, so I’m going to head home, okay?”

“Yeah.”

The girl had lost interest. I still couldn’t remember her name as I watched her run off.

Akiyama watched her recede far longer than I did.

“Yahara.”

Akiyama spoke, gazing off into the distance.

“What?”

“I believe it is unwise to indiscreetly give voice to the thoughts of others. But I see you and I do not share that opinion.”

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

That noise was whispering to me.

Kill.

Kill. Kill. Kill.

It’s time for you to join the world of killers. That’s the only path left available to you.

Despite being more tightly bound by those unholy chains than any other, Shuuichi Akiyama was enough of a freak to feel not agony but comfort from their embrace. There was no human who symbolized the chains as much as he did. That would make him the ideal sacrifice, no?

“You wanna sermonize? Fine by me. In any case, let’s head somewhere less crowded.”

“I see; very well. I would rather nobody else carelessly inserted their voice in our conversation, after all.”

“Yeah, right. Wouldn’t want anyone getting in the way.”

I didn’t want anyone to get in the way.

Not until it was all over.

Unlike a large city like Tokyo, all you had to do in the suburb was walk a little and the tall buildings would be replaced by rice paddies and vacant lots. Past a convenience store with a sprawling parking lot belying its defunct state lay a similarly-defunct factory. I neither knew nor cared what the factory had originally produced, but the sensation of being underground brought about by its oily, metallic odors made it ideal. I didn’t know what this iron press was designed for either, but when I laid my hand on it it was icy-cold to the touch.

“I’m surprised that you knew about a place like this.”

“I told you about all the chicks I was forcin’ myself on, right? You gotta know about places like this to do shit like that.”

Akiyama scowled in repugnance.

Honestly, I’m surprised he’d follow me to a sketchy-ass place like this so easily. Could he not even begin to imagine himself being in danger? ...Well, he probably couldn’t. That was the kind of victim I was dealing with here. The kind of guy who was filled with baseless conviction that he couldn’t possibly get involved with the kind of incident you see on the news.

He was one of them. Hell, he’d probably even be shocked at the sight of one of his classmates smoking.

“So? I’m ready to be preached at.”

“Before we start, would you mind turning on a light? It’s too dark for me to even make out your face. I feel that that would somewhat defeat the purpose of this conversation.”

Did he really think that being able to see my face would make his shitty-ass sermon stick?

“I think someone left a lantern here...”

Squinting to look for the electric lantern, I found it beside a pile of cigarette butts. As I flicked the switch, Akiyama’s form came dimly into view.

“For you to have lead me this far, I can assume you have at least some intention of hearing me out?”

I choked back laughter. Akiyama didn’t seem to consider for a moment the possibility that he might be assaulted, let alone killed.

I’m sure what’s floating through his mind is something along the lines of a naive-ass after school special. The pitiable delinquent, coming from a bad background, finally finds someone who understands him and, struck by his sincere actions, gets back on the straight and narrow.

What a nice story. Even I, without an ounce of cynicism, think it would be nice if we had more of that kind of story. I’ve seen a lot of delinquents, and most of them are scum through and through. Defective from their very genes. Deficient in brains, empathy, fear, and imagination, the lot of them.

But in spite of all that, this guy has enough faith in his persuasive abilities to follow me all this way. I half wanted to see what the it was about his speech he was so confident in. Hell, maybe they’d even be enough to convert me.

“Let me start by asking you something. Are you happy with the way you’re living right now?”

“As if. I’m always wishing I could change, you know?”

Even right now.

In any case, I was about to be able to change. Not that I had any idea what I was going to change into.

“Then why not simply be more diligent? From what I can see, you certainly aren’t stupid. I mean that, by the way. All it takes for people to change is to find an objective and to put in the effort necessary to achieve it. At the moment you’re lapsing into depravity, but if you take a slightly longer view I have no doubt you can overcome such temptations.”

I laugh inappropriately upon hearing that from the most nearsighted man imaginable.

“So you’re saying if I just become a straight-A student like you, my life’ll open up and become all peaches and fuckin’ cream?”

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be studies. Anything you find that you can put your all into works. And that’s all it takes to open up your life. I’m sure there’s some activity you could find yourself getting engrossed in.”

“There’s nothin’ like that.”

“Are you certain? What about sports, say, boxing or rugby?”

I wanted to throw up. Is this guy actually referencing old after school specials, then lumping all delinquents together in one convenient little category? Faced with such a blad lack of imagination, I began to doubt if he was even truly a straight-A student.

“And if you do indeed find something you want to do, the more paths you have available before you to choose from the better. As you are right now, paths are vanishing.”

“Dumbass. No one who was willing to work their ass off just to keep future possibilities open would be in this situation in the first damn place.”

“You mustn’t give up on yourself. Envision the future, and stride towards it!”

I hadn’t suspected his little sermon would fail to resonate with me to this extent. The things he was saying were ostensibly correct. Perhaps they would have resonated more from a different mouth.

But the words felt like they had no weight behind them. They held none of the speaker’s true feelings. It felt like he was simply reading out of some manual on delinquent correction. The words were completely those of another.

And on top of that, the sound of chains.

His thoughts and mine were in parallel, destined to never intersect.

“Those chains of yours. I’ll pass on being bound by them, thank you very much!”

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

Ahh, I can’t hold it in any more.

I should just kill him. I can’t bear to listen to any more of this. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. When I open up his flesh, my future will open up as well. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. I don’t want to be here any more. I’m never coming back here again. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. This place is empty; no one will hear him scream. His death wails will be a hymnal for me alone, a noise sufficient to drown out those chains. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. His blood will go flying. I don’t know how my world will change. But if nothing else, my monochrome world will be dyed red. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. I should just kill him. I should just kill him.

“Chains? I’m not sure I see any chains to speak of... What are you talking about, Yahara?”

Looking around, he frowned.

“I’ll tell you, so you can die in peace.”

“...Yahara?”

“Chains. The preconceived notions that bind us. That’s a useless definition. They’re essentially rules without order. Morals, forced upon us. Their noise is annoying. I've always wanted to escape them. The only way I can escape them is by killing. In other words, that noise is basically the sound of my desire to kill.”

I pulled the butterfly knife out of my pocket. With a flick of my wrist, the blade flies out.

“Now I can get out of here!”

My reluctance to kill vanished.

Immediately, my hand was filled with the sensation of flesh. It was softer than I expected, barely giving me the sensation I had slashed at all. The experience was lacking.

“Now you can get out of here, hm...”

The red blood dripped loudly.

Now that I think about it, it’s strange. Even though we constantly have blood flowing through our bodies, we only ever think about it at times like this. It’s like not being able to see the forest for the trees. It’s not that our awareness is limited, we’re simply under the impression that it is.

“—On that point alone, we are of the same opinion.”

What sentiment did that smile carry? It seemed similar to the sense of accomplishment a child would display upon digging up an anthill and earnestly squishing its inhabitants.

“Your life has no value... or rather, you’re like a vermin that deserves to die.”

Akiyama spoke bluntly, his voice carrying no inflection.

He pulled out the knife.

As he pulled it out, blood — lifeblood — poured from my chest.

Releasing my wrist, Akiyama pulled the knife out from my chest and tossed it aside. Fluids burst out like a stopped had been uncorked. Red liquid spilled out from my mouth. No matter what it was I was regurgitating, it wasn’t anything good.

“You thought too little of me. Did you really believe that I had no idea why you brought me here?”

I knew it. Akiyama was a deviant.

“You should have realized it as soon as I had you turn the lantern on. I had you light it so I could make out your movements.”

Everyone likely, to varying extents, realizes that they’re bound by something. Even if you couldn’t see the chains, you could definitely feel them choking you.

But Akiyama was completely unlike that. He had no doubts in his own world. He never doubted that what he saw as just was what the rest of the world also saw as just.

Akiyama was too much of an honors student for his own good, and as a result had never been reproached or criticized by the adults in his life. So he was under the misapprehension that everything he did was just.

That was his abnormality.

“I was well aware of your murderous aspirations. And from our discussion, I could tell that those aspirations were not something you were capable of escaping from. That is why I judged it necessary to eliminate you.”

The thoughts Akiyama held were widely held by society to be just. But nobody’s cogs are aligned perfectly. Perhaps the misalignment was small at first. Something another could easily notice and alert him to. But because of how much of an honors student he was, he had nobody to point it out to him. So that continued twisting into the form Akiyama desired. And though the misalignment had grown to lethal proportions, even if someone were to point it out Akiyama was past the point of heeding the words of others.

Vainglory. There was no man alive better suited to that word than Akiyama. I should have recognized that.

“You said something about helping me dying in peace, if I recall? It would appear I am now in a position to offer parting words to you.”

Looking down on my fallen body, Akiyama dug his heel into my face.

“I offer you this explanation so that you can die in peace. Would your world change if you killed someone? I offer you the answer you sought for so long.”

My vision went dark, gradually fading. My sense of pain left me as well, the only thing I could feel any more being a cold sense of emptiness where the knife had stabbed me.

“The answer: it would not. Or perhaps it would? You weren’t a very good point of reference, after all. After all, you’re simply vermin. What emotion stirs within you when you kill a cockroach? I’m sure you feel the same thing anyone does. Nothing but disgust.”

The noise of the world started fading as well. Great, now I didn’t have to listen to Akiyama babble any more.

I fell into the void.

Everything disappeared.

All that was left were my thoughts.

For argument’s sake.

For argument’s sake, if I had successfully killed Akiyama, would my world have changed?

Ahh, I came close enough to tell. I can picture it as if it were real. Even if I had successfully killed Akiyama,

My world wouldn’t have changed.

It wouldn’t have changed a bit.

There would simply have been a corpse rolling around in front of me. And having lost my last thread of salvation, I would have gone mad.

Thinking about it, such a conclusion wouldn’t have been half bad.

But even so, I thought.

If by some miracle I survive this, I would still try to kill Akiyama. I would definitely kill him.

Not to change my world.

Not to erase the sound of chains.

I would kill him because he pisses me off. I would kill him out of simple hatred.

I would be the most hackneyed, worthless killer imaginable.

Indeed.

I am, to a degree that disappoints even me, an unremarkable person.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

I can hear them. I can hear them in my ears, which should no longer be able to hear at all.

I knew. In truth, I’ve known for a long time. The cacophonous ringing was never the sound of other people’s chains. It was—

—the sound of the chains that had always been wrapped around me.

<noinclude>
==Translator's Notes and References==
<references />

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</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (I)

2017-11-26T03:32:09Z

Toshiya: formatting

==Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (I)==

“I’ll protect you with my magic.”

As the 18th of May was becoming part of my normal high school routine, those words changed my world.

The shoe rack was so old it clearly needed replacing and was held together in several places with shoddily-placed packing tape. I had gotten used to its musty odor over the past month, and as I took in the moldy smell, the hand picking up my loafers stopped in midair.

“Ex...cuse me?”

Although we had never spoken before, I could tell from the graceful-looking girl’s sailor uniform and red ribbon that she was a fellow first-year. While her chestnut hair was done up with a red hair band on the back of her head, it felt too short to truly call a ponytail. Her features were reminiscent of a movie star, with a petite face, wide eyes, and skin so white it seemed practically transparent. In contrast with my rather unassuming stature, she was graced with such appeal that any who glimpsed her around school would have practically no choice but to turn their head. She was without a doubt the most gorgeous person I had met in my life.

“Oh right, I guess it would be pretty confusing to be told out of the blue that you’re being protected, huh!”

With a smirk, the girl I had just met began slapping my shoulder in an overly-familiar manner. Even given our lack of closeness, between her looks and her behavior I suspected that the majority of people would feel comfortable around her.

“But you know, I couldn’t just leave you on your own like that. You basically don’t have any, after all.”

Her face grew serious as she said the following.

“Magic resistance, that is.”

That’s not a phrase you hear every day.

My fifteen years of life up until this point had left me woefully unprepared to respond to such a ridiculous proclamation, so I had no choice but to stare dumbfounded at the one who voiced it.

To make matters worse, I’m shy. While my friend Masato would disagree with that assessment, the fact that I had no idea how to interact with people when meeting them for the first time was indisputable. In any case, my head was still spinning as I futilely tried to think of an appropriate response.

To that, the girl mumbled something to the effect of “yup, he didn’t even realize how low his magic resistance is,” reaffirming her assessment of the situation.

In the face of such strange conduct, I finally remembered the name of the character standing in front of me.

“Are you by any chance Miki Kouzuki?”

“The one and only!”

That I knew her name was unlikely to come as a surprise to Kouzuki. It was only natural. She was famous, after all.

She was simply that attractive. Like many beauties before her, as soon as she enrolled she caught the attention of male students throughout the school. However, before long the ranks of suitors quietly receded.

The cause was the circulation of a particular rumor.

The rumor that the girl was delusional — a self-proclaimed magus.

“So what’s this ‘magic resistance’?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. It’s your resistance against magic. How immune to magic you are. I wonder how you got that way, though. Maybe there’s something strange with your astral body?”

Oh look, she started saying something undecipherable.

“...And what on earth is magic?”

“Huh? Hiiragi, you haven’t heard of magic? Haven’t you ever played a video game?”

Somehow or other it seemed she knew my name as well.

“No, what I’m asking is—”

What is the real-world concept that you’re referring to as “magic”?

...Or, that was what I was going to ask, but I stopped myself mid-sentence. If the rumors that she believed herself to be a magus were true, asking that question would cause the conversation to quickly grow awkward. After all, that phrasing would be virtually the same as rejecting the concept of magic outright. After thinking for a moment, I decided to ask a different question.

“Who exactly can use magic? Are you able to?”

“Oh, anyone can use magic. Whether or not they realize it, everyone uses magic all the time. Obviously, I’m no exception.”

“I don’t recall ever using magic, though…”

“Like I said, you just don’t realize it. In our world, even really strong magicians sometimes don’t realize their own abilities.”

“Is that... so…”

It seems she was… the real deal. It felt like it would take some time before I could figure out how to interact with her.

“Yup. Just as I suspected, Hiiragi, you have a talent for magic.”

I had no idea what the basis for that assessment was, but as she said it, the corners of her mouth turned upwards happily.

“Didn’t you just say that I had no magic resistance or something?”

“That’s exactly why you’re talented! There isn’t a direct causal relationship, but it’s really easy for a person like that to become a magus if they spend time around another magus.”

“Huh…”

“Even an unenthusiastic response like that is okey-dokey! I get the feeling you have no idea what I’m talking about, but that’s fine! I’ll teach you magic, starting from some super-basic runes! Once you start getting some hands-on experience, you should start picking it up like that!”

I still had no idea how to respond, so for the time being I just set the loafers I had been holding for some time on the floor.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t properly introduced myself yet, huh. I’m Miki Kouzuki from class 1-3. Nice to meet you~”

“...I’m Kouta Hiiragi from class 1-2.”

“Oh, I know. Nice to meet you!”

With a carefree smile, Kouzuki presented her hand.

When I naturally responded in kind, Kouzuki clasped my hand tightly as if refusing to let it escape. Between the sensation of her soft hand against mine and her charming smile, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

You could hardly blame me, right? If not for her comments about magic and such, Kouzuki’s beauty would be sure to make her popular even within her own sex.

“...Is it ok if I go now, Kouzuki?”

“Oh, that won’t do. Please, call me by my first name. A nickname would do too.”

I’d never before called a woman by either their first name or a nickname. Was my first time going to be taken in this girl who I’d met through the conversational equivalent of a fender-bender?

...It was, wasn’t it. I was the type of person who tended to go with the flow.

“Given names are similar to incantations, you see. Calling someone by their last name generates magic too. If we do that, we’ll be cursed to never quite be friends. With me so far?”

I was in fact not with her. All I was picking up was she didn’t want me to call her by her last name. But that would have to be good enough.

“Miki, then?”

“Hmm… it still feels a bit off… but I guess it just barely passes muster. As for you, Kouta, I guess you’d probably be opposed to having a girl suddenly talk to you too familiarly. We can get to that point gradually.”

It seemed she was capable of at least that level of forethought.

“Now then, could you give me your phone number and LINE ID?"

As instructed, I exchange contact information with her. Under normal circumstances, this might look like something to be envious of. But while it might seem that way on the surface, it’s a different matter when the other party is the kind of troublemaker who would call themselves a magus. That’s the conclusion I arrived at.

While putting on a pretense of indifference, Kouzuki asked me this without taking her eyes from the phone screen:

“Kouta, you think of yourself as pretty normal, right?”

Of course.

“Because you aren’t. Magic aside, even now you seem out of place.”

“I mean, people say that I’m unambitious…”

“This is on a whole ‘nother level, though.”

I had no intention of getting any more involved than I already was, so this line of discussion held no interest for me. After I registered the user with the handle “Magus” as a friend on LINE, I assumed that the conversation had reached its conclusion, so I finished putting on my loafers.

“Umm, can I leave now?”

“Oh, hold on a sec. I left my bag in the classroom, so let me go grab it real quick.”

As my mouth hung open like a dunce, Kouzuki flashed a mischievous smile.

“I’m leaving with you, of course. Didn’t I just say that I would protect you?”

As she said that, she nudged my shoulder innocently.

And that was how my first time going home from school with a girl, which I had been eagerly looking forward to since the moment I enrolled, was stolen by a self-proclaimed magus.

The following day, Friday the 19th.

It was morning, just before homeroom. I leaned back in my chair, exhausted from my unusual experience the day before. Getting to know new people always tends to wear me out, but when that person happened to not only be a beautiful, high-spirited girl but also a self-proclaimed magus I suspect nearly anyone would be drained afterwards.

As I lifted my head from my desk, I could see chalk dust falling from the rim of the blackboard and fluttering throughout the classroom. It gets cleaned every day, so it’s probably just my imagination, but this ancient, not-up-to-code building seemed oddly dark and dusty.

I recounted the previous day’s strange events to my friend, who was sitting in the seat in front of me with his head on his desk. After halfheartedly listening to my tale, he said this once I finished.

“Normally ya’d just assume she has the hots for ya, Kou.”

With his eyes half-closed, Masato Yahara lazily gave me a blunt response. Blunt as it was, though, it seemed he had taken interest in my story. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have even bothered replying.

At our traditionalist high school, Masato’s bleached brown hair and perm were in clear violation of the dress code. And his transgressions didn’t stop there; he also regularly smoked and shoplifted. On looks alone it wouldn’t be strange if he were a member of a certain well-known idol group, but his attitude revealed a level of delinquency such that none of the other students would dare get near him.

“But Miki isn’t exactly normal, right?”

“You ain’t wrong; that chick’s fucked up in the head. You sure she’s not just gonna kill you as some ritual sacrifice?”

He laughed cynically. But I was used to this personality of his.

“Kill me? It’s not like she’s you or anything.”

“I don’t fuckin’ get it. She’s gotta have some ulterior motive. If she was normal, I could chalk it up to a sad attempt to get your attention, but that’s not necessarily the case with her. Whatever she wants to do to you, it might be something completely out of left field.”

Masato jabbed me with his thumb.

“But even though you get the same feeling, you’re not going to be able to turn her down, are ya?”

I couldn’t deny it. I was non-confrontational by nature, after all.

“Hey, may as well make the best of it, right? Hell, if nothing else, you’ll be able to spend your adult life bragging that you spent your high school days hanging out with a hot chick.”

As it didn’t directly affect him, Masato’s advice might seem rather irresponsible.

However, he was rarely off the mark when it came to stuff like this. He had a good head on his shoulders, and his hunches tended to be astute. Although most of what came out of his mouth was extreme, if you ignored his generally dubious manner of speaking what you were left with was fairly insightful.

A sacrifice, huh.

It was scary how plausible that seemed.

As I buried my head in my arms, Masato suddenly dropped his gaze from me, and muttered,

“Ahh… I wanna kill someone.”

This was something of a catchphrase of his. Whenever there was a lull in the conversation, he would murmur this as if he were remembering something. Although it wasn’t exactly a praiseworthy habit, if I paid him any heed it would likely just drive a rift between us.

“Still, for her to make a move on you without even knowing you… looks like our girl Miki Kouzuki’s oddity puts the rumors to shame. Just talking about magic is one thing, but the kind of person who’d graduate to actually doing something ain’t exactly a dime a dozen.”

“You know, the two of you are weird in oddly similar ways.”

“Kouzuki and I are?”

Masato frowned, then pondered for a moment. But before long, he replied with an uncharacteristically serious expression.

“Nah, we aren’t.”

“You’re not?”

“We just aren’t. In fact, we’d probably get along like cats and dogs.”

I didn’t quite follow, but given Masato’s intuitive prowess I had no reason to doubt him.

As our conversation wound down, the morning bell began to ring. Although our school had a bell that signaled that homeroom would begin shortly, I’d never seen it have much effect on the other classes. Until the moment the homeroom teacher walked in the door, the students would generally continue chatting and milling about.

But our class was different.

“Everyone, note that the bell has rung. I would appreciate it if you took your seats.”

The class representative, Shuuichi Akiyama, issued an order. Although the rest of the class balked at the prospect of accepting direction from a fellow student, they didn’t feel it was an issue worth fighting over and quickly fell in line. That was simply how our class operated.

Masato hated that arrangement from the bottom of his heart.

“Hell, if it gets down to it, our relationship might become like mine and that fucker’s.”

“Like yours and the class rep’s? No way.”

Masato and Akiyama were on poor terms. Although delinquents and honor students seldom got along well, it was common for the two groups to intentionally avoid interacting and to simply ignore the other.

But these two were constantly at each other's throats, making their disdain for the other clear.

Let’s turn the clock back a month to April 19th for a moment. Much like today, Akiyama took it upon himself to act in the teacher’s stead, to which Masato vehemently resisted. Slamming his desk to drive his point home, Masato declared, in a voice dripping with contempt:

“You make me fuckin’ sick.”

I, along with the rest of the class, froze. To be completely honest, the rest of us also found something about Akiyama a little bit off-putting. However, his actions were objectively exemplary, so nobody could find a reason to reproach him. We had no legitimate reason to be cautious around him.

But Masato simply gave voice to his revulsion, offering no reasoning. I would be lying if I said I didn’t find it a little refreshing, but Masato had clearly taken it too far.

Normally, an honor student like Akiyama would be unused to such violent outbursts. I was certain that Akiyama would be frightened and atrophy in the face of such a verbal blow.

Which is why I was more surprised by Akiyama’s response than by Masato’s outburst.

“And what of it, may I ask?”

Rather than falter, Akiyama struck back defiantly. I was half concerned that Masato would lose his temper and the argument would devolve into a fistfight.

But instead of leaping at Akiyama, Masato just muttered “go figure” to himself with a disdainful look on his face. Unlike the rest of us, it seemed he anticipated Akiyama’s response. Glaring at Akiyama with eyes that gave the sense they were gazing at filth, Masato ended his tirade with “You’re beyond help,” and returned to his seat without causing any more commotion. Fortunately, things hadn’t gotten out of hand.

For his part, although he said no more, Akiyama was able to clearly convey his contempt for the delinquent Masato. But because Masato didn’t press the issue further, neither did he.

From that point on, their relationship had been akin to a lit powder keg.

“Akiyama and I are like opposites.”

Casting a sidelong glance at Akiyama, Masato smiled contemptuously.

“In what way?”

“Y’know, one of us desires chains, the other rejects them.”

I tilted my head in puzzlement.

“Don’t worry about it. Hell, don’t even think about it. No good’ll come of you overworking that poor brain of yours.”

“Are you calling me stupid?”

“Stupid is as stupid does, Kou. Just try to empty out that head of yours.”

“You’re awful.”

Although he says that, I know he doesn’t actually hate me. I’m so used to it that it doesn’t even bother me anymore.

“Well, for now, you should probably figure out how to dodge Kouzuki’s weird-ass solicitations. You know she’s probably gonna come after you again, right?”

Just as Masato predicted, Miki made her way to our classroom just as the fourth period ended. Entering an unfamiliar classroom is often cause for nervousness, but I didn’t pick up on any whatsoever from Miki.

“Welp, let’s get going!”

Grasping my hand, Miki gave it a tug. I didn’t need an explanation to see that she had no intention of letting me refuse.

I could feel the collective gaze of my classmates boring down on me. I couldn’t blame them. Her reputation as an eccentric aside, Miki Kouzuki was widely hailed as the cutest girl in our school. Yet someone like that was calling my name and grasping my hand, even though I had no notable characteristics to my name other than my relationship with Masato.

“H...hold on a second!”

If I put myself at her mercy, I would no doubt find myself the victim of my peers’ boundless curiosity. My peaceful life would be shattered.

Planting myself in place, I stopped Miki.

“Don’t get all rebellious with me, Kouta! I’m doing this whole bodyguard thing for free, you know. The least you could do is be a little more obedient.”

“At least explain what you’re planning on doing with me!”

“I called for you during lunch, so isn’t it obvious that we’re going to eat together? Use your head! It’s because you’re like that that you don’t have any magic resistance.”

For some reason, she scolded me in earnest.

I felt that I should be the one scolding her for her audacity and lack of common sense, but I suspected that my rebuttal would fall on deaf ears. I could almost picture it.

Releasing my hand for a moment, Miki pulled out two picturesque yellow lunchboxes and displayed them to me proudly.

“Behold, two lunchboxes made personally by my cute self! Consider yourself lucky!”

“Well, I guess it would be hard to argue that you aren’t cute...”

Upon hearing this, Miki put both hands on her cheeks and displayed a bashful expression.

“He called me cute! C’mon, I promise they taste good.”

She pounded on my back exuberantly. She was making a racket, and her acting sucks. Given her reaction, she must be completely used to being called cute.

“Let’s go to the courtyard!”

I could no longer muster the energy to resist Miki, who had begun pulling me along once more. My classmates’ inquisitive eyes were no doubt still on me, but... oh, whatever. Peace at any price, right?

Masato, who was watching us out of the corner of his eye, made no move to lend me assistance, instead just putting on the same cynical grin as always and gently waving me goodbye.

Although it was, in fact, a courtyard, it wasn’t the type of place you could easily envision students gathering or eating lunch at. It was simply a poorly-maintained lawn with a few apologetic-looking shrubs, without even so much as a bench to its name. As a result, the two of us were alone aside from the occasional passerby.

Ours was a rural public high school that often used tradition as an excuse to avoid change and fundamentally rejected the idea of a vibrant adolescence. Both the courtyard and the old-fashioned building served to bore us into submission.

The clearest symbol of that was the uniforms. Despite being widely regarded as unfashionable by the students, our school still used black gakuran<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_school_uniform#Gakuran</ref> and black sailor uniforms of old.

Clearly in a bubbly mood, Miki laid a sheet she had brought on the unkempt lawn and took a seat. I followed suit.

“Is eating lunch together part of my becoming a magus too?”

“Yeah, pretty much. That’s about right.”

By eating her homemade lunch, I could become a magus.

When I put it like that, the causal relationship felt a little dubious. I unconsciously let out a sigh.

“Are you going to make me eat lizard tails or something?”

“What are you talking about? This isn’t a Witches’ Sabbath or anything like that, you know.”

I wanted to ask what exactly a Witches’ Sabbath was, but I realized that if I got hung up on everything she said our conversation would go nowhere.

“Of course, I don’t really expect you to believe me when I say that eating lunch together will help you become a magus.”

Pouting a little, Miki passed me one of the boxes. Upon opening the lid, I found... well, to be frank, everything inside looks perfectly innocuous. Nothing inside seemed to be magic-related, nor did anything seem like it was made with a loved one in mind. It was, all in all, an extremely normal lunch.

How anticlimactic.

“Hey, let me guess what you’re thinking right now!”

Miki brought her face close to mine as if investigating something.

“Be my guest.”

“You’re thrilled at the prospect of eating a cute girl’s homemade lunch!”

“What? That’s completely off. I was just thinking how anticlimactic it was.”

“You’re awful!”

Although now that she mentioned it, eating a girl’s homemade lunch was a part of adolescence I had been looking forward to. Miki had stolen yet another of my firsts.

“But being able to speak your mind like that is a step in the right direction! Keep it up, keep it up!”

For some reason, I was being encouraged.

Her wide eyes gazed straight into mine as she spoke. That was probably how she truly felt.

If that’s how seriously she was taking this, I felt that I should do my part to understand this whole magic thing.

“In that case, I’ll ask you... you see, I’m a little confused. I don’t really understand what you mean when you say ‘magic’. After all, even though you sometimes borrow their terminology, your magic isn’t exactly like the stuff you’d find in fantasy novels, right?”

The whole time I was talking, Miki continued watching me with those large round eyes of hers. Feeling uncomfortable, I dropped my gaze.

“I don’t really understand it, but I can’t just unconditionally accept it. At this rate, I might not ever be able to use magic.”

Miki was listening to me earnestly.

Upon hearing my denial of magic, would she take offence?

But Miki’s disposition didn’t sour. She quietly pierced a piece of freezer-aisle karaage with her fork.

“You know, I’ve been dragging you around and saying some pretty confusing things. I’m the reason you’re so confused. I have at least that much self-awareness.”

My eyes still downcast, she spoke again.

“Do you hate me for that?”

In response, I quickly shook my head.

“I mean, you’re doing it all with good intentions, right?”

Miki’s eyes widened slightly as if in surprise.

“You understood that?”

“Yeah.”

“Even though I was saying cryptic things, like that I’d protect you from magic or that I’d be your bodyguard?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s no way I was really conveying my good intentions by doing stuff like that...”

This time it was my turn to be surprised.

“So, you did realize you were being cryptic...”

If she realized how odd she was being, couldn’t she have just acted more normally in the first place? If she was afraid that I would come to hate her, wouldn’t it make sense to try getting to know me more normally?

“Well, ‘cuz... it’s like this. I had to take a gamble. The way I saw it, you were really in danger; someone else could have done you in with magic in the blink of an eye. That’s why I was in such a rush – I had to, like, get really close to you as quick as possible so you’d trust me.”

“And that’s why you were walking home with me and making me lunch and stuff?”

“Yup. But you see, I knew you wouldn’t reject me. Given your lack of magic resistance, I was confident I could get away with a little bit of coercion.”

“You mean people without magic resistance are back at rejection?”

“Hmm... it’s not like that’s a rule or anything, but that’s generally how it turns out. Once the two of us have a strong bond of mutual trust, by that point you’ll already be a splendid magus. Once you get to that point, you’ll be able to protect yourself from other people’s magic.”

There was no way that was the whole truth.

However, I was pretty sure Miki wasn’t saying it halfheartedly. I could tell how serious and earnest she was being.

Although I still wasn’t fully clear as to what Miki’s brand of magic entailed, I got the feeling that it had a strongly grounded concept. If that was the case, I had to deal with it as sincerely as possible.

“You really are Kouta, aren’t you.”

Peering at my face, Miki laughed happily.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing... Hey, that’s right! We still haven’t eaten yet!”

I was puzzled, but we wouldn’t make any progress if I questioned every little thing she did or said. So I did as prompted and began to eat my lunch.

The lunch had a notably brown hue, and an ordinary pair of chopsticks was bundled along with it. Looking at it, it was obvious the creator wasn’t used to cooking. And most of the items were store-bought. Well, it looked edible, if nothing else.

“Oh no... this is terrible...”

Miki, who was sitting beside me and picking at the same assortment of side dishes, clutched the sides of her head.

“I... think it’s pretty average, don’t you?”

“...Sorry. I messed up. You see, I’m actually pretty handy, and I can do most things pretty well. But this is... man, these carrots are too firm... and half of this is undercooked... Oh geez, I’m really sorry.”

“Couldn’t you use magic to make it better?”

“Excuse me? Are you just trying to pick a fight with me like that? You’re picking a fight, aren’t you?”

Grabbing my shoulder, she started shaking me back and forth. My head rattled from side to side. Miki seemed to find this amusing, and with a grin on her face refused to stop.

“You two look like you’re having a blast, for a couple of freshman shitstains.”

With a start, Miki turned to face the source of the malice-filled voice.

Sauntering towards us was a third year with long blond hair and dark roots. Although his fashion sense immediately outed him as a delinquent, his degeneracy didn’t seem nearly as refined as Masato’s. I quickly discerned that what set him off was seeing an unassuming guy like me eating lunch with a world-class girl like Miki.

The long-haired blond, who by now was beside us, looked down at Miki with the vulgar eyes of a small-time brute.

“Now that I look atcha up close, you’re hella fuckin’ hot.”

“...Thank you.”

“Hey, wanna go for a drive with me next Sunday? I just got my license, so I wanna hit the road.”

“I appreciate your kind invitation. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m busy that day.”

Putting on a sweetly smile, Miki diplomatically declined. I was impressed that someone as audacious as her could respond like that.

Although the long-haired blond initially narrowed his eyes in irritation, as he continued casting his viscous gaze at Miki, a crude smile began to slowly dance around his lips.

“Man, normally this is where I’d back off, but... You’re so damn hot I just can’t. I think I’ve fallen for ya already. Fuck, man, you gotta go out with me!”

Upon hearing this, Miki’s poker face broke down for the first time, and she grimaced.

“C’mon, you can’t just leave a guy hangin’ like that! ...Oh, that reminds me. You mind if I switch topics for a sec? You wouldn’t think a guy like me would give a shit, but I actually can’t fuckin’ stand people who disrespect public morals. I’m always thinkin’ about how I wanna stamp guys like that out. It’s like, uh, one of those world peace-type things.”

Although he was clearly violating several school regulations himself, he continued his speech.

“So the other day, right, I see these two second-years named Takahashi and Shinjou gettin’ it on after class. Man, my sense of justice flared up like you wouldn’t fucking believe. The campus is sacred, ya know, you can’t just go dirty it up by having sex here! And I’m like, I can’t just sit here and watch this. So I was thinkin’, the best thing to do would be to get them to break up. That shit’s what they call an illicit sexual relationship, man. So I brought over a couple of my buddies and we broke them up. But chicks are like, they can’t bear it if they don’t have a boyfriend, right? I felt super bad for her. Me and my buddies were worried Shinjou’d be all lonely, so to prevent that we decided to take turns being her lover. Well, until we got bored of her body, at least.”

This was bad. I may have called him a small-time brute, but it looked like I had underestimated his deviancy.

And unfortunately, I was a far cry from some protagonist who could easily take down a small fry; I was Student A, who was at his wit’s end at the mere sight of a delinquent.

“I’m like a demon who uphold the public morals. Looks like I might have to do the same thing here, huh.”

“Well... the two of us weren’t doing anything untoward.”

Although her reply was stout-hearted, Miki’s voice was trembling. It seemed that she too could do nothing but tremble, no matter how unrefined this delinquent’s brand of violence was.

“I guess you’re right. Well, I can let off the hook for becoming my lover this time. But ya gotta at least spend an evening with me. If you don’t, I get the feeling that your boyfriend there won’t be able to make it to school anymore... So, let me ask again.”

Having established just how dangerous he was, the long-haired blond asked again.

“You’ll go for a drive with me, won’tcha?”

“...If you insist.”

Miki answered him expressionlessly.

When I looked at her face, she was smiling.

“Don’t worry about me, Kouta. I’m a magus, I’m sure I can manage.”

There’s no way that was true. If she could use magic to do something about this situation, she would have done so already. And there’s no way she would be trembling so much.

“Oh yeah, I should clear it with your boyfriend. We all good?”

“I’m thinking.”

Frowning, I crossed my arms.

“By the way, is it really true that you want to make friends with Miki?”

“Hah?”

“I understand the desire to fulfill your sexual desires, I really do. I understand how strongly a person would want to have sex with a cute girl. But... if we compare how much you do want to how much Miki doesn’t want to, Miki’s desire not to is stronger. That’s the way I see it. So I’d really rather you didn’t.”

For some reason, the long-haired blond seemed taken aback.

“The fuck is this kid talking about?”

You asked “we all good?”, so I answered. That’s all there is to it...

It was clearly my job to stop him. Although I had only just met Miki, she was taking action on my behalf. But if I tried to oppose him with violence, I would just be met in kind and thoroughly outclassed. I had to consider retribution, as well. So what options did I have left?

For some reason, Masato’s catchphrase sprung to mind.

I wanna kill someone.

“Ryuusuke Yamazaki.”

I then heard a voice that belonged to the same person the catchphrase did. Although he wasn’t raising his voice, I could hear it from somewhere above me.

When I looked up, I could see Masato staring at us expressionlessly from the second-floor hallway window.

Masato pointed at me and spoke succinctly.

“He’s with me.”

Succinct as it was, that was sufficient for the blond, who was apparently named Yamazaki, to display an uncomfortable look on his face.

“...Hey, Yahara. Didn’t know this capybara-lookin’ kid was a friend of yours. It’s not like I was tryin’ to pick a fight with a buddy of yours or anythin’.”

“Uh huh.”

With a bored look on his face, Masato wandered away from the window.

Yamazaki was a vicious delinquent who casually terrorized the rest of the student body. But in spite of this, he seemed unable to turn on Masato despite the latter being a first-year.

It seemed I had unintentionally made friends in high places.

Scratching his head and frowning, Yamazaki whispered in my ear.

“If Masato’s sticking up for you, does that mean you’re the ‘manager’ I’ve heard so much about? Are you in the middle of ‘stocking up’?”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Well, no skin off my back. If you get any cute girls in, send ‘em my way, wouldja?”

Giving my back a firm thump, Yamazaki quickly strode off.

I turned to face Miki.

“Kouta.”

Rather than being relieved, Miki stared intently at my face. I had never seen her look this scared.

“I thought I understood, but you really are... Kouta, aren’t you. You really just see things the way they are.”

That’s... unlike her previous statements about “magic resistance,” that’s a little easier to understand.

“Look, I know he saved us this time around. And I’m sorry, but there’s something I have to say.”

Miki peered into my eyes.

“Please don’t spend any more time around that guy. I’d like you to also avoid that Yamazaki guy from just now, and a second-year named Matsumi too.”

I had no intention of breaking ties with Masato, so for now I just nodded.

But as if picking up on my noncommittal response, Miki heaved a heavy sigh.

“I really do need to protect you.”

Protect.

Let’s suppose for a moment that magic really was something capable of protecting me. Let’s suppose it’s something that could enrich my life.

Even if that’s the case, there’s something I can’t tell Miki.

I couldn’t really care less.

I couldn’t care less what happens to me.

I can’t really remember how I got to know Masato. We sat near each other in class, and before I knew it we were regularly chatting.

But I didn’t spend time with him outside of school. We never hung out together, and we didn’t chat on the phone. If we got put into different classes, it’s entirely possible we would stop interacting altogether. Barring that, even not sitting near each other might be enough to put a halt to our conversations.

But once, I think it was about two weeks ago? He called me to a park near my home at one in the morning.

Masato wouldn’t tell me, so I didn’t know what was going on, but when I got there I was startled by how haggard he seemed. I got the impression that it didn’t matter who, he just needed someone to talk to.

Atop a rusting jungle gym with an out-of-order sign plastered on it, the two of us held a rather aimless conversation. After glancing at the “no balls allowed” sign, the out-of-order vending machine, and the rather unenticing public restroom for the dozenth time, Masato gave an obviously fake laugh and quipped, “This fucking place is less a park and more of a cesspit.”

Atop the jungle gym, Masato took a drag from his cigarette as he toyed with a butterfly knife. Although he was a minor, he was no stranger to cigarettes, beer, and occasionally even harder drugs. However, he never offered me any. And even when he was engaging in such antisocial practices, he showed not a glimpse of enjoyment but the same bored expression as always.

The moon was so full that night I thought it might perhaps be a supermoon<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermoon</ref>, and its illumination was clearly making Masato uncomfortable.

“Kou, whaddya see when you look up at the moon?”

I answered automatically.

“A rabbit.<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit</ref>”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause everyone else does, right? Let’s be real, it doesn’t even look that much like a fucking rabbit.”

He was totally right. Looking back up at the moon again, I completely agreed.

“So what do you see?”

I generally tried to avoid answering questions like this, as I inevitably got mocked for my lack of imagination.

“To be blunt, the moon doesn’t look like much of anything to me.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“I mean, I can’t really see the craters as anything but craters.”

But rather than mock me for my entirely mockable answer, Masato looked almost impressed.

“Huh, so that’s your angle.”

Seeming pleased, he lit another cigarette.

“Makes sense. Hell, if anything it’s weirder to assign meaning to shit like that.”

I wasn’t sure what he was so pleased about.

To fill the lull in the conversation, I asked a question of little import.

“Masato, why do you act like a delinquent?”

“You’re a cheeky little bastard. Normally if you asked a delinquent that, they’d beat you senseless.”

But Masato gave me a serious answer.

“I just didn’t know a way to resist it.”

It wasn’t a very concrete answer. But I could tell that Masato himself didn’t have anything firmer.

The conversation died down again, so I asked the next question that came to mind as I gazed upwards.

“What does the moon look like to you, Masato?”

Furrowing his brow, Masato tossed his cigarette aside.

“Whenever I look up, I get uneasy. Even though I know I can’t reach it, I wanna smash it. So on bright nights like these, I always just look at my feet.”

He put a new cigarette in his mouth and lit it.

“Feels like there’s a monster baring its fangs above me.”

Wrenching his face in despair, Masato whispered as if he were spitting out a mouthful of blood.

[[File:We Don't Open Anywhere In-Text Illustration 1.jpg|thumb]]

“Ahh... I wanna kill someone.”

“It’s been a while since we walked home together, Masato.”

We hadn’t planned it ahead of time. But our houses were in the same direction, and we were both in the so-called going home club, so we occasionally found ourselves walking together. The reason it had been so long was due to a certain magus attaching herself to my hip.

By the way, the magus in question had been invited somewhere today by her friend Sayuri, who apparently wouldn’t take no for an answer. Although I was surprised that Miki was able to make friends at all in the face of her blatant audacity, it turned out she was actually on good terms with most of the girls in her class. Of course, this was self-reported, so I had no way of confirming whether it was true or not.

By the way, when I expressed my surprise at the size of her friend group, Miki got rather indignant. She then went on an incomprehensible lecture about how maintaining the unstable bonds of female friendship was part of magic’s wheelhouse or something. Well, her communication skills were exceptional, so perhaps it wasn’t so strange after all.

“You’re thinking about that chick again, aren’tcha. You’re fucking engrossed.”

“Kinda.”

“You’re supposed to deny it, man, I’m just fucking with you.”

After letting him know that I had, in fact, been thinking about her, Masato gave off a sigh while smirking.

“Go figure.”

Without breaking his smirk, Masato continued.

“Ya know, that magus freak told me to stay away from you the other day.”

“Really? Miki did?”

Masato’s eyes reflected their assent.

“I told you, right? Kouzuki and I will never get along. She fucking hates me.”

That reminded me. Miki had told me to stop spending time with Masato.

“Are you sure you didn’t just make fun of magic or something?”

“I might’ve.”

“C’mon!”

“But this and that don’t have jack shit to do with each other. She just can’t stand the two of us being around each other.”

The word “jealousy” sprung to mind, but Miki had really just been one-sidedly meddling in my affairs.

All she could think about was magic.

“I guess you being around me gets in the way of her plan to make me into a magus?”

“That’s pretty much on the mark.”

I was surprised at Masato’s matter-of-fact answer.

“Wait, do you understand what she means by ‘magic’? Is that why you can tell why she hates you?”

Masato’s brows furrowed.

“Hmm... it’s not like I understand it per se. But us not being able to see eye-to-eye shakes out to about the same thing.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“I mean, you’re starting to get an idea of what her magic is, right? She’s been dragging you around for two damn weeks now.”

“...Sort of.”

“Vaguely” was about the level my understanding capped out at.

It was just like translating English into Japanese; coming up with a word to describe magic was difficult. But I could tell by now that it wasn’t “sorcery” or “witchcraft”.

As far as I could tell, the kind of magic Miki was talking about generally referred to something along the lines of “imposition of notions.”

But it wasn’t just brainwashing, where you could impose things forcibly. Things like daily habits and cultural norms, where they took root before you even noticed, were also included in her definition of magic. Miki’s vision of a magus was likely someone who could freely manipulate the notions of others. When she said I didn’t have any magic resistance, what she meant was that I was in danger because my notions would change so readily.

But I couldn’t understand what made people without magic resistance better at becoming magi. I didn’t see why spend time around Masato would keep me from becoming one, either. I felt like there was still quite a bit to magic that I didn’t understand.

“Quit thinkin’.”

Speaking rudely, Masato lightly jabbed my solar plexus.

“No good’ll come of a dumbass thinking too hard.”

“Surely there’s a kinder way to put that.”

Masato tilted his head with a playful look on his face. But just as I was thinking that, his expression grew grave.

“Honestly, some of the stuff Kouzuki’s talkin’ about has merit. Even I’d rather you go be a happy-go-lucky magus freak than a homicidal delinquent.”

“What? I mean, I’d really rather not become either...”

I responded with a light-hearted joke, but Masato’s intense expression didn’t fade.

“Well, if you don’t think about it too much you can probably stay just the way you are.”

“Kusukusu...kusukusukusu...”

We heard a peculiar laugh that sounded as if someone were exhaling through a gap in their teeth.

The two of us turned our heads. Behind us stood a short girl. Her jet-black hair hung down in braids in the back, with her bangs were cut at a diagonal slant. I could infer from her sailor uniform’s green ribbon that she was a second-year. While that meant that she was older than us, her childlike face gave off a very different impression. That, combined with her innocent expression, would have led me to believe in an instant if I were told she was a grade-schooler. Upon closer inspection, though, her bust was large enough to leave a thoroughly immoral impression.

But her most notable characteristic was her peculiar eyes. Although they were as just as black as her hair, they seemed somehow out of focus and were oddly reminiscent of a rainbow.

“You two are quite interesting.”

There was nobody else around, so it seemed the unfamiliar upperclassman was addressing us.

“Hello.”

With the expression of a pleased child, she gave a quick bow. I returned the greeting.

“...Masato, do you know her?”

Pulling a wry face, Masato shook his head.

“Kusukusu... you really are interesting!”

Her smile was innocent. But it was strange. In fact, it was so innocent, it was unsettling.

“Whaddya want?”

Masato spit out the question in his usual aggressive manner, but the upperclassman showed no sign of fear. Nor did she even seem to mind. It seemed like she was a bit slow when it came to interpreting other people’s emotions.

“Oh, Ririko was just thinking how she wanted to become good friends with Hiiragi!”

It seemed she knew my last name.

Although she had called us “interesting,” I quickly realized that she was paying little attention to us. Her gaze seemed to be drifting all over.

“What did you find so interesting? Our conversation?”

“Yes. Aaaand no.”

Her voice dripped with saccharine. But it wasn’t the type of flirtatious saccharine that Miki occasionally put on for play.

It was like a child’s. Not just that, but her behavior and expressions were like those of a child as well.

“What’s so interesting about you two are the call signs you’re giving off.”

“...Call signs?”

“Yup. Call signs.”

Although I parroted her words back at her, no explanation was forthcoming. It felt as though she thought her manner of speaking were the most natural thing in the world.

As if striking upon something, Masato suddenly asked her a question.

“Hey, are you that Ririko Matsumi chick?”

“Oh, yes. Ririko is Ririko, of course.”

Without any questions as to how Masato knew her name, the upperclassman named Ririko Matsumi nodded.

“Masato, who is she?”

“Her name gets around. You can guess why, right?”

Indeed. If this was representative of her standard behavior, it was no surprise that people would have heard of her.

Oh, right. Now I think about it, “Matsumi” was also on the list of people Miki told me to stay away from. And on top of that, I vaguely remembered hearing rumors about her somewhere.

“Interesting, aren’t they? White and ultramarine, huh. Aren’t most people orange? But you two are different. Ririko likes white, you know. Makes her want to do something.”

Unable to contain her excitement, Matsumi-senpai continued.

“Hey, hey, can Ririko read you?”

“Read me?”

I parroted her words again.

“Oh, that’s right. Most people can’t do scanning. But, but, you see, Ririko can do scanning!”

Puffing up her chest proudly, she spread her hands as if to say “here I go!”

In a flash, her innocent expression vanished.

It was replaced with something inhuman, almost mannequin-like.

A strange voice. A voice that couldn’t quite be said to be coming from her throat. The noise sounded exactly like that of a machine, but it was clearly emanating from her half-open mouth.

As if being infiltrated by darkness, her eyes slowly lost their light. They lost their focus and seemed to stop perceiving altogether. But I could tell. Even though they were out of focus, they were holding me tight in their gaze and refusing to let go. As if I were afflicted with paralysis, I was unable to so much as wiggle a fingertip.

What was going on?

Still frozen in shock, I could see Masato out of the corner of my eye. Although Masato despised other people showing weakness around him, he was simply staring speechless.

Everything about this was abnormal.

“Beep bibibi, bip bip bibeep.”

As if it were travelling not through my eardrums but through my bones, I could feel the noise resound within my body. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from anymore. Coming not from in front of me, nor behind me, nor beside me or above me, that mechanical noise simply wrapped around me and continued resonating.

Beep bibibi, bip bip bibeep.

The noise rang in concert with my very cells. My entire body trembled with stinging pain, almost as if I were being scalded.

I still couldn’t move my legs. I couldn’t move at all. It had transformed from paralysis into sheer violence. A paralysis so strong it felt as though my body were bound with electric cables. Cables that both bound me and tore me to pieces. They exposed me, comprehended me, bound up my insides and scattered them.

While exposing my everything, those eyes continued holding me. Capturing everything, yet reflecting nothing. Eyes that were both jet-black and snow white.

“Scanning complete.”

As Matsumi-senpai said that, the scenery returned and the world began turning once more. Of course, I knew that the scenery had never left. The only thing that had changed was me. For just that moment, the “me” who was able to perceive that scenery was changed.

Only a few seconds should have passed. But those seconds felt so dense that I would have believed if I was told that hours or even days had passed.

A breath.

Good... I took a breath.

I can still breathe.

“Well then, next up is...”

The innocent girl’s eyes turned to Masato.

“Ah—”

Masato’s eyes were wide open. I had never seen him like this before.

Matsumi-senpai’s eyes, which by now had returned to their original color, steadily became black and white again.

“...don’t.”

“Beep bi—”

“DON’T!!”

Masato screamed.

In response to his ragged breathing and scared demeanor, Matsumi-senpai lips began to quiver.

“You don’t have to shout like that, you know...”

Despite being the source of Masato’s terror, she simply pouted, seemingly as indifferent as ever to the emotions of others.

“Excuse me, Matsumi-senpai, what was that just now...?”

“Hold on, hold on. Ririko’s going to put it into words now.”

Matsumi-senpai stood still, her mouth hanging lazily half-open.

She stayed in that state for a little while, not so much as moving a muscle.

“Kouta Hiiragi, age fifteen.”

Still expressionless, her mouth began moving, and like a machine began speaking.

“Lives with his parents and younger sister. Lives in a room with a skylight on the second floor of an old single-family home. Has many friends, but no close friends. Values emotional distance. Has recently begun courting a member of the opposite sex. Virgin. Gets tired when conversing with others. Largely apathetic towards himself.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. But as she went on, it became clear that she was talking about me.

“Unconsciously rejects his mother due to her hysterical temperament. Receives mixed messages from his father. Neither parent approaches parenting with any degree of consistency. His sister enjoys killing cats. Has been ordered by his family to deal with the cat corpses. Will listen to anything he is told. Susceptible to brainwashing. Versatile. Abnormally good at understanding the value systems of others. Has no self, so regards others with-”

“Th... that’s enough! Matsumi-senpai, please cut it out!”

I raised my voice, almost to a scream, and Matsumi-senpai, whose eyes had been open this whole time, finally blinked. Her expression began coming back.

“So? So? How was that? How’d you like my scanning? Did Ririko get that all right?”

She looked like a proud kindergartener asking how good her crayon drawing was. Knowing that it would make her happy, I decided to humor her and nodded vigorously.

I didn’t want to listen to this anymore.

I didn’t want to learn anything about myself.

“Senpai, can we go now?”

For some reason, Masato seemed exhausted.

“Whaaat? But Ririko wanted to chat more! He’s white, after all! He’s the only one!”

“Sorry, but we got places to be.”

“Ririko understands... Well, Ririko guesses it can’t be helped then.”

Matsumi-senpai’s shoulders slumped.

“Ririko guesses she’ll see you later then, Tanihara.”

His lips pursed, Masato scowled at Matsumi-senpai.

“Huh? Aren’t you Tanihara?”

“It’s read ‘Yahara’<ref>Masato's last name, 谷原, can be read as either 'Yahara' or 'Tanihara'</ref>, Senpai.”

“You’re kidding! Ririko wonders why she made that mistake... Ririko wonders if it’s because the scanning stopped partway? Oh, by the way! Ririko doesn’t normally make that kind of mistake! Ririko's normally always right!”

Waving both her hands, Matsumi-senpai gave an odd excuse.

But neither of us could muster the energy for a rebuttal, so we simply turned and walked away.

Walking in silence, we passed through a deserted shopping district, with almost half the stores shuttered up. I felt like my feet couldn’t quite reach the ground. I was filled with an unpleasant floating sensation.

What exactly was that “scanning”? Wasn’t that magic? And a foul magic at that, one that overturned every value I once held.

It felt like the world was shaking. Although there was no heat haze to speak of, I was having difficulty telling exactly where the ground was. It was as if I should have able to fly, but for some absurd reason the cracked concrete was shackling me to the earth.

Perhaps it was a childish delusion. But... that’s right. Ririko Matsumi had no such restrictions. And perhaps she was so absurd a person as to truly believe she could fly.

“Kou.”

Breaking the silence, Masato spoke.

“Get this through your head. Don’t talk to that birdbrain ever again. She’ll be a bad influence on you, got it?”

I wasn’t sure what harm a simple conversation could do, but Masato looked dead serious, so I just responded with a firm nod.

Honestly, I was surprised that Masato would show such concern for me. He reminded me of Miki.

“Masato, did you understand what was going on with that scanning thing?”

“... not even a little.”

I see. So he had “not even a little” desire to explain it to me, huh.

But even knowing that, I didn’t feel the need to press the issue. If he didn’t want to tell me, it wasn’t like I could make him.

The traffic light in front of us turned red.

We stopped.

“Fuck.”

Masato spit out a small expletive and began chewing on his lip.

“What’s wrong?”

“Why the hell’d we stop?”

“The light was red, wasn’t it?”

“There’s no cars here.”

I looked both ways to verify his statement. Indeed, there were no automobiles in sight.

“...Then do you want to cross?”

“That’s not what I’m talking about... that’s not what I’m fucking talking about. I’m asking why I stopped.”

I was perplexed. What was Masato so irritated about?

“Well, red means stop, so obviously we’d stop, right?”

“Right. Even though we coulda crossed, we stopped just because that’s how it works.”

Masato began scratching at his head, almost as if he were trying to plug up his ears.

“Masato, is something the matter? Is it because of that upperclassman?”

“...Yeah, I guess. There’s something wrong with me right now. There’d have to be for me to talk to you like this, huh.”

The light turned green.

“Masato, let’s go.”

“Right...”

As he began walking, I could see Masato’s expression surpass irritation and shift to rage. He was scratching at himself to an abnormal degree. The expression he was giving made it seem as if his entire body were swarming with caterpillars and they were digging under his skin to lay eggs.

With no change in demeanor, Masato spoke.

“Ahh... I wanna kill someone.”

I could tell.

We were past the point of no return.

The day after our encounter with Ririko Matsumi, Masato didn’t show up at school.

That wasn’t too strange in and of itself. Masato had skipped school twice in that past for little to no reason. But given the state he had been in yesterday, I couldn’t help but be concerned.

I wanna kill someone.

He was just saying it like he always did, right?

“Good morning, Kouta.”

I heard a voice I was now fairly used to. I turned my head and responded.

“Good morning, Miki.”

“...Yahara isn’t here today, huh.”

Her voice lacked its usual pluck. Her expression also seemed somewhat gloomy.

“What’s wrong? You seem out of sorts.”

“You can tell?”

Giving a weak smile, Miki heaved a sigh.

‘You can tell?’, huh.

It was obvious that she was wearing her lack of energy on her face to elicit my concern. But I kept that to myself and simply nodded.

“Would you mind coming to the courtyard with me, Kouta?”

“Right now?”

There wasn’t that much time left before class began.

“Yeah... there’s something I want to talk to you about, and I’d rather not be overheard.”

In other words, it was a matter of some importance. That was what Miki was trying to convey. She was extraordinarily skilled at conveying her intentions to others.

So I put on an obedient expression.

The sky was overcast and it looked liable to start raining at any moment, so the courtyard was unpleasantly chilly. The scent of earth mingled with the humidity, and I felt as though I might choke.

Regardless of the fact that she herself was the one who called us here, Miki simply hung her head in silence. It created an oddly docile atmosphere.

“Miki, what was it you wanted to talk about?”

Although I tried to break the ice, Miki still just cast her eyes down. Realizing that I should wait for her to speak, I did just that.

“...I’m really just a bother, aren’t I.”

That was the first thing that came out of her mouth.

“I’m not blind. I can at least tell that I’m a bother...”

“Um... what’s this, all of a sudden?”

Even if Miki had realized that she was being bothersome, she had gone to some lengths to feign airheadedness and conceal it.

“I spent all day yesterday thinking about how I could deal with this without having to do something wrong.”

I wasn’t sure what brought about this abrupt change of heart. All I knew was that I shouldn’t point out the fact that it was a change of heart. If I did, Miki would become difficult to deal with.

Miki’s eyes grew watery, and she seemed to put herself on guard.

As far as I was concerned, that was much more worrying than the actual words coming out of her mouth.

“What do you mean by something ‘wrong’?”

“Pushing magic on you would be wrong. I know that people laugh at me and call me delusional. But even so, I was trying to forcibly push my value system on you.”

I didn’t really care about that. And Miki should have known that.

“But, you know... even though I knew what I was doing was wrong, I couldn’t bear watching you turn into an insane magus! I just couldn’t!”

Her eyes still moist, she spoke with conviction.

I couldn’t say anything. As I still didn’t fully comprehend magic, I couldn’t understand what Miki was saying. But that aside, in the face of Miki’s staunch earnestness, I felt it would be improper to interject, so I couldn’t say anything.

“So I’ve been thinking.”

Miki took my right hand and embraced it in hers. My heart began pounding at the unexpected feel of her touch. Miki peered at me with teary eyes.

It felt very intentional. She was intentionally manipulating my heartrate. But in her eyes, I could see her slyness tinged with indecision.

Closing her eyes for the first time in some time, Miki let out a long sigh. I could feel her grip on my hand tighten ever-so-slightly.

...How strange. I felt a warmth other than simple body heat transfer from her hands to mine. If she told me that it was part of her magic, I wouldn’t doubt it for a second.

Miki opened her eyes again.

They were filled with resolution.

They seemed to be entreating me.

“Kouta... do you think you could fall for me?”

Her unexpected question left me speechless.

“Or is that impossible, I wonder...”

It was, quite clearly, a confession.

Perhaps to an outsider, confessing in this situation might seem completely natural. But as the party in question, I could tell how unhealthy it was.

After all, Miki was simply trying to protect me. It wasn’t as if she held any romantic feelings towards me. I understood that much.

“Am I... no good?”

“Th... that’s not it at all! You’re extremely charming, Miki!”

Reflexively, I gave Miki the exact response she was looking for.

Of course, it was true that she was charming. Her looks would make her at home in any idol group, and although she was selfish, she had a timidly side to her that obsessively took the needs of the others into consideration as well.

But that was nothing more than an objective observation. What did I personally think of her?

To begin with...

Under what circumstances would I fall for a girl?

“Do you think you could fall for me?”

“That’s...”

Even though I knew what answer she was looking for, I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“...Kouta, you’re a guy, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“Even if you only want me for my body, if that’s enough to get you to fall for me, I’m... okay with that.”

Miki’s eyes then widened.

“S...sorry! I said something really weird! But... I really do want you to fall for me! Even if that’s what it takes!”

I couldn’t comprehend it. I couldn’t comprehend why she would go to such lengths.

...No, that’s not true. For the sake of magic, she would go to any lengths. She felt the need to do something about me and my lack of magic resistance. Even if it meant sacrificing her own chastity, she had to protect the notion of magic.

Miki wouldn’t be Miki if she didn’t abide by her magic.

But even recognizing that, I was still uneasy. Although I couldn’t put it to words, there was something that didn’t sit right with me.

There was one thing I was sure of, though. Regardless of how it looked, Miki sought me. Knowing that, how could I turn down her confession?

The answer was simple. I couldn’t.

“I will fall for you. So you don’t have to say weird stuff like that anymore.”

Miki’s eyes widened, and she stared straight at me.

“So you mean we’re going out now?”

“Yup.”

“You’re okay with this? I’m going to be your first girlfriend, right? Are you okay with it being me? You can’t take it back, you know that, right? You know you’ll take on my attribute, right?”

“Like I said, I’m fine with that.”

Before my eyes, Miki’s expression brightened.

“Really? You’re really okay with this? ...Yay. Yay!”

The teary expression she had been displaying up until a moment ago vanished like it had never been there, and she broke into a radiant smile. Seeing it, I was convinced I had made the right decision and was filled with relief.

I was fine with this.

“Yay! Thanks so much, Kouta! I look forward to our continued times together!”

Miki merrily shook my hand up and down.

My discomfort didn’t fade, but there was one thing I knew for sure. From now on, Miki and I would spend a great deal more time together. Little by little, we would stop holding back around each other. My days would be fulfilling, and I might even earn the jealousy of my peers. That was the shape my life would take from now on.

I recognized this, and accepted it without resistance.

Just according to Miki’s script.

A week had passed since Miki’s confession. Unsurprisingly, we had grown a good deal closer, but Miki hardly behaved as if we were lovers and instead treated me much the same as before. So I did the same.

But Miki the object of no small amount of attention. The fact that we were dating quickly became public and rapidly circulated throughout the school. Even if the way we treated each other didn’t change, the way the people around us reacted did. Feeling cramped by the way the people around me forced their definitions onto us, even my awareness of our relationship began to gradually shift. Before long, pressure from the peanut gallery would likely transform us into a conventional boyfriend and girlfriend.

I see. So Miki formally asked me out knowing that this would happen.

“Well then, I look forward to another week together!”

“Yup. See you later.”

As we parted at the usual street, Miki exaggeratedly waved me goodbye. I smiled at her and returned the wave.

Miki and I had made plans to spend the day at her house on the Sunday of next week. Although she had said that her parents would be out of the house, I harbored no improper expectations. Or did I? What did I want to become of my relationship with Miki?

Honestly, there was something I was much more concerned about than our relationship.

Masato.

Masato still hadn’t shown up at school. He wasn’t returning my calls, and my LINE messages to him were marked unread. Dropping out of school would have been in-character for him, so his non-attendance wasn’t strange in and of itself. But based on his demeanor from the last time we talked, I was concerned something bad had happened to him.

“You aren’t with Tanihara today?”

Right, after we met the owner of that voice, Masato started acting strangely. The first time she showed up, his gears began coming undone.

With a childish smile, Ririko Matsumi ignored my stiff expression and spoke in a lively voice.

“Hello, Hiiragi!”

“...Hello. But Senpai, his name is Yahara, not Tanihara.”

“Ah, right. It was, wasn’t it.”

Matsumi-senpai laughed, as if she were pleased about something.

“Do you live in this direction as well, Senpai?”

“Nope, Ririko chased after you because she wanted to chat! You seemed like you were having fun talking to Kouzuki, so Ririko decided not to interrupt you. Admirable of me, huh?”

It seemed she had decided to follow me.

“Mhm. You really are an interesting color, Hiiragi. But you’re a little yellower than you were before. I wonder if that’s Kouzuki’s fault? Was it because you were flirting with her, maybe? I don’t like it. I’d really rather you stayed white.”

As always, she was off in her own world.

“Is Miki not an interesting color? After all, she’s quite the character.”

“Hmm. Having a bit of pink in you is rare and all, but I think I’ve seen a color like that before. Anyways, it’s not much to look at.”

Perhaps Miki was less of a character than I thought? I wasn’t really sure what to make of this whole call sign business.

“Ririko wanted to chat with Yahara as well, but she hasn’t seen him at all since then...”

“I haven’t seen him either. I don’t even know what he’s up to these days.”

For some reason, Matsumi-senpai tilted her head at those words.

“You don’t know what he’s up to? Even though you’re his friend? You don’t have awful reception, do you?”

“Reception?”

“Yeah, reception. ...Haven’t you heard of reception?”

I was of course familiar with the word, but the context Matsumi-senpai was using it in eluded me.

“Then do you want Ririko to look into it for you? She had to stop scanning him partway through, but... Ririko has pretty high fidelity, you see, so she thinks it’ll be okay! She can find Yahara!”

“You can find... you mean you know where he is?”

“Of course Ririko does! Ririko isn’t a child, you know!”

Apparently to Matsumi-senpai, not being able to do this reception thing was on the same level as not being able to ride a bike.

“Ah... but you don’t get reception, Hiiragi? Umm... don’t worry! Ririko has times when she can’t really get a sense for it, either! Don’t let it get you down!”

For some reason I was being cheered up.

“Here, Ririko will go over the basics. See, there are these things floating around in the air, right? Ririko doesn’t really know what they’re called... Particles? Electrons? Wi-Fi? Anyways, you have to catch a bunch of them on your body. It’ll feel like they’re sticking to your skin, you know? Next, they’ll go like, bzzzt, and you’ll start seeing a faint picture, and you have to focus on that picture reaaal carefully. But you already knew that, right?”

There was no way I could have known that, but I kept my comments to myself.

“But see, the next part’s the tricky bit. Finding the picture you want’s tough, right? When Ririko does it, she flies way up high. Ririko’s really good at flying, so she can look out over the whole city. Then, it’ll be something related to the information you want — so in this case, that would be something related to Yahara. Once you find that, the reception is complete!”

“...Did you say ‘flying’?”

There were countless faults to pick with her explanation, so I chose the one I found most concerning.

“...? Flying in the sky, you know?”

It seemed my question fell on deaf ears. Apparently to Matsumi-senpai, being able to fly was just as obvious as being able to breathe.

“Alrighty, let’s see if we can get reception.”

As soon as she said that, it was like a switch flipped.

Those eyes again.

Those jet-black eyes, dripping with viscosity, appeared before me again.

“...Bzz bzz...bzz...bzzt...bzz...”

Noise filtered through her half-open mouth. Occasionally her shoulders would tremble slightly, as if she were convulsing.

Ah, this person’s broken.

That was what I thought of her inner workings.

The first thing I was confident in was the fact that her value system didn’t operate according to the same logic as the rest of humanity’s. She had a culture all her own. Similar to worshippers in a cult, she put her faith in nonsensical theories. She was closed off from the rest of the world, much too far away for any to reach. She lived in a lonely little world.

But in spite of that, her noise easily reached my ears.

An encroachment by her closed world.

Perhaps the sounds I initially thought meaningless were a kind of language. After all, the noise had a certain regularity to it. It wasn’t nonsensical. The sound of “Bzz bzz bzz...bzzt bzzt...bzz” reverberated through my skin and sunk into my pores. Aggressively so. Forcefully so. It stung like a box cutter. In the face of such a blade, no doubt anyone would flee in pain.

But I couldn’t run from it. I didn’t know how to.

So instead, I tried to understand Ririko Matsumi.

The noise was touching me.

The noise was touching me.

I had to clearly envision it. I had to translate her world into an image I could comprehend.

It was a world where everything - the earth, the sea, the sky - was made of electrical cords. Cords of all lengths and sizes, wriggling like snakes, ferociously binding all of mankind. In that world, the cords were gleefully torturing me. The cords were forcibly invading my throat, my nostrils, my urethra, and my toenails and making them their own. It hurt. Stop it. I’m human!

Having envisioned enough, I shook my head vigorously and drove away the translated world.

“Ah...! Haa...haa...”

That was dangerous. If I had dove any deeper, Matsumi-senpai would have disassembled me and I’d have been taken over by her image. If that happened, I knew I wouldn’t be able to return to normal.

Ah, I see. That’s why both Miki and Masato told me to stay away from Matsumi-senpai.

“...Bzz...bzz......huh?”

Color returned to Matsumi-senpai’s eyes.

Taking a deep breath to calm my heart, I asked her.

“What happened?”

“Well... For some reason, Ririko couldn’t get any reception. How odd... even if the scanning stopped halfway, she should have enough information to get reception...”

She looked rather sad.

“Ririko wonders if she’s become awful at reception...”

She couldn’t get reception.

Matsumi-senpai’s proclamations were becoming less and less coherent. And yet her words filled me with a strange sense of dread.

“Does that happen often?”

“Not at all lately! Really! Th- that’s why this is so odd! It’s not Ririko’s fault... probably...!”

Her head bobbed about like a child giving an excuse. It was hard to believe that she had simply failed. I could sense that her noise just now had had a proper regularity to it.

“If the fault doesn’t lie with you, might there be some problem on Masato’s side that’s making the reception fail?”

“Ah, Ririko sees. That’s probably it. Maybe Yahara’s information was overwritten since Ririko scanned him the other day.”

“His information was overwritten? Is that a thing that can happen?”

“Sometimes. You know the saying ‘people can change,’ right? So call signs themselves can change too.”

If Masato’s value system changed in such a span, could that have something to do with his inattendance?

What could he have done to make himself change so drastically?

Ahh... I wanna kill someone.

“...Ah.”

No, let’s not be hasty. Even if, hypothetically, it was the result of Masato fulfilling that wish of his, could that really change a man with as strong of homicidal urges as him? ...Ahh, it might. Such a transient desire being put into a definite form could be said to be a change in and of itself.

“Hiiragi, you’ve been quiet for a while now. What’s up?”

It was right in front of me.

I understood it now.

Her scanning wasn’t some fantastical delusion, nor was her reception.

“Senpai, would you mind telling me Masato’s information from back when you scanned him?”

“Ririko doesn’t mind, but... the scanning was only half done, remember? It might be buggy. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” I nodded.

“You got it. Let me just translate it into Japanese.”

As she said that, she stiffened down to her fingertips. By now I was used to this unblinking visage of hers.

Acclimatization. Was I acclimating again?

“Masato Tanihara, age 16.”

Once again, Matsumi-senpai mistook Masato’s surname for “Tanihara”. Perhaps in importing the data, Masato’s name had been misinterpreted.

“Both parents are alive but neither parent interferes with him. No siblings. Rejects others. Regards almost all other humans with contempt. Afflicted with auditory hallucinations. Can hear the noise more clearly when around people he dislikes. For example, Shuuichi Akiyama. Is perplexed as to why he does not hear the noise from Ririko Matsumi. Believes that he wants to kill someone. Believes that he wants to kill someone. Wants to kill someone. Wants to kill someone. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill. Wants to kill—”

“Th-that’s enough!”

Something was clearly amiss, so I shook Matsumi-senpai by the shoulders. But like a broken record, she just kept saying “wants to kill.”

“Wants to kill... ah... aHh... wants to ahHH! Ah! Ahh! Stop! Make it stop!”

“S... Senpai!”

“It’s filthy! Masato Tanihara is filthy! Why can’t he just go crazy!?”

It was obvious from her exclamations that Matsumi-senpai was in agony. Her eyes no longer seemed mechanical, nor did they seem human.

They simply expressed pain.

“Wh... why...”

Those painful eyes stared straight at me.

“How can you stand to be around someone like him...?”

Seeing Matsumi-senpai like this, I felt like I could understand her a little better.

She was certainly operating under a different logical framework then the rest of us. But the person underneath all that was still human. If she forced herself to emulate something abnormal like that, her condition would quickly take a turn for the worse. An error would occur.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Letting out a shrill scream, she collapsed to the ground. Flopping around like an eel, she began vomiting.

“Senpai!”

Matsumi-senpai was writhing in a pool of her own vomit and convulsing erratically. A strange yellow fluid began oozing out of her tear glands. After convulsing a little longer, she eventually stopped moving altogether. She reminded me of a lizard tail that remained moving even after being severed.

“A... are you alright?”

I put some space between us before calling out to her, slightly alarmed by her bizarre behavior. She didn’t respond, but I could tell that she was at least breathing. After hesitantly approaching her, I felt her wrist. Her pulse was accelerated, but not to the point where it seemed she would be in danger.

I called for an ambulance, and while looking after her, considered the question I had just been posed.

“How can I stand to be around him, huh?”

I would never say it out loud, let alone around Matsumi-senpai or Masato, but Masato was alone. His classmates were a given, but even his family held him at an arm’s length. The more someone got to know him, the more they would realize that his madness was the real deal.

The reason I was around him... was simply because I couldn’t leave, nothing more.

But...

“I’m probably the only person in the world like that.”

The week came and went, and Masato was still nowhere to be seen. Although I searched for him in my own way, I couldn’t so much as find a clue.

Matsumi-senpai was still recuperating from her hospitalization and hadn’t shown up at school either. There was something she had mentioned that I couldn’t get out of my mind that I wanted to ask her about, but her absence made that impossible.

What caught my attention was a name that had come up in the scanning’s translation.

The name “Shuuichi Akiyama.”

“You seem really restless today, Kouta.”

Miki remarked with a concerned frown.

“...Do I?”

“Yeah. It’s like you’re only half here.”

True to his diligent nature, Akiyama was always the first person to show up for class.

But as far as today went, Akiyama had yet to show up at school.

The man who Masato hated so intensely that his name came up in the scanning had yet to show up at school.

I was probably overthinking it. Even Akiyama could get sick, and it wasn’t inconceivable that he might simply oversleep.

Ahh... I wanna kill someone.

There’s no way.

There’s no way that’s the case.

“You really aren’t paying any attention. You’ve been glancing over at the door for forever.”

Having this called to my attention, I apologize to Miki.

“...You’re worried about Yahara, right? You’re looking over at the door because you’re hoping he’ll show up.”

She was half right. But right now, I was hoping for Akiyama to show up even more.

Ahh... I wanna kill someone.

Anyone in the class would probably have heard him say it at least once. But despite their fear of him, most simply wrote it off as edgy nonsense.

But I knew better.

Every time he said it, Masato meant it.

It was a phrase designed to encourage a man who found himself unable to cross that line. Masato, who so disgusted Matsumi-senpai, who put Miki on such guard, was the real deal.

That’s right — I had been able to grasp Masato for quite some time.

Suddenly, the bell rang. But Akiyama’s usual command to take our seats wasn’t forthcoming.

“Now that you mention it, it doesn’t look like the class rep’s here today, huh.”

I froze at Miki’s words, but she was looking at the clock, not at me.

“Welp, I should be heading back now. Let’s give it our all today!”

As a result, she didn’t notice my change and cheerfully stood up and left.

The other side of my conversation now gone, I closed myself away in my heart. But I myself wasn’t there. Inside my heart were other people. Countless other people.

And among them, the one with the largest presence was that man I had been grasping onto.

Although he was grinning, he didn’t seem the least bit pleased. The words that sprung forth from that pained smile were much what one would expect.

Ahh... I wanna kill someone.

I hadn’t realized it was possible to so anxiously await a homeroom teacher’s arrival. Based on his personality, if Akiyama was sick or running late, he would no doubt have contacted the school to inform them. Once the teacher arrived, all of my uneasiness would be put to rest.

But they still weren’t here. It had already been ten minutes since the bell had rung.

Time seemed to be violently slowing down, and my heart was beating so loudly I could hear it echo in my ears. As if the second hand was putting on airs, the minutes refused to pass.

Another ten minutes passed, and the teacher still hadn’t shown up.

The classes on either side of mine were still raucous. Did that mean that our homeroom teacher wasn’t the only one who had yet to show up? Did the staff meeting run over? And if it had, why?

I was so confident in my ill premonition that it gave me chills. Upon holding my head in my hands, I finally heard footsteps.

The door to the classroom swung open. But the homeroom teacher didn’t enter alone. For some reason, the principle was accompanying them.

Both of them wore very intentional grave expressions, almost as if they knew they had to.

“Erm... I have a very serious announcement to make to all of you, so please make sure you remain calm.”

The principal began speaking.

“Just now, we received contact from the police... And be assured, we are all just as alarmed as you are...”

I already knew the answer. I knew quite clearly what the principal was about to say. So I couldn’t muster up nearly as much shock at the word “homicide” as my classmates did.

<noinclude>
==Translator's Notes and References==
<references />

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| Back to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]
| Return to [[We Don't Open Anywhere -There are no facts, only interpretations.-|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Masato Yahara's Closed World (I)|Masato Yahara's Closed World (I)]]
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</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Miki Kouzuki's Closed World (II)

2017-11-26T03:21:50Z

Toshiya: formatting

== Miki Kouzuki's Closed World (II) ==

After Kouta left, I simply laid on my bed in a daze for a while. The sun had long since set by the time I finally began moving again and turned to the mirror on my desk to put up my unfastened hair. But I couldn’t will myself to do it. The red hair band I had used for for so long felt like it contained half of my self — well, that was an exaggeration, but it definitely felt like it had been part of me. That was why it had been so steeped in my magic. Kouta wasn’t the only one under its influence; it had also drained my desire to replace it.

I decided to give up on the ponytail and leave my hair like this for a while.

Collapsing onto my bed again, I ruminated on what Kouta had said to me.

I have to wonder, why do you spend so much time confirming my feelings without voicing your own even once?

His expression had been the same as always, and his voice had been gentle, but he had clearly been reproaching me. It was the first time he had done so.

He’ll just come to hold you in contempt, and that’ll be that. Later.

Yahara had been right after all.

I’m a magus.

That may not be the most accurate way to put it. But I do actually have a special power, and I call it magic.

Up until I turned ten, I never displayed any external emotions. I was extremely shy, never opening my heart up to anyone. By the time I was old enough to realize what was going on, my parents had fallen out of love and fought frequently enough that we even got complaints from the next neighborhood over. They began living separately when I was eight, and they got divorced when I was nine. I was an only child, so I didn’t have any siblings that could intervene. Back then, the atmosphere in our family always felt like someone had run a fine knife through it.

Although they were never physically abusive before the divorce, when my mother was in a bad mood she would often treat me like I wasn’t there. Even if I cried, she wouldn’t pay any attention to me. As this went on, I eventually stopped crying altogether, along with laughing. And I didn’t just stop expressing emotions, I became numb and stopped feeling them altogether. My unnecessary functions were deteriorating.

As you would expect, none of my classmates wanted to get close to someone like that, so I was alone at school as well. I didn’t talk to anyone at school, nor did I at home. That was how I spent my days.

It was like I was invisible. In Japanese class, I wrote poems along those lines as well. When I did, my homeroom teacher would give their unaffected impressions, usually something along the lines of “What an interesting perspective.” ...Notice my cries for help already. Or had they noticed, but ignored them after deeming them too much of a bother?

Nobody came to my rescue. The only reason I was saved was because I didn’t give up in spite of that. I longed for the warmth of others, I yearned for it, and that tenacity was what eventually saved me.

—If only I could use magic.

I always fantasized about that. If only I could use magic to get along with anyone and everyone. If I could use that kind of magic, my parents could get back together, and I could laugh along with my friends. Those were kinds of ridiculous delusions I entertained.

But then one day, magic suddenly stopped being a mere delusion.

Although I had noone to talk to, I was always enviously watching my classmates’ interactions. Now that I look back at it, I was watching them with an aberrant level of concentration.

As an outsider, I calmly observed their interactions. I scanned the patterns of their conversations, unconsciously accumulating data.

And once I did, I began to understand the regularities therein. What kind of person what do what kinds of things to which other people, and how would those people react? Ahh, sudden awakenings truly do happen. As if I had learned a new language, the way I saw the world shifted.

Having understood the regularities behind communication, I immediately put this knowledge to the test. It took courage to move forward, but my hundreds of simulations gave me confidence.

And the result was — people responded exactly as I expected.

It felt good beyond words.

I changed myself through force. My emotions were still weak, but that actually worked in my favor. If I didn’t feel anything, then no matter what part I had to play it wouldn’t adversely affect me. I was at a little bit of a loss as to what to use for my baseline personality, but I found being a cheerful airhead to be the most convenient so I eventually settled on that. I was also aware of my looks, and took full advantage of them. Personality isn’t a single thing, it’s incident to one’s outwards appearance. This can be observed particularly strongly when guys are looking at girls. And the same manner of communication leaves a different impression on each recipient. There are words that can only be said and taboos that can only be broken in certain contexts. I steeled my intuition, put that theory into words, and changed it into something I could control.

Although my good cheer was initially an act, it eventually took root in my personality. In much the same way, my lost emotions initially felt like they were drifting gently in the air above me but eventually became the real thing.

My days became startlingly resplendent, and I was replete.

In my greed, I desired even more bliss. I decided to use my powers not just to change myself, but to influence those around me as well.

In retrospect, I was basically cheating by using it against adolescent girls whose egos hadn’t fully developed. My “communication” bordered on brainwashing.

Upon accepted my interference and my value system, it became easier for me to control someone. In middle school, I had a friend (or so she was perceived by those around us) named Youko who I knew so well I could basically control. She became an entity dedicated to my convenience, as if she lived solely for my sake.

I refer to people like her as having taken on my attribute.By using the information under my control, I can even manipulate them subconsciously. If I recite an incantation, they’ll go so far as to become my swords and shields.

That’s why I call it magic.

But ever since that incident, my magic had been getting cloudier. The incident involving a ceremony I couldn’t tell Kouta about.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was an experiment.

I met this girl — I don’t know her name, so I’ll call her A — over the internet. I knew from her profile that she was interested in magic, so I took action. After exchanging LINE IDs with A, we immediately hit it off and began chatting nearly every day.

I had already experienced someone taking on my attribute at school. The next step was to find out how much control I could exert over a person, how much magic I could use, that I had only ever interacted with online. That was how greedy I was when it came to interpersonal relationships.

But the experiment ended in failure.

I had planned on controlling her by introducing her to my value system and sharing my magical delusions with her. But because I couldn’t meet her in person, small misalignments were born. My magic was imperfect.

One day, A invited me to a magical ceremony. While all this was going on, I was studying for high school entrance exams, and I declined her invitation because I had a test coming up. But perhaps the true reason I turned her down was because I sensed that her delusions were magnifying past the point of no return and becoming dangerous.

After conducting the ceremony on her own, something about A clearly seemed off. Her LINE messages became increasingly unintelligible, and when I expressed my confusion she became irritated, angry, disappointed, and ultimately ended up blocking me. Her social media profiles became full of citations in a language only she understood.

Then she stopped updating her social media altogether.

Worried about her, I took the train three hours to visit the middle school she went to. There, I soon discovered what had happened to her.

A had killed herself.

For the first time. For the first time, I began having misgivings about my magic. I had been manipulating people so casually, but was that really something so permissible? Wasn’t it wrong to change people like this? If I hadn’t been around, wouldn’t A still be alive?

Hesitations like that gradually chipped away at my magic. Magic became more powerful when you accepted it blindly, and weaker when you doubted it. No longer certain that I was in the right, I refrained from using magic and called myself a magus to anyone who would listen, only interacting with people who would approach me in spite of that.

But then I found out about Kouta Hiiragi.

He caught my attention from the moment I first laid eyes on him. As I watched him merge seamlessly into his environment, nearly transparent, I thought that he reminded me of mineral water.

Even if I was restraining myself from using magic, Kouta alone I couldn’t overlook. He was simply in too much danger. I don’t know how he looked to everyone else, but to me he looked like he was strolling down the streets of Johannesburg with rolls of banknotes pasted all over him.

I had to protect him!

I was overcome with a strong sense of duty. I willing to do whatever it took to protect him. It was so strong, I didn’t even mind if I had to offer him my chastity.

But taking a step back now and reconsidering, why had I been so fervent?

Once I got my thoughts in order, the cause became clear. After driving A to her death, I had likely been trying to atone. And Kouta had been a suitable individual. By saving Kouta, I could reaffirm both myself and my magic.

It was all for my own sake.

It was for my own ego.

I was well aware. I used my magic to manipulate others. But the one most strongly manipulated by magic was me. Even my personality had been created to suit magic’s needs. My very emotions turned according to magic’s convenience.

So I didn’t know any more.

Where did my true feelings lie?

“See you later, Kouta.”

I called out to Kouta from the hallway after school, then returned to my own classroom.

After I kissed Kouta, I couldn’t figure out how close we were. It wasn’t even clear whether or not we had broken up. I didn’t know if it was okay to walk home together with him, either.

On the other hand, it also wasn’t like he had completely cut off contact with me. No conclusion seemed forthcoming, and I put off reaching for one.

As someone who habitually made decisions quickly, this was a first for me.

“Say, Miki, did you by any chance break up with that guy from next door?”

Sayuri asked concernedly, wearing her trademark short skirt. I simply sat uncomfortably, which she mistook for an affirmation and pounded on my back.

“Well, I dunno who dumped who, but with your looks I’m sure you’ll have plenty of much better guys pounding at your door!”

“I think Kouta’s pretty good-looking, myself...”

That was my honest evaluation.

“Oh, no way. He’s totally normal. Bland. No personality. Below-average. And for him to break up with you so quickly, he must be a pretty shitty person. He’s worse than trash. I mean, that background character doesn’t even compare to someone like Makino.”

“I don’t even know Makino. And besides, Kouta and I didn’t break up. I think... probably...”

I realized my mistake the moment the words left my mouth. I’d said something that the love story-crazed Sayuri would be sure to latch on to.

“What’s up with you two!? Now you have to tell me everything! That’s it, how about you tell your favorite love expert the details?”

I mean, as far as I knew she had only ever dated one person, and she was still a virgin... No, there was no need to bring that up. Sayuri was always center of attention in our class, so she needed to be perceived as experienced in the ways of love. I shouldn’t say anything to shatter that image of hers.

I ended up attracting the interest of not just Sayuri, but most of the girls in class, so the whole matter took a good deal more time to resolve than I had expected. I was on edge because I didn’t want any strange rumors spreading around, and by the end of it all I was dead tired.

By the time I passed through the school gate, the sun had already almost set.

I had been hanging my head in exhaustion my entire way out, so it was by sheer coincidence that I lifted my head when I did and saw what I saw.

Kouta was with a girl from another school.

The aging coffee shop they went to was near the school, but drinks there were expensive and it wasn’t particularly stylish. Perhaps the conversations about romance I had been embroiled in were to blame for the fact that “affair” was the first word that sprung to my mind, and my face went bright pink.

But setting aside the prospect on affair, seeing the two of them side-by-side gave me an ominous premonition. And the girl was clearly being possessed by some manner of evil magic. It was hard to anything good coming of her interacting with Kouta as he was now.

But my legs simply trembled, refusing to take me to the coffee shop. No matter how much faith I had in my premonition, the courage to get involved refused to well forth.

Vexed at my own powerlessness, my eyes welled up with tears. What I really wanted to do was storm into that coffee shop this instant and protect Kouta from everything that might harm him.

What was so wrong about that?

The next day, Kouta had clearly undergone some manner of transformation.

Yahara was slowly corroding away at him. But a dead man’s magic can’t exert any new influence, so I hadn’t been treating it as an emergency.

But I had been mistaken. Yahara’s magic was stronger than I had imagined. And more importantly, its target had been Kouta, whose magic resistance was zero.

Kouta was completely submerged in the sorcery that was born from the ritual of his death.

What should I do? Kouta had already lost his confidence in me, so now that the issue had progressed this far it was difficult to imagine him listening to what I had to say. On the other hand, was it really for the best that I just leave him be? Would any actions I took to save him here simply be to fuel my own ego?

“You seem down again today, Miki. Probably have your head all full of that good-for-nothing guy Kouta, right?”

Sayuri’s quip came in an intentionally-bright tone. When I met her eyes and gave a small nod, she sighed exaggeratedly.

“...Say. You haven’t properly dumped him, and you haven’t been properly dumped, am I right? ...And, um, as an aside, I find Kouta’s worth as a guy to be deeply… deeply! Very deeply! Suspect! ...Suspect, but…”

She continued with a wry grin.

“If you like him so much, wouldn’t it best if you tried really hard to make up with him?”

“Eh?”

Like him?

I liked Kouta?

“You know, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on your whole situation-thing over there. Like, why things between you two keep getting so complicated. ...Say, Miki, you’ve never liked anyone before, right? This is just me guessing, but Kouta asked you out, and even though it was Kouta you didn’t hate the idea so you just kinda went along with it. Then, when he wanted to move the relationship along, your feelings still hadn’t caught up and you got all wishy-washy… and then he got all pissy, am I on the right track?”

I was impressed. There were a number of details she got wrong, but she had seen through to the essentials.

“You probably don’t understand your feelings yourself, huh, Miki. But see, using Makino as an example, you’ve rejected a bunch of guys before, right? But the only one you’ve gone out with is Kouta. That’s a pretty big jump, don’t you think? So I’m like, what if you just don’t know what it means to like someone?”

“...I don’t have any personal experience, but I think I have a pretty good idea from books and stuff. When you like someone, stuff like your chest getting tight, not being able to swallow when you’re eating, and being blind happen, right? But nothing like that’s happened to me. So I thought my feelings were something else…”

“Y’know, Miki, you’re really good at picking up on people’s true natures, right? Like, creepily good.”

I was startled at having that so suddenly pointed out. I didn’t think Sayuri had seen through me to that extent.

“Miki, the kind of like you’re talking about is probably just when you have illusions about the other party. Like, when you have an idealized version of someone in your head and you fall in love with that version. But when that happens, you’re not really looking at the real them. You’re just in love with the idea of being in love. But because you pick up on people’s true natures so easily, you don’t harbor illusions like that. I guess that makes you kind of a realist?”

“Does that mean I can’t fall in love?”

The creation of my very personality and emotions had been manipulated by magic. It couldn’t be helped if such impediments arose.

But Sayuri just shook her head.

“No, no, no. That kind of love is no more than kid’s play. It’s an egotistical, conceited kind of love. Even a love expert like myself had a phase like that. But every dreamer has to graduate from loving the idea of being in love. That kind of violent love never lasts long. But I think that even without those violent emotions, if you’re always, always always, thinking about that someone, then that’s already love in and of itself.”

I understood the words coming out of her mouth, but I couldn’t make them feel real.

So basically, I was already in love with Kouta?

“That’s…”

“Actually, maybe it doesn’t have to be that complicated? Falling in love is something you can only do if you want to. You couldn’t do it because you weren’t prepared yet. Does that make sense?”

“I’m really not sure it does…”

Sayuri took on a voice like she was gently teaching a child who was doing poorly in school.

“Okay, then let’s stop thinking about it all jumbled-up like that. Let’s just confirm something. Miki, what is it that you want to do for him?”

“That’s—”

It immediately came to mind.

I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to protect him from evil magi.

“Do you think about anyone else in the same way? Could you do the same things for them?”

Kouta was the only person I so desperately wanted to save. But that was because he was a special, transparent kind of person. It was because he didn’t have any magic resistance. ...Or so I had thought.

“Just do what you want to. Even if you end up being a bit of a nuisance, you’re cute enough that anyone would let you get away with it!”

“But…”

“No buts! Ahh, all this tedious blathering is so unlike you! Once the Miki I know has her mind set on something, she goes and does it! Where’d that assertiveness of your go?”

“T...that’s…”

“Ahh, I can’t hear you. Until Miki gets moving, I’m not talking to her anymore! That’s it, I’m done! I’m done being friends with her!”

Sayuri really was meddlesome, I thought, as she pushed me forward repeatedly after arbitrarily deciding that I was in love. But thanks to her fervent speech, I was finally sure of my feelings.

—No matter what, I couldn’t leave Kouta be like this!

That much I felt certain of. Whether or not it was my ego speaking, those were my true feelings.

Sorry, Kouta.

I can’t ignore these feelings of mine. No matter what!

As soon as break rolled around, I immediately headed for the next-door classroom. I had nothing even resembling a plan, but my magic should still have some efficacy. If I just talked with him face-to-face, I was sure I could come up with a way to save him!

I surveyed the classroom, but Kouta was nowhere to be seen.

What should I do? Should I wait for him…? Or should I go back after all…?

“Kouzuki. May I have a moment?”

As I hesitated, a skinny man in glasses called out to me. Though his glasses hid them somewhat, dark shades stood in sharp contrast on his face. Although we’d never spoken before, I knew him as the class representative who always instructed the class to take their seats in the mornings.

“It seems that you often visit our classroom with Hiiragi in mind. What I would like to inquire is, are you in fact his girlfriend?”

His hypocritical courtesy and peculiar manner of speaking where he didn’t allow his facial muscles to move made me wary. I was a magus, so he couldn’t fool me.

—This person was bad news.

How could I have not noticed such a blatantly evil person before? If he had always been this bad, I should have noticed his peculiarity like I did with Yahara and Matsumi-senpai and been on guard.

Had I simply overlooked him? ...Or perhaps, had he only recently become this way?

“I would appreciate it if you would answer my question.”

In my brooding I had completely forgotten to give an answer. As confused as I was, I tried to give as innocuous an answer as possible.

“Um, I’d say we’re really good friends… or something like that.”

“Is that so? However, would you not say that you harbor affection for him as a member of the opposite sex?”

It seemed impolite to me to ask such an intrusive question to somebody in your first proper conversation with them.

He didn’t seem timid in the slightest. But it seemed my displeasure made it across to him.

“That was rude of me. What I’m trying to ask is, why Hiiragi? That about sums it up.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m asking why it had to be him. He doesn’t have any particular talents, nor is he exceedingly attractive. Why are you so fixated on him, in spite of all that?”

Did he simply have romance on the mind, like Sayuri? ...No, there’s no way, right?

There was clearly some other motive behind his question.

I tried to get get a read on what it was, but because it was my first time talking to him I couldn’t get it from his expression alone.

I had a thought.

—I hate this person.

The reason I tried to tear Yahara and Matsumi-senpai away from Kouta was simply because they were dangerous. But I didn’t want to spend time around this guy for a simpler reason than that. I hated him.

“I don’t really see how that has anything to do with you, and I don’t really feel any obligation to answer that.”

“I see.”

The bespectacled man didn’t see overly concerned.

“Can I go now?”

“Ah, I apologize for keeping you.”

I turned away from him as if I were fleeing.

“Ah, my apologies. May I ask you one last question?”

Not hiding my displeasure as I turned around, I asked “What?”

“Do you believe that it is possible, simply from seemingly normal conversation and behaviour, to make others act according to one’s whim?”

Without thinking, my eyes widened.

—Could this guy know about magic?

The bespectacled man gazed interestedly at my panicked demeanor.

“...I think… it’s possible…”

“I see. Now I understand.”

He spoke almost in a whisper. Then he laughed eerily, to the point that I wasn’t sure how concerned I needed to be.

My mood worsening, I gave up on waiting for Kouta and fled the classroom.

Had he known about magic, and was investigating it? No… that wasn’t the impression I got. Then what in the world was he investigating?

But there was one thing I was certain of.

He too was a bad influence on Kouta.

Thanks to my unpleasant encounter with the bespectacled man, I was somewhat flustered. My sense of duty was flaring up as well, telling me that I had to do something about Kouta. All throughout class I found myself unable to think of anything else.

When lunch break came, I finally found Kouta in his classroom.

“Kouta! I, um… I have something I need to talk to you about!”

Kouta’s confusion was plain on his face. I couldn’t blame him; through yesterday, I had been respecting the distance we had placed between ourselves, and now I was acting all assertive all of a sudden.

After somehow convincing him, we made our way to the same courtyard as always. Between the lush trees and the increasingly-overgrown lawn, it seemed less likely than ever that we would be intruded upon.

“What was it you wanted to talk about, Miki?”

“There’s, um, something I really wanted to tell you…”

A phrase instantly sprung to mind.

I like you.

I was almost disappointed in myself. I was still being manipulated by magic. I knew that if I confessed to him like this, he wouldn’t be able to turn me down, which is why I decided to do it in the first place. It was just like when I kissed him.

Ahh… this was the first time I’ve ever resented magic.

But I stopped myself. I wanted to be sincere when I was with Kouta.

“I want to release you from this magic that’s nesting inside you.”

I knew that if I was so stupidly honest, there was a chance I would be rejected. But Kouta would accept it. To the very end, he would never reject me.

I was presumptuous.

This late in the game, I was still presumptuous.

“Just cut it out already.”

So even though I should have been able to anticipate his rebuttal, I couldn’t believe it.

“Miki, you’re full of yourself. You’re not even trying to understand how I feel. ...No, even if you understand how I feel, you’re still just trying to shove your own ego down my throat. I thought you’d been reflecting on that lately, but I guess I was wrong about that, huh.”

“...I, I have! But even so, I want to save you!”

“I’m not some tool you can use to reinforce your magic. And I’m not some pet you can use to stop being lonely, either.”

“I know that… or I thought I did, at least. But… Kouta, you’re in a really bad way right now! You’re getting stained in Yahara’s attribute, in a bad way, and it’s really dangerous! So I need to use my magic to—”

“Magic is just,”

He spoke with an exasperated look on his face.

“An illusion. It’s all in your head.”

That purposeful method of pushing people aside, of hurting them, of keeping one’s distance from them.

It was like he really was—

“I hold you in a bit of contempt now.”

Masato Yahara, wasn’t he.

He’ll just come hold you in contempt, and that’ll be that. Later.

It turned out exactly like he said it would.

Their speech patterns, their appearances, their magic, everything was lining up.

“Later.”

As if saying he didn’t want to even look at me any more, Kouta turned around and walked off in a flash.

I was left alone in the courtyard.

I was rejected?

—Right. I was rejected.

I was rejected so thoroughly as to fall into despair.

“...That’s weird.”

My magic existed just so I wouldn’t be rejected by others. My magic existed just so I could control others. Why so did this happen on account of my magic?

Why did the person I least wanted to be rejected by, reject me?

“...Uw…”

Sadness? Loneliness? Heartbreak? I threw out all those negative emotions at the very beginning. I thought the only emotions I had left were those that I could manipulate to my benefit. But then, what was this… They’re all still totally here.

“...Uwaa...Whaaaa…”

Tears were something for me to manipulate others with. One of the convenient tools at a woman’s disposal. But although I had believed that, tears were streaming down my face despite nobody else being around.

What was going on… Get a grip already… Why was I crying?

“Uwaa, whaaaaaaa!”

It wasn’t like I wanted to cry or anything!

After fleeing from the courtyard, I holed myself up in a stall in the girl’s bathroom. The bell for fifth period rang, but I couldn’t stop sobbing and simply stayed put.

My mind was in turmoil, but I tracked down the one calm part of myself and put it to use.

Even if Kouta ended up hating me, I wouldn’t suffer any lasting damage. If an influential girl like Sayuri started hating me it would likely affect the rest of my interpersonal relationships as well, but Kouta didn’t belong to any social circles in particular. In fact, due to his relationship with Yahara he was somewhat isolated.

Even if Kouta continued to be subsumed by Yahara, even if he passed the point of no return, it wasn’t my fault. If I hadn’t been around in the first place, the only thing that would have changed would have been him getting taken over by Yahara’s magic even sooner. It was completely different than my friend who had committed suicide.

Besides, why had I become so engrossed in Kouta in the first place?

I have this power. And even if they weren’t to Kouta’s extent, I’ve seen plenty of people in danger like he is. For example, that girl from another school that Kouta was with yesterday. But even knowing that, I never once thought to save them. For better or for worse, I’ve been pretty cold since I discovered magic.

Why was Kouta alone so special?

Why was I so willing to give him my first kiss, even though I would recoil at the thought of doing that with anyone else?

Why did it hurt this much to be rejected by him?

—Ahh, so that’s it.

I’m so stupid. It’s so simple. Anyone else would have realized it in an instant. Only I could have failed to see it.

I’ve been violated.

Violated by the most cliched magic imaginable.

The magic of love.

“But… I’m too late…!”

Why hadn’t I realized my feelings sooner? If I had been aware of how I felt, I’m sure I could have come up with any number of ways to get him to like me. There would have been any number of ways.

I hadn’t know what was driving me, so I hadn’t known how to manage it. It was just one failure after another.

The instant I realized what the true nature of my feelings was, the notion of “heartbreak” was born in my chest. It felt akin to the “loneliness” that had tormented me in the past, but the two were hardly comparable. I was furious. Furious at my inability to control my own emotions.

But for some reason, I felt happy as well.

I was happy that there was something that could move me to these lengths. Thank goodness that my emotions weren’t truly dead. Thank goodness that some parts of me were still human!

Ahh, who cares any more! Who cares that Kouta doesn’t have any magic resistance any more! Who cares that he’s being possessed by Yahara any more!

As long as I can keep being with Kouta from now on, who cares any more!

I wanted to devote myself to Kouta. I wanted to make him mine. I wanted to stain him in my attribute. Ahh, my heart was awash with my own selfish ego. So awash with selfishness I might even disappoint myself. But I couldn’t stop it!

Suddenly, the saying about how first loves are never fulfilled floated to my mind.

The first time I heard those words, I laughed with scorn. I’m a magus; I can control people without them even noticing it. If I were to ever fall in love, the thought of it ending in failure was laughable. I thought I’d just be able to seduce whoever I fell for at a whim.

And now look at me! How pathetic I am! How conceited I was!

“Uwaaa, whaaaaaaaaaa!”

I’m so sad!

How could I miss this once-in-a-lifetime shot?

I couldn’t just run home on account of having left my bag in the classroom, so I timed my return with the bell signalling the end of fifth period. My eyelids were puffy and red, so I was immediately grilled by my classmates.

After matter-of-factly tearing me away from the misfortune-starved horde, Sayuri dragged me back to the bathroom. The two of us entered a stall. After making me sit on the toilet seat, she leaned against the door and folded her arms.

“Let me guess, that ass Kouta dumped you, you finally realized that you’re in love with him, and you’ve been crying alone on the toilet for the past hour, right?”

“...Yeah.”

After making her promise not to repeat it to anyone, I told Sayuri everything. The face staring back at me from the mirror earlier looked like death, and Sayuri’s response after looking closely at it was—

“Ahahaha! So that’s it! You’re a riot!”

—irreverent laughter.

What was I to do? I was on the verge of livid. I, the supposedly emotionless heroine, had recalled not only how to get sad but also how to get angry.

“W...what are you laughing at!? I’m having an unrequited love over here! I’m so sad I’m bawling my eyes out over here! What’s wrong with you, Sayuri!? What, you want to go? Come on, let’s go!”

“Ahaha… Sorry, sorry! It’s just, you’re so innocent, Miki, it’s adorable…”

“Adorable!? I’ve had enough of this… I’m going to cast a spell on you that makes you unable to ever split your chopsticks cleanly…”

“I said I’m sorry for laughing! ...But isn’t it too early to call your love unrequited just yet?”

Unsatisfied, I spoke in a low voice, my face still twisted in anger.

“He said he held me in contempt, you know? Other than unrequited, what else could it possibly be…”

“I’m telling you, if he really didn’t want to go out with you any more, he would have said it differently. It’s proof that he just wants you to better yourself.”

Was it? Wasn’t it a matter of course that nobody who was that disappointed in me would ever want to go out with me?

“You were so unaware of your own feelings, all that the lucky guy you fell for heard from you was ‘I don’t really understand, but I want you to stay with me. I want you to put up with my selfishness. I want you to do as I say.’ And why do you think he was willing to do all that for you?”

After hearing it put that way, I was all the more impressed at Kouta for putting up with me for so long. It was no wonder he hated me now.

“...That’s, well, because Kouta is the kind of person who can’t reject anyone.”

“Nope. It’s because he’s interested in you.”

“What?”

That was too far out of left field.

“This is just my intuition talking, but Miki, did you by any chance have a bunch of male friends in middle school? You know, doing you favors and stuff?”

“I don’t know about favors, but I did have friends…”

As long as I had my magic, such a feat was simple. I had put a lot of effort into getting people under my control, male and female alike. I had long thought that my ability to do so was my one redeeming quality.

“You know, those guys were probably all into you!”

“Ehh…? Your logic’s getting a little shaky…”

“You really are blind to your whole sex appeal, aren’t you. I can definitely tell that you didn’t put much thought into romance up until now. Hmm… a quiz, then. What would you say is the kind of girl that guys are the most likely to fall for?”

“Huh? Umm… Someone who’s cute, mature, and respectful… and maybe good at cooking? And long hair is probably better. Anyways, that sort of girly girl, right? I don’t really fit the type, you know.”

“Well, a girly girl like that’ll be a hit with the guys for sure. But that’s not it. That type’ll be popular, but not the most popular. The most popular type is gonna be the type of girl whose looks are only so-so, is easy to talk to, who they can be themselves around, and who looks like they’re having a good time when they’re chatting. Other than the bit about the looks, it’s a description that fits you to a T.”

“You’re not just saying stuff to cheer me up, are you?”

“I’m as serious as can be. Girls are pretty much the same way, but guys don’t really go for girl who are out of their league. They fall for girls that they feel like they have a shot with. And you’re kind of a natural at provoking guys that way, Miki. You try so hard to make sure the people you interact with are having fun, it makes guys wonder if you might be into them. You’re a master at accidentally giving the wrong impression. The first time I met you, I wanted to kill you because I thought you were doing it on purpose.”

“You’re scary…”

“Wait a minute, haven’t you, like, had a bunch of guys confess to you?”

I was silent. I couldn’t refute it.

“So what’s up with that ‘I don’t know anything about love’ aura you give off? Anyways, you should be aware of how popular you are.”

“...Well, enough about me being popular—”

“I’ll kill you. Don’t go getting cocky on me. I’ll kill you.”

“Let me finish! Geez, the look in your eyes is scary! ...But even if I’m popular, that’s different from Kouta liking me, right? I’m pretty confident that he doesn’t seem me in a romantic light.”

“Maybe the two of you are more alike than you think. I’m pretty sure he holds you in good favor… Maybe he doesn’t realize it, either.”

...Now that she mentioned it, Kouta had a habit of avoiding self-reflection, so him being unaware of his feelings was only natural.

“And for that matter, he didn’t ignore you or anything even after you started acting all arrogant around him, right?”

Thinking back to how Kouta was originally, I mumbled, “I think so.”

“Then you got this in the bag.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Even though he might not realize it, it’s not your personality that’s annoying him so much. It’s not your selfishness. It’s what we were just talking about, how you don’t put things clearly. He’s mad because you properly said that you liked him.”

I wanted to tell her that there’s no way that was the case, but something Kouta had told me floated to mind.

I have to wonder, why do you spend so much time confirming my feelings without voicing your own even once?

“Even if Kouta’s like you were and doesn’t realize he’s in love with you, all you have to saying is something like ‘I like you so much I can’t leave you alone. I’m sorry.’ and he’d forgive you with a sappy look on his face. ‘Cause it’s pretty clear he definitely has feelings for you. Guys are pretty simple, you know, and they don’t really get hung up on the past. So you’ve got this in the bag. Or should I call it an easy win?”

I immediately wanted to rebut, saying that there was no way it could be that easy.

But when I ran a simulation inside my head, I felt like the result would be exactly as she predicted. I could almost imagine Kouta saying “It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” and forgiving me with a slightly flustered look on his face.

That was amazing.

Sayuri came up with an incantation to salvage a relationship that not even I could think of a way to like it was nothing.

I gazed at Sayuri with newfound respect.

“Sayuri, are you by any chance actually a powerful magus?”

I had thought that there was nothing I had left to learn from others when it came to communication.

“Magic? What are you going on about? Well, I guess it does make sense that you’d be no match for me, given that you’re just a little fledgeling when it comes to love and I’ve got love on the brain twenty-four seven.”

That… made sense. There was no way I could compare to a romance fanatic like her.

Sayuri gave my head a soft knock.

“Go get ‘em, Miki.”

“...Will do.”

It was possible that despite my preconceptions, magic wasn’t actually all that special. It was possible that others could use similar abilities.

It wasn’t that nobody else knew that magic existed. They just didn’t need to. After all, you can do things similar to magic without even noticing.

But… I still wanted to believe that my magic was special. I couldn’t so easily discard something that had supported me for so long.

There may well come a day when I find the degree to which I was obsessed with magic embarrassing, but that day is yet to come.

I still believed in my magic.

It was still something deeply important to me.

I decided to go see Kouta once school let out.

But thinking about it, it would be difficult to hold a normal conversation with him given how things ended last time. I had to resolve myself if I was going to be able to make up with him.

I had no choice but to confess my love for him.

Upon realizing this I began to lose my nerve a little, and the next-door classroom began to seem farther and farther away. No matter how many deeps breaths I took, my heart continued pounding away. My shoulders stiffened up from the stress, and I even began to feel a headache come on. After slapping my unobedient legs over and over, I finally reached the classroom.

Kouta wasn’t there. But his bag was, so it seemed likely that he’d be back for it soon. With some hesitation, I headed for his seat and sat down. I fell prostrate on the desk he used day in and day out.

That was all it took for my affection to start overflowing. Self-awareness. My heart felt so itchy that I wanted to scratch it. But at the same time it felt pleasant, like the blood pumping out of my heart was warmer than usual.

How odd. I hadn’t realized what these feelings were until today, and yet I was well past the point of doubting them.

I liked Kouta.

I liked Kouta a lot.

I would confess to him, and make a request. An egotistical request for him to become mine.

But who cared if it was egotistical.

I liked him, after all.

I loved him.

So he would forgive me, wouldn’t he? That was what love meant, wasn’t it?

In order to hide my giddy face, I lay even flatter on his desk. Kouta didn’t seem to be coming back, but I waited for him anyways.

I was so lost in the throngs of love that I had completely forgotten.

Kouta was on the verge of not being Kouta any more.

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| Forward to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi’s Closed World (IV) Masato Yahara’s Closed World (II)|Kouta Hiiragi’s Closed World (IV) Masato Yahara’s Closed World (II)]]
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We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi’s Closed World (IV) Masato Yahara’s Closed World (II)

2017-11-26T03:13:38Z

Toshiya: formatting

== Kouta Hiiragi’s Closed World (IV) Masato Yahara’s Closed World (II) ==

An abandoned hospital. A forgotten cemetery. A tunnel that had fallen into disuse. A sea of trees where the sun’s light couldn’t reach.

He wasn’t in any such place.

Let’s say it was a completely ordinary shopping mall out in the sticks. The kind of place that would fill you with déjà vu the first time you visited it, a mass-produced mall with the same kinds of stores as any other. But because it’s the most convenient one in the region, it’s lively in its own way, with money changing hands and people strolling about.

That kind of place.

Masato Yahara was in such a place.

“Why are you in a place like this, Masato?”

“‘Cuz there’s nothing here.”

“Nothing? It’s pretty lively, isn’t it?”

“Then go on, try to imagine somewhere with nothing in it. No people. No shops. No street lights. No streets. Does a place like that seem normal to you? Could ya stay in a place like that without feeling anything? You couldn’t, could ya. A place like that’s already special. There’s somethin’ called ‘nothingness’ there. And nothingness has too much of an impact. It’s pretty damn far from feeling like there’s nothing there.”

“So it’s like… it’s unnatural?”

“Yeah, basically. And I can’t stay in a place like that. I stand out too much against nothingness. I become special. And an incomplete existence like me can’t stay like that.”

“So that’s why you’re here?”

“Yup. Place like this lets me blend into day-to-day life, become homogenized, and not feel anything. That’s what I mean by ‘there’s nothing here’. ...Let’s call it ‘nil’ to differentiate it from nothingness. Nil exists in places where I can exist unconsciously. I’m always right next to you. But nil is folded up real small, so it penetrates the little holes in our day-to-day life and makes you forget about it.”

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

“What’s that noise? Does it have something to do with nil?”

“Yeah. That noise induces nil. As long as it exists, we’re gonna keep getting absorbed by nil.”

“Is it bad if that happens?”

“What, you can’t fuckin’ tell? In nil, even a dead guy like me can exist. Hell, I can exist just as well as you can. So basically, the kinds of oblivious guys who live snuggled up in nil are worth the same as if they were dead. It means their lives have shit for meaning or value.”

“But, there’s lots of people like that.”

“Exactly.”

“Are you one of them, Masato?”

“If I’m not careful, I’ll get engulfed.”

“Is that why you tried to break free?”

“Basically. But I fucked up.”

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

What a grating noise. Every rattle makes me want to run away. It makes me want to succumb to irritation.

“Masato… I can’t take it any more. I want to get out.”

“You could probably actually make it, Kou. In the end, all I was was ordinary. I couldn’t escape the noise. But you’re different. You’re special, you’re abnormal. You can definitely make it out. I’m sure of it.”

“But, what can I do?”

“Don’t worry.”

Masato spoke with a kind smile. He’d never smiled like that when he was alive.

“You already know the way.”

I, who was still just barely “me”, was melting. Melting like an ice cream cone that had been abandoned under a blazing sun. Halfway between a liquid and a solid, I spread unceremoniously across the ground and became worthless.

Becoming worthless like this was no good. I had to find a purpose again. Otherwise I would stop being human.

Then someone interrupted my dissolution from within, bringing along a sound that resembled chains.

Go ahead, do as you will.

I, Kouta Hiiragi, am “white”.

I take on the colors of others.

Go on, I’m right here!

And thus.

Masato Yahara is right here.

From then on, I acted automatically. I became no more than a machine carrying out my duty. My field of view, perhaps the very world, became blurry and unclear. I didn’t know where to focus my sight. I couldn’t perceive the school grounds, which I should have been intimately familiar with, as anything but a meaning flabby mass. It was like the world had been overlaid by a mosaic. I hadn’t lost any of my knowledge, so I was able to go through the motions of everyday life. Like an NPC moving according to its programming. But the ground felt unsteady. It felt unnatural and unsettling, like the soles of my shoes were covered in a powerful gum.

In accordance with the order that had come from deep within me, I was on the roof. Against a backdrop of twilight stained in week-old blood, I stepped solidly on the oddly-dirty concrete and looked down upon the gradually depopulating townscape. Lined up on the street was a stream of kei cars<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car</ref>, all being sucked in by the flashiest building in town: the pachinko parlor.

A cheap end to a cheap world.

An obsolete townscape like that fit Shuuichi Akiyama perfectly. I wanted to dump bird shit all over his honors student’s glasses and post pictures of it on Instagram. It would be satisfying as hell, and I bet it’d get quite the response.

Now then, I’m going to thoroughly divulge everything about Shuuichi Akiyama. I’m going to expose him, enumerate him, crush him piece by piece, and pulverize him.

“What did you hope to accomplish by calling me all the way up here, Hiiragi?”

Ignoring Akiyama’s question, I spoke.

“You can come in now, Sudou.”

Instead of looking at the door she was coming through, I gauged Akiyama’s reaction. He was frantically hiding his emotions, but he couldn’t fully contain the look of surprise in his eyes.

“You’re the girl who was with Yahara, aren’t you.”

Not knowing how much I knew, he gave a fairly safe remark.

“She’s given me a lot to think about. ...First of all, out with it. Why didn’t you come forward, even though you were the last one to see Masato?”

Akiyama gazed reproachfully at Sudou. Following his line of sight, I laid eyes on her for the first time since she’d arrived.

Her long, unevenly-dyed hair was blowing in the wind, and she looked more dishevelled than before. She was pale again today, too. Her habit of raising the corners of her mouth was unchanged, but although that made it look like she was smiling she was actually more frightened than normal.

She was frightened.

Not of Akiyama, but of me.

“Your manner of speaking has become quite haughty, Hiiragi. Are you finally showing your true colors? ...Well, that’s fine. As for your answer, it’s quite a simple matter. The reason I didn’t come forward was for her sake.”

That wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting.

“What do you mean? What in the world does she have to do with you not coming forward?”

“Hmph. It’s something of a delicate matter, so I was hoping not to have to say it, but now that it’s come to this I suppose I have little choice. Our friend over there had been seduced by Yahara and was on her way to a hotel with him. I stayed silent because I would feel bad if I revealed that fact to the world.”

“Didn’t you think that, just maybe, your testimony would be important to catching the killer?”

“If I deemed that to be the case, I would have ignored my qualms and come forward immediately. My testimony would have been worthless. By no means would it have helped the investigation whatsoever.”

“Way to go and decide that on your own. You never know what information might lead to the killer, right?”

“Quite so. They say that a butterfly flapping its wings in one hemisphere can cause a tornado in the other, and the same could of course be said about murder investigations. But when I weighed that small chance against that young lady’s privacy, I chose the latter.”

It was a perfectly reasonable answer. And his voice had been steady throughout, almost as if he had been expecting the question.

With that, the reason I had initially suspected Akiyama vanished.

But that didn’t matter.

I no longer doubted Akiyama.

I had already decided that he was the killer.

“Christ you’re obnoxious. Just fucking confess already.”

Taken aback at my harsh, exasperated words, Akiyama stiffened momentarily.

My words were simply the result of unintentional candor, but to Akiyama they must have seemed like a tactic to rattle him, because he shut his mouth and put on a composed expression.

The conversation heading in the direction seemed favorable to me, so I made no effort to correct his misinterpretation.

“Alright, next question then. When Yamazaki took his little fall, you were at the school, weren’t you. That’s what she claims.”

After seemingly glaring at Sudou for an instant, he nodded with an, “Indeed.”

“I was quite flustered when I found out about the incident. I suppose I can’t blame you for being suspicious of the fact that I was at the school when Ryuusuke Yamazaki fell from the roof. Although I was in the parking lot and not on the roof, I didn’t think that there was anyone who could corroborate my claim. I’m not proud of it, but I had no choice but to protect myself. I had no idea that there was somebody who saw me in that parking lot.”

“Apparently Yamazaki was screaming. Why didn’t you notice anything?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer. I don’t have much to say beyond that I simply didn’t notice. I was deep in thought at the time.”

Akiyama spread his arms exaggeratedly and shook his head.

Irritated by his affected behavior, I heaved a heavy, antagonistic sigh.

“Well then, how do we want to do this… Alright, let’s go with that approach. Akiyama, do you believe in ghosts?”

Akiyama’s eyes narrowed at my abrupt question.

“What’s this, all of a sudden? Ghosts? Must I really answer that question?”

“Yeah.”

“...Very well then. Ghosts, hm. There are no shortage of people who believe in them, so I can’t just unconditionally write off their potential existence. However, I find it difficult to put much stock in something so unscientific. And with the proliferation of digital cameras, pictures and films of ghosts have been reduced to little more than fabricated entertainment. That is about where I stand.”

“Makes sense. You would think that, wouldn’t you. But even if you don’t believe in them, you wouldn’t exactly go around kicking gravestones, would you? And you’d still get creeped out by Suicide Forest<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aokigahara</ref>, wouldn’t you?”

“But of course. Anyone would be on edge and seized by fear upon visiting Suicide Forest.”

“Right, so scared you wouldn’t have time to be deep in thought.”

I could hear Akiyama taking a deep breath. He was quick on the uptake and had probably realized the purpose of my roundabout line of questioning.

“Maybe it’s not on the same level as Suicide Forest. But a school at night is plenty creepy. An outrageous, distorted institution that crams a bunch of kids together and gives them all the same instructions. When night rolls around, that distortion stands out bright. It creates an atmosphere that pushes people away, so much so that someone once told me it was a barrier. It’s one thing for a bunch of people to come together and shoot off fireworks, but there’s no way one guy’s gonna come to school alone at night and get lost in thought.”

I stared coldly at Akiyama.

“And you wanna tell me that under those circumstances, you didn’t hear Yamazaki’s scream?”

After a slight pause, Akiyama replied.

“...I didn’t hear it. I’m dumbfounded by my own thickheadedness.”

Even if forced to admit unseemly things, Akiyama still feigned innocence. I supposed it was the proper reaction if he wanted to dodge the issue. Suspicious as he was, this wouldn’t make for proof.

But I was cornering him bit by bit. I could see in his face that he was wondering if he had left behind any definitive evidence.

He probably didn’t realize it, but he was remarkably easy to read.

“Next up, let’s figure out a way to make someone fall off the roof from down in the parking lot.”

Akiyama raised an eyebrow.

“...Does such a method even exist?”

Sudou interjected almost reflexively.

“If it’s a trick you’re looking for, there’s plenty one could use. Just to make sure, Sudou, but all you saw was that Akiyama was in the parking lot, and not what he was doing. Is that right?”

“Y...yes…”

“As you can see, the parking lot is pretty far from the roof. But, and you can confirm this from here, there’s a clear line of sight, so you can easily see what’s going on up here from down there. And even though they’ve been talking about putting up a new fence up here for forever, there still isn’t one. There was an incident, so it makes even more sense now, but this place has been off-limits for a while. If you’re standing at the edge of the roof, all it’d take is a little push and down you’d go.”

I revealed what I had been hiding in my pocket.

“What is that?”

I answered Sudou, whose face showed visible signs of relief.

“It’s the remote for a drone.”

As I flicked a switch and tilted a lever, the drone I had placed on the roof ahead of time took off. There was a cord of red yarn attached to its camera, the other end of which was firmly fastened around the doorknob.

“Sudou, would you mind not moving for a bit? I’m a beginner at this whole drone thing, so flying this is a little tough.”

As instructed, Sudou stiffened her body. I then maneuvered the drone towards her back. As the yarn drew taught, Sudou received a solid thump to the back and stumbled a step forwards.

If she had been on the edge of the roof, she would have certainly fallen.

“I chose red yarn so it’d be easy to see, but it would be even more feasible with something stronger like piano wire. If you operated it well, you could easily use this setup to push Yamazaki and send him off the edge.”

As I unveiled the trick, Akiyama just stared silently at me.

But his lips had lost their tension.

“...Fufu.”

Little by little, his mask was peeling off. I could almost hear the tearing sound. His hideous true self distorted and expanded, making it impossible for the mask to stay on. His naked expression laid bare his exclusive true form.

No matter how hard he tried to conceal it, he could hide it no more.

—Akiyama was broken.

Ahh… I was successful.

My goal of exposing him was steadily coming to fruition.

“Hiiragi, I’m disappointed in you.”

“How so?”

I posed my question, still sneering.

“You don’t realize it? Your trick is riddled with holes. First of all, operating a drone like that at night is impossible. Was the sky clear that day? I don’t remember, but even if it had been possible to make out the drone by moonlight, it would be far too difficult to maneuver the drone exactly as you wanted. Just as you yourself were struggling just now. In order to put this trick of yours into practice, you would need to practice during the day to even have a chance at pulling it off. But this is a school. If you tried to do that, even on a holiday, you would be sure to catch someone’s attention. Practicing would be impossible. And the final nail in your coffin is the noise from the propeller. It’s inconceivable that, being at the scene of the incident, she would have heard the scream but not the propeller.”

“Well, you’re not wrong.”

“And furthermore, I own nothing resembling a drone. If you look into it, you can verify that easily.”

Having trounced my crude trick, his face filled with triumph.

His triumphant face was so comical, I couldn’t help but let out a scornful laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Don’t go jumping to conclusions on me, now. I mean, I wanted to see what kind of face you’d make, so I let you just to conclusions, but still. Who the hell said anything about you killing Yamazaki with this trick? I told you, didn’t I. There’s plenty of tricks one could use.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What was I trying to prove with this experiment? There are certainly ways to make Yamazaki fall while you’re in the parking lot. But they’re all meaningless tricks like that one. This isn’t some mystery novel; even if the trick isn’t exposed, once you’re suspected that’s it for you. The cops’ll take you in on circumstantial evidence, and once you confess during the interrogation, nobody’ll care about how elaborate your trick was. The minute you let yourself fall under suspicion, your plan failed. And you know that just as well as I do. But you let your misgivings get the best of you, and you ended up at the school that night.”

The one I looked at now was not Akiyama but Sudou. Just as I predicted, her look of relief from earlier had vanished, replaced once more by paleness.

“In other words, this incident was beyond your expectations.”

I went on, sneering all the while.

“There were two points I was trying to make there. The first is that this place is so dangerous, even a lame trick like my stunt with the drone could legitimately kill someone. The next is that if someone pushed Yamazaki, even by accident, he could easily have fallen.”

I slapped Yamazaki’s killer on the back.

“Isn’t that right, Sudou?”

“—eep.”

Sudou had been terrified when she was talking to me. She had been desperately trying to avoid having me suspect that she was hiding something.

But there was no way she could hide something like that from the “white” Kouta Hiiragi.

“Sudou, you referred to Akiyama as ‘the bespectacled guy’ as if you didn’t know who he was, right? But given how obsessed with Masato you were, you were looking for leads regarding his murder, right? The minute you decided to seek out the truth, it would have been obvious what you needed to look into first. The last person to interact with Masato, his classmate with the glasses. Shuuichi Akiyama. It would be absurd for you to look into me before you investigated him, don’t you think?”

“...Uu, ah...”

“But you hid that fact from me. It goes without saying that that was because that information was inconvenient for you. You thought that if I talked to Akiyama in any detail, my suspicions about Yamazaki’s killer would turn to you.”

Perhaps to keep her from confessing, Akiyama moved between myself and Sudou as if trying to conceal her. Although she was trying to feign composure, she couldn’t begin to contain her trembling. What a shy girl she was.

“So in short, I ordered Sudou to push Yamazaki off the roof. Is that what you want to say? Why, I didn’t even have a motive for wanting Yamazaki dead.”

“Oh, but you did. He was complicit in Masato’s death, right? I bet you made him transport the body.”

That was probably what had happened. Akiyama’s reactions had already passed surprise and moved to downright panic. But no matter how obvious it was, he still frantically tried to keep up appearances.

“...That delusion of yours likely stems from having seen Yamazaki looking for me the other day. But we can set your delusions aside for a moment. Now, hypothetically speaking, let’s say that I did have a motive for wanting him dead. Even then, how could I induce her to kill? We aren’t even acquaintances, so there’s no way she would follow such a command. And even if I had convinced her, don’t you think it a bit odd that I would go out of my way to come to school at the time of the murder?”

“You just don’t know when to give up, do you. I just said it; this incident was beyond your expectations. Sudou never had any intention of killing Yamazaki. His fall was nothing more than an accident.”

“Your speculations become more and more preposterous. There are simply too many coincidences in your theory. Whether or not there was a fence, there’s no way he’d simply fall.”

“The first thing we have to figure out is why the two of them were on the roof in the first place. It’s off-limits, and what’s more, it was late at night. Of course, the meeting must have been arranged beforehand, but it’s difficult to imagine Sudou having any reason to meet with Yamazaki directly. The one she was really on the roof to meet was you, Akiyama.”

Akiyama scrunched up his face a bit.

“Sudou was probably pretty surprised when she got to the roof and found out she’d been tricked. Some happened that was so surprising that she accidentally pushed him off. ...Now, this is just me guess, but did it perhaps seem like Yamazaki was going to rape her?”

Sudou was trembling and holding herself tightly. Based on her behavior, it looked like my speculation was on the mark.

“I mean, it’s Yamazaki we’re talking about. He was probably shaking you down for hush money, so you decided to take advantage of his greed. ‘I can’t get you the money now, but I can get you a girl instead.’ Something along those lines, right?”

“I… He told me that a man was waiting for me on the roof who could tell me about the murder…”

“Well, of course you didn’t know about the give-and-take that you were being made a part of. And after being attacked by Yamazaki, you resisted. And because you don’t go to this school, and because it was late at night and hard to see, you probably didn’t realize that there wasn’t a fence. So you pushed Yamazaki away with all your might, and—”

Splat.

“He ended up falling to his death.”

“Ah, ahhhh…”

Sudou collapsed on the spot.

Her obsession with Masato hadn’t been the only cause of her poor condition. Even if it hadn’t been intentional, the sin of murder still weighed heavy on her. That, combined with the fact that she had to hide it from me, must have put enormous pressure on her.

Akiyama gazed at Sudou’s fallen figure, his eyes as cold as if he were looking at trash.

“Akiyama’s true objective in calling Sudou to the roof wasn’t to have her kill Yamazaki. His plan was to become your ally after you had been raped, then to add you as a partner under the pretext of taking revenge on Yamazaki. Even if he couldn’t inspire you to want to kill Yamazaki, he was hoping to at least trick you to the point where he would be able to use you. I can only guess at how he eventually planned on killing Yamazaki, but plenty of methods would have worked. For example, he could have given you a lethal poison to give to Yamazaki but told you it was a sleep medication. He could have told you to shoot Yamazaki with a model gun, only for the gun he provided to be real. Those were just off the top of my head, but you get the idea. The moment he made you his partner, Akiyama’s plan would have been basically put into place. He would make you kill Yamazaki while he maintained a firm alibi. That was all he needed. ...And after that, well… Sudou, Akiyama never gave you a way to contact him, did he?”

Still sitting on the ground, Sudou nodded.

“Do you know why? Because it would be a problem for him if it could be proven that you two ever interacted. All he had to do to avoid suspicion from the police was to make them think the two of you hadn’t met by the time you were made to kill Yamazaki.”

“B-but I myself knew… And if the police caught me, there’s no way I’d be able to keep silent…”

“All that means is that he had to kill you before it got to that point. Like, you killed Yamazaki out of hatred for him raping you, but then you couldn’t bear the weight of your sins and committed suicide. He probably planned on using some plausible scenario like that.”

Sudou’s eyes went wide, and she looked at Akiyama.

Akiyama no longer took any notice of her.

“Why is it, I wonder? For some reason, I know exactly how this bastard thinks. Sudou, why do you think he chose you as an accomplice in the first place? It’s because you’re the kind of person he wouldn’t mind throwing to the wolves… Hell, he probably thinks that you deserve to die. After all, you were gonna sleep with Masato Yahara the first time you met him. After all, men are creatures who view unchaste women as worthless. That’s why so many serial killers go after hookers; they barely feel any guilt. I’m sure that’s why Akiyama thought you’d make an excellent ‘stepping stone’ for him to carry out justice with.”

Sudou could no longer bear to even look at Akiyama.

“Your words are all baseless. You’ve managed to spin quite the tale, especially in the face of the fact that she wasn’t even raped.”

But his voice sounded like he lacked the will to even bluff.

“Then let’s not talk about your plans, and talk about what you actually did instead. After she killed Yamazaki, your biggest concern was that Sudou would turn herself in. After she did, all your crimes would be exposed one after another. You probably wanted to kill her, huh. And to buy time until then, you pretended to lend a sympathetic ear, lied and said you’d help her, and ordered her not to tell anyone else. You wouldn’t be able to handle it if any information got out, after all.”

I glanced at Sudou’s expression to confirm my theory, but she was staring off into space and no longer responsive.

“But Sudou didn’t follow your directions, she came and talked to me before you could kill her. She wanted to know the truth of the incident so badly she couldn’t help herself. And you can hardly blame her, after the curse Masato put on her. That’s something you needed to realize if you were going to use her. But this is you we’re talking about. You’re probably under the misimpression that Sudou’s idiocy let me figure out the truth. But that’s completely wrong. After all, you were the one trying to use her. Your big failure was not realizing that she would come talk to me despite being told to keep quiet. That was your mistake.”

Still grinning, I spit out my next words.

“Get it now, you incompetent excuse for a class rep?”

“...Me? Incompetent?”

At that provocation, Akiyama’s previously controlled expression shifted radically.

Of course. Questioning his ability to carry out his duty would resonate with him more than anything else. His pride was far too high to ever admit to his own failure. To that end, he was even willing to disfigure the truth.

“Impossible. Every choice I made was correct and proper. I could not possibly have blundered. This incompetent girl simply stood in my way and made a mess of everything!”

Unable to contain his rage, Akiyama foolishly acknowledged everything he’d done. A wry laugh escaped my lips.

“Nah, that’s not it. You just weren’t up to snuff. You’re just fundamentally bad at using others. And you’re definitely no magus. It’s you we’re talking about, after all. You seem to think that everyone else lives under the same value system you do. You can only measure with your own scales, so nothing ever goes the way you plan. Come on, man, not everyone lives in the same damn world as you.”

“You’re babbling. There only is one world, is there not? Everyone lives in the same world.”

“You see a rabbit pounding mochi when you look at the moon, of course you’d think that. You don’t understand a damn thing about what people are like behind closed doors. So you can’t understand anything about other people. If you want to understand people, you have to start by realizing that you can never really know everything about someone. But you’ll probably never really understand that, huh.”

In response to my words, Akiyama knit his eyebrows. But before long, he let out a laugh that would put any B movie villain to shame.

“What, did I hurt your feelings or something?”

“Fufu… It seems I was right after all. Your remarks reveal your dogged insistence on manipulating others. You really do like manipulating others into doing your dirty work, don’t you? And you riled up all of our campus’s freaks for sport. Of course, Masato Yahara was one of them. Depending on how you look at it, perhaps he was a victim too. You were the ringleader behind this whole incident, evil in the flesh. So I suppose you learning the truth of this incident—”

His eyes, glittering with a dull light like the scales of a fresh fish, turned to me.

“—was merely a blessing in disguise.”

Ahh, this guy.

He really didn’t understand anything.

He didn’t even realize that his malice far surpassed that of anyone else.

“Why are you smiling, Hiiragi? It seems you don’t realize the situation you’re in.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t know what’s going on. Did you really think I just called you up here to tell you that I knew everything?”

“...Are you saying you didn’t?”

“I’m not planning on handing you over to the police. I have no intention of being so lenient. To be honest, I don’t even give a shit if you’re really the killer. I just can’t stand you, so I’m going to completely pulverize you. But even though I’ve already exposed so much, you haven’t shown a hint of remorse. You just got all defiant and went back to your little make-believe world. Honestly, I didn’t think you were going to be this stupid, you fucking jackass.”

I pulled out my phone.

“So now you’ve left me with no choice but to rely on my last resort.”

I called a certain number. I had made them promise to come as soon as they received a call from me.

As I put my phone away, I spread my arms and laughed.

“Now then, let’s see how much filthy pus you’ve got built up in there.”

Footsteps rang out from the stairs, and the door to the roof swung open.

“Kusukusu… kusukusukusu…”

The girl seemed unable to contain her peculiar laugh, which sounded like it was coming from a gap in her teeth, in anticipation of what we were about to do.

“Hiiragi, I’m here!”

Her bangs were cut diagonally, and her hair was braided in the back. Her childlike face and short stature contrasted with her large bust, she was a deeply immoral-looking high schooler.

Twisting even her malice into innocence, her unsullied mind was that of a saintly fool.

An “apparatus” I had been keeping in reserve.

Her rainbow-colored eyes looked like a drainage ditch filled with salad oil, and as she turned them to Akiyama she raised her voice in disappointment.

“...Ehh… Like, there’s a sorta boring guy here… Hiiragi, you said there’d be something interesting up here, but this guy’s just a common old dull red.”

Confused, Akiyama was clearly panicking.

Up until now, Akiyama had always planned on retaking the initiative. No matter how close I got to the truth, all he thought he had to do was eventually kill me.

But in spite of how dense he was, he realized. That now that Ririko Matsumi, who had the power to destroy everything, was here, the situation had changed. That now, the place he was standing was no longer his stage.

There was no way someone like him knew of an easy way to control this twisted world, which was like a candy sculpture halfway through production.

“At this rate, Akiyama, if I just shove the truth in front of you, you’d just pervert it to suit your own self-righteousness and escape the violence I’m trying to cause you. If I want to crush you, I first have to teach you how to be afraid, or I’m not going to get anywhere. ....Matsumi-senpai.”

“Aye aye!”

Glaring at Shuuichi Akiyama, I spit out my next words.

“Scan Shiho Sudou.”

Still sitting in shock, Sudou raised her head in surprise. She probably hadn’t expected to be thrust into the spotlight again. But it couldn’t be helped. She was clearly a member of the supporting cast here.

And now, she would taking the starring role.

“Sorry, Shiho Sudou.”

I wasn’t even looking at the uninteresting girl.

“This was the real reason I brought you here. Just like how there needs to be a scene where someone dies at the beginning of any killing game novel, there needed to be a tutorial for Akiyama here.”

So for the sake of the story, I need you to fall into despair.

“So I just have to scan that girl over there? Okey dokey—”

In her innocence, Matsumi-senpai hadn’t picked up on any of my malice. I simply tripped her kindness and regressed her from a human to a machine.

“Beep bibibi, beep beep bibibibibi.”

Her eyes went out of focus. But she was definitely perceiving Shiho Sudou’s core.

“What? What’s going on?”

Anyone watching would no doubt be confused. Even if you didn’t know exactly what she was doing, it was clear that it was nothing good. Even if you couldn’t tell what was inside the jack-in-the-box, it definitely wasn’t going to be anything pleasant.

“Beep bibibi, beep beep bibibibibi. ————Scanning complete.”

“Good work, Senpai. Now, would you mind verbalizing it for us?”

“Sure!”

Sudou trembled in fear at Ririko Matsumi’s eccentricity. She had been used by Akiyama, made to bear his sins, and now I was going to crush her. What a pitiable girl she was.

I felt guilty.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

But those feelings of guilt were drowned out by the auditory hallucinations.

“SHIHO SUDOU, age sixteen.”

Would she have known that name, even if I hadn’t told her? I only half-knew how her scanning even worked.

“A second-year at the private Sakisei Academy. Lives with her birth mother, her stepfather, and her older stepbrother. Her house has four bedrooms. Her room, which is on the second floor, is so messy that there’s nowhere to stand. Her father is a civil servant, her mother is a housewife, and their family finances are stable. Her clingy nature makes her disastrously bad at reading the mood, and she doesn’t have many friends. Her few friends often betray her. She does not currently have a boyfriend, but she has slept with two men.”

“Huh? What? What’s going on…?”

Sudou still didn’t understand what had just been begun. Judging from her pale lips, all she understood was that it was something terrifying.

“Presuming that she is involved, she is thoroughly obsessed with Masato Yahara’s incident. She killed Ryuusuke Yamazaki by pushing him off this roof. She has tried to kill herself twice before. However, not even her parents showed her any sympathy. She is lonely. She is lonely. She has a strong inferiority complex in regards to her looks and academic ability.”

The things she tried to hide, the things she needed to hide, were being exposed in front of all of us.

No longer able to even speak, Sudou’s eyes were bugging out at Matsumi-senpai as though she were looking at the Devil.

“She has both been bullied and bullied others. She strongly desires power. She fears the strong, yet is jealous of them, and she finds the weak reassuring, yet despises them. She lacks willpower. She is bad at forming habits. She is not a morning person. She dislikes using stamps on LINE. She enjoys spending time on pornographic websites.”

People, surprisingly, don’t know themselves particularly well. So when a fortuneteller or a swindler makes surprising inferences from just their personality, they believe in the illusion that their true nature had been probed into.

But what Ririko Matsumi does is expose them objectively.

Everyone wants to believe that they’re special. They want to possess some sort of unique identity. Some would even go so far as to say that not being special is the same as being worthless.

But although this may seem obvious, the vast majority of people aren’t anything even approaching special. And whether they are or not, they’re too small to ever change the world. One person can’t save the world, nor can they destroy it.

And Shiho Sudou was no exception. What became eminently clear when her true nature was exposed like this was that she was the kind of common, ordinary person that you could find anywhere. The reality of it was that she was inferior, not superior.

She had been trying to avoid looking straight at that reality despite becoming gradually aware of it, but now it had been firmly thrust upon her.

“She has been coerced a number of times by her NEET brother to have physical relations. Although she despises him, she relishes the feeling of being desired. Her father also views her in a sexual light. She is aware that her mother is jealous of her as a woman. As a result, she doesn’t feel like her home is somewhere she belongs. She hates her home. She doesn’t feel like her school is somewhere she belongs. She hates her school. She doesn’t feel like society is somewhere she belongs. She hates the world for being unkind to her. She wishes it were kinder to her. She wishes she were held more dearly. But she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care what happens to her. But she doesn’t want to be ignored. She wants to be saved. She wants to be saved—”

“Stop it! Stop it already! Stop, stop, stop!”

Wailing, Sudou tried to lunge at Matsumi-senpai. But I had anticipated that, and stopped her by holding her down. She soon stopped resisting and, drained of strength, collapsed on the spot.

Without moving, Sudou began crying like an animal.

The exposed viscera inside her was unsurprisingly grotesque. That was all there was to it, but that alone was as intense as could be.

“Wah. Why are you crying? Now I feel all sorry…”

Ririko Matsumi had no idea how cruel a thing it was to expose somebody to the world. And she could hardly be blamed for that; to her, being able to see everything was the only condition she knew.

Looking down on the sobbing Shiho Sudou, I felt like I understood why she had been to fixed on on Masato’s incident.

Shiho Sudou was full of openings. And she didn’t much care what she filled those holes with. She just needed something that let her believe that her existence was important.

So she embroiled herself in a murder investigation, thinking that perhaps she could play a key role. It was a tragedy, but ironically therein lie the meaning that she had been seeking. By pursuing the truth behind the incident, she could escape from the idleness she felt plaguing her life.

It was no secret that she was full of openings. And regrettably, everyone around her took advantage of them. Her family did, her classmates did, Masato Yahara did, Shuuichi Akiyama did, and I did. Without someone to protect them, a person with such openings had no choice but to used by others.

—Someone to protect them.

—A person filled with openings.

It was an assessment I had heard somewhere before.

But I wasn’t going to think too deeply about it.

In any case, Shiho Sudou wouldn’t be able to go back to normal after having her heart rudely trampled all over like that. Once a person has their existence put into words and forced upon them, they can no longer flee from their sins. She would probably end up turning herself in, after which the inquisitive eyes of both the media and the world would see her as a murderer and violate her by digging up her past and family circumstances. I didn’t know if she’d be able to recover from that or not.

Shiho Sudou’s end was here.

“My condolences.”

I put my hands together perfunctorily.

“Now then, what’s become of you?”

I turned to face Akiyama. Just as I expected, his face had gone pale and he was trembling in fear.

He must have known instinctive what would happen if his insides got exposed.

“...Your actions cannot help but confirm it. The one who induced Yahara to try to kill me was you — Kouta Hiiragi.”

I heaved a sigh in exasperation at his inane comment.

“Are you still going on about that? In the first place, aren’t you the one who killed Masato?”

“The fact that he tried to kill me is beyond a doubt the truth.”

So in other words, the reason he ended up killing Masato was because Masato tried to kill him first and he fought back?

...That makes sense. The last piece of the puzzle slid into place.

“Okay, I get it now. What’s manipulating you — no, what’s manipulating all of us, what’s controlling us, isn’t me. I don’t have that kind of power.”

“What…?”

“The thing that led us all to this point is Masato.”

Akiyama’s eyes widened.

“In a way, we’re victims of the bomb he set off. I got dyed in him, and you got destroyed by him.”

“...You say I was destroyed?”

“Wouldja just fucking notice it already? You’re pretty far off-sync with your ideal self. Off-sync with your sensible, exemplary self. Think about it. You’ve been going around killing people you see as evil. Is that really in line with your ideals? Is a barbaric ideology like that really your idea of justice?”

His eyes still wide, Akiyama didn’t say a word.

All he had to do was self-reflect for an instant and he’d know the answer.

There was no way that’s what his ideals looked like.

“That what was it that made you like this? Did you really think that killing me and Yamazaki was the right thing to do? Whose idea was that?”

That’s right, Shuuichi, remember.

I don’t even need to invoke his name. Those feelings that you’re fleeing from were your true feelings all along.

Now then — tremble in fear.

“Matsumi-senpai. Scan Shuuichi Akiyama for me, would you?”

And fall into despair.

“You got it!”

Ririko Matsumi was an insane, deadly weapon. It was the Devil’s own magic, and it could thoroughly drive Akiyama into a corner.

“Beep bibi, beep bibibi…”

“...Stop it…”

“Beep bibibi, beep bibibi…”

“STOP ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!”

In a fit of madness, Akiyama lunged at Matsumi-senpai.

“Kyah!”

Returning to her senses, Matsumi-senpai gave out a shriek. Akiyama was leaning over her collapsed figure with his fists raised. Her unseemly shriek was only natural.

I drew near Akiyama. Taking no heed of me, Akiyama was about to continue hitting Matsumi-senpai — continue hitting the truth that was about to be revealed, but he stopped when he noticed what I was pressing against him.

“Kouta, Hiiragi… You’re…”

I was pressing a fruit knife against the nape of his neck.

“...You understand, right? I’m dead serious. If you keep getting violent like this, you’re going to find your neck short a few arteries.”

Although a moment ago she had been being punched and looked as though she was about to cry, the fear vanished from Matsumi-senpai’s face in an instant and was replaced with surprised glee.

“Huh? What’s going on, what’s going on?”

Her cheeks lit up in excitement.

“Tanihara’s supposed to be dead, so why are you him?”

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

The blade still flush with his nape, Akiyama peered into my eyes.

“You’re not Kouta Hiiragi… Masato Yahara…? No, that’s ridiculous… But now that I think back, everything you’ve done and said has been just like him. You’re even putting a knife to me the same way he did.”

“Well, that’s ‘cause I am Masato Yahara.”

“...Are you saying that you’re acting as his proxy?”

“Oh, it’s nothing so half-assed as that. All I have to do is ask, and Kou’ll give over his body in a heartbeat. I am Masato Yahara himself.”

“Why would you do something like that!?”

“For revenge, of course.”

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

“That’s why I didn’t care about exposing your crimes. My true objective, well that’s—”

“—to trample over Shuuichi Akiyama’s body and spirit, then kill him.”

Akiyama was silent. He knew very well the danger he was in.

After all, we had both had our moral foundations destroyed by Masato Yahara.

“If I have her scan you, it’ll definitely destroy your spirit, but that won’t even be necessary. Just explaining how messed up in the head you are will be plenty.”

I in close to his ear and whispered.

“You’re an honors student, and you believe that everything you do is just. That in and of itself proves that your self-assessment is soft. You spend so much time preparing escape routes for yourself, arming yourself with ideological arguments. Even when you committed the grave sin of murder, you couldn’t bear not justifying it. Even though you normally would have thought it insane, you had to build up a desire to kill us.”

“...Stop it...Not another word…”

I had no intention of stopping.

“After you killed me, you had no choice but to rationalize murder.”

I spat out the phrase that would finalize his destruction.

“You never really wanted to kill me.”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

—Rattle,
rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle.

God, it’s obnoxious.

This guy’s chains really are louder than anyone else’s.

The knife was in my hand. Akiyama could no longer resist. There was no reason to hesitate. One push, and my revenge would be complete. There wasn’t a single reason to waver. There wasn’t a single thing that could stop me. All I had to do was slash a shattered man with a knife. It was as simple as that.

I put my strength into the hand holding the knife.

I just needed to give in to my desire to kill.

And I could finally escape from this “nil,” this feeling that I was in a mass-produced shopping mall!

“Noooooooo!”

I could hear footsteps running towards me, along with a voice I recognized.

But compared to the voice—

—Rattle,
rattle. Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle,
rattle, rattle.

The sound of chains was far louder.

<noinclude>
==Translator's Notes and References==
<references />

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| Back to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Miki Kouzuki's Closed World (II)|Miki Kouzuki’s Closed World (II)]]
| Return to [[We Don't Open Anywhere -There are no facts, only interpretations.-|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Shuuichi Akiyama's Closed World (II)|Shuuichi Akiyama’s Closed World (II)]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Shuuichi Akiyama's Closed World (II)

2017-11-26T02:52:50Z

Toshiya: formatting

==Shuuichi Akiyama's Closed World (II)==

It was over in an instant.

Let me begin with an excuse. I tried to save him. My classmate was before my eyes, descending into depravity, and I tried to enlighten him and set him back on the right path.

But Masato Yahara tried to kill me. I didn’t understand why. I extended the helping hand that he so desperately sought, but not only did he brush it away, he tried to consume to sate his hunger. I had no idea that such a person could even exist.

It was over in an instant. I was versed in self-defence, so in an instant I reversed the hand he was holding his knife in. Although I didn’t mean for it to, the blade struck his heart fatally.

The scent of rusted iron, which already pervaded that abandoned factory, grew even stronger. With a look of anguish on his face, Masato Yahara collapsed.

It was the worst outcome imaginable.

—Why did this happen?

—Such a thing shouldn’t happen, should it?

—What will become of me now?

I blocked off my sight.

I rejected the world.

I refused to accept reality.

White.

White.

White.

People only hear what they want to hear. And every solution they come up with is opportunistic.

I simply decided to surrender myself to a world of opportunistic.

I would simply forget all the inconvenient truths.

3, 2, 1 —— And lo, they’re gone.

Now then, why did I stab Masato Yahara to death?

It wouldn’t do for it to have simply been a coincidence. It had to have been necessary, it had to have been just. I never made a mistake. I wasn’t in the wrong — which meant that Masato Yahara must have been. Masato Yahara’s death was necessary; killing him had been just.

It had to be that way.

That’s right… I had called Masato Yahara a monster, hadn’t I? That’s right, that’s right! Just as he had tried to kill me, he was a monster who could only affirm himself through killing others. If I hadn’t killed him, innocent lives would have been lost!

Was there any problem with me killing a man like that? Of course not. It was an unavoidable measure, like shooting a bear before it can eat people. Somebody had to do it.

The events before my eyes were moving in slow motion. In this closed world, the concept of time was ambiguous, and all that thought could be accomplished in a moment.

Now then, time for the reception.

What I accepted into my field of view was a world that was amiable to me.

I looked down upon Masato Yahara.

“Now you can get out of here, hm… On that point alone, we are of the same opinion.”

He gazed at me with eyes full of hate.

“Your life has no value... or rather, you’re like a vermin that deserves to die.”

Indeed. That was my reason for killing Masato Yahara.

That would do fine.

But I probably realized it even then.

Such a world could be popped more easily than a soap bubble.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi’s Closed World (IV) Masato Yahara’s Closed World (II)|Kouta Hiiragi’s Closed World (IV) Masato Yahara’s Closed World (II)]]
| Return to [[We Don't Open Anywhere -There are no facts, only interpretations.-|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (V)|Kouta Hiiragi’s Closed World (V)]]
|-
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</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (V)

2017-11-25T07:45:44Z

Toshiya:

== Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (V) ==

The familiar voice was drowned out. There was nothing that could stop me. Because everything had gone according to my plan, the result was as clear as the answer to one plus one.

I slashed at Shuuichi Akiyama’s carotid artery.

Blood gushed out, the crimson fountain pleasantly engulfing me and staining my head red. It dyed both the rooftop and my stunted world red, and brought me to somewhere new entirely. That was how the matter had been decided.

Then I noticed.

I couldn’t hear the sound of chains any more.

Why was that, “I” wondered?

After all, “I” hadn’t been able to slit Akiyama’s throat.

Akiyama’s eyes were out of focus. He had already lost all reason. He was in no position to have stopped me, so it couldn’t have been him.

But even so, my wrist hurt.

Someone was squeezing tightly on the wrist of the hand I was holding the knife in. Because of that, I hadn’t been able to cut him.

Who would do such a thing?

I glared at the squeezing hand to try to figure out whose it was.

And the culprit, the one who held back my right hand was—

“...Why?”

—My left hand.

I couldn’t make sense of this. Why had I stopped myself? It made no sense.

Why was my body acting against my will? Was it being manipulated by remote control? Could you even do that? Was it even possible?

If it was possible, it would only be through—

—magic.

“Kouta.”

I reflexively turned towards the voice.

There, illuminated by the golden twilight, stood Miki Kouzuki. Her long hair fluttered in the wind, each strand glittering like a jewel. Tears rolled down her smiling face. She was so beautiful it made my chest hurt, and it was almost unfair how freely she set the world in motion.

“Kouta, who are you?”

“I’m… Kouta Hiiragi…”

“That right. You’re Kouta Hiiragi, aren’t you?”

As she gradually approached me from the rooftop door, I was so stunned I couldn’t move. I stood there, paralyzed, and she took the knife from my hand. I felt as though I wouldn’t even be able to breathe without her permission.

“You aren’t Masato Yahara. You’re Kouta Hiiragi.”

Miki then leaned on me and moved my hand to her back.

“Kouta Hiiragi. You know what that is? The name of the person I like.”

And then.

Miki Kouzuki kissed me.

Ahh… I could feel my cramped world expand rapidly, as if I had just exited a long tunnel. Light flooded in through countless newly-opened doors and dazzled me.

But it was scary. Advancing through those doors was scary. I didn’t want to leave my cramped world. I didn’t want to learn about the expanded world. But this illuminated place no longer held anywhere to hide. I had no choice but to accept it.

As if affirming my existence, my shadow stood out against the light.

I had no choice but to be Kouta Hiiragi.

I had to accept that reality.

The bill I had been shirking so long had finally come due. I would have to stand up against all my powerful foes.

As Miki released my lips from hers, I finally remembered what was attached to the left hand that had just stopped the violence.

“Ahh… So that’s it.”

The red hair band.

The item Miki had stored her magic in.

What had stopped me — what had stopped the Masato Yahara inside me — had been Miki’s magic.

“That’s not it.”

But Miki firmly refuted that claim.

“Say, do you know why I kissed you just now?”

“To return me to normal…?”

“The next time you say something like that, I’m really going to hit you.”

“What!?”

“A woman’s lips aren’t so trivial a thing as that. No matter what her reason may be, even if she herself doesn’t realize it, there’s only one reason a woman ever kisses a man.”

Probably for the first time, Miki showed me a smile from the bottom of her heart.

“It’s because she likes him.”

In response to her confession, my mind went so white I thought my brains had been blown out. It was completely blank. Matsumi-senpai, socially inept as always, excitedly clamoured to the collapsed, corpse-like figures of Shiho Sudou and Shuuichi Akiyama, “Hee hee, it’s a confession!”

Still unable to think, all that dwelled within me were emotions.

—I’m happy.

—I’ve been waiting for this.

—I’ve been waiting so long for Miki to put her feelings to words. So long!

“Uwa, uwaa…”

Before I realized it, I was crying too.

Not because I was happy.

Because I was sad.

Ahh, finally. I could finally understand my own feelings, I could finally put them to words.

—I was sad that Masato was dead.

“There’s something I just learned, see. In this world, you can make things complicated, or you can make them simple. It’s all up to you. And if that’s the case, then don’t you think making things simpler is nice?”

Miki gently stroked my hair.

“So you see, the reason you weren’t able to drive the knife any further—”

She brought her face to mine, and our tears converged.

“Was because you didn’t want to kill anybody… That’s all.”

And that was a truth that I had no reason to doubt.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Shuuichi Akiyama's Closed World (II)|Shuuichi Akiyama’s Closed World (II)]]
| Return to [[We Don't Open Anywhere -There are no facts, only interpretations.-|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Open World (I)|Kouta Hiiragi’s Open World (I)]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Open World (I)

2017-11-25T07:31:31Z

Toshiya: formatting

== Kouta Hiiragi's Open World (I) ==

It was a shopping mall that filled one with déjà vu the first time one visited it, yet existed nowhere. It was nothing more than a counterfeit.

“Kou.”

There was only one person who called me by that nickname.

“Masato.”

Masato Yahara. His hair was dyed blonde, his looks were handsome enough that it wouldn’t be strange for him to be a member of an idol group, and he was my only friend in the world.

But his body was fading away, already half-gone.

“...Sorry.”

“What’re you apologizing for?”

“I couldn’t take revenge in your place. I couldn’t save you.”

Masato heaved a sigh with an amazed look on his face.

“I see you’re just as stupid as ever, Kou. When the hell did I ask you to do something like that? For that matter, does it even look like that’s what I want?”

“...Well, I guess you don’t.”

Masato had never forced or pressed me into doing anything. He never wanted to get deeply involved with anyone.

“I’m already dead. I can’t even talk any more. Even the ‘me’ that’s here now is just something you thought up. All that’s goin’ on right now is a one-man ventriloquist show.”

“A one-man show, huh… If that’s true, at least the script’s well-written.”

It was difficult to imagine that his sarcastic quips had all come from my own head. The Masato inside my head was clearly able to do and think things that my real self never would.

“In your dreams, you sometimes see shit that you’d never be able to think up when you’re awake, right? People just have that kind of latent power. And Kou, you might just be an expert when it comes to that stuff. Most people can’t even begin to understand other people’s world. They try their best, and all they’re able to do is misinterpret them as something completely different. But you had the capacity to reproduce me like this. And when you’re playing my part, you’re practically a changed man, free from all of your normal stupidity.”

“You’re just as harsh as always, I see…”

Masato laughed cynically in response. He gave off a very Masato-like smile, one full of resignation.

“You’ve already mourned for me plenty.”

Mourn.

I hadn’t even realized that that was what I was doing at the time.

But… Ahh… It fit perfectly. I simply wanted, in my own way, to mourn the loss of my one and only friend. I didn’t want to forget about him, and I didn’t want to let everyone else forget about him either.

“Kou, what do you see when you look up at the moon?”

Masato asked me the same question he had that night in the park.

“Do you still just see the craters as craters?”

I thought for a moment. Craters were craters. That hadn’t changed.

“Well… it’s a little different than before.”

His interest piqued, Masato raised an eyebrow.

“If someone tells me they see a rabbit pounding mochi, I can too. If someone tells me they see a monster baring its fangs, I can too. Before, I couldn’t see anything, but now I feel like I can see anything. I feel like I can turn it into anything. Well, maybe… Maybe that’s not any different than before, but—”

“That’s completely different, ain’t it?”

But Masato didn’t seem to feel like elaborating.

“But I guess this is goodbye, then.”

As he said that, Masato began fading away even more. His very existence was fading.

As I continued on in life, I would never forget about Masato. But I could no longer become him. As he waned little by little, as he separated from the center of my heart, he settled like dust beneath the bulk of my memories.

I would never be able to retrieve him that way again.

“—Masato!”

I called out to him, stopping him as he was about to fade along with the counterfeit shopping mall.

“Oh, what is it?”

“Masato… Masato, are you—”

I had to ask him, just this once.

“Are you glad that you were born?”

At the sight of my no-doubt frantic expression, Masato gave an exasperated but no doubt secretly pleased smile.

“No listen here, you… If you wanted to ask that, you shoulda done it when I was alive. I just fuckin’ explained how everything that comes out of my mouth is just part of the script you wrote. ...Are you fine asking me that, even so?”

I nodded.

But I already knew his answer. Masato’s ultramarine closed world festered, rejecting the light. If a meddlesome heart had sprung up within me like it had in a certain someone, I probably would have tried to shine a light within that ultramarine.

But Masato was dead. He was no longer capable of changing.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

Having lost all his color, the monochrome Masato replied with a bashful laugh.

“Not even a tiny fuckin’ bit.”

—Goodbye, Masato.

—Ah, what a surprise it is to see you outside of school, Hiiragi. As you can see, Ririko is a literary girl who loves books. Hm? I’m reading the books from really far away, you say? Ayup. You see, Ririko can use scanning on books. Ririko can learn all the contents in an instant. That’s amazing, you say? Right? Come on, praise me, praise me! Hm? There’s something you wanted to ask me, you say? Why, go ahead. ...The reason Ririko called out to you two back then, huh? Ririko told you the first time we met, Ririko wanted to get to become good friends with Hiiragi. Why, you ask? Well that’s because Hiiragi is white, you see. ...Oh, and also, Ririko had a dream the day before that. In the dream, when Ririko called out to you two and scanned you, Hiiragi and Tanihara’s friendship broke down. Then, Tanihara became emotionally unstable and killed Akiyama, see. Tanihara turned himself, and Kouzuki broke up with Hiiragi because all he could think about was Tanihara, so Hiiragi was all alone. He gradually became pure white. He was like a fresh snow in the middle of the forest, and it was really pretty. Then, the pure white Hiiragi and Ririko became really good friends. Hiiragi understood Ririko even better than before, and they went beep bibibi and stuff together. Ririko already knew from the scanning, but you’re a virgin, right? Did you know that sex feels really good? You see, Ririko knows just how to make men feel good, so in the dream Hiiragi became Ririko’s captive. He was all over her, you know, and he would do whatever Ririko said. ...Kusukusu… By the way, you know how adult men always act really really self-important around girls like Ririko? But when you take off their veneers, they’re actually as funny as clowns. You know the red lumps running through their brains, well, if you fiddle with them right, you can make them dance ecstatically in pleasure. Isn’t that funny? There are even some people who can’t come back from the pleasure. ...Huh? You want to know if Ririko’s dream was prophetic? Yeah, most of them are. It’s actually really weird how the dream wasn’t right this time. I wonder why that was? Was it Kouzuki’s fault, maybe? She meddles with Hiiragi too much. ...Huh? Aren’t Ririko’s prophetic dreams just the result of her drawing unconscious conclusions from her powers of memory and analytic ability, you say? ...Ririko doesn’t understand complicated stuff like that, even if you explain it. Ririko just wanted to become good friends with Hiiragi. That was all; nothing else was really important. Hm? Ririko’s a mean person, you say? Why? And anyways, everyone else are the mean ones, right? Everyone treats Ririko so rudely. And even Hiiragi used Ririko as a tool, right? Ririko has at least enough self-awareness to know that. So really, Ririko is the one who should be pitied, no? ...Ah, Hiiragi doesn’t have to show Ririko any sympathy, and we don’t need to become good friends any more. You see, Ririko isn’t interested in Hiiragi any more. He kind of became too normal. But, but, Ririko will come help you whenever you need her to, Hiiragi. Ririko can even teach you about pleasure. Isn’t Ririko nice? She’s nice, isn’t she? Ehehe, thanks.

—Bye bye, then.

After being arrested for the crimes of killing his classmate Masato Yahara and abandoning the body, Shuuichi Akiyama stopped attending school through the beginning of summer break.

Shiho Sudou was prosecuted for the involuntary manslaughter of Ryuusuke Yamazaki. The defense argued that it was legitimate self-defense. I had already met with her lawyer and promised to testify on her behalf if it became necessary.

It would have been completely natural for her to hold a grudge against me after I sent Ririko Matsumi after her to scan her and break her spirit. But when I went to visit her at the detention center, she actually thanked me for my cooperation. Even fact, she even seemed happy. The reason for her improved outlook was that apparently this incident had inspired her family to get their act together for her sake. Adversity builds character… but there was quite a bit of adversity, so it remains to be seen what character will be built out of it. But if nothing else, after the way I had used her, I wanted to do whatever I could to help her.

On the other hand, and you couldn’t really blame him, Akiyama refused to meet me. Apparently he had quite the breakdown, and could barely even speak. Occasionally the detention center would be filled with his terrified moans. No doubt he was still being tormented by visions of Masato.

Did I still resent him for killing Masato?

Although I gave that question a bit of thought, I wasn’t totally sure. Although killing him was a bit much, I couldn’t deny that Akiyama had been acting in legitimate self-defense. If not for Masato, Akiyama probably could have lived out the rest of his life as nothing more than an obstinate honors student. In a way, he too was a victim. But even though I knew that logically, the unpleasant feeling in my heart refused to fade. Whether that feeling was hatred, rage, or something else entirely, not even I knew.

Many such unidentifiable emotions whirled throughout my brain, existing as noise due to my inability to govern them. Before, I would have just abandoned all my thoughts and emotions and returned to being perfectly even.

But I wasn’t able to do that anymore.

In my new, unstable state, Miki came to visit me almost every day and drag me out of my house. Arcades, karaoke boxes, bowling alleys, tennis courts, movie theaters, ramen shops, restaurants, cafés — I had spent years only going back and forth between home and school, so all of those ordinary, common places were new and fresh to me. Amused by my innocent reactions, Miki eventually got carried away and took me somewhere unbelievable.

Okinawa.

I stood completely still atop a pearly-white beach. I was speechless at how absurdly clear the emerald ocean was.

When I looked at the blue sky melt into the ocean, I felt as though my day-to-day life was fusing with something powerful and mysterious. I felt as if I was no longer just myself. Like the odd pleasure you get from peeling off a scab, being here felt like it had freed me from the constraints of my emotions.

My eyes were no doubt wide as I stared at the ocean, and Miki slapped my shoulder playfully. Her terrycloth hoodie, combined with the the healthy pair of legs extending from her swimsuit bottom, gave off the impression of a model on her way to a photo shoot. Perhaps because it wasn’t particularly well-known, or perhaps because summer vacation hadn’t started yet, the beach was only sparsely populated. But even so, I could tell Miki was turning the heads of both men and women alike. Apparently being at the center of attention like this was normal for her, as she seemed wholly unconcerned.

In Miki’s world, no doubt being liked and desired by others was normal. It was completely different from my world, in which most people ignored me.

Miki took her hair, which was a bit longer than it had been when we’d met, and bundled it up with the scrunchie she’d been holding.

It was the first time I’d see Miki in a ponytail in a while.

“You know, I think it looks better that way.”

Miki’s cheeks reddened.

“...My father is right over there, and you’re hitting on me?”

“That wasn’t my intention…”

“My heart skipped a beat, you know.”

Miki stroked her tied-up hair meaningfully.

“By the way, when were you going to take this off for me?”

I held up my left arm.

The red hair band, which even now I couldn’t remove of my own volition, still rested there.

“Oh, you should just wear it the rest of your life.”

“I feel like it’ll get all moldy and scratchy at times like this if I do… Miki, didn’t you say you were going to stop believing in magic?”

Miki had more or less stopped talking about magic all the time. But recently, I had been suspecting that she might be a genuine magus after all.

In the end, she had altered the destinies of a number of people. And she was liable to keep doing so going forward.

And on top of that — that kiss.

Miki had said that wasn’t magic, but I was pretty sure she was lying.

After all, I hadn’t been able to stay away from her since then. When we were apart, my chest hurt, proving that I was still under her control even when we weren’t together.

What could that be, other than magic?

But that was probably all nonsense. If she herself said it wasn’t magic, and she truly believed that, then I guess it wasn’t magic. My becoming like this was too just a pleasant notion I had constructed.

But even so, there was still something that plagued my mind.

Even if we were together nearly every day, Miki was still another person. Everything about our value systems was different. No matter how well I got to know Miki, there would still be countless things I didn’t know about her. Even today, when I saw the clear emerald ocean, when I learned of a whole new world, even though my own world expanded and light flooded in, it still didn’t intersect Miki’s world. Just because the range that I could travel expanded didn’t mean I could ever reach there.

Our worlds, without exception, weren’t open to anyone.

That was the same no matter whether I was dealing with Miki or with Masato.

The sound of chains. Although I could hear that sound when I was playing the part of Masato, I still couldn’t say that I knew what it meant. Masato went on about chains a number of times, and when Matsumi-senpai scanned him she said that he was afflicted with auditory hallucinations. That was probably where I first conceived of it.

But I no longer had any way of knowing if the real Masato heard the sound of chains or not.

And, even if he had heard the sound of chains, it wouldn’t matter. The sound of chains wasn’t real. All that had been there was the Masato I came up with.

Whenever we interact with someone we come up with a version of them formed from our own ego, and all we can interact with is that version of them.

“Kouta, you’re getting all quiet and serious on me. Penny for your thought? ...Ah, I know. You wanna see what’s underneath this hoodie! Well, fine, I suppose if you want to see it that badly then it can’t be helped!”

After saying something presumptuous, Miki vigorously stripped. Her slender waist, which looked like it would snap if you hugged her too hard, and her cute, oblong navel came into full view. Her bikini top concealed a pair of soft-looking bulges. And even though her ribs stood out, she had some good skin on her bones.

A playful grin danced across her lips.

“Aha, did arouse you a bit? Did it?”

I’ll be blunt.

Damn. I wouldn’t have taken Miki for the type to look skinnier dressed…

Surprised at my own vulgar thoughts, I lost my presence of mind and couldn’t answer her. Or rather… This was the first time in my life I’d ever been aroused by a flesh-and-blood girl. Ahh… Ooh… Miki, you’re amazing.

Before I noticed, Miki had responded to my unexpected wonderment by retracting her playful grin, replacing it with a bashful expression and readorning her hoodie.

“...Excuse me, just because my father’s over there doesn’t mean you can get all pervy on me. ...Don’t look at me! I said don’t look!”

She was red to the tips of her ears.

Even though she’s the one who showed me…

“And whose fault is that?”

“...Well, uh, it’s because I was enticing you… Wait, wait, wait, that’s not it! Don’t go blaming this on others! It’s because you’re a perv! You coaxed me into it!”

“Miki, you really don’t understand how attractive you are, do you…”

“And now you’re hitting on me again! And it’s working! I can’t stand this! Daaaad! Dad, heeelp! There’s a beast disguised as a saint over here!”

After that exchange, we went back to our normal high spirits and headed for the water’s edge. We both stuck our feet in the ocean, taking in the sensation of lukewarm waves tickling at our feet.

“You know, this is my first time seeing the ocean.”

“Oh, really?”

“It’s also my first time leaving the Kantou region, actually.”

“...You really did live in a closed world, didn’t you, Kouta.”

That was the way it had to be. I couldn’t possess my own will or hopes.

At least, not before I met Miki.

I gazed at the horizon. The clear sea sparkled under the sun’s aggressive glare, connecting the world together. Somewhere it would become ice, somewhere it was filled with garbage, somewhere it was steeped in blood. The same waves that lapped gently at my feet could at times swallow people to their doom.

Why was it, I wondered?

I was crying. The tears wouldn’t stop.

But even seeing me like that, Miki didn’t draw back. She just squeezed my left wrist, the same wrist that was bound by the red hair band.

She then gave me a wide smile, with the corners of her mouth fully upturned. A smile clearer than the ocean, so attractive it was almost devilish.

“It would be nice if this day could last forever.”

To be honest, I disagreed. From here on out we would continue to grow, and our feelings would change. I wanted Miki to be free. I wanted her to shine. I didn’t want her to be chained down by the emotions of this moment. I didn’t want her to be chained down like me.

But right now, I knew what Miki wanted me to say. Or rather, I knew what her smile was practically forcing me to say.

Ahh, I see—

We don’t open anywhere.

But this level of mutual understanding was possible.

It was something pleasant, no doubt, something that if understood might lead to true happiness.

“You’re right, it would be nice if this day could last forever.”

And the moment the words left my mouth, only for a moment, I wished for eternity from the bottom of my heart.

Fin.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (V)|Kouta Hiiragi’s Closed World (V)]]
| Return to [[We Don't Open Anywhere -There are no facts, only interpretations.-|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[We Don't Open Anywhere: Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

User:Defan752

2017-11-19T07:49:26Z

Toshiya: Undo revision 530723 by 162.129.251.85 (talk)

Hello, defan752 here.

Not much to say: Huge fan of anime, manga, light novels, and Japanese culture in general.

* Here's my [http://myanimelist.net/animelist/defan752 MyAnimeList].

==== Current Projects ====

I enjoy contributing to the community, and especially about doing something I love. Been following Baka-Tsuki for a long time, but only recently started having somewhat of a footprint here.

* I'm working on '''Kokoro Connect''' at [http://nanodesutranslations.org/kokoro-connect/ NanoDesu].

* I also run a [https://defan752.wordpress.com/ translation blog] of my own, where I work on '''Sword Art Online''', '''Accel World''', '''F-Rank no Boukun''', and '''Urasome Tenba'''.

* I'm currently recording the [[Audio_Recordings|Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria Audiobook Project]].

==== Contact Information ====

You'll find that I have somewhat of a presence on reddit as well. Feel free to hit me up in the [http://www.reddit.com/r/aotrp Attack on Titan Roleplay].

Here's some more contact information:

* My Discord name is defan752. I hang out in the /r/SwordArtOnline server. This is my preferred method of communication.

* My Skype Name is kevin.defan.

* Email me at kevin.defan@gmail.com. Note that I may not respond immediately.

* I'm defan752 on reddit. PM me and I'll get back to you.

* I'm also somewhat active in the forums, PM me if you'd like.

My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister

2017-11-15T08:54:31Z

Toshiya: ebooks

{{Status|Active}}
{{Web_novel|English}}

[[Image:Zombie and Vampire v01 cover.png|thumb|300px|right|]]
The '''''My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister ''''' (吸血鬼の姉とゾンビの妹) series is a web novel series written by Kamachi Kazuma (鎌池和馬) and illustrated by Mahaya (真早). Kamachi Kazuma is also known for several other light novel series, most notably the [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index|Toaru Majutsu no Index]] series.

==Story Synopsis==

“If a zombie and vampire went all out, which one would win?”

Those fateful words began a serious sisterly fight between zombie little sister Ayumi and vampire older sister Erika.

The entire city has been recreated using the environment simulator created by the main character and a virtual horror movie begins with the fleeing residents as the targets!

Characters:

Ayumi: Zombie girl.

Erika: Vampire girl.

Satori: High school boy with a zombie little sister and vampire older sister.

Maxwell: Support program developed by Satori.

== Web Novel ==

This web novel is currently hosted on Kamachi Kazuma's [http://dengekibunko.jp/author/kamachikazuma/novel/index.html#zonbi website].

==''My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister'' by Kamachi Kazuma==

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister Have Gotten Into a Pretty Serious Fight…Only in Virtual Reality Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/file/hoa35gv0ljbubxu/My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister_-_Volume_01.epub ePub])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v01_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Looking Over at me Like They Want to Join In…in Reality Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/file/667u9rb14afeg2o/My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister_-_Volume_02.epub ePub])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v02_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Completely Overshadowed by the Incredible Thing that Showed Up…Which One is it This Time? ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/file/10h1s05m9fpxr2m/My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister_-_Volume_03.epub ePub])===
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister Seem to Have Gone out into the World, so What do I do…I Have Bigger Problems This Time Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/file/l2mrb4btw1fc2bf/My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister_-_Volume_04.epub ePub])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v04_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Kind of Being Neglected This Time, so What do I do…This is a Legit Demon Lord Rush Though===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v05_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*Chapter 1
*Chapter 2
*Chapter 3
*Chapter 4
*Chapter 5
*Chapter 6
*Chapter 7
*Afterword
*?
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Fascinated by the Hacker Festival, so What am I Supposed to Do?…This is Hardly the Time for That Though===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v06_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume6_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*Chapter 0
*Chapter 1
*Chapter 2
*Chapter 3
*Chapter 4
*Chapter 5
*Chapter 6
*Chapter 7
*Chapter 8
*Chapter 9
*Chapter 10
*Afterword
*?
 

== Project Staff ==

*Supervisor:
*Project Manager:

=== Translators ===

'''ACTIVE'''
*[[user:Js06|Js06]]

=== Editors ===

'''ACTIVE'''
*[[user:DasAuto|DasAuto]]

[[Category:Dengeki Bunko]]
[[Category:Kazuma Kamachi]]

My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister

2017-11-04T05:00:39Z

Toshiya: full text page link

{{Status|Active}}
{{Web_novel|English}}

[[Image:Zombie and Vampire v01 cover.png|thumb|300px|right|]]
The '''''My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister ''''' (吸血鬼の姉とゾンビの妹) series is a web novel series written by Kamachi Kazuma (鎌池和馬) and illustrated by Mahaya (真早). Kamachi Kazuma is also known for several other light novel series, most notably the [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index|Toaru Majutsu no Index]] series.

==Story Synopsis==

“If a zombie and vampire went all out, which one would win?”

Those fateful words began a serious sisterly fight between zombie little sister Ayumi and vampire older sister Erika.

The entire city has been recreated using the environment simulator created by the main character and a virtual horror movie begins with the fleeing residents as the targets!

Characters:

Ayumi: Zombie girl.

Erika: Vampire girl.

Satori: High school boy with a zombie little sister and vampire older sister.

Maxwell: Support program developed by Satori.

== Web Novel ==

This web novel is currently hosted on Kamachi Kazuma's [http://dengekibunko.jp/author/kamachikazuma/novel/index.html#zonbi website].

==''My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister'' by Kamachi Kazuma==

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister Have Gotten Into a Pretty Serious Fight…Only in Virtual Reality Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1|Full Text]])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v01_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Looking Over at me Like They Want to Join In…in Reality Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2|Full Text]])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v02_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Completely Overshadowed by the Incredible Thing that Showed Up…Which One is it This Time? ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3|Full Text]])===
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister Seem to Have Gone out into the World, so What do I do…I Have Bigger Problems This Time Though ([[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4|Full Text]])===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v04_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_6|Chapter 6]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Epilogue|?]]
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Kind of Being Neglected This Time, so What do I do…This is a Legit Demon Lord Rush Though===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v05_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*Chapter 0
*Chapter 1
*Chapter 2
*Chapter 3
*Chapter 4
*Chapter 5
*Chapter 6
*Chapter 7
*Afterword
*?
 

===My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister are Fascinated by the Hacker Festival, so What am I Supposed to Do?…This is Hardly the Time for That Though===
[[File:Zombie_and_Vampire_v06_cover.png|right|border|200px]]
*[[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume6_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*Chapter 0
*Chapter 1
*Chapter 2
*Chapter 3
*Chapter 4
*Chapter 5
*Chapter 6
*Chapter 7
*Chapter 8
*Chapter 9
*Chapter 10
*Afterword
*?
 

== Project Staff ==

*Supervisor:
*Project Manager:

=== Translators ===

'''ACTIVE'''
*[[user:Js06|Js06]]

=== Editors ===

'''ACTIVE'''
*[[user:DasAuto|DasAuto]]

[[Category:Dengeki Bunko]]
[[Category:Kazuma Kamachi]]

My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume4

2017-11-04T04:59:37Z

Toshiya: full text page

=== Illustrations ===
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Illustrations|Illustrations}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_0|Chapter 0}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_1|Chapter 1}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_2|Chapter 2}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_3|Chapter 3}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_4|Chapter 4}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_5|Chapter 5}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_6|Chapter 6}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_7|Chapter 7}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_8|Chapter 8}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_9|Chapter 9}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_10|Chapter 10}}
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Afterword|Afterword}}
==?==
{{:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Epilogue|?}}

<references/>
<noinclude>

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|-
| Return to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume3|Volume 3]]
| [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister|Main Page]]
{{#ifexist:My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5 | {{!}} Forward to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume5|Volume 5]] }}
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Zero no Tsukaima:Volume14 Chapter1

2017-10-30T15:42:09Z

Toshiya: /* Chapter 1: The Flowerbed Squadron's Rebellion */

==Chapter 1: The Flowerbed Squadron's Rebellion==

The river Shire flows through the center of Lutèce, the capital city of the Kingdom of Gallia…….

From the center of the city which was known as the old town that was developed along the riverbank extended Bonfan Street, along which it would take thirty minutes by horseback to reach the capital outskirts.

There the street was interrupted, and instead there was a long wall that stretched seemingly endlessly. Even at high noon the appearance of a section of this wall was unmatched.

As for what was on the other side of that long stone wall, that was the palace of Versailles where the Gallia royal family lived. As for why the palace had been built on the outskirts, one would understand if they saw the scale of it.

When it came to the amount of land on which to build an imperial palace of such concentrated luxury, no such place could be found in the urban areas of Lutèce.

Due to the twin moons being hidden by clouds, the darkness of that evening was like a burden on one's shoulders……, and in front of the palace's eastern Red Rose Gate the figure of a mounted knight was striding.

The main road was illuminated by magic torches mounted on the palace's walls, yet the darkness was deep nevertheless. It had rained during the day and, due to the air moistening at that time, the sticky atmosphere enveloped the knights.

The youthful knight walking on his right side, lifting the brim of his hat that was adorned with a white lily, spoke with a tired voice.

"However, for the Bilateral Fleet to have rebelled……. The Commander Lord Claville isn't known for being deeply loyal to the monarchy, is he. It's a rebellion! How could this have come to pass in the fatherland? The end of tradition in the land, the corruption of the government, the nobles thinking about nothing but increasing the gold in the treasury, and the commoners aren't thinking about anything other than their own portion. And now it's finally lead to rebellion!"

Taking a breath, the young knight began singing a ballad that was popular in the city.

"God and Founder, please show favor on our Gallia. Please grant brilliant rue of Halkegenia to our Gallia. For what cause has the Founder disinherited us? Why have we exhausted the grace of God? Ooh Gallia. The sweet scent of flowers has disappeared somewhere. Ooh Gallia. Please make out fatherland beautiful. Why has even the dignity of the fleet been exhausted?"

A sudden insurrection had occurred at the port city of Saint Maron on Gallia's northwestern coast that doubled as the navy's homeport, and a report had reached them this morning that the port was shut down. Lutèce was under martial law, and a large number of knight regiments were heading towards Saint Maron.

At present, with their forces having besieged the navy and the port it seemed they were continuing to stare at each other.

The old knight, who belonged to the same Order of the Southern Lily Flower Bed as the young knight, was staring at his junior with eyes of pity.

"You really believe the rebellion was caused by the Bilateral Fleet don't you?"

"That's what it sounds like. It's because of that that we're supposed to flush them out with these nighttime patrols. Well, if it's compared to the other knight orders who have the task of driving them out and suppressing Saint Maron, it could be said this is a simple task……. Since in spite of the power of the rebellion, in either case it isn't a concern that they'll turn their wands on the people of Gallia."

The old knight let out a sigh and spoke words that ought to be astounding.

"As a man who was selected as fleet commander based on how many times he lowered his head, he's unlikely to bite his master."

"What are you saying?"

"The entire thing was conceived by His Majesty."

The old knight, wearing his long worn military uniform, gazed towards the other side of the wall with eyes containing a mixture of weariness and insight.

"……What! Is that true?"

The young knight, since enrolling, had always looked up to the old knight as his teacher. He had only been a knight for less than a year, and his only motive had his lineage. If he had held a minimum position as a Baron, by now it seemed he would have had the status to take charge of the Knights Order.

Until now his words that excelled in military arts had never been off. Because of the respect the young knight felt towards him in his heart, he immediately believed his pronunciation.

Indeed his words ought to have been shocking, but since it was him saying it there was no doubt that it was true.

"……Then what does the besieged forces staring at each other mean?"

"It's probably an act I guess. It should be fine Flander-kun, because even if His Majesty is called 'The Incompetent King' and is treated as a fool both here and abroad, I don't believe that. His Majesty……, forgive me if what I say is disrespectful, but he's a terrifying man. Since being demoted from the position of military commander forty years ago, I have served the royal family. I've rushed about more battlefields than I can count on both hands. However I've never known a man more terrifying than the King."

The young knight, who was staring at the old knight, let out a large sigh at that.

"……So we're being made to go along with this play then."

"Such is the way of a knight. After all it's gone beyond the point of comedy actors dancing on someone's palm. Now that it seems you've understood what I've been saying, you mustn't reveal it to anyone. If this matter were to reach His Majesty's ear, it wouldn't just be my neck, but yours would fly as well."

The young knight displayed a tense look and nodded.

The two of them had reached a place where a forest spread out to their left. It was the Forest of Ternyan . In a corner of this forest that had become the royal family's personal hunting ground, the young knight suddenly spotted a wriggling figure.

"What's that!"

The young knight quickly spurred his horse to hurry forward. Chanting a spell of 'Illumination', he shined the light in the vicinity where the shadow appeared to be.

What was revealed was a man whose body was wrapped in a black robe. Perhaps in resignation, he was boldly standing there without so much as stirring. The young knight, his wand prepared, thrust it at the man.

"Remove your hood!"

The man slowly removed his hood. Seeing the face that was then revealed, the young knight let out a surprised voice.

"Castlemont-dono!"

Regarding the face that was under the hood, it was that of the leader of the of the Knights of the Eastern Roses, Bart Castlemont. While his age was not too different compared to the young knight, he was well known as the prodigy who had been entrusted with leading a Knights Order. Among the Flowerbed Knights, there wasn't one who wasn't aware of his various valorous deeds or didn't know his face.

At the moment, he was, for some reason, staring at the young knight with a stiff expression.

While inclining his head, the young knight returned his wand to its sheath.

"What are you doing in a place like this? The Knights of the Eastern Roses……weren't they heading to Saint Maron?"

"……Without asking for a reason, I'd like for you to let me through here."

With a bitter voice, Castlemont muttered. The young knight awkwardly shook his head. Perhaps it was that he was following secret orders or something. However, they were on duty.

"I can't be a part of that. That's the way things are in the current time. You know that it's after curfew right? I have received orders that everyone I should encounter around here I am to take them in for questioning by one of the officials. However though, I won't skip the formalities. Since it's someone of your stature, it'll be fine so long as I get you to sign the documents in the guardroom. Well then, for now if you would come this……"

However Castlemont didn't move an inch.

"Castlemont-dono?"

At that moment, the old knight who had watching the development attentively from behind shouted out. He had noticed something.

"Flander! Draw your wand!"

Following his own advice the old knight drew his wand.

As the young knight muttered, "Wha, why should I do that?" in a confused voice, a wind rope leapt out from Castlemont who was behind him, which simultaneously wrapped itself around the old knight's body.

As the confused young knight drew his wand, a mass of air struck deeply into his abdomen. Looking back over his shoulder, Castlemont, with a sever expression, was wielding his military staff that he had rapidly produced. From the darkness the figures of knights whose bodies were cloaked with black robes appeared one after another.

"……Why?"

As he muttered that, the young knight's consciousness faded.

Watching his subordinate tie up the two fallen knights that had been on patrol, Castlemont sighed. To have been discovered, that was a disgrace. Be that as it may, it seemed that fortunately none of the eighty men from the Knight's order that had come here were looking to find fault.

For the Knights of the Eastern Roses that Castlemont commanded, news of the Bilateral Fleet's rebellion had reached them yesterday morning.

However, for the elites of the Knights of the Eastern Roses who had embraced the spirit of rebellion against the current royal government, this report was entirely unbelievable. They immediately made a request to their collaborators hidden everywhere for a supply of information, and by that very afternoon they had obtained the truth of the matter.

The rebellion was a complete lie.

It was a plot of the current king, Joseph.

Joseph, who appeared to bear territorial ambitions towards Romalia, was plotting to deceive even his friends, which enraged not only Castlemont but also the Knights of the Eastern Roses. To dress as rebels and then invade a neighboring country with which they had an alliance, such was a situation that should not exist. If this plot were to come to light later on, it seemed the prestige of the Kingdom of Gallia would come crashing to the ground, its brilliant past history would vanish into a future of darkness.

Two hours later, when the order came to head to Saint Maron on the pretext of besieging the Bilateral Fleet, that was when Castlemont finally resolved himself.

The name of the Bilateral Fleet's flagship was ironically 'Charles Orleans'. To name the flagship after the younger brother he himself had killed, did he think that to be some kind of atonement?

……If so, they would simply imitate the fleet that was an accomplice in the plot.

Not only that, that incompetent king was trying to dress even them up as actors in this farce.

Lay siege? What does that mean to lay siege? Laying siege, why should they do such a thing? In all likelihood they were being used as simple observers. They were no more than a piece of makeup to obtain the consent of foreign nations.

They didn't need to endure anymore. The time for action was now……

While on their way towards Saint Maron, the Knights of the Eastern Roses had waited for nightfall and then returned to Lutèce. Having continuously marched through the dark of night, they had managed to return here to Lutèce four hours later. Along the way, they had already been sending couriers to every regiment in which collaborators had been installed.

The sub-leader Arnulf, with whom the age difference was like that of a parent and child, approached him and brought his face close to his ear.

"We have promises of collaboration from three regiments, and word just reached us that they will arrive in Lutèce by morning."

"That's reassuring."

Castlemont smiled for the first time all day. There were more than a few nobles and military personnel that held animosity for the present royal government. However, when it came to actually taking action it was a different story. No one wanted to bear the stigma of being a traitor.

Nevertheless, three regiments had immediately responded by taking action. His decision had not been mistaken. If Castlemont could take Joseph's head, the rest of them would immediately submit.

"In three days we shall welcome Charlotte-sama who was forced to flee from Lutèceas as she takes the throne."

Castlemont, remembering the face of the princess who was always being pushed around, lowered his head. Remembering the face of the gentle Duke of Orleans, his heart was fired up.

"……Your Highness, the time to dispel all of Your Highness's regrets has finally arrived. Your Highness the one who raised me, who was born into the house of a destitute noble, to the Knights Order with the words of 'There's promise'. At last, the time to repay that favor has come."

Castlemont raised his head and held his staff up high.

"Gentlemen! I would speak to you gentlemen of the Knights Order! From this point, we shall reclaim the throne from the usurper! After that, the proper noble individual shall return! Do not be afraid! We are not rebels! We are the true Gallian Flowerbed Knights, the noble and courageous soldiers of Gallia!"

There was a cheer from the Knights Order.

"The man who is surely sleeping on the other side of this wall, he is a traitor who has become an enemy of God, the Founder, and the Fatherland! All of you, with me!"

As Castlemont shouted that, he jumped over the wall by chanting the magic of 'Fly'. One by one the knights proceeded after him. Using magic to blow away the soldiers on guard who had bustled to gather together, the Knights of the Eastern Roses charged straight for Grand Troyes where Joseph was.

Joseph was sitting on his throne, listening to a music box.

While he was absentmindedly gazing into empty space, slowly raising his arm, he moved his hand as though conducting a melody.

With an intoxicated expression he was abandoning his body to the Founder's melody, and then a cabinet minister burst in leading guards before his throne.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty! It's terrible! Rebellion! It's a rebellion!"

While making a panicked commotion, the cabinet minister knelt before Joseph's throne.

"The Knights of the Eastern Roses have risen in rebellion! The bodyguards have been kicked aside, and they are invaded Grand Troyes! At this moment, the guards who are continuing to frantically put up a fight in the Hall of Mirrors are being outnumbered! Soon the defensive line will break, and then they'll be here next!"

At present there were no more than twenty nobles protecting the palace. For several generations the several hundred mercenaries of the ruler of the Grand Duchy of Bergen had been stationed there, but with the mages of the Knights Order as opponents, their strength could not be counted on. For the aforementioned 'plot', most of their forces and Knights Orders were not in the capital.

That gap had been exploited.

Despite the crisis of being driven into a corner……, Joseph's trance-like expression wasn't disturbed. As though the cabinet minister's voice was part of the melody, he was listening to the tones of the music box.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Quickly, to the underground passage! My group of guards will serve as escorts!"

As though finally noticing that angry look, Joseph raised his head.

"What for?"

"It's a rebellion! How many times are you going to make me say it!"

"Aah. I see. Speaking of which, there was that possibility. I had forgotten."

Giving a big nod, Joseph slowly stood up.

"This way then!"

Interrupting the cabinet minister who had guided him while saying that, Joseph calmly gazed towards the entrance to the throne room. From the other side of the entrance, the sounds of the guards fighting with the knights of the rebellion could be heard. At that terrible sound, the cabinet minister's back gave out and he collapsed upon the floor.

"Aah, ahh……, the end, this is the end……"

The sound of magic flying and the horrible sound of fellow canes colliding with each other suddenly stopped. At ease, Joseph continued standing perfectly still, even as the figures of the victors appeared at the entrance to the throne room.

"Oya, if it isn't Castlemont. Why in the world? I thought I ordered your forces to head towards Saint Maron."

Without answering Joseph's question, Castlemont thrust his staff forward.

"Reigning King of Gallia, Joseph the First. In the name of God, the Founder, and all that is just, I'm placing you under arrest you bastard."

"Hou. What the hell kind of crime do you intend to arrest me for? If it's laws for judging a king, they shouldn't exist in Gallia."

"For your various acts of treachery against the Fatherland. You King with no ability."

The Knights of the Eastern Roses were stampeding into the throne room, and one by one they pointed their military staffs at Joseph.

"Now! Drop your wand!"

At that point, Joseph laughed loudly.

"Is something amusing!"

"Iyah, as expected it's the first time someone has called me 'King with no ability' to my face. Castlemont, you don't have that much promise do you? Truly, being incapable of anything other than simply bowing your head, you imagine yourself to be a user of flattery."

"Don't mock me! I'm done acting for the sake of deceiving the likes of you!"

"In all honesty……, that thing called public opinion has been damaged. As you said, I am really a king with no sort of ability. It's true, since even your spirit of rebellion wasn't perceptible to me. Incompetence like this is rare! But. Ahhaha!"

At which point, Joseph laughed loudly once again. Giving a sidelong glance at everyone who had become dumbfounded, Joseph turned his back on them.

"Where are you going!?"

"To bed. Iyah, I'm slowly getting sleepy. If it's talking, can we do that tomorrow?"

It looked like that truly was his plan. Beyond being enraged, Castlemont was astonished. Perhaps this king truly was just that weak minded.

However, there was no reason for him to permit that.

"Take Joseph into custody."

Some of the knights approached Joseph while being wary of any traps. The remaining knights as well pointed their staffs at Joseph as they chanted spells. The sub-leader Arnulf drew near like a steward and whispered in Castlemont's ear.

"We can't know if it's a trap. Be careful."

Castlemont nodded. There surely was a trap, but there didn't exist a trap that more than eighty knights couldn't suppress. No matter what spell he used, being surrounded here by skilled knights, he couldn't escape. At this moment, Joseph was a rabbit that had been seized by the hunter.

However, the moment the knight reached out to grab Joseph's arm……, something no one could have guessed occurred.

Suddenly, Joseph's figure vanished in an instant.

"What the?"

Castlemont shouted. The knights reflexively fired their magic. The throne, the partition that had been standing, the silk damask hanging behind the throne, the gorgeously engraved mirror, all of them became battered from receiving fire and wind magic.

However, the figure of Joseph wasn't there.

Someone in their confusion recited Detect Magic. If something had been concealed using magic, with this it should be immediately discovered……, however, there was no magical reaction within the throne room.

A single knight let out a shout while facing the skylight window.

"He's over there!"

"What?"

Brushing aside the knight, Castlemont jumped to the window.

"Hey, what is it? What are you looking for?"

What skill he had used no one knew, but Joseph was standing next to the fountain in the courtyard. The knights turned pale. Even for magic experts like themselves, they couldn't understand the means by which Joseph was able to instantly move to the courtyard. For magic that could accomplish that, there was only the Wind System's 'Ubiquitous<ref>Kanji:Uneven Distribution</ref>', but even that couldn't make one's figure vanish and reappear so splendidly.

Besides, for Joseph who was said to have no magical ability, he could not be expected to utilize square-class wind magic.

The skylight window facing the courtyard was small, so it was impossible for them to exit through it. Castlemont gave his order with an irritated voice.

"Surround the courtyard! Hurry! Don't let him escape!"

The knights started running in a panic.

The shout seemed to reach Joseph in the courtyard, who laughed out loud.

"I won't run or hide! Calm down! Besides that, I decided to change my bed this evening. It would be in your best interest to escape quickly."

"What was that?"

Joseph chanted a spell.

'''Eoruu Suunu Firu Yarunsagusa……'''

It was a list of runes they had never heard before. Forgetting to recite an offensive spell, Castlemont was instantly captivated by that spell.

'''Osusuunu Uryu Ru Rado……'''

Castlemont felt something of a chill run down his spine. Astonishing. He himself was horrified! He was a Square Class Wind Mage but……, he was terrified of the spell of the one born with no magical talent, the king known as the Incompetent King.

Calm yourself!

Castlemont encouraged himself.

There doesn't exist a spell that can blow away more than eighty knights. Magic is strong, but that power has limits. Moreover, we are inside the palace. Does he really think he can attack us from the courtyard?

"You Incompetent King! Worry about yourself!"

Castlemont raised his wand and chanted a spell. He completed the gust of wind filled with ice spears. Capturing him alive and then having him stand trial before the people first, there was no way for him to accomplish that.

The instant he tried to fire them at Joseph, Joseph, upon seeing that, calmly lowered his wand as though he was at that moment the conductor of an orchestra beginning a concert.

A reasonable bluff.

You Incompetent King.

A spell that a bastard like you can handle…….

"Wha?"

The floor was shaking violently. That shaking affected the aim of the Ice Spear, causing it to pierce the ground at a distance from Joseph.

"Leader-dono!"

Arnulf who was waiting beside him shouted. Castlemont turned his neck to face that way. Arnulf's body was becoming more distant. Looking at it, wasn't it because the floor had been greatly dislocated?

It was then that Castlemont finally understood.

The entire place was in the midst of collapsing.

"Absurd! How can it be!"

There wasn't any time to aim a spell. When Castlemont looked up, the image reflected in his eyes was of the massive stone ceiling collapsing.

As he watched Grand Troyes, which was composed of beautiful bluish stones, collapse while raising a subterranean rumbling as it swallowed the Knights of the Eastern Roses, Joseph laughed out loud. In spite of the fact that among them had been those without any spirit of rebellion within them, such as servants and cabinet ministers, not to mention allied soldiers, Joseph was laughing.

As a massive dust cloud rose, the vicinity suddenly fell silent.

"This is 'Explosion' huh. Quite a convenient spell. It had this much power just by destroying the castle's support structure. As for ways to use it, there ought to be more interesting ones."

[[Image:ZnT14-031.jpg|thumb|center]]

Joseph muttered as he stared at the 'Founder's Music Box' that he held in his hand. After that, he produced the 'Founder's Censer' from his pocket. As he stroked in gently, fragrance wafted from within it.

"However, this 'Explosion', for it to be the first of my marvelous 'Void' is something of a rude awakening."

Recalling how confused the knights had been when they'd seen him standing in the courtyard, Joseph smiled once again.

While flustering in a panic, a survivor from the guard knights rushed over.

"Your Majesty! It's good that you're safe!"

Without looking in his direction, Joseph gave an order.

"Gather the men. They are to drag the corpses of the rebels from the rubble, and then hang them from the gates of all major roads in Lutèce. By the time morning happens to come along, upon seeing that even an idiot will understand the folly of opposing me."

Watching Joseph whose face was like a demon from the depths of hell, the knight immediately bowed low.

"……Ha-Hah!"

In order to carry out his orders, the knight ran off.

"Wait."

Being called to a halt, the knight stood erect as though struck by lightning. While yawning Joseph informed the knight's back.

"Before that prepare my bed. I don't care where. Truly, I am quite exhausted."

<noinclude>
==Translation Notes==
<references/>
</noinclude>

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Zero_no_Tsukaima:Volume13_Epilogue|Volume 13]]
| Return to [[Zero_no_Tsukaima|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Zero_no_Tsukaima:Volume14_Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Zero no Tsukaima:Volume14 Chapter3

2017-10-30T15:41:08Z

Toshiya: /* Chapter 3: An Elven Gandálfr */

===Chapter 3: An Elven Gandálfr===

“What?”

''I—I slept in this kind of place？''

''No, that can't be possible. I was inside Romania's church with Louise. Something was odd with her alluring presence......then, in the room, she drank wine. The wine was mixed with some kind of medicine....''

''Does this mean that Louise carried me here?''

''Where is this place anyways?''

Saito shook his head as he sleepily eyed his surroundings in confusion. He was sleeping on a hill that seemed bit taller than usual, leaning against an old man's tree's roots. Intense sunlight lit the same hill, making it a desert-like oasis. With a piece of shade around, only bits of sunlight leaked towards him, inevitably forcing Saito to squint.

The grass field was distant; mountains and forests could be seen.

Still, Saito lifted his legs and sat down, stretching his neck.

''Was this one of Romania's grass fields?''

Truly nerve-wracking. Saito shook his head at his situation. His body seemed fine, in its usual sweater and jeans, prior to the wearing a cloak.

He had been dressed like this during his times with Louise. Simply, finding himself moved here after regaining consciousness in a church shouldn't be an issue.

''Still, why would I be sleeping on a grass field……''

“Each time I lose consciousness, I wind up in some incredibly ridiculous place,” he mused.

A figure emerged from the distance.

''Who is it?''

Out of habit, Saito reached towards his back, but Derflinger wasn't there. He had left it in the room. Aside from feeling a bit uncomfortable, there shouldn't be much of a problem; the approaching person's footsteps were leisure and slow，indicating no hostility.

Slowly, the silhouette grew visible, much like the one previously seen....wearing a grass colored dress. Hidden by a hat, the person's face could not be seen, but based on the figure, the person must be female.

The woman approached him after he had awoken, and said.

“Oh，you're awake.”

Then, she lightly pushed her hat aside. Saito suddenly felt his whole body stiffen. Before him was a woman beautiful enough to induce fear in people.

She was around twenty years old.

She had a mature charm and cheerful presence to her. With a friendly smile, she threw a leather belt at Saito.

“I brought you water.”

He drank the water in large gulps. "Huah,” he breathed a large gulp of air before truly studying the woman.

“My name is Sasha. You？I thought you were a traveler based on how you were sleeping here, but I don't see any luggage...”

“My name is Saito. Hiraga Saito. I'm not here on a trip. I just found myself here after regaining consciousness....”

“Right,” said Sasha before studying Saito. She easily removed her hat, revealing something that would have frightened just about anyone. Her ears were those of an elf's.

“Whoa! E-Elf!”

“Oh, you know of me?”

“Y-yes....”

“Ah, that's rare.”

The woman now eyed Saito with interest.

''Rare？Something was wrong with that phrase; everyone knows about elves in Halkeginia.''

“Thank you for the water. I'm very grateful. By the way, what do you mean by people who know about elves being 'rare?'”

“I also don't know, the barbarians I've met have never seen my kind. Really, what countryside is this.”

Hearing Sasha refer to humans as barbarians had upset Saito a bit. If he wasn't mistaken, Bidashal had also referred to them as such that time.

“This place isn't Halkeginia is it？”

“Halkeginia ? What's that？”

Sasha's expression displayed apparent confusion.

No idea what Halkeginia is?! How is that possible？Saito couldn't help but feel anxious. But based on what was said……at least, this place isn't Halkeginia?

Saito began to believe that he was dreaming, but, “Ah!” That hurts! Looks like it wasn't a dream. With how things are, Saito couldn't help but slap himself in the face.

“Pah!” Saito called out in pain from the ground in a clear voice.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing...it's just that I think I'm dreaming.”

“In that case, one could say that I'm quite fortunate.”

Saito began to search his memory: Since there is no land for the elves, this isn't a place in Halkeginia. Then, is this place the so-called Eastern continent？

“Then, this is Rub' al Khali?”

“What? Even if it's not precisely what you meant，I come from a place called Saharan, but according to him, that place is called ‘Igujestansea.”

''Igujestansea....never heard of that name.''

''Besides, why did I find myself awakening in such a place?

''Who is responsible for this?

''Could it be that Pope？But what good would it do to leave me here？Or maybe, this is one of King Joseph's ulterior motives?

''However, the heart of Romania, the Church，is not such an easy place to access, even for King Joseph...Wait...if say he used that “Void” Magic, it might be possible.''

King Joseph?

Suddenly, he remembered something important.

“Ooooh!” Saito cried.

“How?”

“Not that....I suddenly remember! Right now, we're in deep trouble……there's no time to waste in this place!”

“What trouble?”

In haughty tones, Sasha eyed Saito as she spoke.

“Oh？Ah，I must have not made it clear. Where we are, there's an atrocious king that wants to do absurdly bad things to us. Just to get rid of him, we're preparing for battle...I'm loitering here at such a critical time.”

“I can relate to that.”

Sasha opened both hands.

“Right now, the people of my tribe are being swallowed by the army<ref>The expression "swallowed by the army" essentially means "killed by the army."</ref>. I too shouldn't be idling in such a place, but he.....”

“Him?”

Saito asked. However, Sasha did not respond. Carefully looking, he realized that her face was colored with mild anger. Looks like she resented that “him.”

Having seen a real female elf for the first time, Saito could not help but carefully study Sasha.

She had the same golden hair that Tiffania had, along with pupils that appear as if they were transparent emeralds adorned with long lashes above them. Despite the sharpness of her eyes, its lines had an enchanting and gentle feel to them. She was essentially like Tiffania with all traces of childishness gone.

Beneath her robe, her aura was neutral.

The reason why Tiffania seemed approachable was that she was half-human....but facing this true elven female, he didn't feel an ounce of fear, despite having witnessed the elven Bishadal's unnerving presence.

Saito then thought: Elves and humans are definitely alike; each individual was unique to their own.

He once again eyed his surroundings. It was around noon. Distant clouds slowly grew larger.

Just as he was thinking, the sky suddenly made “pipapipa” noises as it rained. Saito and Sasha quickly hid under the trees.

“That essentially gave off an extremely strange feeling.”

Sasha muttered as she looked at the rain.

“A pleasant feeling？”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I am someone who is too shy to face people, but I don't feel that way around you.”

Is that so，Saito couldn't help but sigh. Speaking of that, he himself didn't feel distant, in the slightest, around Sasha. Even if he was close to Tiffania and has faced life and death situations, before an elf, who was believed to be one of the strongest and most feared creatures in Halkeginia, on impulse, he too felt....

“I also feel the same way.”

Having heard that, Sasha stared into Saito's pupils in surprise.

“H—How？”

Being observed by such a stunningly beautiful girl at such a close distance, Saito inevitably felt his heart pound. Sasha's brows furrowed slightly.

“Somehow, it feels like this isn't my first time meeting you. I wonder why?”

“Even if you ask, I also……”

Speaking of which, Saito also felt as though......

This should have been his first time meeting this female elf......，but he felt a sense of familiarity. This is indeed.....

“Is this some kind of deja-vu?”

“Deja-vu？”

“Yes, this kind of feeling where a lot seems to have happened before.”

“Yes....”

However, he felt that it was not all of what he felt, and just as he was thinking about what all of that was about...

Sasha suddenly narrowed her eyes and rose with a grim expression.

“What is it？”

“Get down.”

Just as Saito wanted to question what happened, he realized that, on the field, a gray object had floated into sight.

“Dog.....?”

“You sure are optimistic. That's a wolf.”

“Oh? That's a wolf?”

Saito, having seen a wolf for the first time, carefully stared at the wolf that was about twenty meters away. It really wasn't anything like a dog. It looked savage, wary of its every surrounding.

“Looks like it's intending to make us its dinner.”

“With only one of them?”

“Not possible.”

As expected, silhouettes of more wolves emerged, following one another. Maybe, they had been hiding in the bushes before to quietly sneak forward.

Forming a circle, the wolves surrounded Saito and Sasha. One side lowered themselves, the other slowly turned. The same vicious expression was plastered on all of their faces. The entire pack coordinated their movements, as if informing them that they were currently a part of their daily lives and their play-things.

“Is there anything that could act as a weapon?“

“What are you intending to do?”

“About that....., I gain confidence when I have a weapon on hand. The wolves should be able to sense that. ”

“Oh, what a coincidence, but I've got more confidence than you. It's really a matter of whether you are lucky or not. ”

“Yeah, but I suggest that you just lend me one if you have one. Anything would do. Even if that broken piece of wood over at the side there, might be able to work, if you push it.......”

Even without the Gandálfr's power, he could make himself a sword. Defeating a pack of wolves was something that he would have liked the Gandálfr's power for, though.

“No problem, just leave everything to me.”

In the next moment, Saito was at a loss for words from shock. He couldn't believe what he was seeing at the time.

As soon as she wielded the dagger, Sasha's left hand began to glow. Or more accurately, the back of her left hand began to glow.

On that was something that he was very familiar with....runes that formed words that were already a part of his body by some significant event.

“GanGanGanGan—Gan—Gan—Gandálfr!”

“Oh, you know what I am?”

“It's not just a matter of knowing or not knowing—”

Saito showed Sasha his left hand.

“Ah! You too?”

Even if what she had said was an expression of surprise, Sasha didn't appear to be shocked.

“Anyhow, why don't you join me.”

Having said that, Sasha pulled out a dagger for Saito. Saito gripped it tightly.

''This elf was a Gandálfr? Why? There are other Gandálfrs besides me? How is that possible?''

As though it had seen Saito's momentary confusion, a wolf fiercely lunged at him.

Damn.

Now wasn't the time to think. Saito reacted quickly, bent down, and pierced the dagger into the wolf's abdomen.

“Ao!”

The wolf that was stabbed in the abdomen moaned. It fell and rolled on the ground. Sasha quickly turned, and in the blink of an eye, two lunged at her.

“!”

For a moment, it was as though her entire body had disappeared. An agile figure shuttled, just like the dancers from Albion, with her robe flying in the sky.

The wolves that had lunged at her either got their legs chopped off, or were beheaded by her, and they fell towards the ground. Sasha stabbed her dagger into wolf that had its legs chopped off and ended its life.

Gradually, the place once again fell into silence.

“Why would a Gandálfr.....”

Be an elf and be in a place that isn't Halkeginia. Seeing an fellow Gandálfr, Saito was puzzled.

But internally, he was hopeful.

What kind of magic was this anyways?

Really，magic.....something that whisked him away to an unknown place in the blink of an eye....making anything possible……Thinking of that, Saito suddenly cried, “Ah!”

“What is it？Were you injured？”

Sasha eyed Saito worriedly.

“No, I'm fine.”

Saito responded with a nod. Just, he had to immediately return to Halkeginia. Things are in the midst of trouble right now. Returning is of utmost priority. Everything else could be shoved to the back of his brain!

Right now, his only clue is that other familiar's master. He should probably know what happened.

“I would like to meet your master, who summoned you.”

“I would like to see him too, but I don't know where this place is.....where is Nidabelio? Honestly, what magic test? What good does it do for people!”

“Magic test?”

“Yes, that guy uses uncivilized magic.”

Uncivilized magic....that's an indicator that it's "void," right？

He always thought there were only four void users, yet there were others?

Saito felt his curiosity peak.

It gradually began to rain harder, hitting its way past the tree leaves, towards Saito and Sasha. Finding shelter beneath a tree was now useless. Sasha suddenly took off her robe.

Seeing Sasha in the tight clothes she wore underneath, Saito covered his eyes.

“What's wrong？”

“I thought that it would be best if I didn't look.......”

“It's just a method used to avoid getting too wet.”

Sasha stretched out and raised her robe high up. After calling for Saito, the two of them hid beneath this temporary umbrella.

The robe emitted a mildy sweet aroma. It inevitably made people feel exotic. Is that the scent of elves.....? After feeling intoxicated, a mirror-like object suddenly appeared.

That was the very 'door' that Saito had seen from the summon familiar spell.

“What is it?”

Sasha's face suddenly stiffened.

The frowning face could now be considered to be vicious. Saito instinctively stepped back in fear.

This elf was very scary.

Elves were certainly a frightening race........

Sasha had an air of ferocity to her that was a hundred times worse than when she killed the wolves as she stared at the object in the mirror.

From the mirror came a somewhat short boy. He wore a firm expression and had golden hair that was neatly brushed. His entire body was covered with a loose robe.

Apologetically, the boy hurriedly rushed over.

“Aah，finally managed to get it to open. So-Sorry. I'm really sorry. My apologies.”

Saito saw Sasha's shoulders tremble slightly. Then, her small throat emitted a high pitched, tangled sound:

“You barbarian────────！”

Having said that, Sasha approached the boy, and kicked him with a pretty foot of hers.

“Ah！”

The boy dramatically rolled onto the ground. Sasha helped herself to his back.

“I've said before, what have you and I both agreed on?”

“Yes.....that's.....”

“Say it loud and clear!”

“This barbarian is very sorry.”

Sasha hit the boy's head again.

“Ah”

“The next time I take a magic test, I won't make any arrangements?”

“Yes....do that. In addition, be sure to rely on nobody else.....and I'll say that this isn't even a test.....this is the product of magic research──”

“Isn't that just called a test!?”

Once again, Sasha slapped the boy's head.

“No, I'm truly very sorry, but there was no other way. It's an important time right now, that barbarous.......”

“I've said before that you don't have enough respect for living creatures. You really are a barbarian! I'm part of the noble Elven race, yet you turned me into a familiar. Due to that, you should be expressing much respect for me. But what did you do? Oh, try a test that destroys magic? I opened a teleportation door, and you immediately went to see?........"

“I had no other way. We're at a critical time right now. That violent and cruel Varyag......and there are only a handful of us. The only thing we can depend on would be a miraculous power, fighting with "magic."”

“What difference does it make to tell me that you were dealing with that Varyag!”

Witnessing this scene, Saito instinctively reminisced about a Gandálfr's relationship with his master. ( If they are truly in the Void situation, it's extremely similar.) Do things appear to be this way regardless of location? As long as it is related to the Void, women are scary for some reason, even if the situation was the complete opposite of his own.......

''This person, who is in a place called Igustansea, is a Void user?''

Saito coughed with an "oof." He then made his way towards them.

[[Image: ZnT14-091.jpg|thumb]]

“There's.....something that I would like to ask you......”

Seeing Saito, the boy that Sasha sat on responded somewhat sheepishly:

“Ah, nice to meet you. You are?”

“My name is Saito. Hiraga Saito. I know my name is very weird.”

“Oh sorry, sorry, he and I are the same — we've got the same runes on our hands........”

“What!? You! Let me see that quick!”

The boy suddenly leapt up with a firm expression. Running towards Saito, he grabbed Saito's left hand.

“This isn't a true Gandálfr! He's just some random gnome that was made agile by magic!”

“No, I'm not a gnome.....”

“That's not it! That's not it! Sasha, look! As I've said, there are people other than me who use this "odd system" of magic! Awesome! This is far too great!”

The boy grasped Saito's hand near his face.

“Quick! Let me see your master!”

Saito shook his head sheepishly:

“It's impossible to accomplish that right now......., I don't even know what magic sent me here.....

“This looks like,” The boy suddenly exclaimed with disappointment, but, at the same time, he smiled lightly.

“Oh, come to think of it, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Brimir of Nidabelio.”

Saito stiffened.

This name was one that he has heard many times.

“What?”

“Yes, what's wrong?”

“Co-Cou-Could you please repeat your name?”

“Brimir of Nidavellir. Brimir le Reimir Nidavellir.”

''Brimir

''Wait, wait wait.

''That's....that's.....the mainland of Halkeginia's widely respected.....''

“Founder Brimir's name”

“Founder？What founder？Are you sure you're not mistaken?”

Revealing a dumbfounded expression, the boy looked at Saito.

Something suddenly clicked in Saito's head.

A void user couldn't possibly not know about Founder Brimir. That person before him doesn't seem like some ordinary person who coincidentally shares Brimir's name.

So....

''No, how's that......

''How's that possible?

''Could it be alleged as impossible?

''In a world where magic is a part of people's daily lives.......a world where, unlike earth, magic exists, the existence of 'teleportation' magic isn't impossible.

''Brimir himself.''

Saito inevitably started staring at the boy before him. …..... A deity-like figure was really human too.

This man also had a time he was young, the normal life he experienced... and the era he lived in.

Right now, he was in Brimir's time........

That is to say, in Halkeginia, six thousand years ago.

Is this really not a dream?

No.

This atmosphere.

The feeling of these large footsteps.

“What in the world is it?” Both of them looked at Saito.

The founding Void user and his familiar, the Gandálfr.

That feeling that passes through his skin and that motion.

All these things told Saito that this could possibly be a dream.

This is no dream.

“What has seriously happened? What is this anyways? ”

Realizing the truth that would have made people faint a hundred times<ref>An idiom that expresses how shocking some information is.</ref>, Saito dropped to the floor in a kneel.

<noinclude>
==Translator's Notes and References==
<references/>

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| Back to [[Zero_no_Tsukaima:Volume14_Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
| Return to [[Zero_no_Tsukaima|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Zero_no_Tsukaima:Volume14_Chapter4|Chapter 4]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Zero no Tsukaima:Volume14 Chapter5

2017-10-30T15:41:06Z

Toshiya: /* Chapter 5: Six Thousand Years Ago */

===Chapter 5: Six Thousand Years Ago===

At the same time...or not.

Brimir and Sasha brought Saito to a village called Nitabelio.

Although described as being brought there, as soon as he walked past the gates, the village appeared before him. With Nitabelio as its name, it seemed to undoubtedly be a prosperous market. With that kind of mindset, he found that what he saw did not fall within his expectations.

It was a small village filled with movable tents placed along the sides of nameless hills. One round tent was made of wood and cloth. On one side of the tent, there were a few goats eating long strands of grass.

The whole scenery looked just like the nomadic Mongolians living in their daily lives—something that he had seen in a community textbook.

Finding his breath taken away by this foreign place, Saito stood there dumbfounded.

“My house is just over there. ”

Brimir led him to one of the highest tents in the village. A blue flag flapped atop the tent's canopy. ''Wasn't Brimir a founder? Someone like Christianity's Jesus, Islam's Mohammad, or Buddhism's Śākyamuni? Essentially some incredible person!'' While thinking so, Saito entered. ''He's living in this kind of run-down place? Is this really Brimir himself?''

The furniture inside was simple; crude. A thatch bed was placed further inside. A carpet that resembled Middle-Eastern carpets covered the ground.

“But this really shocked me.”

Standing in the house, Brimir excitedly said,

“Where is your master anyways? Near Midagade? I just really want to meet him.”

Saito found himself recalling an animated film before he had seen before. Because the protagonist returned to the wrong time period, he got to directly interact with a hero. "I'm Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan's first commander general." It seemed that as he said that phrase, he was introducing the Battle of Sekigahara in a friendly manner.

What he could see right now was completely different from that. No matter how he saw it, this was just an ordinary person.

Although, you couldn't really say that that was the absolute truth.....after all, legendary people were still people. The mere fact that he was in such a place and was seeing Brimir as an ordinary person was far more unimaginable. He should be paying close attention to this.

Saito coughed with an "ahem," then faced those two.

“That's absolutely impossible.”

“Why?”

“That's.....well what you two believe to be a trifling matter happens to be something that I can't possibly do. I actually come six thousand years from the future." He never thought that he would find himself saying something that sounded like it came out of a sci-fi show, regardless as to whether he was on Earth or Halkeginia.

Unsurprisingly, Brimir and Sasha faced each other and laughed. "Hahahaha.”

“What you said was indeed hilarious.”

“Sorry, sorry. I understand how you want to protect your master. Especially during this kind of chaos. Very few people use this kind of "odd system" of magic. It would be terrible if the Valiag knew. Why don't you tell me when you feel like it.”

Brimir laughed lightly.

''Odd system was referring to 'Void' right? In this era, the term 'Void' must be non-existent.''

“What's the Valiag?”

Saito asked.

“……You don't know? Those guys are a group of devils that employ frightening tactics." Brimir responded with a pained expression.

Saito felt a bit reluctant to believe what he was hearing on the topic of the Founder's enemies....those weren't the elves, who used ancient magic, were they?

“By Valiag, are you referring to elves? ”

Saito's head got hit hard with a “clang.”

“Ah, that hurts....”

“Why would we be those kinds of barbarians? ”

Sasha was put off by what Saito had said.

“They and us are of completely different races. In this wide world's other places.....have completely different cultures.”

“So it's like that.”

Brimir took a hold of Saito's left hand.

That's why I engraved this inscription on her. Gandálfr. In our old language, it means 'the lowly person who controls magic.'

"So you're the one who engraved this inscription. ”

"That's right. Yet your master didn't?”

Saito shook his head. The inscriptions actually engraved 'themselves'. But according to Brimir, inscriptions in this era had to be engraved. “Nope. Although, 'the lowly person who controls magic' ── Gandálfr doesn't actually use magic.”

“That's because you're a mere human. Looks like ordinary humans can actually become familiars. I had thought that only beasts, magical creatures, or creatures of a different race could. Essentially, the magic that she uses isn't what I use.”

“Ancient magic?”

He asked, but Sasha shook her head.

"What's that? Could you please stop calling it weird names, and just call it 'elven powers'?"

Saito began to realize how serious history was. A Gandálfr was 'the lowly person who controls magic.' And the Gandálfr in this era was an elf. He just felt that all of that was a bit hard to believe.

After having stared at Sasha for the whole time........he felt reality crack, as though he was seeing his own ancestors. Just some kind of indescribable feeling.

“Why didn't you use magic during that time?”

“I didn't want to use elven powers at that kind of place," Sasha said.

“Did you know that to use magic, elves have to learn it?”

“That's a widely known fact, after all.... but what do you mean by the Valiag's frightening tactics?”

Brimir looked at Saito in bewilderment.

“Do you honestly not know about the Valiag?”

“That's right.”

“I sure envy you; there's actually someone in this world who doesn't have the Valiag's shadow treading upon their land. Oh, I understand; your master must be intentionally hiding it from you.”

As though he was very satisfied, Brimir nodded his head. Saito could only watch in bafflement.

“If it's as terrifying as you say.......just what do those tactics look like?”

Brimir shook his head sadly.

“You'll probably understand in a moment.”

Heavy silence fell in the room. Unable to stand the silence, Saito looked around the inside tent. On a normal basis, there wasn't anything attractive. The entrance revealed a child's nosy face, though. A cute little girl that was around ten years of age.

She wore something that resembled a work uniform with a thin brightly colored belt on her waist.

“Lauren, it's fine. Come here. “

The little girl called Lauren, who was holding a ceramic pot, went over there with small steps. She placed the pot on the stove outside the tent.

“Ah, bring me the Basstelude. Thank you.” 

Looks like the thing called Basstelude was an object. The girl who brought that took out a wand and began chanting a spell.

“Wow, you are using magic, despite how young you are. Impressive. Is everyone here a Noble?”

“A Noble? I don't really understand what you mean. We are of the Markey race. It's in our blood to use magic. “

Would that mean, everyone living in this town were mages? This situation would have even had nobles shocked! As Saito exclaimed, a young man broke inside.

“Chief! Bad news!

Brimir rose with a thud. The girl called Lauren fearfully gripped the corner of her robe.

“Coming already? That was quick. They've already found this place, haven't they?”

Then, he whisked away what Lauren had brought and ran outside the tent.

“What is going on?” Saito was bewildered.

“They're here. The Valiag.”

Sasha explained.

“Hey, what exactly is this?”

“We'll discuss that later. Just grab this. “

Sasha grabbed a spear inside the tent and handed it to Saito.

Understanding nothing, Saito darted outside. Just who are these feared Valiags? The villagers are mages, but their feared enemies are......?

The village was in a state of chaos. In the empty center of the village, the young man held a staff in his hands, forcing Brimir to gather in the center. As Sasha, and Saito, who was standing on the edge, made their way there, Brimir gave them instructions.

“Lagunaru, stand guard on the west side of the village. Shigulsier, we'll be relying on you to aid the group in the North. Group Brimir, are you ready?”

Ten young men raised their arms.

“All right. Let's crash into the enemies' positions to buy time. Sasha, let's go.”

Brimir ran to the other side of the hill. Saito then followed Sasha, running two hundred meters over the hills.

Seeing the circumstances...., Saito stopped breathing.

Over there.......was an army.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it was a scene that would be difficult to describe with 'army'. The number of people involved was unknown. Four hundred metres to the front, there were several organized armies.

At the front were cavalry. They wore frightening horned helmets and chain mail. Following were troops on feet. Holding four meter long spears, similar to model corps, they stood there motionlessly.

“......That's the Valiag?”

If that was their enemy........He had no idea how many thousands or ten thousands of people there were. We, on the other hand, only have a few mages. Even if they were mages, they were incapable to defeating such a large number of enemies.

Also, what lies beneath the frighting helmet and armour? As their name happened to be Valiag, Saito had thought that they were ghost-like scums.

Despite having held up against this type of army before, this time's opponents weren't moving, and were organized and prepared for battle. A prepared opponent had no openings. If you directly faced the enemy from the front, you would get stomped on by the enemy like an ant.

The leading general was riding on a horse. He slowly raised his right hand, then lowered it. The troops slowly moved forward. They stopped every ten steps or so, and howled like beasts.

“That's the enemy? “

Sasha nodded at Saito's question.

“So it's like this? Really, why must the innocent me face these kinds of enemies.......”

While Saito was complaining, Sasha gripped the gun in her hands tightly, never taking her eyes off the enemy.

“Aren't they all fully armed.....just what should we do?”

While he distractedly gazed at the circumstances, Brimir could be heard chanting from behind.

''Eoru-Sunu Yarunsakusa-''

It was the “Void” magic that he had heard countless of times. The troops before them were slowly approaching.

''Osuonu waruyu rado''

Louise's "Explosion." But....this should be the earliest form of it.

The Valiag troops reached about three hundred meters from them. The range corps started shooting arrows. For a split second, the sky darkened with clouds of arrows. As soon as they reached their maximum height, several hundreds of arrows were pulled by gravity, aiming directly at Saito and the others.

The wind mages standing at ready beside Brimir started chanting wind magic. That was probably the “wind shield" that Tabitha frequently uses.

Thousands of arrows that flew at them were blown away by the wind magic, one by one piercing the ground around Saito and the others.

''Be-ozusu yuru svyuru kano oshiela''

Ten seconds later, a storm of arrows was brewed again. The same wind magic was used to blow them away. Around where Saito was waiting, it looked as if it was a rice paddy field from all of the arrows sticking out of the ground.

Along with Brimir's chant, Saito's fear slowly disappeared, replaced by overflowing courage.

The troops were now about a hundred meters ahead of them.

The mounted general once again raised his arm, waving it.

Stationed in the front row, heavily armored troops with pikes on foot cried out loudly in unison and started charging forwards. If someone was able to assault while carrying such heavy armour, are they even human? Just what kind of monster is beneath that armour?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! (Warcry)

Thousands and millions of cries echoed across the land──────

Sasha nodded at Saito.

Generally speaking, seeing that organized army and hearing their terrifying war cries, people would be too scared to keep their backs straight.

But a Gandálfr that heard its master chanting from behind had no chance of fear.

Gandálfr existed for just one reason- to protect their master as they chant their spells.

They are weaponry experts capable of rivaling a thousand troops alone.

“What we see right now is a proper stance.”

Saito was brimming with courage.

Keeping their fighting stances, Sasha and Saito charged over.

The enemies on foot uniformity raised their pikes. As such, Sasha and Saito used the spears in their hands to fend off those numerous pikes. Then, waving off the pikes, they dashed towards the enemy troops.

“Uwah!”

The spears in Sasha's and Saito's hands looked like windmills in the battlefield. The enemy heavy infantry were swatted away like they were simply straw-men with the power of Gandálfr.

Suddenly, someone's armour got hit off by a pike. Catching a glimpse of the creature below , Saito found himself shocked.

“.......human?”

It appeared to be neither ghosts nor scums; just real live humans. Just how much rough training did these people endure, to be able to run and march uniformly in such heavy armour?

But right now, there was no time to be awestruck. The skilled soldiers had already surrounded Saito, thrusting their pikes like bouys in the sea.

Sasha and Saito were standing back to back, watching each other's backs while shaking away the pikes. Deep inside, they were praying for Brimir to hurry up and finish chanting his spell.

“Is the magic still not done! C'mon! We can't fend them off for much longer!”

Each second they endured felt like a minute under the endless pressure. The pikes attacked with a whoosh.

''Jella Isa Unju Hagaru Beo Kun Iru''

“Void” was finally complete.

Brimir waved his wand at the heart of the army.

A white ball of light started to form before Saito's eyes.....then, created a giant explosion. The explosion engulfed the enemy troops. Rays of light spread all over the place, causing destruction and chaos.

“Uwah──！”

With loud cry, Saito was also blown away by the wind produced by the explosion. The damn situation was like getting swollen up by a tsunami

“That hurts!”

Saito bumped into the ground. For a split second, he nearly lost his senses. While whispering, he supported his body. Looked like he wasn't hurt particularly badly, but his entire body still felt numb with pain.

Suddenly, someone grabbed Saito's wrist. He looked up. A mud-splattered Sasha stood there.

“You all right?”

[[Image: ZnT14-139.jpg|thumb]]

“Of-of course not... the power of the spell even hit us too... that's even scarier than Louise's spell...”

“Alas, nothing can be done about it. After all, this was the most effective method.....”

Sasha said without the slightest sign of complaint.

“Look.”

Looking carefully, that place was already transformed into portrait of Hell. Thanks to the gargantuan explosion, the heavily armoured soldiers in front were all blown off. Right now, they were all thrusted into the ground, moaning. Despite having gone through sufficient training, their bodies were inevitably that of human's. Remaining troops slowly retreated.

“Is everything all right?! I'm sorry! Really sorry! I'll definitely apologize to your master!"

Brimir exclaimed as he ran over to Saito. Saito finally stood up.

"In any case, I'm still alive. Forget about apologizing.....”

“Is that so……I had always wanted to greet your master too.”

“It's impossible. Forget about it.”

“In this case........I'll just apologize for now, and say these things later. All right, it's about time that that side of the village is done preparing. Let's retreat before the enemy reorganizes itself like before. “

Brimir ran off. Saito and the others immediately followed.

“Thank you. You helped us greatly. Had you not been here, the incantation might not have been completed.”

To follow their master's wishes and continue fighting even if they weren't willing, this is the fate of a Gandálfr, isn't it?

While thinking about how the situation looked, facing Brimir's back, Saito asked.

“Brimir-san.”

“What is it?”

“Why do you need to fight against those dreadful guys?”

“Because we cannot understand each other."

“So it's like that......”

As though he was mumbling to himself, Brimir said,

“Humans would fight for recognition. But the me who is recognized, hardly does anything for our clan; I lack the power to confront them. However.......the Gods have not abandoned us. I've been granted this unfathomable, strong power,” Brimir ended with a strong tone.

“We will win. Sooner or later, we will win for sure.”

''If this was truly the legendary Brimir......after this, he would go to war with the elves for an unknown reason. In the middle of this, he will then pass away.

''This kind of person had unexpectedly turned an elf into a familiar. How ironic. Of course, that cannot be told to Brimir.''

Saito attentively watched the Founder of Louise's world's back for a long long time.

After returning to the village, the tents were all packed up. The preparations before setting out were done. It was surprising how something that requires skill was done in such a short duration of time in preparation for retreat.......

''This must have been a part of their daily life.''

Brimir once again chanted a spell. A gigantic hinged door appeared before their eyes. Even after casting such a big explosion, he was able to make such a large door. This man was worthy of being called the “Founder”. His magic powers were unimaginably strong.

''... No, now that I think about it, back when I met Sasha, the "door" was not open in "another world", right? In that case, perhaps it did not require too much will power.

''Freely opening a “door” leading to a “different world” would require some time, wouldn't it?''

“Women and children first. Enter quickly.”

The women and children were absorbed into the door. That gigantic door led to some other place. A place in that world where the enemies would not find them.

''They avoided the enemies' assaults numerous times like this while constantly fleeing. On this land called “Halkeginia”, for them to be eventually named as nobles, that would require quite a bit of time.''

The men also disappeared through the door. It was finally Saito and Sasha's turn.

“You should go next. Enter, all right.”

Saito gazed at glowing door.

He thought: ''Just ahead might be a place that's considered to be holy.'' With mixed feelings of attachment and unease though fascinated, Saito entered the glowing door.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[Zero_no_Tsukaima:Volume14_Chapter4|Chapter 4]]
| Return to [[Zero_no_Tsukaima|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Zero_no_Tsukaima:Volume14_Chapter6|Chapter 6]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Mushi to Medama

2017-10-30T03:08:31Z

Toshiya: dead link

[[Image:mtm_main.jpg|300px|thumb|Cover for the 1st novel]]

Sakaki Guryū is a multi-talented genius who, despite being gifted and wealthy, decides to teach in the countryside to be together with his lover, Usagawa Rinne, who also happens to be his student. Their peaceful lives are shattered one day when Rinne is killed, in front of Sakaki's eyes, by a girl named "Gankyū Eguriko", who gouged her eyes out with a spoon. Things take an even stranger turn when Rinne suddenly wakes up as if nothing had happened, and something called an "Eden's Apple" is thrown into the mix.

Mushi to Medama won the award for the "Best Newcomer" category in the MF Literary Awards.

'''Update''': Volume 5 Epilogue 19 is out.

And that, everybody, is the end of the main story.

When I first started reading Mushi to Medama, I was convinced it was some dark-humor crack fic that I would probably put down after the first volume. As I read more and more of it, I felt the impossible mysteries in that world must be an echo of the tales and fantasies in Christianity and the Bible, and I was prepared for the story to become an exploration in theology. When I reached the end, I was initially upset, as it felt like a self-insert and a ''deus ex machina'', an easy explanation out of a story that has spiraled out of control.

To be fair, ''Mushi to Medama'' is not exactly a piece of top-end writing. But as I mused more and more on the story in the past eight years, it felt more like a description of the various aspects of the human psyche, the contradictory elements that reside in all of us, and the power that lies dormant within each of us , as surely as the gentle breathing of a slumbering God.

At the end, the messages in this story boil down to knowing the multiple side of your self, and recognizing the power you have to change your life.

This convoluted story of murder, betrayal, and madness, was in fact a magnified version of the internal struggle we experience daily as we try to balance desire and fear in every decision we make, sometimes letting the different parts of our mind complement each other magnificently, and sometimes doing our best to tear ourselves apart.

I have also done some research to see the feedback the internet has about ''Mushi to Medama'', specifically this translated version, and unfortunately the response wasn't positive. While there is little I can do about the context of the story, I have resolved to go back to the earlier chapters to proof-read for grammar and localization. While this shouldn't slow down the translation speed too much (there are no more giant chapters), I hope it would contribute to a better reading experience for readers in the future.

- [[User:Brynhilde|Brynhilde]] ([[User talk:Brynhilde|talk]]) 11:26, 30 January 2017 (CET)

'''Update''': A thorough editing for the text for Volume 1 has been completed. There should be far less typos, grammatical mistakes, and bad translation/syntax in general.

Will now go back to focusing on translating Volume 6.

- [[User:Brynhilde|Brynhilde]] ([[User talk:Brynhilde|talk]]) 10:50, 5 August 2017 (CEST)

'''Update''': I've finally gotten started with the last volume of this book serious. The entire of Volume 6 is essentially a massive epilogue. Should be fun!

- [[User:Brynhilde|Brynhilde]] ([[User talk:Brynhilde|talk]]) 09:54, 10 October 2017 (CEST)

== [[MTM:Registration Page|Registration]] ==
'''Translators are asked to [[MTM:Registration Page|register]] which chapters they're working on''' (see [[Format_guideline#Translators|the Guideline page]] for usage rules).

=== Format Standards ===
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]

== Feedback ==

If you enjoyed the series, why don't you tell us in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org:8080/forums/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=2068 Feedback Thread]?

== Updates ==

[[Mushi:Updates|Older updates]]
*January 30, 2017
**Volume 5 Epilogue 19 complete

*February 18, 2017
**Volume 5 Author's Notes complete

*August 5, 2017
**Volume 1 editing complete

*October 10, 2017
**Volume 6 Ragnarok 00 complete

== Mushi to Medama Series by Akira (日日日), Illustrated by Mitsuki Mausu ==

===''Mushi, Eyeball and a Teddy Bear '' / 蟲と眼球とテディベア ([[Mushi:Vol1|Full Text]])===
[[Image:Mtm_main.jpg|200px|thumb|Volume 1 Cover: Gankyū Eguriko]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol1_Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol1_Ch1|Night 1: Usarin-kakka's Daily Edict]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol1_Ch2|Night 2: The 15th November Incident]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol1_Ch3|Night 3: The Girl who died a Thousand years ago]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol1_Ch4|Night 4: Loneliness ← Kodoku → Insect Poison]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol1_Ch5|Final Night: "Don't Look"]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol1_Epilogue|Guriko's Offering]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol1_Author's_Notes|Author's Notes]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol1_TLnotes|Translator's Notes and References]]
 

===''Mushi, Eyeball and Sterilization Disinfection '' / 蟲と眼球と殺菌消毒 ([[Mushi:Vol2|Full Text]]) ===
[[Image:Mtm2_cover.jpg|200px|thumb|Volume 2 Cover: Usagawa Rinne]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_Open|Open: The Bell of Night]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_Ch1|Night 1: A Series of Misfortune]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_Ch2|Night 2: Melancholic Officer and a Long-Armed Demon]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_Ch3|Night 3: Boudoir]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_Ch4|Night 4: I can't hear the bells]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_Ch5|Final Night: Start of Disinfection]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_Close|Close: Blood-stained Night]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_Author's_Notes|Author's Notes]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol2_TLnotes|Translator's Notes and References]]
 

===''Mushi, Eyeball and a Chocolate Parfait '' / 蟲と眼球とチョコレートパフェ ([[Mushi:Vol3|Full Text]]) ===
[[Image:Mtm3_cover.jpg|200px|thumb|Volume 3 Cover: Saibara Mitsuki]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_Prologue|Start: The Girl Carrying a Head]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_Ch1|Night 1: Black Dragon Black Snake Black Rat]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_Ch2|Night 2: Granulated Sugar and a One-sided Love]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_Ch3|Night 3: Distancing happiness]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_Ch4|Night 4: Temporary halt?]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_Ch5|Night 5: Vomit]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_End|End: You and Chocolate Parfait]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_Author's_Notes|Author's Notes]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol3_TLnotes|Translator's Notes and References]]
 

===''Mushi, Eyeball and Lovesong '' / 蟲と眼球と愛の歌 ([[Mushi:Vol4|Full Text]]) ===
[[Image:Mtm4_cover.jpg|200px|thumb|Volume 4 Cover: Nikuyama Kajiri]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_Overture|Overture: 700]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_Symphony1|Symphony 1: Unable to transmit via songs alone]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_Symphony2|Symphony 2: Whom does the Song of Love belong to?]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_Symphony3|Symphony 3: Crybaby Joker]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_Symphony4|Symphony 4: The Adventures of Vegetable Juice and Tomato Juice]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_Finale|Finale: Unable to Save Based on Love Alone]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_Requiem|Requiem: 666]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_Author's_Notes|Author's Notes]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol4_TLnotes|Translator's Notes and References]]
 

===''Mushi, Eyeball and Snow White '' / 蟲と眼球と白雪姫 ([[Mushi:Vol5|Full Text]]) ===
[[Image:Mtm5_cover.jpg|200px|thumb|Volume 5 Cover: Rinne and Guriko]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_Prologue|PROLOGUE 02: The Jealous Queen]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_Epilogue_03|EPILOGUE 03: The Mirror of Truth]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_Epilogue_06|EPILOGUE 06: The Hunter]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_Epilogue_09|EPILOGUE 09: The Seven Dwarfs]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_Epilogue_11|EPILOGUE 11: The Witch]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_Epilogue_14|EPILOGUE 14: Poison & Apple & Kiss]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_Epilogue_19|EPILOGUE 19: Snow White]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_Authors_Notes|Author's Notes]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol5_TLnotes|Translator's Notes and References]]
 

===''Mushi, Eyeball and Damaged Hair '' / 蟲と眼球とダメージヘア ===
[[Image:Mtm6_cover.jpg|200px|thumb|Volume 6 Cover: Damaged Hair]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol6_Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[Mushi:Vol6_Ragnarok_00|Ragnarok 00: Damaged hair of a place no one knows]] - '''100%'''
::*Ragnarok 01: A 19-year-old useless repeat-year-student, whose hobby is video gaming
::*Ragnarok 02: Marionette of blood and flesh and bone
::*Ragnarok 03: Peaceful, Everyday Heaven
::*Ragnarok 04: 29 year old bachelor, Bored every day
::*Ragnarok 05: Production-orientated Loner
::*Ragnarok 06: Final God Mode: 3000 Worlds
::*Ragnarok xx: The twilight of the aftermath...
::*Author's Notes
::*[[Mushi:Vol6_TLnotes|Translator's Notes and References]]
 

== Project Staff ==

*Supervisor:
*Project Manager: [[User:Brynhilde|Brynhilde]]

=== Translators ===

'''ACTIVE'''
::*[[User:Brynhilde|Brynhilde]]

Those who wish to contribute are asked to first notify a supervisor beforehand. [[User:Brynhilde|Brynhilde]] has Chinese RAWs available for those who wish to help.
'''Translators are asked to [[MTM:Registration Page|register]] which chapters they're working on''' (see [[Format_guideline#Translators|the Guideline page]] for usage rules).

'''MIA'''
::*[[User:Cakemanofdoom|cakemanofdoom]]
::*[[User:HolyCow|HolyCow]]

=== Editors ===

'''ACTIVE'''
::*[[User:AlfheimWanderer|AlfheimWanderer]]

'''MIA'''
::*[[User:TheGiftedMonkey|TheGiftedMonkey]]
::*[[User:RoadBuster|RoadBuster]]
::*[[User:Chaos Greyblood|Chaos Greyblood]]
::*[[User:dell19930|dell19930]]

== Series Overview ==
* Mushi, Eyeball and a Teddy Bear / 蟲と眼球とテディベア　(ISBN 978-4-8401-1273-4)
* Mushi, Eyeball and a Sterile Disinfection / 蟲と眼球と殺菌消毒　(ISBN 978-4-8401-1470-7)
* Mushi, Eyeball and a Chocolate Parfait / 蟲と眼球とチョコレートパフェ (ISBN 978-4-8401-1532-2)
* Mushi, Eyeball and a Song of Love / 蟲と眼球と愛の歌　(ISBN 978-4-8401-1593-3)
* Mushi, Eyeball and Snow White / 蟲と眼球と白雪姫　(ISBN 978-4-8401-1765-4)
* Mushi, Eyeball and Damaged Hair / 蟲と眼球とダメージヘア (ISBN 978-4-8401-1858-3)

[[Category:Light novel (English)]]
[[Category:Akira]]

[[Category:Genre - Comedy]]
[[Category:Genre - Drama]]
[[Category:Genre - Fantasy]]
[[Category:Genre - Horror]]
[[Category:Genre - Mystery]]
[[Category:Genre - Romance]]
[[Category:Genre - Supernatural]]

Fate/Zero:Act 6 Part 4

2017-10-27T07:00:43Z

Toshiya: made a typo while fixing a typo

=== -130:45:08 ===




It was pure luck that Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald captured Caster’s figure in his sight in Fuyuki.

Although he was dumbfounded upon discovering that figure in a inky black cloak, obviously from the wrong era, strolling casually along the suburban streets at dusk, Kayneth began his chase when he saw Caster stopping a small truck that passed by, gave hypnotic suggestions at the driver, and then sat in it with the children as if it was a kindergarten trip.

A battle between Servants can only be conducted away from other people; however, the truck carrying Caster was incidentally driving towards the remote mountains far from the city. Kayneth snickered as this suited his purpose perfectly, but began to hesitate when he realised their destination is the Einzbern forest.

He’s already heard of the Einzbern territory near Fuyuki when he conducted investigations beforehand. Since it is a territory of magi, it would therefore have its matching bounded field, making it a location where others would find it hard to battle with an advantage. Despite that, leaving aside the true reason for Caster to specially travel here – his intention of challenging the power of the Einzberns is obvious. If so, then maybe there’s a chance to gain something in the battle. Kayneth made up his mind, and stepped into the forest with Lancer.

Just as he thought, Caster began fighting Saber, who materialized to counter his assault. From his fuddled speech and acts it can be seen that Caster, already roaming, is acting alone, but Saber’s Master still didn’t appear. He probably deduced that he can protect himself alone even if he doesn’t stay beside his Servant since this is in his territory, and decided to observe the battle in his headquarters away from the frontline.

So Kayneth decided on his own strategies.

He ordered Lancer to assault Caster. For Kayneth, who has already spent one Command Seal, the reward the supervisor brought up concerning defeating Caster is something he’d do anything to obtain. However, even if he defeats Caster here, it would seem that he’s on the same side as Saber. The Einzbern Master would also be given the extra Command Seal. It’s something that Kayneth definitely doesn’t want to see.

Therefore, Kayneth decided to leave Caster to Lancer, and he himself would secretly enter the Einzbern castle alone. If he wants to claim Caster’s head as his own, all he has to do is to get rid of Saber’s Master at the same time.

Although it is a bold challenge, Kayneth has unshakable confidence in himself. No matter what defenses Einzbern had made, he’s willing to bet the title of Lord El-Melloi that he is able to break it apart. He’s got to show this kind of courage if he wants to amend the defects Sola reprimanded him for last night. For Kayneth, the most pressing problem for him right now is to have his fiancée take back her insults.


Kayneth moved toward the depth of the forest as the seething vigor boiled inside him. Although illusionary magecraft has been cast upon the forest of the bounded field, Kayneth’s outstanding knowledge and instincts allowed him to make precise deductions, and easily found the location of the central axis of the bounded field. It wasn’t for nothing that he has the mighty title of the greatest genius of spirit invocation.

If the magecraft of the Einzberns is only to such a degree, then just how the castle is defended is very clear.

Kayneth still had enough ease left to snicker. Although many magecraft artefacts he brought from England were lost when the hotel collapsed, his strongest trump card, his Mystic Code, has always been by his side. Therefore, he didn’t feel that his strength in battle weakened at all.

The trees hindering his sight suddenly disappeared, and the antique stone castle appeared before Kayneth. So that is it, one would expect no less from these prestigious northern magi; even a relocated castle is a building whose size deviated from normality. But Kayneth is also the son of the prestigious house of Archibald. Even if the castle’s majesty can overwhelm others, the only sentiment it rose from him was a snort.

Not bad. After Einzbern is dealt with, it wouldn’t be bad to take this castle and make it the new headquarters…


After Kayneth lost the Hyatt hotel suite he had obtained an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city as his temporary base, and hid Sola there. Obviously, his fiancée’s mood couldn’t be worse. After all, it’s an environment that Kayneth’s pride won’t tolerate.

If he’s decided on this, then he has to keep the destruction of this building at the minimum.

Kayneth laughed presumptuously and placed the large porcelain vase he carried under his arm on the ground. Once it left his hand, the vase sank deeply into the earth. This vase, which was under a spell of weight reduction to make it easier to carry, has a true weight approaching 140 kilograms.

"{{H:title|Let my flowing blood seethe.|Fervor, mei sanguis.}}"

Once he chanted the spell that activated the magecraft, the thing in the vase oozed out from the mouth. That liquid, giving off a mirror-like metal sheen, is a large amount of mercury. Flowing out of the vase as if it is a disciplined primeval creature, the ten-kilograms-or-so mercury, shivering, formed a ball.

Among the many of them in his possession, this is the Mystic Code Lord El-Melloi took pride in – Volumen Hydragyrum • Moon Spirit Cerebrospinal Fluid.

"{{H:title|Automated defense.|Automatoportum defensio}}: {{H:title|Automated search.|Automatoportum quaerere}}: {{H:title|Attack on command.|Dilectus incursio.}}"

Following Kayneth’s low chanting, the surface of the mass of mercury vibrated and rustled as if answering him, and followed his feet on the ground to approach the gates of the castle.


Kayneth, who possesses the two attributes water and wind, a feat rare even among magi, excels in the art of manipulating flow, which is shared between these two attributes. He thus created this unique Mystic Code, using mercury filled with magecraft as his weapon, and controls it at will.

The shapeless mercury, can also be sculpted into any shape –

"Scalp!"

As Kayneth yelled, a part of the mercury ball suddenly became a long and thin ribbon extending upwards. Then, the mercury ribbon savagely thrashed towards the door like a whip.

As it was about to hit, the mercury whip suddenly compressed itself into a thin edge of only a few millimeters thick, becoming a mercury blade as sharp as a razor. Attacked by this mercury blade edge, the heavyset bolt was cut in half as smoothly as if it was a piece of tofu. The great gates collapsed inwards with a heavy groan.

Mercury is a heavy liquid in room temperature; when it moves rapidly under high pressure it would possess a mighty kinetic energy. Moreover, mercury can change into shapes such as whips, spears, and blades at will. Its sharpness can even overwhelm laser rays, rivalling pressurized water jet cutters.

Perhaps he carries with him the confidence of an assured victory. Because, in front of Lord El-Melloi’s Volumen Hydragyrum, even the most stolid defense won’t stand a chance. Be it titanium alloys or diamond, nothing is unbreakable.

Kayneth walked leisurely towards the great hall of the castle after he’s finished with the obstacle in front of him. The crystal chandelier in the hall emanated brilliant light and the marble floor, polished extremely smooth, had not a single flaw.


Even the air felt extraordinarily still, with only Kayneth’s presence – of course, not a single person came out to greet him.

"The ninth head of the Archibald house, Kayneth El-Melloi, asks for an audience!"

Kayneth, with an air of command, proclaimed loudly in the deserted hall.

"Magus of the Einzbern! For the Holy Grail that you seek, betting your life and pride, come out to meet me!"

Despite Kayneth’s taunting declaration, no one responded. It was as if they weren’t looking forward to duel with Kayneth. As though he was made to look foolish, Kayneth sighed, and walked toward the center of the hall with heavy steps.

The moment Kayneth arrived at the center of the hall, the four flower vases placed at the four corners of the hall suddenly exploded with an enormous roar. However, it wasn’t porcelain fragments that flew out from the explosion but countless metal beads. Those metal beads sprang toward Kayneth like bullets.

This machinery was constructed free from magecraft. Kayneth didn’t sense any scent of magecraft activation. Therefore, it must be machinery Kiritsugu set up in the vases. It is an anti-personnel mine called a Claymore, a cruel pre-set bomb. When each bomb explodes they will release, simultaneously, 700 or so steel balls with a diameter of only about one or two millimeters. These steel balls would radiate outwards in all directions in a fan formation, a terrifying weapon that people say is made to completely destroy infantry units with one strike. When it explodes, one won’t even have time to escape; the only thing the target at the center of the bombs can do is prepare to be beaten into a sieve.


– Of course, provided that the target isn’t a magus.

In the split of a second before 2800 steel balls reached Kayneth, the spot he was standing on became enveloped by a silver semi-circle. The mass of mercury lying recumbent beside his feet suddenly changed form.

Although the tight, thin mercury membrane wrapped around Kayneth was barely one millimeter thick, its surface tension reached the strength of steel when supported with prana supply. Out of the rain of beads that the Claymore mines dispersed not one of them hit Kayneth. All they did was getting reflected back to the hall and hammered the setups in the room into smithereens.

This is Volumen Hydragyrum's "automated defense" mode. This pre-set magecraft can automatically respond when Kayneth is threatened, forming a powerful protective membrane in a split second. This kind of reaction speed can even defend from bullets. It was also this defense system Volumen Hydragyrum created that protected Kayneth and Sola when the Hyatt hotel collapsed. The malleable mercury is a perfect weapon that gathered attack and defense all onto itself, being Kayneth’s sword and also Kayneth’s shield.

"… Hm."

Kayneth, after he removed the protective membrane and saw the tragic scene around him, snorted with derision at the baseness of the machination. Even Kayneth, who didn't know much about military equipments, understood that it wasn’t magecraft that assaulted him but simply ordinary weapons filled with gunpowder.


Kayneth’s mind finally had some idea about the truth concerning the unpleasant experience last night.

He doesn’t even need to analyze it. Among the other six Masters, the only one who wants to destroy Kayneth more than everyone else is Saber’s Master, the Einzberns. However, how could the magus of the Einzberns, being such a high-born house with eminent prestige, use such a base method? Kayneth, who takes pride in being also from a prestigious family of mages, found this impossible to believe.

However – now he has to believe this. The one who used explosives to destroy Kayneth’s workshop last night with absolutely despicable methods is hiding in this castle at this very moment.

"… Fallen so low, Einzbern?"

Kayneth mumbled, with more lamentation than anger in his tone. It probably isn’t Saber’s Master himself who used such despicable methods, but some lowly guy they hired somewhere else. But even so, it is still a very corrupted thing to do. They invited an irrelevant guy onto this holy battlefield. This is utterly unforgivable.

– Fine, then it’s not a duel anymore, but my crusade towards you.

Arousing his intent to kill once again, Kayneth walked deeper into the enemy’s defences.


Through the CCD cameras concealed in the main hall, Kiritsugu meticulously observed the power of Volumen Hydragyrum, Lord El-Melloi’s pride.

Using spells to manipulate mercury for automatic protection – although he’s heard about this before, he never thought that the real thing would have such powerful abilities. Even the shockwave of the Claymore mines wouldn’t beat its defense in speed. If that’s the case, then he can’t expect to use firearms to obtain victory.

Although Kiritsugu was very annoyed, he had to admit that this magus indeed possesses first-rate skills. Actually, when his machination at the Hyatt didn’t succeed, he should have known of this already.

In other words, this is an opponent that Kiritsugu must confront as a "magus."

Right now, to find the enemy hiding in this castle, Kayneth must be searching all of the rooms on the first floor one by one. At the moment Kiritsugu is located at the innermost part of the second floor. If he acts immediately, he should have enough time to choose a place advantageous for him to face the enemy.

Kiritsugu analyzed the plan of the castle in his head as he walked out of his room and towards the door – his footsteps stopped.

A drop of mercury, like a thread of cobweb, hung in the door’s keyhole. Although it was only a tiny bit of mercury, Kiritsugu could still see it drooping toward the ground as it left a silver trail on the surface of the door.

The drop of mercury suddenly stopped moving downwards the moment Kiritsugu saw it. Then, it retraced its tracks, retreated back through the keyhole as if it was alive, and disappeared.


"… So that’s what it is; an automated search."

Immediately following Kiritsugu's bitter words, a ray of silver light sprang up from below the salon's carpet.

In the blink of an eye, a circle was cut out on the floor at the center of the room and fell to the ground below. Then a silver tentacle leapt up from that circular hole.

In front of Kiritsugu, Volumen Hydragyrum’s new shape was like a metallic jellyfish. Endless tentacles grabbed the edge of the opening on the floor and their base, in the middle of the tentacles opening out like an umbrella, was expanded into a flat, bowl-like platform. And the one standing on the platform and smiling was none other than Lord El-Melloi.

"I finally found you. Little mouse…"

Before the triumphant Kayneth ordered the mercury to attack, Kiritsugu had already drawn the Calico submachine gun from his waist holster and opened fire.

Reacting immediately, Volumen Hydragyrum speedily formed a protective membrane in front of Kayneth and blocked all the might of a rain of 9mm bullets. It took only a few seconds to empty fifty bullets.

But it’s preciously those few short seconds that gave Kiritsugu more than enough time to chant his spell.

"Time alter – double accel!"

Following the pronounced spell, the prana inside Kiritsugu began to gallop at light speed.


"Scalp!"

Kayneth gave the proclamation of death the moment Kiritsugu’s firing ceased.

The two mercury whips that leapt up following his voice flew towards the prey in front of them with a pincer formation, attacking from the left and right.

"Hm!?"

It was Kayneth who gave an exclamation of surprise.

The moment the two silver whips were just about to hit the target, Kiritsugu dodged the silver whips’ attack with an almost unbelievable speed and quickly leapt below the Volumen Hydragyrum, on which Kayneth was standing – into the hole on the ground that the mercury blade just cleaved out.

Kiritsugu’s speed was so fast that human eyes couldn’t see his movements clearly. No matter how you think about it, it shouldn’t be a physical feat ordinary people can perform. Although Kayneth did feel he was a bit careless, he wasn’t too surprised with this strange change happening in front of his eyes. After all, this is the battle between magi that overrides ordinary rules. It wouldn’t be odd even if a little mouse mixed into it possesses extraordinary abilities.

"Oh? Also know a little bit about magecraft?"

Although a small smile passed across Kayneth’s face, the intent to kill was already within his heart. Whether he is an ordinary mouse or not, even if he’s had some teaching in magecraft, he is still a lowly man who used dirty means. Such actions, which humiliate magi, can not be tolerated.


"Scum… I’ll make you know what death tastes like."

Kayneth flipped the tail of his coat and leapt down to the first floor. Then, Volumen Hydragyrum removed its jellyfish shape and slowly fell down too.

"{{H:title|Search and Destroy!|Ire: Sanctio}}!"

The mercury’s thin tentacles scattered after receiving his orders, and once again scanned through the entire first floor. The mercury immediately confirmed the location of the target. Approaching that location following the tracks of the tracing mercury, a sliver of a bloodthirsty smile emerged on Kayneth’s lips.

Kiritsugu, traversing the corridors, felt that his whole body was being devoured by the after effects of using his magecraft.

The skill he used to dodge Kayneth’s Mystic Code just then wasn’t a basic physical enchantment. It was an advanced magecraft with a greater range of utility – and obviously with far stronger side effects.

The ability to separate the passage of time inside a designated space from the "flow of time" in the outside world; in some ways, Time Manipulation can be regarded as a type of Reality Marble. Although it is classified as a greater magecraft, it is definitely not "magic" which cannot be replicated. Compared to "time modification", which can reverse cause and effect and change the past, this is merely the magecraft of "time adjustment" that can stagnate the time that had passed and accelerate the time in the future. Therefore, it is not a magecraft of extraordinary difficulty.


The only problem one needs to consider is the size of the bounded field and the scope of time that needs to be modified.

Kiritsugu’s root, the Emiya family, spent generations researching and seeking the magecraft that controls time. The magic crests existing on Kiritsugu’s back inherited the fruits of research from generations of men. But the amount of prana one needs to spend and the rituals needed in preparation to activate this kind of magecraft rivals in magnitude with the greater magecrafts. Therefore, it has to be prepared and used strategically. For Kiritsugu, who made up his strategies to just survive on the battlefield, it was originally a rather useless inheritance.

However, to use the "time control" ability he’s inherited at the maximum, Kiritsugu created a flexible way of utilizing this magecraft at a very small scale.

A method that kept the scope of the bounded field within the practitioner’s body made it easier to establish a Reality Marble. Although it is impossible to completely isolate the flesh from the outside world, it can minimize the affect the outside world has on the body. Within this minimal bounded field, he "adjusts" just a few seconds of time; this is the magecraft that Emiya Kiritsugu created, Innate Time Control.

For example, when he fought Kayneth just then, Kirtsugu "sped up" his blood flow, haemoglobin metabolism, and muscle movement all at the same time. All that’s left is to use his quick reaction time to dodge the attack after he easily predicted the track the mercury whips would take. Kiritsugu is capable of accomplishing physical feats impossible for ordinary humans after he accelerated the time inside his body.

The biggest problem for this magecraft is the huge burden on the body.


The craft of time modification inevitably creates errors between the time within and without the bounded field. This error would immediately be corrected by natural forces when the bounded field is removed. That is, the "world’s own adjustment". Of course, this adjustment can only happen where "errors have occurred", which means inside Kiritsugu’s bounded field – his physical body. Adjustments have occurred in his flesh to get back in sync with the normal time flow.

Death is the accompanying danger born from using magecraft, but Innate Time Control is above all Kiritsugu's riskiest technique. Just now, it was as though he was tightrope walking while his flesh was being shredded.

Compared to Kayneth's unrestricted magecraft, Kiritsugu’s ability is not powerful. But this doesn’t mean Kiritsugu has no chances of victory now. Because the best chance Kayneth had at killing Kiritsugu – the strike just then – had already been missed. Although Kayneth may have not realized it, for Kiritsugu it was his biggest mistake. Kayneth had already exposed the true form of his Mystic Code, and also gave Kiritsugu the chance to analyze it. After that, it’s "hunting time" for the Magus Killer.

As he ran, Kiritsugu exchanged the helical magazine on the Calico for a new one. The bullet in the Contender were also changed into a normal one. It’s still a bit early to use the final killing move. He needed to provoke Kayneth even more in order to kill the enemy with one strike.

Lord El-Melloi’s mercury Mystic Code united attack and defense, and also possessed the ability to search out enemies. However, Kiritsugu had already spotted the flaw in this magecraft with its three advantages.


First, its ability to search for enemies –

Kiritsugu suddenly stopped as he turned a corner, and hid in the shadow of a pillar. The mercury wasn’t just approaching from behind him, but spreading silently over the entire corridor and getting closer and closer. Most likely, the mercury tentacles were spreading out into a giant web, and sealing off all of Kiritsugu’s exits.

Using liquid metal as a sensory tool – how is it passing the perceived information back? There are no specialized senses such as sight, smell, taste, which is why Kayneth can control it so fluently. Therefore those ways of communication are out.

The most probable would be through touch. But when Kiritsugu was discovered at the second floor his location was pinpointed without him making contact with the mercury.

However, if the mercury is extremely sensitive to touch, then it’d be able to make judgements based on vibrations in the air. It should also be able to sense differences in air temperature and find a heat source.

Kiritsugu chuckled as he stared at the mercury web approaching from all directions. That thing doesn’t have eyes. Therefore, if he contorted his heart beat, breathing and body temperature, he can make his existence completely transparent.

"Time alter – Triple stagnate."

Following the chanting of the spell, Kiritsugu’s field of view suddenly became very bright.


Of course, the outer world didn’t make any changes; it’s just his delusion. While Kiritsugu’s optic nerves registered whatever he saw, his cornea received three times the light a person’s eyes would normally receive.

The time control this time is the exact opposite of the accelerated physical speed back then. Kiritsugu slowed his biological processes to one third of its normal speed. His breathing lagged, and his heart beat slowed and stagnated until he could barely feel it himself. Also, due to his metabolism having stopped, his body temperature declined quickly, cooling down until it is not much different from the temperature of the outside air.

The mercury flew abnormally quickly and anxiously in front of Kiritsugu, who was as still as a statue. As he expected, the mercury couldn’t detect him now. Kiritsugu’s shallow breathing and slow heart beat was muddled with the noises of the natural world. The mercury can no longer recognize the current processes of Kiritsugu’s body using the standards of a human.

The searching mercury web speedily retreated after it deducted that there are no signs of the enemy, retracing its steps. The sound of footsteps on the marble floor followed. Since he thought no one is here, Kayneth walked on without taking any precautions…

"Release Alter!"

The brightness of his sight and the sharpness of his hearing returned to normal in the blink of an eye. Kiritsugu’s heart also began to beat extremely quickly; all the blood vessels in his body hurt as if they are going to burst. Within his body, blood flow was adjusting to go up to three times its original speed. In fact, there must be bruises forming somewhere on his body due to internal bleeding coming from burst capillaries.


But Kiritsugu already leapt out from behind the pillar before his body had fully adjusted. When Kayneth, who just arrived at the corridor, reacted, Kiritsugu was about fifteen meters away. He immediately opened fire with the Calico in his left hand at the magus whose eyes widened in surprise.

Although Kayneth was shocked, the Volumen Hydragyrum still displayed its abilities accurately and loyally this time. The protective membrane opened up in the blink of an eye and again blocked the storm of 9mm bullets. Everything was like a replay of the scene before.

"– Idiot. These are just boring tricks!"

Although he was at a loss with the unexpected ambush, Kayneth, hidden within the protective membrane, couldn’t help but laugh when he discovered that the attack was a shooting as unthreatening as the last time. But he didn’t know that the opponent he was mocking had also figured out the weakness of his automated defense.

Before the Calico stopped firing, Kiritsugu’s free right hand had already pulled out the Contender and fired a shot at center of the expanded, semi-circular mercury membrane.

Volumen Hydragyrum had already adapted to the best physical shape to protect against the Calico. However, the initial velocity of the .30-06 Springfield is 2.5 times higher than the 9mm bullets, and its destructive power seven times the latter.

Kiritsugu had completely seen through the speed of Volumen Hydragyrum, which came from pressure. Although a blob of mercury can quickly spread out into a membrane faster than a bullet through hydraulic pressure, it is impossible to quickly go back to a blob from a membrane using pressure alone. That is the limit of hydrodynamics.


Therefore, when another sudden massive force is launched against it, the mercury can’t react quickly and form a powerful defense –

A big hole was punched right through the mirror-smooth surface of the mercury membrane. Judging from Kayneth’s wails inside, the Springfield bullet has hit the target.

However, he couldn’t even aim at the target hidden behind obstructions. Therefore, it was already lucky for him to hit the other man; he couldn’t at all expect this attack to give the other a fatal wound.

Kayneth’s wails also quickly turned into angry curses, then –

"Scalp!"

Following a roar full of the intent to kill, the mercury unleashed a killing move.

Kiritsugu faced the silver whips roaring towards him with ease. He didn’t even need to activate Innate Time Control this time. There were more than ten meters between him and Kayneth now. Such a far distance was more than enough.

Kiritsugu pulled back just a bit; you can't hit what you can't reach, and the mercury blade only managed to cut the hem of his flowing coat.

Volumen Hydragyrum’s characteristics can be grasped by just observing its attacks once. Despite being a very fast attack, it is comparatively simple.

When mercury is in the shape of a whip it is the base that controls its extremely quick attacks, but the tip virtually has no power. The power of the blade is basically formed through centrifugal force. For someone as experienced as Kiritsugu in melee combat, the path this kind of attacks would take is easy to predict. This is also the characteristics of controlling mercury with pressure. Only parts with a large mass can fully exert its power, while the strength slowly gets weaker towards the tip end. Kiritsugu had already analyzed this weakness of its when he realized the mercury ends that stretched far from the original mass to search for enemies aren’t as agile as the cutting whips.

Kiritsugu was running before the opponent could continue to attack. It’d be great if the opponent began to chase him immediately, but if the other man didn’t chase him and stopped instead to treat the gun wound he’s just received, then that means the previous taunt still wasn’t enough.

The blow that penetrated the protective membrane was the first and the last. Volumen Hydragyrum’s defense would become firmer once it realizes the Contender’s power, which is completely different from that of the Calico. In future attacks, all forms of defense should be able to block the Springfield bullet as well. Kayneth would certainly utilize all his prana to strengthen the mercury’s defense.

It wouldn’t be good if he didn't do that.

Kiritsugu, enduring the pain enveloping his body, opened the Contender's chamber and pulled out the empty cartridge as he ran. This time, he slipped in a magecraft bullet.


Kayneth would definitely utilize all the prana he has in his body to anticipate Kiritsugu’s next strike. The previous strike was conducted using the normal bullet just to entice him to be alert.

If things go according to plan – Kayneth is digging himself the greatest of graves. All that's left is to find the way to shove him in, and bury him with Kiritsugu's own hands.

The Magus Killer's "hunt" is about to reach its climax.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Fate/Zero:Act_6_Part_3|Act 6, Part 3]]
| Return to [[Fate/Zero|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Fate/Zero:Act_7_Part_1|Act 7, Part 1]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Fate/Zero:Interlude

2017-10-27T04:10:16Z

Toshiya: /* Sometime, somewhere */

[[Image:FZ_v04_005.png|thumb|Interlude.]]
=== Sometime, somewhere ===

"Kerry, you do know where the name of this island comes from, right?"

Shirley asked while leisurely handling the creaking car’s wheel.

The boy called Kerry, sitting in the passenger’s seat, shook his head and squeezed out a "Not really" as if he was scared that the vehicle’s intense shaking would make him bite his tongue.

The pick-up truck they were both driving in was a vehicle so antique it may have come from the time when coaches were just running out of use. Moreover, the road they were driving on now was not a paved bitumen road but a dirt road. Even an ox-cart would have to slow down on these roads. Right now, they almost feel like they are sitting in a small boat floating on the sea during a storm.

Although this vehicle looked like a pile of junk about to go out of service, this is one of the only three or four precious vehicles on Arimago Island – Besides, as a fishing village with only about 300 families, people who need a car are uncommon enough on Arimago Island. The people troubled with living without a vehicle are probably just the family of the boy and Shirley, the maid who did the housework. In the far-removed house of the boy's family, far away from the fishing village, there were truly no other transportation facilities but this worn-out truck.

"Arimago... did it mean giant crab?"

Shirley nodded and answered the boy’s question.

"A long long time ago, this island was a place used to keep the offerings presented to a deity of the sea. However, there was a time when a girl didn't have anything to feed her sick mother, and had to steal the offerings of the deity. Then, that girl was punished with divine retribution, and was changed into the shape of a crab."

"It's a terrible story."

"After that, it was told that if you eat a crab caught on this island, it would cure any disease. The mother of the girl recovered from her long illness as well."

"That’s even worse. It is such an outrageous sea deity."

However, such folktales recorded in media such as tapestries aren't rare. If one were to look carefully, such tales can be found all over the world.

"Um, does the shrine where people sacrificed to this deity still exist?"

"It disappeared a long time ago. Besides, no one knows whether it really did exist. According to the myth, it seems to have been built right next to where Kerry's mansion is now."

“Then the girl who was turned into a crab actually made her way to the heart of this deep jungle so far away specifically to steal the offerings? It would have been much more convenient to just catch some fish at the beach instead.”

“That myth is the reason why people of the village wouldn't get close to your house. Legend says that's an ominous place, and you’ll get cursed if you go near it too often. I’ve been warned of it as well."

"But how!... then, what about me, who's living there?"

"It's because Kerry is a foreigner. But even then, don’t the people at the village see you as my little brother?"

Although the words ‘little brother’ didn’t completely make the boy feel relieved, compared to his father, who never stepped outside the house, Kerry does indeed need to help Shirley with the shopping every time. Therefore, they would basically ride in the truck to go into the village everyday.

It has been almost a year after he moved to this island. Any of the island’s inhabitants would warmly greet the boy when they saw him. Even the other boys of the village, who fought with him whenever they saw him beforehand, are also already making pranks on other people together with him.

Although he was in a strange land very far from his home land, the boy still likes this place called Arimago Island very much.

Although he felt extremely boring everyday during the first few weeks after he moved over, the dazzling southern sun and multi-colored sparkling waves of the southern ocean had gradually captured Kerry’s heart.

However, for his father, who never approached anyone and didn’t step out of the house at all, it would be hard to feel that there is anything delightful at all.

"If father would communicate more with the people at the village, he would surely be a bit different..."

"Mmm, who knows..."

While skilfully handling the steering wheel to dodge large rocks sticking out of the road, Shirley gave a bitter smile.

"Father Simon never liked your father’s actions, and had often lectured me with things like I’d sooner or later be ensnared by the devil if I go work in that house again."

"… I see."

The boy couldn’t help but feel a little down when knew that Father Simon, who always seemed to be so gentle, would judge his father in such a way behind his back. But it can't be helped. Rather, he should feel relieved that those comments were only to such an extent. Father Simon would surely expel both father and son out of this small island if he really knew about everything the boy's father did.

Shirley tapped her lower back, and motioned for Kerry to look at a silver short sword on her belt.

"Look at this knife. Father Simon forced it onto me and wants me never to part with it. He said it’s a very useful talisman."

"… Isn’t this the knife you always use to peel fruits?"

"Mmm, that's because this knife is very sharp and is easy to use. It must be something very precious."

Shirley continued to speak in a calm tone. Different from the boy, she appeared to not feel anything gloomy with this topic.

"Aren’t you afraid, Shirley? Aren’t you afraid of my father?"

Although the boy was a bit hesitant, he asked this question at the end. Shirley nodded decisively.

"I understand your father isn't a normal person, and based on his behaviors it's not unreasonable for the villagers to be guarded towards him. However, since he’s doing those kinds of researches, it can't be helped that he left the city and came to such a remote island to live a hermit’s life. But this shows your father really is an impressive person."

The boy suddenly noticed that for some reason, Shirley would suddenly become mature and sensible whenever they talked about his father. She was only a girl 4 years his elder; she definitely isn’t as mature as adults.

"If you take any one of his knowledge and discoveries, it would be an immense discovery that can change everything for this world. Of course, anyone would become scared if they knew about such things, and it can't be helped for it to be held in secret... but as for me, I really do believe such powers can help this world greatly. I’ve always firmly believed in that."

"... Can such things, really be possible?"

"He may have given it up already. But Kerry, if it were you, I believe it would definitely be successful!"

Shirley said so with a serious expression on her face. Instead, the boy said disappointedly.

"What do you mean? Aren't you, Shirley, father's favorite pupil? Wouldn’t it be Shirley who keeps it up if it comes to it?"

Shirley, who went often to his house, didn’t only do domestic chores such as tidying the house; she also helped his father in his work as an assistant. His father once said that this girl named Shirley possesses exceptional intelligence and talents, and is really a waste to leave her on this lone island. It says something about Shirley’s talents if his father, who always obeyed the creed of secrecy, trusts a female stranger to such a degree.

But Shirley herself laughed loudly and shook her head.

"I'm not any kind of a pupil. At the most I'm only an assistant, someone who does the odd jobs and give a hand. Therefore, I don’t know anything about the important parts.

But Kerry, you’re different from me. You will definitely succeed your father’s business. The researches your father is doing now will need to be kept up by you one day. Are you prepared for it? Although it is a bit to early for you to talk about such things."

"..."

Shirley said all that earnestly, like a real big sister worrying about her little brother. For one moment, the boy was caught with the complicated sentiments in his heart and couldn’t speak.

He didn’t have any memories about his mother, who passed away right after he was born. For the boy, his so-called family only consisted of his father. Although his father was eccentric and very strict, he was a very gentle and a great father. He was the person the boy respected and loved the most in the entire world.

Therefore, at the beginning, the boy's heart was in upheaval when he discovered that the father, whom he admired the most, favored an assistant more than his own son. There was a time when he even felt enmity for Shirley. But Shirley's cheerful temperament and gentle attitude untied the knot in his heart, and that time didn't last long.

It was almost as if there was a new member in his family. Shirley respected the boy's father as if he was her own father, and looked after the boy like her real little brother. For the boy, who didn’t have female relatives, the words ‘older sister’ far surpassed the meaning the words originally possessed.

No... Maybe it wasn’t so exaggerated at first, but recently such strange feelings had occurred in the boy’s chest.

He knew well Shirley's gentleness, cheerfulness, and virtue. But moreover, even her unconscious gestures – such as her current profile as she handled the steering wheel while humming – also appear to be so beautiful. Why?

"Kerry, what kind of a man would you like to become? And if you succeeded your father's work, how would you like to use it?"

"... eh?"

The absentminded boy was suddenly dragged back into reality by Shirley's question.

"It's the power to change the world. Someday you are gonna obtain it."

"..."

His father's inheritance. If would be a lie to say that he never thought about that. The boy completely understands its value and its significance.

Let alone its use.

But the boy looked rather hesitant to put it in words himself, particularly in front of Shirley. He didn’t want others to tell him that his dream is naive, above all from Shirley.

"... That's, a secret."

"Mmm?"

Shirley laughed knowingly, then kept asking.

"Then, I’ll use my own eyes to confirm what Kerry wants to do when he grows up. Until I get the answer, I'll always be beside you. How’s that?"

"... Do as you like."

As if feeling somewhat ashamed, the boy turned his eyes away.

But even so, the smile of the girl who is almost like his older sister was still far too dazzling for the boy.

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Skin white as wax.

The blue-black veins that popped up tore her looks into shards.

An expression, full with near-death anguish, filled her face.

She is about to die – that was obvious.

Although she’s about to die, she was still writhing.

If that was the expression of a human, then this human will soon become something inhuman – the boy’s heart understood this clearly.

The night outside. Of course, there are no street lights on this island. Even so, the chilly white light that came from the bright and pure moon outside silently illuminated the scene of this tragedy through the window.

This is a henhouse on the edge of the village. While searching for Shirley, who suddenly disappeared for no reason, the boy walked through every inch of the village during the day. The boy didn’t give up and kept searching till night. Then he came upon here.

The leftover carcasses of the chickens eaten, and the “Dead” that kept shivering and crying deep inside the henhouse.

''Kill me –''

The “Dead” that had the same face as the woman he liked the most begged him while sobbing.

Then, the silver short sword that was thrown near his feet reflected back a cold and pale light in the moonlight.

Terror –

''I can't do it myself –''

''Therefore, please. Kill me –''

''While there’s still time –''

"Such a thing..."

Shaking his head, the boy drew back.

I cannot do.

No matter what shape you turn into, Shirley is Shirley. We promised to be together forever. She’s a most important family – no, she even more important than family.

Please – 

Shirley panted painfully. Gradually her sounds became maddening. Together with sorrowful sobbing, the girl let out a panting like a hungry beast.

It's already – over – before I completely lose control of myself – quick – 

Shirley’s body started to tremble uncontrollably as if she got malaria, then she suddenly opened her mouth and bit into her wrist.

Spurt...

Spurt... the sound of blood splashing out entered the boy's eardrums.

''Please –''

The persistent sound of begging drowned out the boy’s tragic wails. The boy ran out of the henhouse.

What gave the boy more terror than the Shirley in front of him – was the light that the short sword emanated beside his feet.

He doesn’t know what actually happened, and he doesn’t want to understand.

Now, all that the boy prayed for is to have someone to save them.

The boy firmly believed that there must be someone who can release them from this nightmarish terror.

Shirley will surely be saved. Someone surely is going to save them.

The boy kept repeating this to himself.

It takes about 5 minutes to get to Father Simon's church if he runs as fast as he can.

The boy ran for his life as he cried. Be it the pain in his feet or the anguish in his chest, he could no longer feel any of them.

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Natalia Kaminski. The woman said that’s her name.

This woman wore an inky black long coat very inappropriate for a tropical night, but there was no sign of her sweating. Rather than thinking of her pale countenance as cold and cruel, it was better described as expressionless. It would even make others doubt whether there was actually blood flowing within her, and whether she actually has body heat like normal people.

That was the appearance of the savior who saved the boy out of the ravaging pandemonium.

"Alright, kid. It's about time for you to answer a few questions for me."

With his back turned to the woman's cold voice, the boy only stared transfixed at the distant fishing village that was burning to the ground.

The village that was so peaceful till just yesterday, the village that was slumbering beneath the silent moonlight only a few hours ago, was actually burning with endless flames. He still couldn’t believe the scene before his eyes even if he was standing on top of the cliffs opposite the town and witnessed it himself; he only thought all this was a nightmare.

He would never see those familiar, gentle faces in the village again – he couldn’t believe it no matter what.

"… What exactly, happened?"

The boy asked with a dry voice. Natalia snorted.

"I was the one who asked first. Boy, isn't it time to get back to your senses?"

"..."

The boy suddenly turned his head around. Even if he owes her his life, it was really very irritating for her to ignore other’s feelings, not answer his questions, and on the contrary went on and on with her own questions.

After an obstinate silence, Natalia seemed to have grasped his thoughts. Then, she let out a helpless sigh, and gave a brief explanation.

"Now, there are two groups that caused such a tragedy in that village. One group is the Executors for the so-called Holy Church. They are completely different from the nice priests you know. They are cruel guys who believe that all those who betrayed God needs to be killed. Of course, they would naturally mercilessly eliminate something like a vampire if they see it. If they don’t have the time to check one by one who among the people had their blood sucked, they would completely destroy all suspects. In other words, these guys don’t have much time right now.

The other group is called the Association. This is a bit difficult to explain – basically they’re a group who wants to solely possess fantastic things such as vampires. Naturally, in order to have sole possession, they would kill anybody else who knew about the relevant details. There’s no point in not do things very thoroughly in order to destroy evidence and hide the truth.

Because of this, boy, you’ve got fine luck. You’re probably the only inhabitant of this island right now who managed to survive through the purge those people delivered."

The boy accepted this fact even easier than Natalia had expected. It was as if the boy had discerned the reason those dangerous men would come to Arimago Island a long time ago.

The boy rushed to Father Simon to seek help, and the priest who received this request contacted some other people. Some people outside the island must have received this intelligence while the priest delivered such information.

Leaving the sequence of events aside, at least the beginning of this tragedy was inextricably linked to himself.

If the boy had listened to Shirley's supplication and took the courage to plunge the silver white short sword into the chest of the girl he loved the most, then this present tragedy would not have happened.

If he had done that, then even if he would become a hollow shell without a soul from now on or even if he could no longer doze off in the night – these many lives won’t have been lost.

For the boy, it was the same as if he had set that memorable place on fire himself.

"... Then, which side are you on?"

"I'm like a salesman for the Association. My job is to seek out secrets they are interested in, protect this secret from being known by anyone else and pass it into their hands. Of course, it needs to be sold to them before such a huge incident happens. It can’t be sold now."

Natalia shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps she had already become accustomed to such scenes. It was as if the woman in black emanated the smell of death from her entire body.

"Alright, boy, let's get back to the previous question. It's about time for you to answer my question.

The so-called Sealing Designation – do you know what that means? Also, where is the evil magus, who’s the culprit of this vampire incident, hiding on this island? Do you know of it?”

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Although those words sounded too deep for this boy, in truth it hit the bull’s eye of this problem in some way.

Kerry is not the boy’s real name.

The name of the boy, who was born in a foreign, remote country, was very hard to pronounce for the people here. At the very beginning it was Shirley who abbreviated his name into Kerry, and then the villagers all called him Kerry by habit. The boy also felt that, instead of being called a strange name such as 'Keritougu’, ‘Kerry’ sounded much friendlier.

The boy’s real name is – Kiritsugu.

The son of the magus who has been given a Sealing Designation, Emiya Norikata.

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In the deep night, Kiritsugu returned to the wooden villa in the depths of the jungle, and saw his father receiving him with a worried expression.

"Ahh, Kiritsugu. Are you alright? Thank goodness…"

His father embraced him. It has been many years since he felt his father’s broad shoulders. It was a rare moment for his strong father to express his true feelings like that.

After releasing Kiritsugu from his arms, his father's expression suddenly turned severe and said.

"I told you not to step out of the barrier of the forest today no matter what. Why did you disobey me?"

"... Because I was worried about Shirley…"

His father suddenly turned his eyes aside when he heard the girl's name. Just that small gesture could completely confirm one fact.

"Dad, did you know what changes happened to her body? Is that why you didn’t allow me to go outside?"

"…About that girl, it's really a pity. Although I told her the reagent was very dangerous and to never touch it, it seems she still didn't win over her own curiosity."

Although his father’s tone was filled with bitterness, there was no regret or shame in it. It was as if he was telling off a boy who broke a flower vase with only blame and anger in his tone.

"…Dad, why would you investigate the Dead Apostles?"

"Of course that’s not my true intention. However, being the research of us, the Emiya family, we should seek it no matter how far it seems. I have to come up with a solution for aging, at least before your generation. The flesh, shackled with the destiny of death, is really too far away from the 'root'."

Shirley’s pitiful sight that he saw under the light of the moon once again appeared before Kiritsugu.

"Dad... would you eventually turn me into that shape too?"

"Nonsense. Someone who cannot control the vampiric urges and becomes a Dead Apostle is a failure... I told Shirley this a long time ago. Looks like the results of this experiment isn’t as good as I thought it’d be. I’d have to start from the basics and modify my theories again."

"…I see."

Kiritsugu nodded and said.

His father seemed to be intent in continuing. There’s no need to pay attention to sacrifices of this degree. He still needs to keep repeating it until he gets a satisfactory result.

"Kiritsugu, we’ll talk about this later. Now our top priority is to hurry and escape – I'm afraid there’s no longer time to pack. Soon those guys from the Association would see through the barrier in this dense forest. We need to leave soon."

Looks like his father made the preparations to leave a long time ago. There were already two large suitcases packed and sitting in the middle of the room. The reason he had delayed till now – was probably waiting for his own child to return.

"…Are we escaping? Right now?"

"I knew a long time ago this day would come, so I prepared a motor boat on the southern coast beforehand. You can never be too prepared.”

His father took one suitcase in each of his hands, turned around and walked towards the porch – of course, at this moment he was not guarded at all.

Then, Kiritsugu took the pistol Natalia gave to him from his trouser pocket.

It was a .32 caliber pistol. If it was fired from point-blank range, even a child can easily hit the target. The woman in black assured him of that. After that, it'd be all Kiritsugu's concern.

While aiming the gun at his father's defenseless back, the scene of village that was burned to the ground and Shirley’s final tragic expression swelled up within the boy’s heart – also, all the memories he had after living with his father for ten years, and the gentle sentiments that was hidden beneath his father’s stoic look.

His father loves him, and is full of expectations of him. He also loves his father deeply, and is proud of him.

Endless feeling tangled up and Kiritsugu wanted to close his eyes. However, contrary to his sentiments, Kiritsugu opened his eyes and aimed, then swiftly pressed the trigger.

Bam – it was an unexpected, dry and crisp sound.

His father, shot from the back of the neck, fell forward. Then Kiritsugu walked up and continued to fire towards the back of his head twice. Then he stopped, and continued to give two more shots to his back.

He couldn't believe it. Even Kiritsugu himself was afraid of his own coldness.

He wavered to the end. Certainly there was struggle in his heart. However, his hand moved as if everything was pre-established and out of his control. His body completely disregarded the thoughts in his heart, and only mechanically carried out things that 'had to be done'.

This behavior may be regarded as a talent – this thought only flicked past his heart briefly. After that, Kiritsugu once again sank into emptiness, with no sense of accomplishment.

The wooden floor gradually became stained red with blood. Father wasn't there anymore. What lay there was nothing but a corpse. This thing was the culprit. This thing rubbed away everything he had, killed everyone on the island, and burnt the village to the ground.

Shirley said he is an amazing person, someone with the power to change the world. Kiritsugu thought so as well once upon a time.

What did the two youngsters understand about the way of magecraft? And what did they expect of magi?

At the beginning, Kiritsugu didn't realize he was crying. Even he didn’t know whether his current feelings were sadness or regret. All he felt was an emptiness as if he was drained to the core.

The gun in his right hand was very heavy, almost too heavy to lift up. However, he couldn't throw it away. His fingers froze on the trigger and couldn’t move.

Kiritsugu even risked the danger of accidentally firing and swung his right hand crazily just to try to throw the gun away. But it was all useless; his fingers were holding the gun tightly as if they were glued to it.

At that moment, somebody suddenly grabbed his wrist, and then easily took the gun away from his hand. Only then did Kiritsugu realize Natalia had already appeared beside him.

"C’mon, the bounded field here isn’t as exaggerated as you said. I got in easily."

Natalia said with a rather scolding tone.

"…Are you angry?"

"You think? I’ve never given this thing for kids to play with."

Natalia glanced at the gun she took from Kiritsugu, then she put it back into her pocket after locking the safety again.

"However, it was up to your luck to see if you can make it on time."

In fact, if all that didn’t happen just now, Emiya Norikata would surely have escaped safely and went into hiding again, then restarted his research on the Dead Apostles at some other unknown place. Maybe the tragedy triggered on this island would happen once again.

This isn’t a problem that can be solved by luck. This is something that has to be stopped.

"This man, had a reason that he has to be killed – I have no other choice."

"I even encouraged a child to kill his own father; I really am a very bad person.”

Natalia said, discouraged. Hearing this, Kiritsugu smiled with traces of tears still on his face.

"…You, are a good person."

Natalia looked, stunned, at Kiritsugu’s smile. Then she sighed and heaved the corpse of Emiya Norikata onto her shoulder.

"I'll take you out of the island. You need to decide what comes afterwards yourself – is there anything you’d like to take with you?"

"Nothing at all."

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Then… Kiritsugu spent the following few years beside Natalia Kaminski.

Naturally, Natalia didn't look after him like an orphan or her adopted child, but ordered Kiritsugu around as an assistant or servant. However, this was just what Kiritsugu desired.

He studied Natalia’s skills and trained his own abilities at the same time in order to walk the same path as Natalia – to become a ‘hunter’. This is the unchangeable path that Kiritsugu chose for his life.

The tragedy at Arimago Island was not a rare event. Such tragedies are repeated over and over again like daily occurrences in the shadowy places of the world.

The magi who are willing to bring ill omen into the mortal world in order to seek the knowledge that they search for and the two large organizations that used any methods necessary to hide these facts; the battle surrounding these mysterious events kept occurring at obscure places. Precisely because of this, there’s money to be made for Natalia.

Eliminating magi such as Emiya Norikata is really too far from the ideal of preventing such tragedies from happening again – it could almost be said that Emiya Norikata was only one drop of water in the vast ocean, an existence that could be completely ignored.

His action on that day, killing his father by his own hands; if he was to make that event meaningful and worthy...

Then that means all heretic magi like his father must be killed. Only then can he truly prevent tragedies from occurring again.

Sealing Designation Enforcers.

Hound dogs that hunt demons that have surpassed ordinary sense. The boy chose this thorny road of Shuras without a moment’s hesitation.

Natalia does not belong to an organization, and was only a freelancer who hunted with bounty as her goal. Her targets are those Sealing Designated magi who possess precious research results, but have left the Magi’s Association and conducted secret researches. Different from the Holy Church that acted in the name of judging all heretics and killed everyone, the Magi’s Association took ensuring the safety of the research results as its priority.

And what’s the most precious of all are the Magic Crests carved on the magi’s flesh. Magic Crests that are created through generations of research can produce even greater powers when it is passed onto the successor, especially for magi families.

Through the negotiations Natalia had made with the Association, a section of the Magic Crests gathered from Emiya Norikata’s body was allowed to be inherited by his son Emiya Kiritsugu. Although the important parts were confiscated by the Association and only a ‘fragment’ of barely half the original amount was allowed for Emiya Kiritsugu to inherit, it was enough for Kiritsugu to use his abilities as a magus. Besides, Kiritsugu didn’t have the intention of following his father’s dying wish and continuing magecraft research to begin with.

For Kiritsugu, magecraft isn’t his life-long career, but just a tool used to achieve his goals. Moreover, this tool was only one of the many ‘tools’ that the boy learnt from the huntress.

Tracking, assassination, the usage of various weapons – there can’t be only one ‘fang’ for a hound. All sorts of knowledge and skills are necessary for him to master in order to be able to catch up to the prey under all situations and conditions and bring it down.

In a sense, the history of human beings is a history of killing. Humans spent an endless amount of time and intelligence to research the skill of ‘killing people’ in order to hunt down the ‘two-legged beasts’ that looked the same as themselves. Kiritsugu had made his own body master all these.

The years covered in blood and gunpowder passed by flying.

Emiya Kiritsugu, who experienced the trials of too many violent battles during a time as sensitive as adolescence, no longer has any youthful innocence on his face. As an oriental person of unknown age, his three different false passports all recorded him as an adult and they hadn’t been questioned a single time.

However, judging only from his appearance, although his figure isn’t very tall and his moustache is sparse, his grim and cold look is definitely not something that a teenage boy should have.

One day –

Even when he knew that his teacher and friend – Natalia – faced the worst danger in her life, Kiritsugu still didn’t show any emotional wavering and devotedly completed his duty.

No matter how anxious or wavering his heart is, there was not a single way to help Natalia. That’s because her battlefield is inside a giant commercial airliner more than 3000 feet above in the sky.

It started with the chase for the magus known as the “Demonic Bees User”, Odd Borzak.

It was said that this magus successfully created Dead Apostles and can manipulate the Demonic Bees under his control to use poisonous stings to increase the amount of Ghouls under his power; a very dangerous man indeed. Moreover, he had changed his name and face and pretended to be an ordinary person, with no information about him at all. However, four days ago, there was information that he was taking Flight A300 from Paris to New York. In the situation of being completely ignorant of the person’s appearance and name, Natalia accepted this gruelling task of finding the target among the plane’s 287 passengers and ‘erase’ him.

As her partner, Kiritsugu didn’t board the plane, but instead went ahead to New York to investigate Volsack’s fake identity. The teacher and student communicated using radio and calmly and confidently locked down the location of the prey in that sealed space 3000 feet above the sky.

Approximately three hours after the takeoff – the assassination was achieved unexpectedly smoothly. However, that was the beginning of the tragedy.

The Ghoul Bees that Volsack brought into the plane through deceiving customs caused a fatal disturbance after the death of their master. The Ghoul Bees that Natalia didn’t destroy on time raided towards the passengers one by one, and the cabin of the giant commercial airliner turned into a living hell ravaged by Ghouls in the blink of an eye.

Faced with a sealed area with nowhere to escape and Ghouls that manipulated without end, even someone as strong as Natalia felt an endless despair. Faced with this worsening situation, Kiritsugu could do nothing and can only wait for the radio communication. He must not let go of any chance of proving that Natalia was still alive.

The basic rule that Natalia had instructed Kiritsugu over and over again is – ‘no matter what method you use, you must ensure your own survival’. Since she has such a creed, Kiritsugu firmly believed that experienced huntress can definitely make it out this time too. After two hours, the radio was still silent.

Finally, when the light of the stars in the night sky was covered by the cyan shade of dawn, the tired voice of a woman was transmitted with static.

“… Can you hear me? Kid… you aren’t asleep, right?”

“Loud and clear, Natalia. We’re both at that most sleepy time right before dawn, after staying awake for the entire night.”

“Of course. If you had dared to go back and sleep last night I’ll definitely kill you afterwards… well, there’s some good news and some bad news. Which one do you want to listen to first?”

Natalia laughed briefly and said so.

“Didn’t we promise to start with the good news?”

“Ok. Then it’s good news first. First of all, I’m alive. The plane is without damage as well. I’ve just ensured the safety of the cockpit; both the captain and the co-pilot have already set the flying perimeters before their death. Even I can manage to simply drive it. Apparently the controls are the same as a Cessna.”

“Did you communicate with the control tower?”

“Got them. At the beginning they thought it was a prank, but now they’re directing me well.”

“… Then, the bad news?”

“Mm – I was the only one who didn’t get bitten. All passengers and crew, all 300 of them, perished and became Ghouls. The other side of the cockpit, divided only by a panel, already became a flying city of the dead. Don’t be surprised now.”

“…”

That’s the worst situation Kiritsugu had thought of.

“In that condition, will you… come back alive?”

“Ahh, this door is pretty rigid. Although it’s a bit wobbly now, there’s no worry about it being broken – Instead, the landing makes me more insecure. Can this giant thing really land safely?”

“… If it’s you, then you’ll surely manage.”

“Was that you encouraging me? I’m glad to hear.”

After a bitter laugh, Natalia gave a powerless sigh.

“There are still 50 minutes before arriving at the airport. It’s too early to pray – kid, chat with me for a while.”

“… I don’t mind.”

So they started a random conversation. First, they began with those two hours when communication ceased. Then they listed the dead Volsack’s many evil deeds in detail. Finally, the two of them naturally remembered the magi and Dead Apostles that they had destroyed, and those Shura’s fields that the two had faced together.

Natalia, who was usually quiet, became talkative for some reason today. The low roar of the Ghouls coming in from the cabin intertwined with the sound of them repeatedly hitting the cockpit’s door. Chatting is the single best choice to distract one’s attention from that.

“– When you first told me you want to enter this career path, I was having a real headache for a long time. Moreover, you didn’t want to change your idea no matter how much I persuaded you.”

“Was I such an unpromising disciple?”

“No… it’s because you have too much promise, too much potential.”

Natalie said with a bitter laugh.

“…What does that mean?”

“Because you can make your actions completely removed from your emotions – regular hit men can only obtain it after many years of trials. However, you had that since you were born. What a surprising talent.”

“…”

“But hey, it’s not necessarily correct to choose your life’s path based on talent and abilities alone. A person’s belief and feelings come before talents; that is the key to decide a person’s life. If that doesn’t exist, a person can’t be regarded as a person anymore. If they consider ‘What needs to be done’ before considering ‘What I want to do’ and only acted according to those rules… then they are not people but are only regarded as machines, far removed from the life of a human.”

The words of the teacher who had watched him growing up glided past the boy’s heart like cold frost.

“I, well… I had thought you are a very cold person.”

“What’s that after all this time? Isn’t that the truth? Was I ever gentle towards you?”

“No. You always were strict, absolutely merciless.”

“… Usually, disciplining a boy is the role of the father.”

On the opposite end of the radio, Natalia was silent for a while, then continued after sighing helplessly.

“However, I carry a certain degree of responsibility for causing you not to have the education from a father. Well, how to say it… it’s not that there was a way to push it off me.”

''I can only teach you some survival skills; I’m useless for everything else –'' Natalia added that as if mocking herself.

“… You wanted to be my father?”

“Don’t mix up men with women, impertinent. At least you should call me mother.”

“… Right. Sorry.”

Although Kiritsugu’s answering tone was very even, his expression looked very shocked.

Radio can’t display the other person’s face and obviously can’t see their expressions either. Therefore, Natalia could not know of Kiritsugu’s current feelings.

“… For a long time, I experienced the blood and stench on my own. I’ve almost forgotten the fact that I am all alone.

That’s why, well… Haha. It’s almost funny. As if we are family.”

“Me too –”

What’s the meaning of saying these things now? Kiritsugu asked himself in his heart while he continued to speak.

“– I, have also regarded you as if you’re my mother. I feel that I’m not alone, and I was happy.”

“… Hey there Kiritsugu. Let’s stop talking about this topic so that we don’t feel too awkward when we meet next time.”

Natalia’s current bewildered expression could vaguely be discerned in her words. It seems she was still unaccustomed to things like ‘embarrassment’.

“Ahh, the situation got worse. I’m landing in 20 minutes. I don’t want to commit some fatal mistake at such an important time just because I remembered something funny.”

“… Sorry.”

Kiritsugu apologized.

Natalia didn’t need to choose to do an emergency landing.

She also wasn’t going to meet Kiritsugu again.

Only Kiritsugu knew that.

There is no possibility of Natalia surviving before all these Ghouls are completely destroyed. The only way to deal with this airliner full of Ghouls is to make it plunge into the Atlantic Ocean. The operation to eliminate the “Demonic Bee User” is achieved at the cost of the lives of all the passengers and crew and Natalia Kaminski – Kiritsugu was already prepared for this outcome.

But Kiritsugu knew his teacher would definitely demonstrate her amazing abilities at the last moment. Natalia, who held on to the creed of ‘must survive no matter what’, may prevent the body of the plane from crushing in order to save her own life. Kiritsugu must consider this as well – that would be the unpredictable worst result.

Natalia, who prioritizes her life above all else, must choose this outcome without hesitation after weighing out the risks.

Land the airliner filled with 300 Ghouls at the airport and release these hungry dead – she would definitely choose this method if there were no other choices. Kiritsugu had already made the preparations to deal with this 10000-to-1 possibility precisely because Kiritsugu knew her too well.

In order to prevent the disaster from expanding further, the A300 must not be allowed to land.

That is the unswayable truth regardless of Natalia’s welfare.

Kiritsugu had been around almost half of New York an hour ago and finally brought a military surface-to-air portable missile launcher from the black market.

Right now, Kiritsugu was standing in a motor boat floating on the sea, waiting for Natalia’s plane to appear in his sight. The giant airline needs to circle a while before landing at the New York International Airport; Kiritsugu’s current position can roughly get the plane into the range of his missile.

While he was purchasing the weapon and choosing the spot to fire, Kiritsugu once again doubted the construction of his own mentality.

Viewing from the perspective of avoiding a larger tragedy, it is a correct response for him to calmly face Natalia’s death.

However, what is he who gives up on the final ‘miracle’ that would make the woman he loves survive, and instead kill her with his own hands?

It would be good if everything was only an assumption, but right now Emiya Kiritsugu was facing the cruel truth. Soon, he would erase Natalia by his own hands. Now, A300 had appeared at the sky at the break of dawn with sparkling silver wings.

“… Perhaps I, have really lost it.”

Natalia still believed without a doubt that Kiritsugu, on the other side of the radio, was in a hotel in New York, so she said leisurely with no caution.

“Maybe I would never end up saying those things if such a big mistake didn’t occur. It seems my time is up, too. Should I be retiring…”

“– If you retire, then what do you plan on doing after?”

Kiritsugu still faked an even voice. Meanwhile, his two hands have started to set the missile launcher onto his shoulder, and aimed the missile at the airliner.

“If I lose my job… haha, then I may really become your mother.”

Even with his eyes running full of tears, he was still able to accurately decide the distance to the target… it was within 1500 meters. A certain hit.

“You… really are my family.”

Kiritsugu said softly, then he released the missile.

In the few seconds that the missile had to be manually directed, Kiritsugu had to keep the aim on the airliner that Natalia was on and all his memories about her resurfaced in Kiritsugu’s mind.

But that torture did not last long. Soon the missile locked onto the heat radiation the giant commercial airliner emitted out. The missile left Kiritsugu’s control, and rushed mercilessly towards the target like a hungry shark.

The missile hit squarely on the gas tank beneath the wings; Kiritsugu watched the plane tilt and fall downwards.

The collapse afterwards was like a sand picture blown apart by a stormy wind – the masses of iron that lost its thrust was dismembered like rotten wood, and became a cloud of fine dust that silently fell onto the surface of the sea. The carcass of the plane that fell in the rising morning glow danced like confetti at a gala.

The first sliver of the dawn’s light that shone out from the other side of the horizon didn’t touch Natalia’s face even at the end. Basked in the morning sun all alone, Emiya Kiritsugu started crying soundlessly.

Once again, he had saved a crowd of unknown faces. Without anyone knowing.

''Did you see that, Shirley?''

''I have killed again this time. Killed as when I killed my father. I would never make the same mistake that I made with you back then. I, wanted to save more people…''

If Kiritsugu’s actions and intentions were known by others, would they thank Kiritsugu? Would the passengers at the airport who were spared of death under the threat of the Ghouls praise Kiritsugu as a hero?

“Don’t kid me…Don’t kid me! Bastard!”

Grasping tightly the missile launcher that was starting to wear off the remaining heat, Kiritsugu roared towards the brightening sky.

He didn’t want prestige or gratitude. He just wanted to see Natalia’s face once again. He just wanted to call her “Mom” face to face.

This isn’t the conclusion he wanted. This is only the correct decision, with no other choice and no space for dispute. Kiritsugu’s decision was ‘correct’. He erased the person who must die and saved those with no reason to die. If this isn’t ‘justice’, then what would it be?

It can’t come back anymore. He remembered that distant face so long ago that asked him “What kind of a man would you like to become?” with a gentle look under the blinding morning sun.

At that time, Kiritsugu should have answered – If he has the power to freely change the world, if miracles would dwell in his hands; ‘I want to be a hero of justice!’.

The Kiritsugu back then still didn’t know what this scale named ‘justice’ would rob away, and what it would bring him.

‘Justice’ took away his father, and now it also took his mother. All it left was the sensation of blood in his hands. Even his right to remember them was also stripped away.

The people he loved. Their voices, their faces; none of them can come back. Instead, they will appear again and again in Kiritsugu’s nightmares. They would probably never forgive Kiritsugu, who took their lives away with his own hands.

That is the choice of ’justice’. The price of pursuing his ideal.

Now, Kiritsugu can no longer turn back. What he seeks will disappear with even a single moment of hesitation or uncertainty. If so, then all the prices he had paid, and all the sacrifices, would become worthless.

Surely he would follow the ideal in his heart and reach for its fulfilment while he cursed and hated at the same time?

Kiritsugu vowed silently in his heart.

He will accept that curse. He will accept this anger. At the same time, he prays that some day he will drain all his tears and reach that far distant and serene utopia.

If the cruelty that his hands carry is the limit for humans.

Then let he himself wipe away all the tears in the world.

That was the last day of Kiritsugu’s youth –

As he determinedly stepped towards that thorny and uneven path.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Fate/Zero:Volume_3_Postface|Volume 3 Postface]]
| Return to [[Fate/Zero|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Fate/Zero:Act_13_Part_1|Act 13, Part 1]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Fate/Zero:Act 13 Part 3

2017-10-27T03:56:58Z

Toshiya: /* -47:39:59 */

=== -47:39:59 ===

After that completely unbelievable day, Waver finally came to terms with the implications of the current situation.

After getting up in the morning, Waver told the old couple he would be coming back later than usual today, then rushed to Shinto without even eating breakfast.

Though the worst of rush hour was yet to come, the bus heading towards the station already seemed to be full; perhaps too many people were commuting between Fuyuki and the neighboring town.

With a great ruckus of people around him, Waver was unused to the way the crowd pushed him along. But right then, when he felt so hollow and empty, he was actually filled with a sense of security.

Over the past few days, there had been an overwhelming presence continuously filling the space next to him. In comparison, the level of oppression from the crowd felt more like an empty lot abandoned after a bustling ritual.

Of course, Rider’s presence was always next to him. Even now, he could still feel the majestic and oppressive atmosphere of the Servant in spiritual form.

Speaking of which, the big man had been maintaining his spiritual shape, not once materializing since that great battle with Caster two nights before.

That wouldn't have been strange for any other Servant. Out of battle mode, there was no need to specifically materialize and expend excess prana. However, that didn’t apply to Alexander. The man participated in the War of the Holy Grail with materialization as his goal, after all.

If the situation had only lasted a few hours, it could have been interpreted as him just having some fun. But it became unusual when he didn’t appear for an entire day. There could only be one reason why Rider would not materialize.

As a Master, Waver could still converse with his Servant of spiritual form at any time. If Waver called for him now, there was no doubt that Rider would respond immediately. However, Waver didn’t dare open his mouth and inquire. It would be better not to start a conversation until he knew how Rider would respond and had thoroughly prepared himself in advance.

In order to be prepared for everything, Waver decided to start shopping in the morning.

First of all, he needed to go to the supermarket’s outdoor equipment sale and purchase sleeping bags and mattresses suitable for winter wilderness. They were expensive, but nothing in comparison to the gaming console Rider had bought.

What really irritated him were the prices at which pharmacies sold energy drinks and portable heaters. Achieving the same degrees of medication and equipment with magecraft would have required huge amounts of prana worth ten times the effort. Though he felt it bruised his pride as a magus, Waver, with anger beyond reason, still bought more than he actually needed.

He was intensely annoyed at the fact that he had been born in the modern world. What bad luck. If only the era he had grown up in was full of respect and fear for magecraft! Why did he have to be born into a time when a portable heater only cost 400 yen and no one knew the harshness of life?

In any case, when he was done buying all of his necessities, Waver took the bus back to Miyama town, bought some eel fishball bento from the supermarket two bus stops down the road from the MacKenzies', then heated it gently with a microwave. If he wanted to eat his meal before it got cold, he'd have to hurry to reach his destination.

Actually, Waver was already eager to ask Rider just what had happened. However, he couldn’t do anything to a Servant who offered no explanation and didn’t even want to show his face. Had Waver been more outgoing, he definitely would have gotten the answer he wanted. But he had many concerns – as an immature magus, his sense of powerlessness made him afraid to question Rider.

He thought this in his heart, and yet refused to bow his head to Rider. After all, it was humiliating enough being ordered around by his own Servant.

He was indeed very weak and very useless, but Waver was reluctant to admit it. If he could achieve the best results through prudent preparation, then even Rider wouldn't be able to underestimate him anymore. With these thoughts in mind, Waver chose to likewise remain stubbornly silent in the face of Rider’s muteness.

Waver had soon traversed the residential areas and walked into a bushy forest soon to be developed into an urban park.

Passing through the brushwood with no roads yet to be developed, Waver walked into its greatest depths. Although the scenes here varied drastically between morning and night, Waver still marched towards its center with familiarity.

Having finally reached his destination and made sure all of the surroundings were in order, Waver sighed in relief. After placing the thermal mat on the leaf-strewn ground, Waver sat on it and began eating the bento he had just bought from the supermarket. The microwave-heated bento was already cold and had lost its flavor, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that it contained the energy he needed to maintain life.

“–Does that taste good?”

It was Rider’s voice, something he hadn’t heard for an entire day and night. Even in spiritual form, was food still the only thing that could arouse his interest? Waver couldn’t help but idly wonder.

“No, it’s disgusting. It’s probably the most disgusting thing in Japanese cuisine.”

A reply like that made Rider in spiritual form sigh as if in regret and say:

“Kid, do you remember a shop called ‘Shogi Okonomiyaki’ that you passed in Shinto? The innovative pancake they sell there is really damn miraculous. Pity you didn’t buy it…”

“If you still want to eat it, then hurry up and recover to a state that allows you to materialize.”

“…”

A strange silence began to fill the atmosphere. However, Waver now appeared to be quite at ease. The apprentice magus continued to speak as he ate the eel bento in big gulps.

“Do you know where we are? This is the place where you were summoned. The quality of this spiritual ground hardly needs saying, and the Magic Circle used that night for the summoning hasn’t been damaged either. This is the leyline in Fuyuki that suits you the best. This place would definitely help make your recovery more efficient.”

Actually, Waver had noticed it two nights ago. It was impossible for a large Noble Phantasm like Ionian Hetairoi to be used two nights in a row without any repercussions.

A large amount of prana was required just to expand such a powerful Reality Marble and maintain it for a short time. Moreover, in his battle with Caster, Rider had also been within the bounded field and received heavy damage.

Above all, so much prana had been spent that Rider, who clung to his physical so obstinately, was forced into spiritual form in order to concentrate on recuperation. It was obvious that this was no small amount of prana.

“I’ll be staying here the whole day today and doing nothing but sleeping. So you can take as much of my prana as you'd like, as long as it doesn’t kill me. This way, it should help your recovery a lot too.”

Rider’s spiritual form was silent for a long time, as if he had his mouth open in shock. Then he laughed loudly.

“…Hahaha. Why didn’t you say so earlier if you noticed it? Mm, I’m really sorry.”

“Idiot! If you don’t hurry up and recover from your current condition, I’ll be the one in danger!”

Waver felt angry all of a sudden. Rider, who had been so carefree, actually felt apologetic. But if he put some thought into the real reason behind their whole predicament, Waver was the one who should have felt embarrassed.

Waver’s reason for not wanting Rider to maintain his physical form was obvious – as a Master, Waver’s prana supply was far beneath the prana expenditure Rider required in order to recover.

Of course, it was humiliating for the Master. He was not fit to command a Servant as powerful as Rider. It was the best proof that he was nothing but a weak, second-rate magus. Humiliation and anger: those were accurate reflections of Waver’s current mood.

Was it Waver who was at fault for being unable to accurately grasp his Servant’s condition, or was it Rider, who had hidden and kept this truth from him? If Rider had straightforwardly brought it up when he felt his prana supply running low and made Waver prepare for it ahead of time, then perhaps there could have been some other way.

After Waver finished his bento, he drained the energy drink he had bought in one gulp, then asked the spiritual entity beside him.

“…What’s wrong? You’ve been quiet.”

“No, I’m wondering if I can hold on a bit longer. The battle at the river bank wasn’t as exhausting as I thought.”

In order to stop the sea demon Caster had summoned from coming on land, Rider had maintained the area of his Ionian Hetairoi Reality Marble beyond its limit. No matter what, it was too much. Back then, Waver had been more worried about his Servant than his alliance with Saber.

“In the end, your trump card was surprisingly wasteful of prana, wasn’t it?”

“Not at all. Just that its size became bigger. Those guys in the army weren’t summoned out, so it didn’t cost too much prana to maintain.”

“Liar. Large magecrafts of that degree need to use an enormous amount of prana just to be activated. Once activated, the army summoned within was a pretty surprising expenditure for you, wasn’t it?”

“…”

“When I first saw it, I really did think it was a very efficient Noble Phantasm, just like you said. In retrospect, the amount of prana you took from my Magic Circuits when you first fought Assassin was really too small.”

That was when Waver had misunderstood the amount of prana required for Ionian Hetairoi. Even magecraft must obey the greater rule of ‘equivalent exchange’. Therefore, activating a large magecraft of such a degree was definitely not an easy thing. Waver couldn’t help but feel angry once again at his own naïveté.

The excessive intake of energy drinks made Waver feel nauseous, and his chest felt as if it was on fire. Waver sat up on the thermal mat, took off his boots, and dived into his sleeping bag.

“Rider, why did you use your own stored prana instead of using mine? It is my duty to provide it. And you made that decision twice in a row without consulting me… just what are you trying to do?”

“As for… that.”

Rider made a deep sigh as if it were difficult to explain.

“Frankly, as a Servant I am purely a killer of souls. If I had involved you when I released all of my prana, it could have threatened your life.”

“Even so – I was prepared.”

Waver said in a low voice, staring at the ground.

“I don’t want this to become your solo battle. This is my first time joining a war. If I do not make sacrifices or shed blood, and do not obtain victory, then this is completely meaningless.”

Back when they'd had the chance to stroll around Shinto, he was quickly laughed at for the meaning behind his battle. But even so, he did not cast it aside. He did not give it up. No matter how much it was laughed at for being tiny, what was in this heart would never be yielded to anyone.

“Do you know why I want to obtain the Grail? I’m not concerned with what happens after I obtain the Grail. I just want to prove this for everyone to see! I just wanted to confirm it! That I, Waver – even someone like me is able to grab what belongs to me with my own two hands!”

“–But kid, that’s only meaningful under the premise that the Holy Grail actually exists, right?”

Rider’s surprising words left Waver gaping and speechless.

“…Huh?”

“Everyone's fighting madly for the Fuyuki Grail, but does it really exist? It’s only a legend. No one’s ever seen it with their own eyes, have they?”

What did Rider mean? Waver could not completely comprehend his words, but neither could he refute them, and so only nodded.

“True, it’s like you said, but…”

“I have also fought for things with an ‘uncertain existence’.”

Somehow, Rider’s words contained a hint of bitterness and sorrow far from his usual majesty.

“I want to behold the endless sea with my own eyes – I continuously crusaded across the world for the sole sake of this dream. Those who believed in me fought with me without a doubt, and even sacrificed their own lives. However, even till the end, it was only in their dreams that they saw the endless sea of which I spoke.”

“…”

“Finally, the eastern crusade was disbanded under the persuasion of those who did not trust me. But that was the right thing to do. Had I continued, my army would surely have been defeated somewhere along the way. I only realized that the earth was a globe when I came to this era. It was such a farce. Now, anyone could figure out that there is no endless sea just by looking at a map. My so-called dream back then would be nothing more than a delusion now.”

“Hey, Rider.”

Even if that was the truth.

To hear Alexander say it – it shocked Waver quite a bit.

A man who had marched forward so bravely towards the vivid dream in his heart – why would he now deny his own dream with such a calm voice?

However, those words of rebuttal tangled in Waver’s throat and remained unsaid in the end.

Waver had the same dream as Rider, but he could not express it no matter what. Because it concerned Waver’s pride.

“I’ve become tired of others sacrificing themselves because of my whims. If I can ascertain that the Grail indeed exists somewhere, then I will obtain it even if it means your life and mine… but unfortunately, we still don’t know whether the Holy Grail really exists. I don’t want to make the same mistake, a mistake like not knowing the world is a globe.”

“But I… even so, I’m still your Master.”

Waver wanted to argue, but he immediately mocked himself in his heart.

He couldn’t even provide prana, which should have been the least he could do.

He couldn’t even detect the weakness of his Servant, who pushed himself to participate in battle.

As if unaware of Waver’s worries, Rider’s voice, in spiritual form, once again returned to its usual carefree style, and he laughed out loud.

“Kid, that goes without saying. True, your Magic Circuits are a lot more powerful than usual. The leylines here are pretty good too. If we rest for the whole day like this, then we can get some things going at night.”

Waver himself could already feel the amount of prana Rider had absorbed through his Magic Circuits. The previous burning sensation in his chest had already completely disappeared; in its stead was an overwhelming exhaustion as if all the strength in his body had been drawn away. Even moving his fingers and opening his eyes became difficult.

“…What? Get some things going? What do you plan to do after this?”

“Hmm, it’s gonna be like this… Tonight, we should regard Saber as our opponent first, and attack that castle in the forest again.”

“Not going to chat with them, right?”

“Of course not. The alliance is over. What should be said has all been said. What’s next is to oppose each other with everything we’ve got.”

Although Rider’s voice was still powerful and confident, there was an audible wariness hidden within. That Saber would definitely count as a powerful enemy even for Rider. He was already prepared for a majestic and desperate battle to the end.

“…If we keep this up, how much can you recover by nighttime?”

“About that… if all goes well, I won't be able to use Gordius Wheel in its most powerful form, but simple flight shouldn’t be a problem.”

Then, as if it had been weighing on his mind, the spiritual form continued speaking with a sigh mixed in his words.

“But Ionian Hetairoi – I fear I can only use it one more time.”

“Oh…”

In the midst of all this misfortune, having one final trump card was the greatest strength left in his hands.

“That should be left for the battle with Archer. I can’t handle that goldie’s killing blow without my trump card. The other enemies can probably be finished with just the war chariot.”

That was fine strategically, but a new question suddenly emerged in Waver’s mind.

“But… Rider, why did you pick Saber specifically as your opponent?”

“Hmm?”

“Didn’t you say that you weren’t regarding that woman as an enemy anymore? Besides, with the way you are now, shouldn’t you do your best to minimize the number of battles in the future? And Archer… never mind, that’s some kind of strange promise that you made yourself; can’t go back on that now. But the battle with Saber should be put off; best to wait for other Servants to finish her off.”

Listening to Waver’s serious advice, Rider couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oi, kid. If I could stretch out my fingers, I’d give you a hard flick on the forehead.”

“Wha– what!? Isn’t that the best strategy?”

Had Rider’s physical form been here, Waver would’ve been covering his forehead with his hands. However, now that the other is in spiritual form, the short magus appeared a bit more forceful than usual.

“I must be the one to defeat Saber. We’re both Heroic Spirits, so that is my duty.”

“… What does that mean?”

“If I'm not the one to defeat her, then that idiotic woman will continue walking down her wrong path. Then it’d really be too sad for her.”

Although Waver had a hard time understanding him, he understood the feelings of this King of Conquerors, this guy who was willing to let even the War of the Holy Grail go.

Therefore, as a Master, extra thoughts were better discarded – in fact, Waver didn’t even have the optimism to wish for someone else to finish off Saber. The Servant called Saber was truly too powerful. That mysterious golden Servant, Archer, was also a mighty competitor. Waver thought he was very shrewd, and it was nearly impossible that Saber would damage him before Rider fought her.

For Rider, a face-to-face confrontation with Saber was more or less inevitable.

“…Never mind, if that's how you want it to be… fine…”

Waver wanted to argue a bit more, but realized that nothing would change no matter what he said and simply gave up. He eventually felt so tired that he could not fend off the sleepiness and tucked himself into his brand new sleeping bag, all the while feeling the warmth of the downy feather quilt.

“Alright, stop holding yourself up. Go to sleep, kid. Rest is your battle now.”

“Mmm…”

Although there was still much to be said, they could be said when he woke up. He didn’t need to be on guard against getting his forehead flicked when conversing with a Rider not in physical form, but he kept feeling as if something was missing there. Moreover, he was at a point where it was tiring just to open his mouth and speak. It was best to just have a good nap.

And so, Waver began to relax his nearly exhausted body and sank into a deep slumber.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[Fate/Zero:Act_13_Part_2|Act 13, Part 2]]
| Return to [[Fate/Zero|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Fate/Zero:Act_13_Part_4|Act 13, Part 4]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Fate/Zero:Act 13 Part 4

2017-10-27T03:51:42Z

Toshiya: missed one

=== -37:02:47 ===

When Irisviel opened her eyes again, the first thing to fall into her sight was the light of the setting sun dying the high windows of the underground storage a sheen of crimson red.

Since losing consciousness, she had been immersed in a deep sleep and felt as though the entire day had disappeared. Rather than sleeping, her deteriorating body was better described as entering a near death state.

But it felt fine for the moment, so maybe such a long rest had some effect after all. She still didn’t have enough strength to sit up, but she could at least gather enough breath to speak.

Irisviel looked to her side and discovered Hisau Maiya still sitting in a corner of the room, still as a painting. She was in the same place with the same posture as before Irisviel had fallen asleep, but the razor sharp look emanating from her eyes held not a sliver of exhaustion or fatigue. She was just staring blankly into air.

Though she made a dependable sight, she could easily have been mistaken for a robot or familiar. Even Irisviel couldn’t help but feel a certain degree of fear towards her. Just what kind of training and how strong a will must she have had to be able to maintain such a degree of focus? It was unimaginable.

With some awe, Irisviel suddenly realized – this woman called Hisau Maiya may have achieved a state above the realm that Kiritsugu pursued.

“—Hey, Maiya.”

Irisviel called softly. Like a hound that suddenly heard its calling trumpet, Maiya immediately turned her eyes towards Irisviel.

“Why… do you fight for Kiritsugu?”

“…Because I have nothing else.”

When she realized that her charge was not in any pain or discomfort and just wanted to chat, Maiya relaxed her taut nerves a little and answered after a short pause for thought.

“I can’t remember anything concerning my family or my name. This name, Hisau Maiya, was given to me by Kiritsugu when he made my fake passport.”

“—Huh?”

Seeing the surprise on Irisviel’s face, the end of Maiya’s mouth twitched with a small smile. For someone like her, who showed no discernible emotion on her face, that was the limit of what she could do to show her relaxed mood.

“All I can remember is that it was a very poor country. There was no hope, there was no future. The only things left were communal hatred and conflict over food for survival. War would never end. There were no funds left to maintain armies, but the mutual slaughter continued without a moment’s pause… No one remembered whose idea it was, but at that time someone decided it was faster to get children to go to the frontline with guns than to hire soldiers and train them.”

“…”

“Therefore, I don’t remember anything before I had a gun in my hand. I could only keep killing others to prolong my own life. Snipe my enemy, pull back the trigger; that was the only function left in my being. Everything else was discarded… the children who couldn’t do that were all killed by those children who could. I lived on aimlessly just like that until I met Kiritsugu.”

As Maiya spoke, she lowered her head to look her at hands. Those long, slender fingers possessed no feminine gentleness, only comparable to sharp weapons of murder.

“As a human, my heart had already died. Only my body still functioned, maintaining my human behavior. The person who picked me up and kept my ‘life’ was Kiritsugu; therefore, he can use my life in any way he wishes… That is the reason why I’m staying here.”

Although Irisviel had long predicted that Maiya had a tragic past, the things she said far surpassed Irisviel’s imagination.

Irisviel was silent and didn’t know how to respond. This time, it was Maiya who opened her mouth and posed a question instead.

“—Oh?”

Irisviel hadn't expected Maiya to say such a thing and couldn’t help but feel surprised.

“You’ve always lived in such a secluded castle and known precious little about the outside world. Why would you support Kiritsugu, who vowed to change the world, to such a degree that you would be willing to sacrifice your own life…?”

“I—”

Maiya’s words once again made Irisviel sink deep into thought.

Emiya Kiritsugu, her husband, the man with a dream to ‘save the world’. Now that she knew he sought the Holy Grail hidden in her own body, did her current self still hold the same ideal as he did?

“—True. To be honest, I don’t understand Kiritsugu’s ideal all that much.”

Yes, her answer was – negative.

“In the end, I probably only pretended to understand. Maybe it was just to stay together with the person I love. Like you said, Maiya, I know almost nothing of the world Kiritsugu wants to change. The ideal in my heart was probably just something Kiritsugu taught me.”

“…Do you think that?”

“Mmm. But please keep it a secret from Kiritsugu.”

This was an incredible feeling for Irisviel. She had said words in front of this person she would never say in front of her own husband.

“No matter what the situation, I would tell him I firmly believed him to be right. I could even sacrifice my life for his ideal. I pretended that I possessed the same ideal as him. If I gave my life for an ideal we both shared—compared to a woman who simply sacrificed herself for her husband, wouldn’t I have become less of a burden for Kiritsugu?”

“I see.”

Her love for Kiritsugu and her trust in Saber were two completely different feelings. For Irisviel, this feeling of relying on someone, a feeling she was having for the first time, could probably be called ‘friendship’.

“Then, madam, don’t you have any wishes of your own?”

As she was again asked this question, Irisviel couldn’t help but remember the battle she and Maiya had faced together in the forest. Back then, faced with Kotomine Kirei’s enormous and overwhelming presence, just where had that surge of fighting spirit come from?

“I probably do have… a wish. I wish for Kiritsugu and Saber to obtain victory. I, for them, wish them to possess the Grail.”

Of course, that would also mean Irisviel’s death, her eternal farewell with Kiritsugu.

However, even so, this wish – became the fountain that provided the heaving courage in Irisviel’s heart.

“Is that… the so-called wish of the Einzbern family, the achievement of the Third Magic?”

“No. I don’t mind even if we don’t reach the Greater Grail. What I hope for is an end to the war forever. It’s the same as what Kiritsugu seeks; to change the structure of this world and end all fighting. This battle for the Holy Grail at Fuyuki City would be no exception, wouldn’t it? This is already the fourth time, and I wish for this to be the last Heaven’s Feel. In terms of homunculi sacrificed as vessels of the Grail – I hope I will be the last one.”

“Mmm.”

Illyasviel von Einzbern. A creature with all great achievements of alchemy gathered within her, born from the womb of a homunculus and conceived with the sperm of a magus. Although she hadn’t seen her with her own eyes, Maiya had heard of her existence long ago.

“It was the plan of the head of the family. For the ‘protector of the Grail’ after me, he planned to use a homunculus with even greater mechanisms. He not only implanted the secrets of the Holy Grail into the embryo, but also added Magic Circuits to her exterior and made her physical body capable of becoming a vessel of the ‘Grail’ by itself. The head of the family had already predicted the possibility of ‘the Fifth round’ before the ‘Fourth’ Heaven’s Feel began, and he allowed me to give birth to Illya. If Kiritsugu and I fail, that child will become the experimental specimen for ‘the Dress of Heaven’.”

At this time, Irisviel’s voice was full of the gentleness of familial love.

This was the concrete evidence that the homunculus called Irisviel was not simply an artificial machine. She had the heart of a human, the benevolence of love, a smile of happiness, and tears of sadness. The warmth swelling in her heart was the most important part of being human.

“When I held that child and fed her… I was also very much aware that she wouldn’t be able to escape the destiny of becoming a ‘vessel’ in the end. Can you understand the feelings of a mother who felt endless despair when looking at her beloved child?”

“…”

Maiya was silent and didn’t answer. Irisviel continued.

“However, that is the destiny carried by the homunculi of the Einzberns. Be it that child or my granddaughter, this sorrow is tasted again and again every time a daughter is born. This fate will be repeated every time the Fuyuki Holy Grail descends. Therefore, I hope this pain can end here with me, using my body to end the stubborn wish of the Einzberns. If my wish can be fulfilled, then my daughter will be freed from this tragic destiny. That child would probably be able to live her entire life as a human and have nothing to do with the Holy Grail.”

“Are those the feelings of a mother?”

Only when Maiya asked this did Irisviel realize she had exposed too much of her feelings. She gave an embarrassed, bitter smile.

“Perhaps. Maybe you find it hard to understand, Maiya.”

“It's not too hard. I’ve also been a mother, myself.”

“—Huh?”

It really was a surprising reply. Irisviel almost doubted her own ears.

As if feeling slightly apologetic for surprising Irisviel so, Maiya related the event in a calm voice.

“I…actually experienced pregnancy and delivery, although it could be said that it was an accident.”

“…Were you married once?”

“No. I don’t know who the father is. During battle, every night in the barracks, the male soldiers would come to all of us female soldiers and… I can’t remember when it started… anyways, I became pregnant soon after I became a woman. The child wasn’t given a name and I don’t know if he’s still alive. If he hasn’t died, he must still exist in some remote corner of that battlefield, fighting for his life. The children there are all given guns and sent to battle when they turn five years old.”

“How can it…”

When she heard this former child soldier in front of her recounting tragic stories of the past, Irisviel couldn’t help but feel stunned.

“Are you surprised? But such things are definitely not new in this world, are they? Modern terrorists and guerrilla warfare groups all know the benefits of using children as soldiers, and early successes such as I also serve as evidence. Therefore, children who share my experience did not decrease in the modern age, but rather increased.”

Maiya narrated silently, her eyes seeming less and less alive. Sorrow and hatred also began to disappear from her voice. Perhaps the only thing left in her memories was endless despair.

“Madam, perhaps you thought the world you saw with your own eyes for the first time was very beautiful and envied the happy people living there. However, I am very envious of you, who always lived in that castle. You did not experience any of the terror and ugliness of this world.”

Although there were no feelings of jealousy or hatred in Maiya’s contemplation, Irisviel felt rather embarrassed upon hearing it.

Maiya seemed to detect Irisviel’s feelings, so she continued.

“If such a world can really be changed… then no matter how Kiritsugu chooses to use my life toward that end, I will not utter a single word of refusal.”

But I don’t know how to do anything apart from fighting—Maiya muttered softly to herself. There was no exaggeration in that sentence. Without goals and without hope, her heart was as desolate as a barren, fire-ravaged field.

Although her inner feelings were completely different from Kiritsugu’s, they were amazingly similar as soldiers. Maiya’s existence constantly served as a reminder to Kiritsugu, and at the same time provided him with an example. Because of Maiya’s close existence, Kiritsugu had sealed himself within this dilemma and made himself a cruel hunting machine devoid of mercy.

“What… do you want to do after Kiritsugu achieves his wish?”

When Irisviel asked this, Maiya’s eyes once again became confused.

“—I never imagined I’d be able to complete this task and live. If I really managed to stay alive, I would have no reason to keep living. There shouldn’t be any place for me in the world changed by Kiritsugu.”

A world without war had no place for someone like her, someone who knew nothing but combat. For Maiya, it was the logical conclusion.

Such sad, melancholic feelings made Irisviel speak out.

“No, that’s not true. Maiya, you still have things you have to do after the war finishes.”

“…”

Irisviel continued speaking while staring at the confused eyes of the female soldier.

“You must search for your family and your own name, and the whereabouts of your child. They are things that shouldn’t be forgotten. They are things that should be remembered.”

“Is that so…”

Contrary to Irisviel’s passion, Maiya’s reply was full of emotionless nonchalance.

“If we really can usher in a world without war, then the memories of people like me would be nothing short of nightmarish. Remembering them would only make me more painful. Would you want me to bring the seed of hatred into the utopia we’ve finally created?”

“That’s not true. Your life wasn’t a dream. It contains facts that really happened. A peace created by burying all those memories in the darkness of the past is nothing but a sinful lie. I think a truly peaceful world shouldn’t simply forget those past pains. Instead, we should solemnly remember those previous pains and sacrifices so we don’t go down the same sad road and can continue on to create a peaceful new world.”

“…”

Maiya gazed at Irisviel silently – then spoke with a slightly more relieved face.

“You should have said these things to Kiritsugu earlier. Had you done that, maybe he would already have obtained salvation.”

Maiya’s heartfelt words brought both joy and loneliness into Irisviel’s heart.

Perhaps – as she was on the verge of destruction, she would never have the chance to chat with her husband again.

“—Then, Maiya, I trust you to bring these words to him. Tell him I said them.”

Maiya replied with a vague shrug of her shoulders.

“I’ll do as I see fit. But that’s to come after the war finishes. We shouldn’t be careless for now.”

Although Maiya’s tone was very cold, Irisviel still heard the playfulness in her words.

“Really, you’re just—”

Before Irisviel finished speaking, the underground storage suddenly began to shake violently .

Maiya rushed to Irisviel and held her shoulders, quickly switching to battle mode. Her gaze became as sharp as a blade, and she grabbed her light machine gun with her right hand and aimed it at the iron doors of the underground storage.

The underground storage shook once again. This time, the thick and heavy iron door deformed with a violent impact from the outside, as if someone outside was powerfully banging on it. It was a terrible feat only possible through use of a mechanical crane. For the two participants of this Heaven’s Feel, it wasn’t something worthy of surprise – rather, they only felt despair.

If it was really a Servant attempting to charge into the underground storage, then Maiya’s weapons would be completely useless against it. Moreover, they couldn’t even escape in the current situation, truly trapped at a dead end.

However, before terror could even pass through their minds, there came a disbelieving confusion.

Who could have known that Irisviel was hiding in this underground storage?

The protective barrier should have detected any clairvoyance or arriving familiars. However, the enemy skipped any reconnaissance and directly sent the Servant to Irisviel’s safe house with such accuracy; could it be that the enemy had learned of this place a long time ago?

A third shockwave. Before the iron doors were destroyed, the earthen walls around them could no longer take such a powerful impact and collapsed first.

With soaring dust, the iron doors fell into the underground storage. The setting sun shone in through the doorway, dying the room a shade of bloodstained red.

And that giant figure looming over the debris and dust was undoubtedly – Servant Rider, King of Conquerors, Alexander.

Maiya could only hold onto the light machine gun in her hands with utter despair.

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Back to [[Fate/Zero:Act_13_Part_3|Act 13, Part 3]]
| Return to [[Fate/Zero|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Fate/Zero:Act_14_Part_1|Act 14, Part 1]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Fate/Zero:Act 13 Part 4

2017-10-27T03:50:33Z

Toshiya: /* -37:02:47 */ weird linebreaks and whitespace

=== -37:02:47 ===

When Irisviel opened her eyes again, the first thing to fall into her sight was the light of the setting sun dying the high windows of the underground storage a sheen of crimson red.

Since losing consciousness, she had been immersed in a deep sleep and felt as though the entire day had disappeared. Rather than sleeping, her deteriorating body was better described as entering a near death state.

But it felt fine for the moment, so maybe such a long rest had some effect after all. She still didn’t have enough strength to sit up, but she could at least gather enough breath to speak.

Irisviel looked to her side and discovered Hisau Maiya still sitting in a corner of the room, still as a painting. She was in the same place with the same posture as before Irisviel had fallen asleep, but the razor sharp look emanating from her eyes held not a sliver of exhaustion or fatigue. She was just staring blankly into air.

Though she made a dependable sight, she could easily have been mistaken for a robot or familiar. Even Irisviel couldn’t help but feel a certain degree of fear towards her. Just what kind of training and how strong a will must she have had to be able to maintain such a degree of focus? It was unimaginable.

With some awe, Irisviel suddenly realized – this woman called Hisau Maiya may have achieved a state above the realm that Kiritsugu pursued.

“—Hey, Maiya.”

Irisviel called softly. Like a hound that suddenly heard its calling trumpet, Maiya immediately turned her eyes towards Irisviel.

“Why… do you fight for Kiritsugu?”

“…Because I have nothing else.”

When she realized that her charge was not in any pain or discomfort and just wanted to chat, Maiya relaxed her taut nerves a little and answered after a short pause for thought.

“I can’t remember anything concerning my family or my name. This name, Hisau Maiya, was given to me by Kiritsugu when he made my fake passport.”

“—Huh?”

Seeing the surprise on Irisviel’s face, the end of Maiya’s mouth twitched with a small smile. For someone like her, who showed no discernible emotion on her face, that was the limit of what she could do to show her relaxed mood.

“All I can remember is that it was a very poor country. There was no hope, there was no future. The only things left were communal hatred and conflict over food for survival.

"War would never end. There were no funds left to maintain armies, but the mutual slaughter continued without a moment’s pause… No one remembered whose idea it was, but at that time someone decided it was faster to get children to go to the frontline with guns than to hire soldiers and train them.”

“…”

“Therefore, I don’t remember anything before I had a gun in my hand. I could only keep killing others to prolong my own life. Snipe my enemy, pull back the trigger; that was the only function left in my being. Everything else was discarded… the children who couldn’t do that were all killed by those children who could. I lived on aimlessly just like that until I met Kiritsugu.”

As Maiya spoke, she lowered her head to look her at hands. Those long, slender fingers possessed no feminine gentleness, only comparable to sharp weapons of murder.

“As a human, my heart had already died. Only my body still functioned, maintaining my human behavior. The person who picked me up and kept my ‘life’ was Kiritsugu; therefore, he can use my life in any way he wishes… That is the reason why I’m staying here.”

Although Irisviel had long predicted that Maiya had a tragic past, the things she said far surpassed Irisviel’s imagination.

Irisviel was silent and didn’t know how to respond. This time, it was Maiya who opened her mouth and posed a question instead.

“—Oh?”

Irisviel hadn't expected Maiya to say such a thing and couldn’t help but feel surprised.

“You’ve always lived in such a secluded castle and known precious little about the outside world. Why would you support Kiritsugu, who vowed to change the world, to such a degree that you would be willing to sacrifice your own life…?”

“I—”

Maiya’s words once again made Irisviel sink deep into thought.

Emiya Kiritsugu, her husband, the man with a dream to ‘save the world’. Now that she knew he sought the Holy Grail hidden in her own body, did her current self still hold the same ideal as he did?

“—True. To be honest, I don’t understand Kiritsugu’s ideal all that much.”

Yes, her answer was – negative.

“In the end, I probably only pretended to understand. Maybe it was just to stay together with the person I love. Like you said, Maiya, I know almost nothing of the world Kiritsugu wants to change. The ideal in my heart was probably just something Kiritsugu taught me.”

“…Do you think that?”

“Mmm. But please keep it a secret from Kiritsugu.”

This was an incredible feeling for Irisviel. She had said words in front of this person she would never say in front of her own husband.

“No matter what the situation, I would tell him I firmly believed him to be right. I could even sacrifice my life for his ideal. I pretended that I possessed the same ideal as him. If I gave my life for an ideal we both shared—compared to a woman who simply sacrificed herself for her husband, wouldn’t I have become less of a burden for Kiritsugu?”

“I see.”

Her love for Kiritsugu and her trust in Saber were two completely different feelings. For Irisviel, this feeling of relying on someone, a feeling she was having for the first time, could probably be called ‘friendship’.

“Then, madam, don’t you have any wishes of your own?”

As she was again asked this question, Irisviel couldn’t help but remember the battle she and Maiya had faced together in the forest. Back then, faced with Kotomine Kirei’s enormous and overwhelming presence, just where had that surge of fighting spirit come from?

“I probably do have… a wish. I wish for Kiritsugu and Saber to obtain victory. I, for them, wish them to possess the Grail.”

Of course, that would also mean Irisviel’s death, her eternal farewell with Kiritsugu.

However, even so, this wish – became the fountain that provided the heaving courage in Irisviel’s heart.

“Is that… the so-called wish of the Einzbern family, the achievement of the Third Magic?”

“No. I don’t mind even if we don’t reach the Greater Grail. What I hope for is an end to the war forever. It’s the same as what Kiritsugu seeks; to change the structure of this world and end all fighting. This battle for the Holy Grail at Fuyuki City would be no exception, wouldn’t it? This is already the fourth time, and I wish for this to be the last Heaven’s Feel. In terms of homunculi sacrificed as vessels of the Grail – I hope I will be the last one.”

“Mmm.”

Illyasviel von Einzbern. A creature with all great achievements of alchemy gathered within her, born from the womb of a homunculus and conceived with the sperm of a magus. Although she hadn’t seen her with her own eyes, Maiya had heard of her existence long ago.

“It was the plan of the head of the family. For the ‘protector of the Grail’ after me, he planned to use a homunculus with even greater mechanisms. He not only implanted the secrets of the Holy Grail into the embryo, but also added Magic Circuits to her exterior and made her physical body capable of becoming a vessel of the ‘Grail’ by itself. The head of the family had already predicted the possibility of ‘the Fifth round’ before the ‘Fourth’ Heaven’s Feel began, and he allowed me to give birth to Illya. If Kiritsugu and I fail, that child will become the experimental specimen for ‘the Dress of Heaven’.”

At this time, Irisviel’s voice was full of the gentleness of familial love.

This was the concrete evidence that the homunculus called Irisviel was not simply an artificial machine. She had the heart of a human, the benevolence of love, a smile of happiness, and tears of sadness. The warmth swelling in her heart was the most important part of being human.

“When I held that child and fed her… I was also very much aware that she wouldn’t be able to escape the destiny of becoming a ‘vessel’ in the end. Can you understand the feelings of a mother who felt endless despair when looking at her beloved child?”

“…”

Maiya was silent and didn’t answer. Irisviel continued.

“However, that is the destiny carried by the homunculi of the Einzberns. Be it that child or my granddaughter, this sorrow is tasted again and again every time a daughter is born. This fate will be repeated every time the Fuyuki Holy Grail descends. Therefore, I hope this pain can end here with me, using my body to end the stubborn wish of the Einzberns. If my wish can be fulfilled, then my daughter will be freed from this tragic destiny. That child would probably be able to live her entire life as a human and have nothing to do with the Holy Grail.”

“Are those the feelings of a mother?”

Only when Maiya asked this did Irisviel realize she had exposed too much of her feelings. She gave an embarrassed, bitter smile.

“Perhaps. Maybe you find it hard to understand, Maiya.”

“It's not too hard. I’ve also been a mother, myself.”

“—Huh?”

It really was a surprising reply. Irisviel almost doubted her own ears.

As if feeling slightly apologetic for surprising Irisviel so, Maiya related the event in a calm voice.

“I…actually experienced pregnancy and delivery, although it could be said that it was an accident.”

“…Were you married once?”

“No. I don’t know who the father is. During battle, every night in the barracks, the male soldiers would come to all of us female soldiers and… I can’t remember when it started… anyways, I became pregnant soon after I became a woman. The child wasn’t given a name and I don’t know if he’s still alive. If he hasn’t died, he must still exist in some remote corner of that battlefield, fighting for his life. The children there are all given guns and sent to battle when they turn five years old.”

“How can it…”

When she heard this former child soldier in front of her recounting tragic stories of the past, Irisviel couldn’t help but feel stunned.

“Are you surprised? But such things are definitely not new in this world, are they? Modern terrorists and guerrilla warfare groups all know the benefits of using children as soldiers, and early successes such as I also serve as evidence. Therefore, children who share my experience did not decrease in the modern age, but rather increased.”

Maiya narrated silently, her eyes seeming less and less alive. Sorrow and hatred also began to disappear from her voice. Perhaps the only thing left in her memories was endless despair.

“Madam, perhaps you thought the world you saw with your own eyes for the first time was very beautiful and envied the happy people living there. However, I am very envious of you, who always lived in that castle. You did not experience any of the terror and ugliness of this world.”

Although there were no feelings of jealousy or hatred in Maiya’s contemplation, Irisviel felt rather embarrassed upon hearing it.

Maiya seemed to detect Irisviel’s feelings, so she continued.

“If such a world can really be changed… then no matter how Kiritsugu chooses to use my life toward that end, I will not utter a single word of refusal.”

But I don’t know how to do anything apart from fighting—Maiya muttered softly to herself. There was no exaggeration in that sentence. Without goals and without hope, her heart was as desolate as a barren, fire-ravaged field.

Although her inner feelings were completely different from Kiritsugu’s, they were amazingly similar as soldiers. Maiya’s existence constantly served as a reminder to Kiritsugu, and at the same time provided him with an example. Because of Maiya’s close existence, Kiritsugu had sealed himself within this dilemma and made himself a cruel hunting machine devoid of mercy.

“What… do you want to do after Kiritsugu achieves his wish?”

When Irisviel asked this, Maiya’s eyes once again became confused.

“—I never imagined I’d be able to complete this task and live. If I really managed to stay alive, I would have no reason to keep living. There shouldn’t be any place for me in the world changed by Kiritsugu.”

A world without war had no place for someone like her, someone who knew nothing but combat. For Maiya, it was the logical conclusion.

Such sad, melancholic feelings made Irisviel speak out.

“No, that’s not true. Maiya, you still have things you have to do after the war finishes.”

“…”

Irisviel continued speaking while staring at the confused eyes of the female soldier.

“You must search for your family and your own name, and the whereabouts of your child. They are things that shouldn’t be forgotten. They are things that should be remembered.”

“Is that so…”

Contrary to Irisviel’s passion, Maiya’s reply was full of emotionless nonchalance.

“If we really can usher in a world without war, then the memories of people like me would be nothing short of nightmarish. Remembering them would only make me more painful. Would you want me to bring the seed of hatred into the utopia we’ve finally created?”

“That’s not true. Your life wasn’t a dream. It contains facts that really happened. A peace created by burying all those memories in the darkness of the past is nothing but a sinful lie. I think a truly peaceful world shouldn’t simply forget those past pains. Instead, we should solemnly remember those previous pains and sacrifices so we don’t go down the same sad road and can continue on to create a peaceful new world.”

“…”

Maiya gazed at Irisviel silently – then spoke with a slightly more relieved face.

“You should have said these things to Kiritsugu earlier. Had you done that, maybe he would already have obtained salvation.”

Maiya’s heartfelt words brought both joy and loneliness into Irisviel’s heart.

Perhaps – as she was on the verge of destruction, she would never have the chance to chat with her husband again.

“—Then, Maiya, I trust you to bring these words to him. Tell him I said them.”

Maiya replied with a vague shrug of her shoulders.

“I’ll do as I see fit. But that’s to come after the war finishes. We shouldn’t be careless for now.”

Although Maiya’s tone was very cold, Irisviel still heard the playfulness in her words.

“Really, you’re just—”

Before Irisviel finished speaking, the underground storage suddenly began to shake violently .

Maiya rushed to Irisviel and held her shoulders, quickly switching to battle mode. Her gaze became as sharp as a blade, and she grabbed her light machine gun with her right hand and aimed it at the iron doors of the underground storage.

The underground storage shook once again. This time, the thick and heavy iron door deformed with a violent impact from the outside, as if someone outside was powerfully banging on it. It was a terrible feat only possible through use of a mechanical crane. For the two participants of this Heaven’s Feel, it wasn’t something worthy of surprise – rather, they only felt despair.

If it was really a Servant attempting to charge into the underground storage, then Maiya’s weapons would be completely useless against it. Moreover, they couldn’t even escape in the current situation, truly trapped at a dead end.

However, before terror could even pass through their minds, there came a disbelieving confusion.

Who could have known that Irisviel was hiding in this underground storage?

The protective barrier should have detected any clairvoyance or arriving familiars. However, the enemy skipped any reconnaissance and directly sent the Servant to Irisviel’s safe house with such accuracy; could it be that the enemy had learned of this place a long time ago?

A third shockwave. Before the iron doors were destroyed, the earthen walls around them could no longer take such a powerful impact and collapsed first.

With soaring dust, the iron doors fell into the underground storage. The setting sun shone in through the doorway, dying the room a shade of bloodstained red.

And that giant figure looming over the debris and dust was undoubtedly – Servant Rider, King of Conquerors, Alexander.

Maiya could only hold onto the light machine gun in her hands with utter despair.

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Back to [[Fate/Zero:Act_13_Part_3|Act 13, Part 3]]
| Return to [[Fate/Zero|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Fate/Zero:Act_14_Part_1|Act 14, Part 1]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Fate/Zero:Act 14 Part 3

2017-10-27T03:40:25Z

Toshiya: /* -36:44:26 */

=== -36:44:26 ===

From a building far away, three pairs of eyes watched Rider’s flying Noble Phantasm as it appeared in the airspace above Shinto city, as well as Saber as she changed her route to pursue him.

One person’s eyes expressed satisfaction. One pair of eyes was extremely fatigued. And one more person —could those eyes, filled with violent frenzy, still be said to belong to a human?

“I did not think that the real Rider would actually appear… This is truly a good show. Matou Kariya, you often bring luck to your companions on the battlefield.”

Kotomine Kirei said this with a smile, in a tone that held a slight insinuation of sarcasm. At the same time, he slapped Kariya’s shoulder to indicate admiration. Kariya's good right eye regarded him with suspicion.

“Father… do you think it was worth wasting two Command Spells on such a small matter?”

Kariya looked at his right hand, which was missing two Command Spells, with some dissatisfaction. Kirei said to him, smiling.

“There is no need to worry. Kariya, as long as you are willing to help me, you need not worry about wasting Command Spells—come, stretch out your hand.”

Kirei caught hold of Kariya’s veined and withered right hand, softly chanting a Holy Word while tracing the mark of the Command Spells with his own hand. At his small ministration, the darkened Command Spells immediately regained their light and returned to the previous shape of three marks.

“You… really—“

“Did I not already tell you? Kariya. I accepted the duty of Supervisor, so I have the right to redistribute the Command Spells in safekeeping of the Church at will.

“…”

Kariya was unable to surmise the other’s true intentions; he regarded Kirei unabashedly, then glanced with a sigh at his own Servant.

The large silhouette standing behind him was Rider, King of Conquerors, Alexander. Whether it was the crimson mantle or the curly red hair, or the burly physique—everything was the same as the driver of the chariot that had sped out of Fuyuki City with Saber. The only difference was the pair of eerie, blood-red eyes radiating resentment… Undoubtedly, this was a characteristic unique to a Mad Enhanced Servant.

Wrapped in his thickset arms was the slender body of Irisviel, who had lost consciousness and was still in a coma. This ‘Rider’ was the true culprit who had kidnapped the ‘Guardian of the Holy Grail’ from the underground storage that Maiya protected, and had also lured Saber to give chase toward Shinto.

“… That is enough, Berserker.”

Kariya nodded. The large body of the King of Conquerors turned into a pitch-black fog as if burnt, then reverted to the armored figure filled with an ominous air. The dark energy that imitated Rider’s appearance twined about his hands and legs, obscuring small parts of the black armor.

Seeing Berserker returned to his original form, Kirei said as if groaning.

“This sort of transformation ability… It is truly wasted as a Noble Phantasm of Berserker’s level.”

“This guy initially had the ability to transform into many other Heroic Spirits that had won merit in military exploits for other people. Because of the Mad Enhancement, it has been reduced to the ability of ‘imitation’.”

The black fog that twined about Berserker’s entire body was originally a Noble Phantasm that had the purpose of not only hiding his visage, but also of mimicking any person in order to deceive enemies’ ears and eyes. Ever since Berserker had been stripped of his rationality, this ability could not be brought into play. Kariya had forced this ability to manifest through the power of the Command Spells and made it possible to disguise Berserker as a fake Rider. But this ability could only be used once.

“Ar… ur…”

Berserker stared after the light of Saber’s motorcycle headlights moving gradually further away into the east, his gaze full of hatred. A bone-deep hatred caused his shoulders to shake ceaselessly, the armor chafing with a creaking sound, but he did not do anything else out of the ordinary. That was due to the binding of the ultimate command, the second Command Spell that Kariya had used—“capture Irisviel, and let Saber escape”.

In order to make Berserker, who had an unusual stubbornness when it came to Saber, follow his own instruction, it was necessary to restrict him with a forceful command.

For Berserker, it appeared that those shackles were extremely difficult to endure. Although his task was now complete, the black knight seemed like a mechanical part that had malfunctioned; his limbs continuously convulsed, stubbornly resisting this command.

Kariya felt a chill run down his back at Berserker’s willfulness. As Berserker fell into a state of uncontrollability, Kariya forcefully cut off the prana connection with him. Having lost the prana that sustained his form in this world, the Servant immediately reverted to spirit form and the body of Irisviel, losing its support, was violently thrown to the rooftop floor. On impact, the sleeping homunculus gave a soft groan of pain, but nevertheless did not open her eyes. Since being forcefully kidnapped from the Magic Circle in which she had rested, Irisviel’s awareness had become even thinner.

“Is this woman really the ‘Vessel of the Holy Grail’?”

“To be precise, it is this homunculus. If one or two more Servants are finished, then it will probably show its true form… I will prepare the ritual to receive the Grail as it descends. Until that time, let this woman also be temporarily under my protection.”

The robed man picked up the weak body of the woman; Kariya wordlessly communicated his question with his eyes.

Kirei noticed his gaze and replied as before, with a leisurely and self-satisfied smile.

“Don’t worry. I will give you the Grail as per our agreement. Because I have no need to pursue that wish-granting machine.”

“Before that, you seem to also have promised me another thing, Father.”

“Ah, that thing… Of course there is no problem. You just have to come to the church tonight at midnight. I will make the preparation for you to meet Tohsaka Tokiomi then.”

“…”

Exactly what did this priest intend? — It made Kariya’s heart very troubled to not be able to discern his true intention all this time.

Though Kotomine Kirei had once been a disciple under Tohsaka Tokiomi, for the sake of participating in the Heaven’s Feel he had split ways and become a Master—a hypocrite. But from the perspective of the Matou family that had also participated in the previous Heaven’s Feel, the collusion between the Tohsaka house and the Church had long been known. In this case, it was also obvious without needing to be said that this son of the Supervisor, who was also an Executor of the Church, had summoned Assassin as Tokiomi’s lackey.

At noon today, Kirei had actually come running all of a sudden to knock on the door of the Matou house, saying that he hoped to discuss the establishment an alliance. According to him, the responsibility for Supervisor Kotomine Risei’s death fell on Tohsaka; as the man’s son it was necessary for him to avenge his father, and so he wished to use the hand of the Matous to kill Tokiomi.

Although Kariya knew that this intention was suspicious, the conditions laid out by Kotomine Kirei were truly too alluring to him.

This man had not only planned to trap Tokiomi, but also investigated the location in which Einzbern, protector of the ‘Vessel of the Grail’, was hiding and secretly succeeded the right to safekeep the Command Spells as Supervisor; it could be said that he held the most important trump card to the latter half of the Heaven’s Feel.

To Kariya, holding the ticking time bomb known as Berserker, isolated and unable to trust even his own kin, Kirei’s assistance was greater than an army of thousands; his heart was immediately grounded. However, the condition was that he had to trust everything that this man, Kotomine Kirei said.

Kotomine Kirei could ensure that the homunculus of the Einzbern family was in his hands. He even generously replenished his consumed Command Spells… But even thus, Kariya was unable to completely trust this priest whose smile surfaced as leisurely and self-satisfied.

The attitude of this man was truly too relaxed. Perhaps it was due to the confidence brought about by the secret he held, which was the most important deciding factor. But if he were only to look at it thus simply—that indicated that he had no sense of danger in the face of battle, or a sense of anxiety in needing to consider tactics.

If it were absolutely necessary to describe, that smile was closer to that of an excited child playing a game. In the name of betraying his benefactor to avenge his father, this man had formed an alliance with him. It was very obvious that this man found great joy in this sort of situation…

“It will be too suspicious if both of us appear at the same time. Kariya, why don’t you go back first?”

“… And you?”

“I still have some small things to do… Don’t forget, Kariya. Tonight at midnight, your wish shall be accomplished there.”

The priest seemed to be even more concerned over the whole affair than Kariya himself, reminding Kariya again in a voice filled with anticipation.

Kariya once again regarded his smile with a suspicious gaze, then slowly turned around and walked toward the rooftop staircase.

Without the slightest carelessness, Kotomine Kirei listened closely to his ally’s footsteps moving into the distance. After confirming that the sound of footsteps had entirely disappeared—he again moved to a corner of the rooftop and shifted his gaze to a pile of discarded material covered by many sheets of water-resistant material.

“… I have already sent him away. I don’t know who you are, but isn’t it about time you revealed yourself?”

This voice carried an authority that did not permit compromise. After a period of silence, a hair-raising and suppressed laughter rang out, seeping into the icy night air.

“Oh, already noticed, have you? Indeed, you are worthy of being an Executor who has experienced battle. Much more sensitive than that kid Kariya."

From the darkness appeared a shadow without definite form. At first glance Kirei had even thought that it was a large pile of worms, a collection that would send a chill through anyone—but the bright moonlight immediately chased away this misconception; it was an old man, thin and small of stature, that quietly walked out.

“Executor, you have no need to worry. I am not your enemy. I am the kin of that kid who is cooperating with you.”

Since he named himself thus—in Kirei’s heart surfaced a suitable person.

“Matou Zōken… is it not?”

“Indeed. You even know my name. It seems that Tohsaka instructs his disciples well.”

The old magus quirked a corner of the lips deeply hidden in wrinkles, revealing an inhuman smile.

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The thickness of the darkness spread about the mountain road was already incomparable to that of evening; it seemed that it was already night.

In the darkness that was black as ink, you would not see your hand in front of your face. The brilliance of the headlights ripped apart this patch of darkness. Saber was still driving the steel beast as if her life depended on it.

She had traveled this path when escorting Einzbern out of the city. When they had left, it had been Irisviel driving; returning, it was Saber who tightly gripped the steering wheel of the Mercedes-Benz, sure of the road. Though it was only two times that they had come and gone, it was enough for Saber. Her memory was above average; be it the width of the road or the angle of inclination or even when to make a turn, she could clearly recall it all.

Saber saw that Rider’s ‘Gordius Wheel’ had only just descended from high in the air and landed somewhere far away. For some unknown reason, the King of Conquerors had not continued to flee, but had landed on the ground, seemingly intending to respond to Saber’s challenge of having a competition of riding skills on the ground.

His air of heroism seemed not to be miscible with his sneak tactic of kidnapping Irisviel, but perhaps this was exactly the conflict between Rider and his Master. The actions of Servants restricted by the contract often brought about many contradictory results; this was not surprising.

This was exactly the personal experience that Saber herself had gained through her conflict with Emiya Kiritsugu.

It made Saber very happy that Rider could make a decision based on his own agenda in this final battleground. Between these two fast-moving riders, Kiritsugu had no way of interfering even if he wanted to. To Saber, this was something she wanted very much.

The key of the problem lay somewhere else—the vibration of the handlebars she was tightly gripping sent a message of danger.

As a man-made machine, the V-MAX had already fully manifested all of its ability. What was sad was that what was driving ahead was a quick-moving Noble Phantasm that transcended normality. Although the V-MAX was already being towed along by its rider Saber’s internal prana, the strength of its material composition and structure was definitely limited.

The engine and acceleration system, which from the city to here had been continuously used to their greatest capacity, were already showing signs of breaking down. Saber’s excellent driving allowed her to be aware of this vehicle’s internal situation as well as she would have known an extension of her own physical body. It was already possible to clearly hear the dejected cry of almost having reached its limit.

“It’ll be terrible if this goes on…”

There would be nothing more to say if she were to decelerate in consideration of the vehicle’s burden, but if it were necessary to force the motorcycle to continue at its high speed, this vehicle would fall apart within a few minutes. If no measures were taken to strengthen the innate capability of the vehicle…

Saber herself had difficulty judging the feasibility of the plan that had momentarily flashed into her mind, but there was no way to hesitate further. Saber made up her mind and entrusted everything to all the possibilities that had been given to her as a Servant.

The full-body platinum armor that she wore while fighting— she now intended not to put the armor on her own body, but to fuse it with the body of the V-MAX through intense psychokinesis. The concept was similar to the armor that protected beloved horses on the battlefield. With the sense of unity of riding as the mainstay, this time she must definitely turn this steel beast that could not speak into her own limbs…

Her prana continuously being released, the various important parts of the V-MAX that could ensure maximum speed of movement were completely covered and protected; the flexible and strong armor increased the capability of the motorcycle.

“—This is great!”

Though this usage was unexpected, Saber’s great skill made this difficult task possible. The entire structure of the V-MAX was wrapped in brand-new silver armor, beautiful and majestic to behold. This hard structure of the vehicle was in no way inferior to that monstrous, extraordinarily strong horsepower; this time, the mechanical lion had finally become a real magical beast. The exhaust pipe thundered.

Saber released the Invisible Air like an arrow directly in front of her, completely covering the body of the vehicle. Using the compression of the pneumatic umbrella to decrease air resistance to zero, the V-MAX was finally released from air resistance.

The needle of the speedometer was already damaged and could not be used. Saber’s prana had caused the rushing vehicle to transcend the laws of physics; already the speed was more than 400 kilometers per hour. The pressure released by the magecraft pressed the rear wheel firmly against the cement; even when making turns, Saber did not release the throttle and turned the body of the vehicle round by force.

Like this, it might even be possible— it made Saber extremely excited to have captured this thread of victory through so much effort.

The distance from the ‘Gordius Wheel’ in front gradually shortened. Originally it had looked like only a point of light, but now it was already possible to clearly see the entire likeness of the thundering vehicle that was releasing lightning bolts and also turning at high speeds.

On the other side, Waver, who had been sitting in the charioteer’s seat since having touched down, was constantly watching the rear. Seeing the brilliance from the headlights of the motorcycle that was suddenly approaching, he could not help but hold his breath; he tugged at Rider’s cape.

“Rider, at this rate they will catch up to us! Eh, idiot, look out behind!”

Hearing Waver’s frantic voice, Rider snorted. As a Heroic Spirit who had appeared in this world and gained the throne of Rider, even without turning back he could clearly feel the presence of Saber gradually closing in.

“This fellow, Saber. On the account that she can catch up just using that gizmo, I cannot but praise her. On the other hand…”

Rider roared, the corner of his lips twisting, showing the smile that had always seemed somewhat sinister.

“Sorry, but this is a war chariot. Now I can no longer play nicely in this game of competing speeds with you!”

Then Rider slid the enormous structure of the car to the side, arriving at the side of the road.

On the two sides of ‘Gordius Wheel’ whose dimensions were greater than an ordinary truck were fixed two large, fiercely curved sickles. On the two sides of the national highway on which Rider was now speeding were dense forests that almost covered the path. If the wheels of the chariot were moved to the very edge of the paved road, then the blade of the sickle would definitely pass into the lush green forest—

“So, Saber, pursue me from behind!”

The electrified wheels of the chariot crushed the forest as easily as if it were cutting through paper; Rider had begun a brutal deforestation.

Though the tree trunks were all very thick, for the sharp sickles flying at 400 kilometers an hour, it was as easy as sawing wood. The tree trunks that had been instantaneously broken all snapped back and were swept into the air. The sight was like shredding wood shavings, only it was a nightmare a few hundred times more majestic.

Seeing this tremendous scene of destruction, Saber could not help but hold her breath.

“Damn it…!”

The trees that had been swept up into the air descended like rain upon their target, which was obviously the head of Saber who was catching up from behind. To say nothing of being directly hit—at this speed, even if the steering wheel should be gently brushed across, it would be a matter of life and death.

Deceleration—was impossible. This was not a test that could be avoided just by retreating. The only path of survival was to rush on forward.

Saber made up her mind; after making thorough mental preparation, she rushed into the rain of continuously falling trees without any timidity whatsoever.

These things fell toward the ground like an avalanche. The V-MAX advanced forward in a twisting manner like a snake, passing through narrow spaces. Saber thought that braking to make the motorcycle stop was an act of stupidity, so not only did she not decelerate, she also made use of the momentum from acceleration to make the front wheel leave the ground, relying only on the rear wheel to maintain balance and performing the consummate stunt of controlling the driving of a motorcycle using magecraft alone. That beautiful one-wheeled dance incited Waver to stare, completely forgetting his fear; on Rider’s face also appeared a very satisfied smile.

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“Hahahahaha! Fabulous! Indeed the King of Knights of consummate dignity! Only you are worthy to be named flower of the battlefield!”

Laughing, Rider continued to deftly slide the chariot from side to side, closing in on the next object to be cut down.

“Here I come again—next up after the trees is a rain of stones!”

The next prey of the sickles was surprisingly the solid asphalt and concrete that covered the surface of the road. Rock had a density and hardness much greater than tree trunks. But the sickles nevertheless mercilessly crushed them to rubble, sending them flying in all directions like droplets, blocking Saber’s way.

A fatal baptism of rocks much more lethal than tree trunks. But— Saber stared ahead, moving forward bravely, the corners of her mouth suddenly showing an undefeatable smile.

“King of Conquerors, you underestimate me!”

Rocks were more dangerous than tree trunks only when first assuming that they must ‘hit’. If she could dodge it all, then it would make no difference even if it were raining rockets or bullets. Saber entrusted the last hope of victory to the V-MAX which she completely trusted, using valiant and yet beautifully skilled riding ability to pass through the gaps between the stone and concrete.

On the other side, sweeping the surface of the road with its large sickles, Rider’s war chariot had already lost its ability to accelerate. The concrete was much more difficult to cut through than tree trunks and was an obstructing force to the divine bulls, one that could not be overlooked.

Saber’s sixth sense predicted the arrival of a divine opportunity for victory. From then on, the priority was to pass through the next few successive tests safe and unharmed; there would definitely be a chance to rise again from death—
A large concrete slab that had broken off the surface of the road obstructed the path of the V-MAX. The large flat stone slab, measuring more than two meters in both length and breadth, was just like a stone screen.

Facing the blocked path right ahead of her, Saber’s gaze was unwavering; driving the V-MAX forward, she raised Invisible Air over the edge.

“Chaaaaaarge!!”

Along with her roar, the clump of air pressure—which had the momentum to sweep away an army of thousands and was supported by the release of prana – impacted heavily on the top of the stone slab; the slab, which looked as if it must weigh at least several tons, was easily flung into the air. It completely defied the laws of physics that the slender wrist of a young girl could carry out such a grand feat; this was the godly skill transcending normalcy that only a Servant could possess.

Spinning rapidly in midair, the stone slab fell forward along the fatal parabola, aligned exactly with the top of the war chariot in front. Hearing Waver’s terrible scream, Rider turned his head. Raising his sword, he stared wide-eyed at the rock over his head.

“AAAAAAAAAH!”

As if saying ‘In a competition of strength I will definitely not lose to you’, Rider boldly brandished the bronze sword level with the stone slab. The slab’s trajectory was once again changed, spinning even more wildly in midair. At last it fell down like a boomerang, embedding itself deeply in the surface of the road behind the chariot.

Seeing this scene, Saber’s entire body was electrified by a revelation.

The concrete slab embedded into the asphalt road surface—the smooth side facing the sky, it was embedded diagonally into the ground at an angle of slightly more than thirty degrees. It was like a key that foretold the presence of victory.

“Now is a good time—“

Under the thumb of her right hand, which was tightly gripping the steering wheel, was a button that she had always been acutely conscious of. Saber drove the V-MAX with extraordinary riding skill; though she did not know that button’s ‘function’, she did know that button’s ‘effect’. That was the deepest secret hidden within this horse of steel, and also the most powerful trump card.

Without the slightest hesitation, Saber pressed down on the red button; the two-wheeled beast let out a provoked roar.

Within the interior of the rapidly rotating engine, inside the valve that had switched to atomization mode and filled with oxide fuel, the nitrogenous oxide expanded under the high temperature of 300 degrees Celsius and reached the boundaries of its limit. The V-MAX, suddenly increasing acceleration twofold, sped forward; this could only be called rapid acceleration. Saber used a great deal of strength to control the body of the vehicle; her target was a slope that had just appeared before her eyes.

The front wheel had already moved onto the concrete slab which was giving out creaking sounds resembling screams. Then the body of the vehicle was propelled upward; the force of the madly spinning rear wheel suspended it in the air. Even the restriction of gravity had been broken, as it flew high into the air—

To Rider, this was definitely a surprise attack that he had not anticipated. Complacently flying his Noble Phantasm in midair, he had not at all expected that the enemy would appear right above his head.

Taking advantage of the lapse as the chariot slowed, due to a great acceleration from the V-MAX’s turbocharger, as well as having made a springboard of the slope that had come about only through coincidence, Saber found Rider’s weak spot at last.

And this position above the enemy’s head was one of absolute advantage in crossing blades. This was indeed the grace of the goddess of victory given to the sword-wielding Heroic Spirit; this time was a chance of certain victory.

“Die, Rider!”

Invisible Air, which had been lifted as if she gambled everything with this one blow — slowed slightly with hesitation at that time.

Rider raised his own blade to block. The blades that clashed together—considering only power, Saber should have had a greater chance of victory due to the advantage of her position; however, the outcome was an even match. Invisible Air could not break past Rider’s defenses, and had at last been deflected away.

There was no opportunity for the swords to clash again, not between Gordius Wheel and the V-MAX which had fallen. Saber let off the speed that had been increased by the instantaneous prana release, sustaining the balance of the vehicle in midair only with great difficulty; as the rear wheel touched the ground, all the force of impact was absorbed by the rubber tire and suspension.

Thus was an excellent opportunity to seize victory lost in vain, but Saber’s unease was for another reason.

“Einzbern is not here?!”

There was no mistake. In the instant that the V-MAX had leaped, she had seen that in the charioteer’s seat of Gordius Wheel, aside from the driver Rider there was only his Master.

In that case, then where had Irisviel, who had been kidnapped from the underground storage, gone?

Saber braked with all her strength, restraining the vehicle that weighed more than 300 kilograms. The tires skidded on the surface of the ground, stopping the violent revolutions of the two wheels. All this time, she had pursued Rider without the slightest hesitation, but now the clouds of doubt surfaced in her chest.

Exactly where was Rider’s destination as he moved?

From the city street he had moved east to pass through the national highway… His final destination was the Einzbern forest.

Rider had already walked this path once, holding a bottle of wine. After kidnapping Irisviel, why would he specifically choose an escape route that led to the enemy’s territory?

Feeling a chill that made her restless, Saber gritted her teeth.

What if this was not an escape?

And how would the Master of Rider have known about the underground cellar at Miyama—yes, it was basically impossible for him to have known. Rider’s camp had not in fact known that the Einzberns had changed their location. He had definitely thought that Saber and the rest had still been in that forested citadel, and so had, in the middle of the night, driven his chariot in midair in a blind rush there.

In that case, then who was it that had attacked Maiya and kidnapped Irisviel in the underground storage?

The truth was still unclear, but now an intense premonition rushed forth into Saber’s heart that she had been tricked. That feeling made her restless. While Saber had been pursuit Rider, the culprit that had set Rider up might be fleeing with Irisviel even now.

She could not stay here any longer. She needed to return to Shinto as quickly as possible to search for Irisviel.

And yet—though this judgment was entirely accurate, Saber did not move. There was a tense aura about her body, like the rising wind that heralds a coming storm; no useless action was allowed. She gazed upon the danger before her eyes, taking her stance and preparing to go all out at any time.

About a hundred meters away, Rider’s chariot also slowed to a stop. And it had reversed the direction that it was facing, too. All this time, it had moved straight forward to let Saber trail in its dust, but now it actually turned around; the eyes of the two divine bulls, as well as their master the King of Conquerors, were filled with a feeling of the joy of battle; he looked upon Saber with a captivating gaze.

There was no need to guess. Rider’s intentions were very obvious—he intended to fight.

From his eyes could not be seen the slightest shadow of deception or scheming; he had truly been set up. The fires of rage burned in the eyes of the King of Conquerors as if demonstrating his might and saying ‘No matter how you may stab me, I will return it in equal measure’.

If Rider had moved east because he had the intention to challenge Saber, then his situation was different from that of Saber who had been led into a trap; he was in no way opposed to the current situation.

Precisely because of this, if she were to ignore the problem of Rider and return to Fuyuki City, this would mean that she would be victim to Rider’s attack from behind while she was completely unprepared.

She could only make an immediate decision now—it was a moment with no room to choose, in which she must quickly make her choice.

The small hands of hers that gripped the hilt of her sword suddenly gave out a creaking sound.

Waver huddled on the charioteer’s seat of the Gordius Wheel; he could feel that the fighting spirit of Rider, who stood beside him, had already reached its peak.

The target of the King of Conquerors was definitely ahead of him by a hundred or so meters: Saber, riding on the large motorcycle, staring in this direction with a serious expression.

She had chased Rider fervently from Shinto till here; why would she suddenly stop now? But Rider, upon seeing that his pursuer had stopped, did not take the opportunity to flee and widen the distance, but instead immediately turned the chariot around and pull it to a halt, as if intending to have a face-to-face confrontation. It stood to reason that this was a matter of course. Because to have a showdown with Saber had been Rider’s intention from the start. If the other had given up the pursuit, then it would be necessary for this side to take the initiative.

But—although Waver was not yet very mature, he still bore the burden of being a Master; feeling restless and uneasy, he could not help but bite his lip.

This distance, and this position, was all terrible.

Saber’s Noble Phantasm, which had taken the life of Caster at Mion River—ever since witnessing the ‘Sword of Promised Victory’, the war situation in front of him was clear at a glance. This was a straight road that was not obstructed by anything. There was no worry that unrelated people could be affected. Both sides were still as they stared at each other—without a doubt, the current situation was a uniquely advantageous condition for Saber’s Noble Phantasm.

Small things of this magnitude would not have gone unnoticed by war veteran Rider. He had also witnessed the might of Saber’s Noble Phantasm at Mion River. Although his judgment was more often based on emotion than reason, in matters of war strategy, this Servant would definitely not judge wrongly.

If, at this moment, the mechanical energy of the Gordius Wheel had been manifested at the largest capacity possible, perhaps it would have even been possible to evade for a time. But for some unknown reason, Rider just had to abandon the advantage he had in leg power and choose instead to confront Saber directly.

“Hey, Rider…”

“Nn. Even if it is to you, my Master, I must first make this clear.”

As if seeing through Waver’s doubt, Rider surfaced an irrepressible smile; nevertheless, his gaze never shifted from Saber as he said to the youth beside him.

“From now on, I will put aside my thoughts of winning the Grail; I intend to raise the stakes. If you wish to use a Command Spell to stop me, then perhaps now is the time?”

“…”

Because he knew the haughty personality of this Servant, he could understand his intention.

A rational Master would definitely use the power of the Command Spell to stop him; the Servant himself knew this well, too, but he wished to act recklessly anyway. Was this the case?

“You… are you really going to initiate the attack? From this angle? Rush straight over?”

“That sword of light that we saw at the riverside. When Saber has taken her stance and is preparing to use it, we shall see if my Gordius Wheel can use the time lapse to cross this distance. This is what we are contesting.”

Waver’s expression changed drastically; he began to recalculate the distance between both sides.

It would be just in time; this was so alarmingly dangerous.

Comparing the time he remembered it would take Saber to activate her Noble Phantasm and the acceleration power of Rider’s Noble Phantasm... No matter what angle he looked at it, it was very difficult to guess at the final result. The distance across which the two confronted each other was really very opportune.

“… How sure are you of victory? Rider?”

“About half.”

The King of Conquerors replied with a dignified air, in a tone that was nevertheless very relaxed. To one who managed military affairs, this statistic was not in fact very optimistic.

If the chance of victory was half, then the chance of failure was also half. It was as absurd as flipping a coin to decide between life and death. This sort of thing was definitely not worth being called a ‘strategy’. If one absolutely had to name it something, then it could only be called ‘the stratagem of gambling with one’s life’. Only under conditions in which there was no other way out would one adopt such foolish action.

“Why do you want to… act irresponsibly like this?”

“Precisely because it is acting irresponsibly, therefore.”

The Servant said softly, showing a somewhat sinister smile; his eyes were filled with the belief in victory— while gazing fixedly upon an uncertain future of which he was only fifty percent assured.

“If a challenge is made under conditions like this when both sides are evenly matched, then the side that loses will definitely be left with no excuses or face. This is the true ‘ultimate defeat’. I don’t actually think that that the sword of that girl who’s always trying to show off her cleverness can use this opportunity to bring me down. If I can completely defeat her in this way, then perhaps this time she will feel fear at her own incompetence, and from then on become my subordinate and serve me.”

“…”

Waver furrowed his brow; he could only sigh. There were truly no words that could be said.

In the end, it was only thus. Compared to the war centered around the Holy Grail, they placed even greater importance on the open and aboveboard competition between themselves as Heroic Spirits.

“…You... want to win against Saber so much that you are willing to do something like this?“

“Mn, indeed, I would like that very much.”

Rider nodded his head without the slightest hesitation.

“On the battlefield, she is certainly a star on earth. Rather than letting her make those jokes about whether or not she is actually an ideal king, it is better that she emit true light as a subordinate under me.”

This despot had defeated countless nobility and war generals; ignoring their power and wealth, he had obtained their ‘souls’.

It was for this reason that people called him the King of Conquerors.

He did not eliminate the enemy, nor belittle them; he subdued a standing opponent—this was what he thought was the true form of victory.

What right had one who relied only on the Grail to connect and establish a contract to be concerned with whether this was right or wrong?

“… Forget it, Rider. If you can win by your methods, then that’s okay too.”

Waver had given up; exhaling frustratedly, he threw out such a sentence.

This was not a case of sending the helve after the hatchet. To Rider, whose prana had been replenished through a day of rest, this was an excellent opportunity to make a challenge; it was an opportunity that would definitely not come again. No one could guarantee that the next time he confronted Saber, his physical condition would be better than this.

In that case, instead of believing in a statistical chance of victory, it was better to place his bet on Rider’s fighting spirit.

Compared to attempting to convince the King of Conquerors through logical reasoning, it was better to let him do things on his own grounds—it was precisely that transcendent personality that was afraid of neither heaven nor earth that perhaps formed a chance of victory one could believe in.

Waver’s expression was serious, as if having said these many reasons in order to convince himself. Rider maintained a confident smile.

“Hehe, kid, you seem to be starting to understand this idea of ‘supremacy’.”

His confidence was not hollow. Though he had said that it was a large gamble, Rider himself had full confidence in his victory.

“Light is at the other end of the world—conquer! Via Expugnatio: Distant Trampling Domination!”

The true name of that which had finally been released, the chariot drawn by divine bulls from which lightning suddenly burst forth. The majestic braying of the divine bulls under whose feet Berserker had been trampled in the first battle could never compare to this.

“—Let the wind come!”

Seeing her opponent rush towards her, Saber also hurriedly pulled out her sword under the protection of the air pressure.

Opening the vortex of the hurricane, a golden light shone forth as if to show the kingship of the knight; prana was continuously roiling.

“AAAALaLaLaLaLaie !!”

Accompanying Rider’s roar, the bulls stamped hard once on the asphalt ground; their cloven hooves rushed forward like raging billows. Waver, though overwhelmed by their majesty, nevertheless made an utmost effort to open his eyes wide, so as not to pass out again like the last time. At the fore was a very strong anti-city Noble Phantasm about to be released; in order to gain the initiative, Rider rushed as if his life depended on it, definitely unwilling to give up an opportunity to defeat Saber.

The King of Conquerors’ direct attack sent a shiver down Saber’s spine. By the rushing of the divine bulls, the hundred-meter distance had instantaneously been decreased to zero. In the blink of an eye, the might of Gordius Wheel manifested before her eyes.

If the hilt of her precious sword had still been in her hand, then she would definitely have been certain of victory; facing the golden radiance that Rider raised, there was only one thing that she could shout out, one true name.

“Ex—“

In the moment that the rushing incarnation of thunder was about to trample upon Saber’s small frame—

“Calibur!”

Golden lightning, as if radiating countless comets, made the night as bright as day.

“—!”

Waver’s gaze was drawn by this, dazzled by this, and he could not help but turn around—within the intense attack, he rationalized extremely calmly and realized one thing.

He had personally witnessed the light of Saber’s Noble Phantasm, and that meant… the result was that, before the Gordius Wheel had reached its final step, the King of Knights had taken the first step to initiate her attack.

But even thus, the touch of the thickset arm that extended all the way to his shoulder nevertheless did not disappear.

To be aware of one’s own defeat at the same time indicated the truth that one was still alive and clearheadedly conscious.

Waver gingerly opened his eyes and saw the appalling condition of the battlefield.

Due to Excalibur's blow, the surface of the road had instantly been burned away; even the forest a little way away had been instantly blown to waste. The road was scarred, carved in the likeness of a single straight line. The molten asphalt gave off a revolting stench; it was extremely pungent. Waver felt as if his body was floating through the universe… no, carried by a strong man on his shoulders. Who was it that carried his young Master like a small luggage bag— it was not necessary to ask to know.

“Ah… we’ve failed.”

Rider said softly, as if remorseful from the heart. But considering the current situation, it did seem like too much of an understatement.

It appeared that Rider was not hurt, either. But the chariot in which he rode, as well as the two divine bulls, had all vanished without a trace. The Noble Phantasm ‘Gordius Wheel’ had borne the might of the ‘Sword of Promised Victory’ and so had, like Caster’s sea monster, vanished and left no trace, not even a speck of dust.

In the moment at which he had bordered the line of death, Rider, who had understood his failure, had quickly plucked Waver from the charioteer’s seat and narrowly escaped from under the attack of the anti-city Noble Phantasm. It could really be said that the two had cheated death. But the price was high enough. The flying chariot, which Rider had used as his main weapon all this time, had at the last minute gone up in smoke.

But this was not yet over—using his will to fight, Waver immediately chased away his frustration at failure. Even if the ‘Gordius Wheel’ had been taken away, the King of Conquerors still had one last real trump card.

“Rider! Use ‘Ionian Hetairoi’—“

Toward Waver who spoke thus, Rider lightly but very firmly shook his head. The King of Conquerors seemed to not yet intend to dismiss his foresight regarding the latter half of the war, which he had come up with while resting. If Saber was his opponent, it was best to use the chariot. As for the summoning of the Hetairoi, which could only be activated once, it was necessary to save it for the showdown with Archer later.

But no matter how physically strong and unwilling to admit defeat Rider was, to engage in a battle of blades without mechanical force was clearly a definitively advantageous position for Saber. Though the build of the two were vastly different, this was a battle between Servants that transcended normalcy. Though Saber looked weak, she had a monstrous fighting ability; from the battles so far, Waver had long since become aware of this.

Very obviously, Rider understood her strength well. But the King of Conquerors still did not look at all afraid; he confronted Saber open and aboveboard by raising his sword, without the slightest indication of retreat.

In this closely matched staring competition, it was Saber who lost first.

She slid the sword wrapped in windstorms back into its sheath, then released the throttle and slid the rear wheel around to turn the vehicle, speeding away with her back to Rider.

Saber did not show off her weakness to Rider at all; at the same time she was moving the rear wheel, she also quickly accelerated, leaving behind only a tremendous roar of exhaust and moving quickly in the direction of Fuyuki City in one breath.

To Waver and Rider, this was certainly unexpected; however, Saber needed to quickly search for Irisviel and had no time for a showdown with Rider. She needed to find the culprit who had led her to clash with Rider, then snatch Irisviel back from that person; for this goal, even if she had to throw aside the showdown with Rider, she needed to retreat as soon as possible.

In the blink of an eye she had disappeared from sight, leaving only the roar of a motorcycle that was moving away. Waver and Rider stood there stupefied, listening to the sound of the motorcycle. Rider, who had been listening intensely to the sound of the exhaust, nodded, showing a knowing expression.

“A motorcycle… Nn, it is truly a good thing.”

“—You—after being defeated, this is really the first thing you have to say?”

In the aftermath of battle, all the strength had drained out of Waver’s body; angrily questioning Rider, he suddenly became aware of an important problem and became dismayed.

“Hey, Rider—how are we ever going to get back?”

“Ah, that… We shall have to walk.”

“—Yeah.”

In the darkness, Waver gazed upon Shinto which shone with light in the distance, and sighed heavily.

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Fate/Zero:Act 14 Part 4

2017-10-27T03:32:07Z

Toshiya: /* -36:38:09 */

=== -36:38:09 ===

Matō Zōken –

The man before him was the mastermind behind the Matō family, a presence known but never seen. Kotomine Kirei’s senses couldn’t help but go on the alert.

There was a small, short figure that had deliberately chosen to stand in a dark corner of the night street, a place that bright lights could not illuminate. Contrary to his shriveled and aged appearance, this man was an extremely dangerous entity; Tokiomi had told Kirei time after time. Although he had publicly declared that he was retired and no longer cared for the businesses of the outside world, he was an abnormality that covertly used the secret arts of magecraft to prolong his life and rule over the Matō house for generations. In a way, he was far more dangerous than the actual Master of the family, Kariya. This old man was someone who required special attention.

“Kotomine Kirei. I heard that you’re the son of that stubborn and honest Risei. Is that so?”

“That is true.”

Kirei nodded to show agreement when he heard the question asked by this hoarse voice.

“Hmph – what a surprise. It is often said that heroes come from the most unexpected places. There must be some truth to it. I didn’t think that man could sire a son as wily and deceitful as you.”

“What do you want, Matō Zōken?”

Kirei ignored the old magus’s provocation and demanded an answer.

“You should be on Kariya’s side, so why did you have to hide here and eavesdrop on us?”

“What are you talking about? I’m just a parent worried about his child. I wanted to see with my own eyes what kind of helper that child Kariya got for himself.”

He deliberately pretended to smile like a doting grandfather, but that skeletal, shriveled countenance was markedly different from that of normal humans. It was obvious that his face, with such a structure, would never have such a smile.

“I heard everything you said to Kariya to appease him. You seem to want to get rid of the son of the Tōsaka house.”

“That is true. That man killed my father –”

“Be quiet. Don’t repeat such a lie twice.”

Those deep-set eyes, buried in wrinkles, glistened with a keen light and stared at Kirei.

“Kotomine Kirei, you’ve gone too far with your petty trickery. You even dared to act behind Tōsaka’s back; you’ve overstepped your boundaries. You don’t need Kariya’s hand to kill Tokiomi at all, not since the moment you decided to get rid of him. You must have prepared for every eventuality – I’m not so old that I’m turning senile. You might be able to trick Kariya, but don’t you dare think you can trick me too.”

“…”

Kirei quietly improved his evaluation of this old magus in his mind, but he maintained his mask of calm.

“Your goal isn’t the son of the Tōsaka house, but Kariya himself. Isn’t it?”

“… If you doubt me so, then why didn’t you stop Kariya?”

A bone-chilling creaking sound, like the muted chirping of a hoard of insects, resonated. Kirei only understood it to be the sound of this old man’s suppressed laughter after a few moments.

“Hmm, how should I say this… you can say it is simply out of my curiosity. I want to see what methods you would use to ‘break’ Kariya. I am very interested in this.”

“… Zōken, can you really watch Kariya, who is fighting for the Matō house, have his chances of victory destroyed little by little?”

“Chances of victory? Kariya? Hmph, such things never existed. If that piece of trash can obtain the Holy Grail, then the past three bouts of slaughter would all seem like a comedy show.”

“I don’t quite understand. Isn’t the Matō house also one of the Three Noble Families of the Beginning, one that craves the Holy Grail?”

Hearing Kirei’s question, Zōken gave a cold snort.

“I think the Tōsaka son and those of the Einsbern house are all idiots. If they remember the details from the last battle of the previous war, then they should understand that there is something odd with this fourth Heaven’s Feel, and be alert towards it.

"I saw through the battles of this round from the start. Truth be told, just by looking at that despicable Caster at the start of the War, we should have been able to tell that the summoning didn’t call forth a Heroic Spirit, but an evil spirit far removed from heroes. Without a doubt, something has begun to err within the Heaven’s Feel system. We need to solve this problem first.”

This odd man, who had overcome ordinary humanity, had likely been present in every single Heaven’s Feel. This man Matō Zōken had grasped something that even the previous Supervisor, Kotomine Risei, had not known about.

“Then why did you let Kariya and Berserker participate? If you only wanted to watch from the sidelines, then why did you even prepare a Servant?”

“That’s not the reason. Although there were some dubious elements, it is still a grand ceremony held every 60 years, after all. It wouldn’t have been interesting to watch the children fumble around. Therefore, I found a unique method for me to enjoy the event.”

Zōken said with a tone of ridicule. His mouth tilted even more, and there were smiles all over his face.

“Of course, if that failure really grabbed the Grail, then there’s no better outcome. Despite what I say, I really am impatient.

"Just seeing how Kariya, who betrayed me, suffers in pain day by day – I honestly can’t get enough of it. I desire the Matō house’s victory, but I’m also tempted by the thought of observing Kariya’s defeated and helpless end. How conflicted I am!”

Zōken’s hoarse laughter was truly piercing to Kirei’s ears. How much better would it have been had they met on the battlefield and fought for their lives not with words, but with swords? He could not help thinking that even though he knew the other was a very dangerous old magus. It seemed that Kirei already found the existence of Matō Zōken to be unbearable.

Faced with the inquisition from Kirei, who was trying his best to hide the true feelings in his heart, Zōken lifted his eyebrows as if deliberately mocking the other man.

“Ahhh, how surprising. I thought you would've been able to understand my joy.”

“– What did you say?”

“I may look old, Kotomine Kirei, but my nose is still very sensitive. You have the same smell as I do. You’re like a maggot that crawled here, attracted by the piece of rotting meat that Kariya is.”

“…”

Kirei remained quiet, but slowly drew out his Black Keys from within his frock.

He now knew he could no longer persuade this old magus with reason, but they must fight to the death. Zōken had stepped into his range. He had entered the 'absolute territory' at the risk of his life. If he wanted to ensure his vitals remain safe, he could only use a killing strike, attacking the enemy head-on without any warning. If Zōken had thought of evading that strike at his vitals – an inevitably certain kill – Kirei would have no other choice but to confront him directly. Right now, Matō Zōken had already crossed this line - not with his feet, but with his words.

However, Zōken still faced the cold killing intent emanating from Kirei with a casual smile.

“…Oh? Did I overestimate you? I thought I’d finally managed to find a kindred spirit. It seems you still feel ashamed of your own heresy – hahaha, you’re still too inexperienced. Do you feel ashamed of these matters, such as a man would feel shame in indulging in self-pleasure?”

There were no shows of strength, nor were there any warnings. Kirei simultaneously threw out two Black Keys at his left and his right in the blink of an eye, so fast that his preparatory movements couldn’t even be seen. It was as if he was going to pierce this old man’s body like a piece of barbeque meat.

However, faced with those blades, Zōken remained completely unmoved. He was extremely nonchalant, and it was no empty boast. The silhouette of the old magus melted like mud moments before the two blades were about to pierce him through, and he once again became a shapeless shadow hiding in the corner.

Kirei’s entire body tensed up. A voice full of happy mockery sounded from somewhere.

“Ahh, scary, scary. You are young, but still a hound of the Church. It’ll definitely endanger my life if I mock you.”

Kirei took up another Black Key and stared at the throbbing shadow in the darkness.

Was it an illusion a moment ago, when he saw that he was just about to pierce Matō Zōken’s flesh? Or was it that Matō Zōken’s physical body didn’t even exist here? Any kind of extraordinary thing was possible when it came to this wily and devious old magus. If such trivial matters surprised Kirei, then he would not be suited to the role of Executor.

“Honestly. Until next time, young man. You must nurture your personality so that you can be on equal footing with me the next time we meet. Hahahaha…”

Zōken’s scent melted into the darkness and disappeared, leaving only a terrifying shrieking laughter. All that was left was the figure of Kirei, who stood holding his blade like a scarecrow.

“…”

Irritated, Kirei threw the Black Key, which had lost its target, on the roof.

He hadn't imagined that this old man was a monster with no usable potential whatsoever. There was no reason to keep him alive.

He was certain that Matō Zōken was a nemesis that he must eliminate sooner or later.

<center>※※※※※</center>

To escape the gradually darkening night, Matō Byakuya continued to drown himself in alcohol.

Nothing had happened last night, and it passed peacefully. But now he was resentful of the fact. Mighty waves rushed up after calm sea weather. Nothing dangerous had happened last night and it went past peacefully, which meant that dangerous happenings would be afoot tonight.

Byakuya clearly understood the truth behind the alien events that had been threatening the Fuyuki night recently. He was the eldest son and inheritor of the prestigious Matō house, the final remnants of a mighty bloodline that had begun a pilgrimage to seek the traces of the Holy Grail in the distant past. In truth, he should have been a part of this cruel and extraordinary war as one of its participants.

However, he had turned his back on his duty and drowned himself in alcohol day after day. Byakuya felt no shame towards his own behavior. On the contrary, he actually thought his was the correct and logical attitude in comparison to his little brother Kariya. Byakuya could say that with his chest thrust out in pride.

Byakuya could never understand why Kariya, who had been disowned by the Matō house a long time ago, had returned to his homeland and gone so far as to participate in the Heaven’s Feel. He didn’t even want to understand it. Byakuya couldn’t thank his little brother enough for having changed his mind. Had he not returned, the one reduced to such a state and forced to participate in the Heaven’s Feel would have been not Kariya, but Byakuya himself.

Whenever he remembered that figure, black like a vengeful spirit, that Kariya had summoned using the Summoning Circle and signed a contract with – Byakuya could only use alcohol to numb himself, to get as far away from the terror he felt then as possible.

How could anyone stay sane when he knew there were 6 other such things slaughtering each other in the night while devouring human flesh and blood? The current Fuyuki city was an authentic demonic realm. Alcohol was the only thing he could rely on to keep on living in this place while maintaining a calm mentality.

His only child Shinji was sent overseas in the name of studying. Byakuya himself was strongly against staying in the present Fuyuki. However, he had no legitimate reason to leave the Matō mansion. Zōken had given him the task of acclimating the little girl adopted from the Tōsaka house to the underground worm storage and training her to one day be worthy of becoming the next head of the Matō house.

Yes. Byakuya had already completed his task to near perfection as the current head of the Matō house. Zōken’s original plan had been to sit aside and observe this Heaven’s Feel anyways. After all, Kariya was simply a toy played in that old magus’s hand. Byakuya was the only one in the current Matō family who was walking along the right path. It wasn’t a matter of the number of Magic Circuits. Even if his abilities were only good enough to defeat a small child, Byakuya still firmly believed his path was the only one that could truly connect to the future of the Matō house…

He said this to himself and continued to gulp down large mouthfuls of liquor into his stomach while despising his little brother.

Becoming a magus of the Matō house meant becoming the puppet of Zōken – the mastermind controlling everything behind the scenes. Because Byakuya understood this, he had no sympathy for Kariya, who had once left the family but foolishly returned and willingly became the foster bed for the Crest Worms. He never had much familial love for his little brother to begin with. Kariya had talent that far surpassed his older brother, but left the family and forced the cursed destiny carried by generations of the Matōs all unto Byakuya. How could he feel sympathetic toward such a man right now?

Ahh, why was he still not sleepy today? Normally, he would have been dead asleep a long time ago. He hadn't drunk enough; he was not drunk enough. He wanted to forget what was happening outside of the house as soon as possible, wanted to skip through the night as quickly as possible – but someone took the wine glass on the table and poured all the ice water in the glass onto Byakuya’s head.

He fainted for a moment under the piercing cold, but his drunkenness was immediately dispelled and he regained consciousness. A merciless impact slammed into his cheek this time. Byakuya curved up into the blankets on his bed.

Byakuya’s mentality snapped. Even his cries of horror were suppressed in his throat and couldn’t be voiced. A wraith-like man whose appearance sent shivers down Byakuya’s spine was standing there, looking down on him.

He was dressed in a dirty, creased old coat, and the stubble on his chin said he hadn’t shaved in days. If judging by appearances alone, this man looked even more like a drunkard in a pub than Byakuya, who was inside his own house and dressed in everyday clothing. However, his eyes refuted all that. The temperature in that man’s eyes had already surpassed the realms of cruelty or mercilessness. It was only filled with the cold sadism and lethality of a wounded beast. After staring into those eyes, Byakuya surrendered all will to uncover the origins of this man or his business here and became a complete slave of despair.

Who this man was, how he had broken through the impressive layers of protective boundaries outside the house; none of that mattered now. This thing that now appeared before Byakuya was undoubtedly the reincarnation of the very horror that he had only managed to temporarily forget through the effects of alcohol for the past week.

“…Where is Irisviel right now?”

Byakuya was convinced that he must answer before he understood the meaning of the question, or else he would be killed.

– After a moment, he finally realized he actually didn’t understand the meaning of this question. Byakuya was instantly crushed by an overwhelming despair.

“I, I, I…”

Byakuya moaned unintelligibly. The man stared at him with an ice-cold gaze and slowly took out the weapon from his coat. He roughly jammed Byakuya’s right hand between the floor and the muzzle and pressed the trigger.

Byakuya’s right hand scattered in the wind with a thundering bang that could make anyone who heard it go insane.

A part of his body had just disappeared without reason. Byakuya was so shocked that he couldn’t speak. After a while, a scarring pain made him scream in agony.

“No, no no no I don’t know I just don’t know I don’t know anything! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! My hand! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

“…”

There was no one with more experience with getting information out of people unwilling to provide it than Emiya Kiritsugu. Instinct honed over the years told him he wouldn’t get much of an answer even if he kept asking.

Matō Byakuya’s soul had already been ruined long ago. Although Kiritsugu didn’t know the reason, Byakuya had already forced himself onto a road of no return long before Kiritsugu came to visit.

In retrospect, Kiritsugu was the final straw that broke his back and made him crumble completely. This man before him would not hesitate to do anything to get rid of his present pain, including betraying Zōken. When they reached such a stage, everything humans said was a guaranteed truth.

It seemed Byakuya truly didn’t know anything about what had happened in the last few hours.

Which meant – the destination of Irisveil’s kidnappers was definitely not the Matō mansion.

He had spent hours breaking through the protective barriers in such a pressing and tense circumstance, and yet the result was nothing. Kiritsugu couldn’t help but grit his teeth in regret.

By process of elimination, only those from the Matō camp could have kidnapped Irisviel. Rider’s Master didn’t have the reconnaissance ability to discover the secret headquarters Kiritsugu had prepared, whereas Tōsaka didn’t need to contradict himself in this way when they had just formed an alliance last night.

Although the possibility of a new opposing force emerging apart from the seven Masters and Servants was very low, it was not impossible. However, such wild guesses wouldn’t get him any results at this stage. At the moment, he could only find this potential enemy amongst the three Masters who still had the protection of their Servants and needed Irisviel for the final stage.

It was almost four hours after the raid on the underground storage. Victory was slipping further away from Kiritsugu with every second he lost, and he had no time to stop and think thoroughly.

Kiritsugu didn’t even bother to look at Byakuya, who was sobbing with pain and terror, and left the Matō mansion.

Kiritsugu again used about three hours to break through the protective magecraft formations in order to enter the Tōsaka mansion, his next target.

His methods were already close to miraculous. The bounded field that Tōsaka Tokiomi set up was a first-rate security system specifically guarding against magi, and was created with magi in mind to begin with. It couldn’t be broken through by sheer magecraft even if attacked continuously for a whole year. Kiritsugu could overcome this bounded field in a short time precisely because he was someone who did not seek results by way of magecraft and fought against magi by perceiving traps wrought through magecraft.

However, no matter how comparatively quick he was, it was long enough to make Kiritsugu anxious in the current state. He had never wasted this much time on the battlefield. He had finally broken through the protection between the inner porch and the living room, but Kiritsugu was still tormented with a nameless anxiety the moment he arrived in the main lounge. Although he passed through the protective barriers at the risk of his life, it didn’t mean he was guaranteed to find Irisviel, just as had happened at the Matō mansion.

Saber, who started chasing Irisviel one step before Kiritsugu, must have also failed. He could still feel that the Circuits providing prana were not interrupted, which meant that Saber had not suffered any major attacks.

However, had she been safely protected, Irisviel would have definitely activated her signal conducting system and relayed Kiritsugu with detailed information on her current location. He still had not received that, which meant Saber’s pursuit had also been a wasted effort.

After carefully removing the seal on the window, he also removed the inner plug with glass-cutting tools. Kiritsugu had finally arrived at the inner parts of the Tōsaka mansion. No lights were lit within, and all was quiet. It was almost like an empty house with no inhabitants. However, because it was an enormous mansion, such conclusions were hard to draw. As an outstanding Master, Tokiomi was much more prudent than the eldest son of the Matō house. If they were to chance upon each other, then Kiritsugu must make the mental preparedness to fight him. Of course, he would definitely use Archer, and Kiritsugu would have to summon Saber here too. He would have to once again spend a Command Seal and forcibly summon her here.

Although he had wanted to avoid having a confrontation between Saber and Archer, whose true fighting strength remained to be seen, the current situation was too urgent for him to be able to choose his battle strategies. Even so, he wanted to start fighting after having confirmed Irisviel’s whereabouts. If it happened to be an unknown enemy who currently had possession of Irisviel, then Kiritsugu would be falling into a trap if he began to duel with the Matō or Tōsaka houses. What annoyed him the most was that he had to consider this possibility and be wary of it.

Suddenly, Kiritsugu’s sense of smell detected something unavoidable as he stepped into a dark room.

It was the stench of blood. It was undoubtedly fresh.

He focused his prana to his eyes and used night sight. He could instantly see the furniture and design of the room with impeccable clarity. It seemed to be a living room. There were also two sets of teacups on the table.

There was obviously a large amount of blood in the middle of the luxurious carpet.

Kiritsugu carefully checked the bloodstain, which had dried completely. Although the blood had not splattered widely, the amount shed didn’t seem to be from a light wound. With his experience, he concluded it could only have been a bloodstain left from a stab wound.

Kiritsugu searched through all the other rooms, just to be careful. However, his goal was no longer to have a better grasp of the situation, but to find the inhabitant here.

As a medium and the starting point of magecraft, blood was the most important ingredient in magecraft. It would have been unthinkable for a magus to casually let out his blood in his territory with no intent to cast a spell. Of course, it would be a different matter entirely if it happened to be the magus’s particular habit. However, according to Kiritsugu’s previous investigations, the man Tōsaka Tokiomi was not so careless.

His premonition became conviction when he reached the basement workshop without much trouble. A magus would never allow others to easily set foot into his workshop even if he was away from home, let alone present in the house. It seemed that Tokiomi was not only absent from his home, but in a situation where he couldn’t even detect the current state of his house.

To verify, Kiritsugu took out an eye drop bottle from his pocket containing the liquid that could be used to test his hypothesis. The liquid was made by refining the body fluids of a succubus, a kind of demon that particularly liked to seduce men. It was especially sensitive to the blood of men and aged things, and could distinguish differences accurately.

First he tested the reaction of the liquid in the bathroom sink, and then he verified the bloodstains in the living room. It was evident that the reaction was the same for both. Only one man would have shaved at this bathroom sink in the past few days.

And that man’s blood was spilled on the carpet in the living room…

Now he was sure Tōsaka Tokiomi was either dead or had disappeared.

Faced with the emergence of this surprising turn of events, Kiritsugu did his best to calm himself and began to assess the situation.

There were no traces of a fight in the room. The two teacups placed here were to welcome a guest. Tokiomi had definitely suffered a heavy or even lethal wound after having chatted to someone in this room, whom he had welcomed as a guest. It seemed that Kiritsugu wasn’t the only one carrying out revenge on magi.

But what was Tokiomi’s Servant doing at that time? How could he look from the sidelines and ignore his Master? However, there was another possibility… the possibility that Archer no longer needed Tokiomi as a Master, and Archer murdered Tokiomi together with his next contractor. This would also be a reasonable explanation.

Faced with this solemn answer that he had achieved after prolonged thought, Kiritsugu felt as if a knife was twisting in his heart.

A man who was Tōsaka Tokiomi’s friend and was welcomed as a guest, a man before whom Tokiomi could even show his weaknesses.

Archer’s new Master had gained new Command Seals – he was someone who had lost his Servant and thus lost the authority of a Master, but retained his life.

There was no need to think any further. There was only one such man. Moreover, if he had really obtained a new Servant and was once again participating in the Heaven’s Feel, kidnapping Irisviel and controlling the ‘Vessel of the Grail’ with his own hands would have been a logical and necessary move.

Therefore – Kiritsugu finally understood that confrontation with Kotomine Kirei was unavoidable.

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