Editing Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha:Volume 9 Prologue (section)

===Part 2===

The students marched into the hallways from their classrooms, and then to the entrance. There was a place located far from the bustle of their movements. A room which had the duty of representing the students — the student council room. And now, there was a person who stood amidst the chaos in the student council room. It was Toujou Basara. He, who had taken a different path from Mio and the others, placed his hand over his forehead as he asked

“Sorry Tachibana…I don’t think I heard you wrong, but can you say that one more time just to be sure?”

The person who he asked in this place was — his friend, Tachibana Nanao.

“U-Umm…well, so…”

In front of him, Nanao wrapped her hands around her own body as she spoke.

“…My body has stayed as a girl’s body since the beginning of the year.”

Basara had already heard this earlier, so it was his second time.

“So that’s the case…”

“Umm…Toujou-kun, could it be that you realised?”

When Nanao asked with a flushed red face due to embarrassment, Basara nodded to confirm.

…At this rate, it’s probably impossible to turn back to a boy…

Since he came back from the Demon Realm, Nanao’s femininity seemed to have increased from before — of course, Nanao had a cute look from the beginning, but…

…Somehow, she’s gotten cuter since the sports festival…

When he was in the sports festival committee with Nanao, she was still at a “cute like a girl” sort of level, so he wondered what happened. Since Christmas, Nanao had progressed to the level of “definitely a girl”.

—The half-vampire Tachibana Nanao had the special ability of body shifting. Before they turned eighteen, their gender wasn’t set, and so they went back and forth between a male body and a female one. The change happened every month or so, and it seems like the final gender would be one that Nanao herself had a strong affinity with. However, at Christmas, Basara was able to confirm with his own eyes and hands that Nanao had a female body — normally, it meant that from then to today on the last day of school, Nanao should have changed bodies twice.

“Prior to this, have you had a late transformation before?”

“No, this is the first time…”

Nanao shook her head at his question.

“I thought my mother might know something about it so I thought of asking her, but I couldn’t get hold of her…so that’s why I wanted to ask you as you might be familiar with the situation.”

“I see…”

“What should I do? Do I have some sort of illness?”

Nanao’s eyes trembled as she said that. It was a first-time experience and she herself did not know how to react. Naturally, she became worried, so

“…I got it. First let’s think of why your body stopped transforming.”

Toujou Basara rested his hands on Nanao’s shoulders to reassure her.

“Don’t worry so much about it, we don’t know if it’s a bad thing yet. I don’t know much about half- vampires but I’ll think of a solution with you.”

“Toujou-kun…. Yeah, thank you.”

Nanao said that with a happy expression on her face.

“That being said, it’s hard to think of how this could happen with no reason. Tachibana…do you have any ideas of what might have caused this? For instance, if you’ve experienced something for the first time…”

“That’s—”

Upon being faced with that question, Nanao’s face turned red, making her embarrassment obvious to him.

“…What is it?”

“It’s…probably that Christmas Eve.”

Nanao mumbled

“Christmas Eve…during the launch of the sports festival?”

 

 

“Yeah…after we ate, we played some party game, if you recall?”

“…Yeah, that.”

Basara said dejectedly. It was during the time Basara’s father Jin infiltrated the school as Azuma Takehito, but – it was quite a game.

“At that time, the two of us had to change into a girl’s school uniform in the toilet right?”

“Y-Yeah…that’s right.”

It wasn’t wrong, but there simply wasn’t much to say regarding that.

“On top of that, you kissed the nape of my neck at the time, right? I’ve never done anything like that before…. In the midst of that, I had feelings I didn’t understand.”

“…I see.”

If this was overheard by someone who didn’t know what happened, it would’ve sounded like a story that could end in different ways, but with that, Basara thought of a possibility. With this new experience to her body, the memory of it was engraved deep in Nanao and hence that was probably why her body stayed in this form – in that of a girl. In short, with the intense experience it linked to her spirit and took shape since her body was in a nervous state. Even though this was nothing more than a hypothesis…

…The best method is to erase the memory of that time.

That being said, it was nearly impossible to just erase a small portion of the memory.

…So in that case.

Basara began to wonder if there was another possible approach.

“U-Umm, Toujou-kun.”

Nanao tugged on his sleeve reluctantly, speaking as if scared.

“There…is something I’d like to try.”