Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 13 Chapter 4 (section)

== 4.04 OPS3 Part 19 ==

Horiuchi Erii watched it all happening from the surface through Ebina Yuu’s eyes.

Only Yuu was in this spacious museum.

“This world I was born into was full of no more than things I couldn’t understand.”

Erii spoke from within Yuu.

Underneath the starry night sky, the golden C-butterfly wrapped up the debris.

Erii’s personality was left inside a certain storage device in that debris. Right now, settling within Yuu’s body—within her brain—was nothing more than a fragment she’d created with Shinpu’s ability.

“I was born in a certain town, but was always alone. The mere fact I could perform just a slightly calculation made them all think I was a genius… but they soon started treating me like a hideous monster. —So apparently, being a normal person was conditioned upon being unable to perform even simple calculations.”

“Calculation… right, I need to keep studying for my entrance tests.”

While idly looking above, Yuu moved only her mouth.

Right now Ebina Yuu was being controlled by C manipulating her electric signals. The human mind could be easily controlled by just a bit of electric flow.

“Why were all other people stupid? And why was I hated? I had no idea. I wanted to understand what other people were and above all else what I myself was, and by that time—I became Mushitsuki.”

“Mushitsuki… very strong people… but also slightly sad people…”

Yuu mumbled in delirium.

She was already used to hacking people’s minds to operate them. She also became able to preserve memories and feelings as well as fake and erase them.

Because she repeated it again, and again and again to learn.

In the experiments under the orders of Miguruma Yaeko.

“Finally… I thought that I was reborn in the world I should have been a part of in the first place.”

Erii recalled the time when she’d been assigned the codename C.

“The ones who stopped my rampage after I became a Mushitsuki were Kakkou-san and Sleeping Beauty—Arisu-san. The ones who guided me into the world of Mushitsuki just like me. Since Mushitsuki were abnormal, my powers of calculation were not special in the least… and I finally gained the friends called Mushitsuki.”

“Friends… Mushitsuki friends… Ubuki-san… Shiika-san…”

“Several years ago, on the night of the meteor shower, I was the only one absent. …Did they see through me? Kakkou-san and Arisu-san were both sharp, despite being so simple. Since I had so much fun being with them, did they notice?”

Erii, along with Miguruma Yaeko, repeated the experiments on Shinpu’s fragments.

She embedded Mushitsuki with fragments to strengthen them, she forcibly revived them… Erii repeated these cruel deeds that played with people’s feelings.

Although she knew this was unforgivable, Erii couldn’t escape.

After all—

“I actually didn’t want the battles of Mushitsuki to end…”

In the night sky she saw with Yuu’s eyes, the C-butterfly’s silhouette engulfing the debris was thinning out.

A mere lump of electricity couldn’t stop the debris. Her aim was to take it to an isolated space that didn’t exist in this world and patiently wait for its momentum to stop.

“I, just like Miguruma Yaeko—wanted there to be a world that always had Mushitsuki in it…! But if it became known that I thought this, other Mushitsuki—my friends would hate me. So I did my best pretending to fight… However, Miguruma tempted me with the prospect of gaining more friends, so I couldn’t go against her… I wanted him to stop me. None other than Kakkou-san…”

The fragments of the debris became shooting stars in the night sky.

It looked exactly the same as the night that gave Sleeping Beauty her alias.

“I wanted him to act before Sleeping Beauty—before Arisu, who always fought for Mushitsuki, woke up. I wanted him to kill me along with Miguruma. —Because I’ve already done something so horrible that I can never face her again.”

These hidden feelings of her contained the spark lighting up the fires of hatred.

“If Fuyuhotaru is not going to grant me even that, I’ll just purge it all. All so I can puff up with pride and say I fought, when Arisu-san comes back…”

Yuu’s vision moved from overhead to the surface. She glared at the half-domed building in the distance.

“Alpa—”

“Alpha…”

Erii and Yuu’s voices overlapped.

“Before I got swallowed by Shinpu’s memories, I peeked at Miguruma’s memories. Before the Original Three became the Original Three, Alpha was already a Mushitsuki… the true start—was with this human called Alpha. As long as he exists, even beating the Original Three will not mean the end of the fight—”

“Alpha will… vanish…”

Yuu’s mouth moved.

“But—then… Erii will…”

Erii knew that her control was rapidly weakening. Since the C-butterfly took the debris away, Erii’s ability was being erased from this world.

“It’s fine. I’ve—already been dead for a while now. Ever since the time I synchronized myself with Shinpu and was unable to restrain my own power…”

As she looked at the night sky again, almost none of the C-butterfly’s silhouette remained.

She wanted to grit her teeth, but Erii had no body.

“What I did is meaningless, yet—”

In the end, Erii was unable to achieve her goal and couldn’t stand up to her own power.

Failure.

Although she pulled out all breaks trying to win, she lost.

Although she felt like she wanted to writhe with this scorching pain, at the same time—she was glad.

She felt like she finally understood Kakkou and Sleeping Beauty.

They definitely had fought while carrying the same feelings as Erii did right now.

Perhaps they would keep fighting from now on.

“I will not regret it. It is painful, but… it doesn’t hurt.”

“Erii…”

“Sorry, Ebina Yuu-san. For using you.”

“Don’t go…”

“—You really are just like Sleeping Beauty. For example, in how you look like you’re being controlled by me but you actually accept it, or how you try to stop someone from vanishing… as well as in your dream of saving Mushitsuki…”

Were they Erii’s? Or perhaps Yuu’s?

Whoever they belonged to, large tears started gushing out from Ebina Yuu’s eyes.

“Because it’s the same as Sleeping Beauty’s… the same dream as Arisu-san’s…!”

Erii’s consciousness was leaving Yuu’s body.

No, her true personality was being pulled back to the debris.

The Mushitsuki called Horiuchi Erii watched this scene in the last moments of her life.

She saw Ebina Yuu, shedding tears and reaching out into empty air—

“Couldn’t you see it, Erii…? Even though my eyes were able to do…!”

See it?

What was she seeing?

Leaving that small doubt behind, Erii’s vision was cut off.

“—”

As Erii got pulled back to the storage device in the debris, she saw a gigantic C-butterfly holding her.

A pitch-black world.

It was even darker than the outer space Erii had drifted through before. There were no twinkling stars but only golden butterflies fluttering around, and nothing else.

This was the isolated world created by C in the past.

Once the being known as Super Class Rank 1 C absorbed even her lost personality, what kind of a being would she become?

Even that was a future Erii would never come to know.

“…”

What should she think about while dying?

What should she mutter?

Erii thought of such things, but it didn’t matter.

Because a light different than that of the C-butterfly was created in this world of darkness.

Fluttering softly, that small glow was as just like—snow in the midst of winter.

“Give her back—”

Although this world was supposed to contain only Erii and C, something else pushed its way inside.

Held by the girl called Recall who had teleportation powers, that girl was—

“Give Erii back!”

Fuyuhotaru—Anmoto Shiika.

This was what Ebina Yuu spoke about. The moment the isolated space closed, she probably saw those two manage to slip inside with the girl’s teleport ability.

Touched by a single snowflake, the C-butterfly screamed.

Since it had no mouth to raise a cry with, instead it blew electrical attacks—but its wings broke from the inside, the sound of shattering became its death throes and it echoed through the space.

What an evil and scary power—

It was the freakiest power among all Mushitsuki.

It was obvious at a glance why everyone would fear it—but at the same time, since Erii was used to feel lonely because of her oddness, it was a fact she also felt a strange sense of camaraderie.

“Stop acting for no reason… even risking your life…”

If Erii currently had a mouth, she would have cussed and cursed her.

If she had arms, she would have probably struck her and laughed hard at this foolish act, trying to save someone who was going to vanish anyway.

And if she had eyes—she would have probably cried.

“…I don’t want to owe anything to someone like you…!”

Horiuchi Erii’s last words—

Became this sort of unintended scream.