Mushi Uta:Volume 14 Chapter 2

2.00 The Others

“Big brother.”

Taiki woke up the same way as he did yesterday.

His youngest sister Ririe peeked at him from the half-opened door to his room. Petite, meek and wearing black-rimmed glasses, young Ririe looked nothing like either her sister or brother.

“Dad’s going to be angry if you don’t wake up soon.”

“Ngh…”

As he grimaced and raised his upper torso, he felt deadly tired. He was all sweaty.

Perhaps he was looking exceptionally tired, based on Ririe’s next words.

“Do you have a cold?”

“…I just had a weird dream again… I’m tired…”

Ririe pulled her face back. He could hear footsteps going down the stairs.

Taiki sighed heavily and stretched. It made him slightly less tired.

He went down to the first floor while scratching his bed hair, running into his other younger sister, Noa.

“Good morning.”

As he tried calling to her as they met, Noa suddenly reached to Taiki’s forehead with a hand.

“Doesn’t look like you have a fever.”

“Huh?”

“Ririe said you look like you’re feeling bad.”

Noa was already wearing her uniform.

“You can’t ditch school, though.”

Noa retracted her hand and smiled mischievously while Taiki found no words to reply.

As he went into the living room, there was a program about the situation of Akamaki City on TV. Nothing changed from yesterday. The only change was that the reporter sounded already tired of it all.

“Good morning, Taiki. Are you alright? Can you go to school?”

While preparing boxed lunches in the open kitchen, his mother turned to him.

“…”

Ririe was sitting on the sofa, her face the very picture of innocence. Noa was also next to her. His youngest sister apparently spread the rumors, and his older younger sister went on ahead to block his escape path. What a team combination.

“I’m going, I’m fine.”

Taiki sat down at the table full of breakfast.

Since it was so close to winter vacation, he wouldn’t feel guilty taking a day off. However, if his strict father found out it was a feigned illness, he’d be angry. His sisters knew this, so they went on a preemptive attack.

“You look more out of it than usual. Pull yourself together, son.”

While tightening his necktie, his father spoke not even looking at him.

If he “pulled himself together”, would he start having normal dreams again? Since he even started thinking it might be the case, he couldn’t argue back.

The strange dreams that Taiki started seeing—

Dreams where the people called Mushitsuki appeared. Regardless of whether those known as Mushitsuki actually existed, those dreams were far too removed from reality.

Before, he’d dreamt about a beauty wearing a strange mask.

And as for this night—

“So there’s no vacation today either, eh.”

When it became time to leave home, Noa sighed. Although she was a model student, it probably bummed her out going to a school where less and less students were in attendance every day.

Taiki felt the same. He secretly waited to hear school was on break, but they unfortunately reached the deadline.

“I’m going.”

Ririe, who exited the house a step before, didn’t seem as melancholic as her brother and sister.

Taiki also tried wearing his shoes, but perhaps he was still somewhat sleepy, since it took him some time to tie the shoestrings.

“Why are you slow?”

“Don’t kick me.”

He was urged by Noa’s foot from behind. It wasn’t like their relationship as siblings was bad, but it was embarrassing to go out together. Since Taiki took larger strides, he’d end up going out first.

“I’m heading out.”

While going on his usual route to school, he recalled the TV program from that morning.

It didn’t feel like they were going to reveal information about Akamaki City at all. As a result, it seemed like the populace was split into two—those whose anxiety kept growing, and those who just shrugged everything off and calmed down.

How was this town, with it being so far away from Akamaki City?

He didn’t feel like the number of people he saw on his way to school differed much from yesterday. Taiki was sure there’d be less of them, so this was unexpected.

“Maybe nothing’s going to change, surprisingly enough.”

He mumbled to himself.

Since his school focused on preparing students for high-ranking universities, the lessons were tough as expected, but that suited Taiki just fine. He had no complaints regarding his daily life.

However—it was true that somewhere deep inside him he wished for just a little special something to happen. People might think of it as imprudent, but it was every boy’s wish to taste a little bit of a thrill.

“Oh well.”

Just like yesterday, he would arrive at class and chat with his classmates about nothing important at all.

About the only thing changed from before was that he started seeing these strange dreams—

So he thought and started walking when it happened.

Just like his father said often, Taiki was normally absentminded.

Therefore, he ended up being overly startled by the person suddenly blocking his sight.

“—Mister Taiki?”

It was a tall foreigner. His short blond hair was waxed and he looked like an amiable young man. His worn-out suit and leather shoes created a mismatch with his young age.

“…?”

Taiki felt his entire body grow tense at this unusual happening.

Taiki had never talked to a foreigner. He was confused and unsure to how even respond.

“I apologize for suddenly calling out to you.”

A woman standing next to the foreigner spoke.

No, rather than a woman, it might be more precise to call her a girl. She looked to be around Taiki’s age. However, since her slim body was wrapped in a suit and she spoke politely, she looked more adult.

“This is Mister John Mash. He is an American journalist.”

While the woman explained this, the youth called John put out his hand to Taiki.

Taiki awkwardly shook it back.

The suited girl did not seek a handshake. Pushing away her diagonally-cut bangs with a finger, she made a Japanese-style bow.

“I am his interpreter slash assistant, Ikarino Kirari. —Nice to meet you.”

She was a calm beauty. She might actually be older than his estimations.

As Taiki just stood there like a statue, John started speaking at length about something in English.

“Eh…? Err—”

In the end, the voice coming out of his mouth sounded this pathetic.

“What’s going on, big brother?”

As Taiki got around, he saw his little sister, apparently having arrived there in a delay, standing there with a puzzled expression.

“I-I don’t really understand it either—”

“Mister Mash wishes to interview you, Taiki-san.”

Both Taiki and Noa were surprised at the interpreter girl’s words.

“Interview?”

“To be more precise, this is about your cousin.”

As Taiki furrowed his brows, John and Kirari glared at him.

“That person’s name is—”

She stared at his face as if to gauge his reaction—

“Kusuriya Daisuke.”

The girl called Ikarino Kirari spoke clearly.

“Also—has anything changed at all around you?”

Being asked this by an exceptionally powerful tone of voice, what came to Taiki’s mind was—

The dreams he started seeing every night.

As well as the dream he had that very night, about that overly powerful Mushitsuki.

That man’s fight was as fierce as a sea of flames—

2.01 Harukiyo Part 1

Harukiyo took in that nostalgic smell.

“This is—what you’d call a coup d’etat.”

It started at the very moment Haji Keigo said this and turned the flag of revolution against the government.

There was the unpleasant smell of flesh and blood burning. Harukiyo had the feeling that this scent clung to him ever since he was born.

What one might call the scent of hell.

“—Time to go.”

Harukiyo spat, his voice mixed with a sigh.

The domed facility, serving at the Mushitsuki’s temporary headquarters, was now filled with hustle and bustle. Following Haji Keigo’s announcement of a coup d’etat, Lady Bird’s appearance caused the confusion to reach its peak.

“You really plan on letting that woman go free?”

Said Kusezaki Ume, his long-time companion. The boy clad in an androgynous-looking sailor uniform was looking toward the still-smiling Miguruma Yaeko.

“How many years has she been toying with the Librarian and the Custodian for? I gotta wrack up my brains to think of the proper punishment for her.”

“Let’s ask everyone for ideas on torture! I believe you’re going to use mine, though.”

As Ume spoke excitedly, a large mirror bug appeared at his back. The mirror surface on the insect’s back reflected Harukiyo and his comrades.

Harukiyo looked to the side, speaking to Kasuou who was carrying Sleeping Beauty.

“Give her a message from me once she wakes up, Kasuou.”

“Ah?”

“Look—this world is the continuation of your failed dream.”

Hearing this, Kasuou and the girls called Nene and Tamamo all turned harsh eyes to him.

“You can also tell her that she has to pay for it sooner or later. She and Kakkou never even noticed how dangerous C was. They shoulda let her participate in the night of the meteor shower—and kill her.”

They all became speechless, hearing his words. However, Kasuou soon spoke back to him.

“Why’re you even bringing that up in that stage? You’ve lost your edge, too.”

“I’m just stubborn. You know that, right?”

The moment after Harukiyo asserted this, the scenery visible to his eyes changed completely.

It was the townscape of Akamaki City spread out, with a side gale blowing.

Harukiyo was standing atop the very summit of the dome’s ceiling.

He was instantly transported to the rooftop like that through the use of Kusezaki Ume’s mirror bug. Since he could control multiple mirror bugs, Ume was able to take a person’s reflections and reflect them from one mirror bug to another, thus transporting them to different location.

Standing next to Harukiyo were his several companions, including Ume and Haruka.

“So what are we going to do now, Harukiyo?”

The youth with a scraggly beard asked while stretching. Harukiyo’s friend, alias Santa Claus, was a another powerful Mushitsuki.

“Nothing. Playtime’s over.”

“Really? Really? What on earth have you been trying to do, Harukiyo? …Uh, my wounds feel like they’re opening again. I have to rub in more medicine.”

The girl with a pointy hat started rubbing some suspicious medicine on her own stomach. Her alias was the Witch.

“Nothin’ much. I just wanted Sleeping Beauty to wake up and crush me like a bug.”

“Ooh, so hentai…!”

The blond woman—aka Maria—started panting for some reason, sounding excited.

“And that’s why you’ve been looking for her for more than two years…? Hardcore…”

Sakaki Haruka, who wore the kind of clothes classified as Gothic Lolita, mumbled to herself.

At that moment, the dome shook violently.

Along with a roar, dust blew from the edge of his vision.

He wondered if a missile exploded or something, but that wasn’t it. Apparently, some impact broke through the dome’s walls. He could see the Mushitsuki all busting out of the dome within the screen of dust.

“Oh, so it’s over? Then I’ll be heading back home. I got to enjoy the rate sight of seeing Harukiyo almost dying, after all.”

“Right, right. We also almost died, but that always happens. I gotta go back and watch the anime I was recording.”

“I is sleepy…”

Even among Harukiyo’s acquaintances, they were especially powerful Mushitsuki. They were never threatened by anyone; a gathering of people who were as free as they were peculiar.

They were all going to scatter as casually as after going to late-night karaoke, and Harukiyo didn’t have the right to stop them. Nor a reason for doing so.

“Eh, we’re leaving already? But it still looks fun. It’s a war out there!”

Only Ume seemed displeased at this. Apparently he hadn’t played enough.

“I get the shivers, working with groups of people numbering more than two digits. I might vomit.”

“No can do, no can do. You’re calling it a war, but isn’t it a witch hunt? I have enough of people beating me after I try to get close in class. Ah, I hope the world gets destroyed so I get a vacation from school…”

“War bad! Love & peace!”

Ume pouted at their friends’ cold behavior.

“Then at least leave a little of your powers for Haruka! Maria-san’s sensing ability and Witch-san’s medicine and fortune-telling are useful. We don’t need you, Santa Claus, so you can go.”

“Hey! What the hell? Am I not actually the most useful? Well, I am not going to reveal my hand even if you ask me to, though.”

“No! Fakkyu!”

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll give you my remaining medicine, so please let me go.”

Complete rejecting Ume, the three friends ended up leaving. And in a ridiculous manner, too; the Witch pulled out a broom from somewhere and the three of them rode it into the sky.

“Can this not go any faster?” “Lessgo!” “Can’t you fly with your own powers, Maria…?” These voices grew further and further away in the skies of Akamaki City.

“Aw, they’re gone. Is that fine with you, Harukiyo?”

“Huh? What is?”

“Shouldn’t we make them help us in defeating C? Or are we really finishing here now?”

After being asked this by Ume, Harukiyo sat down on the spot.

“What’s defeating C has to do with me in the first place? I only wanted to settle the score with Arisu.”

“And yet you’ve let even Arisu-san get away.”

“I’ve done it all properly, so it’s fine. She came to kill me without any hesitation, without a goal and while using her full powers. Sure, she might’ve been sleepwalking, but that’s fine. She told me two years ago she’d do it, and she finally did. We’re even now.”

“…”

“And since I’ve survived—it just means I’ve won again.”

Under his eyes, a fierce fight was unfolding.

The revived Lady Bird served as rear guard, trying to let as many Mushitsuki escape as possible.

“You don’t look very happy about your victory, though.”

“Ah, it’s just that once I think about having to look for the next… ‘disaster’, I feel kinda down.”

Those were his real feelings.

He’d never been able to get used to that—the absurd disappointment and everything feeling so meaningless. Even though he’d experienced those countless time to this point.

“I don’t really get it… but your dream sure is a bother, Harukiyo.”

Harukiyo’s dream, mentioned by Ume.

There was one, single time he’d ever spoken about it out loud. Even he thought it was a bothersome dream, and in fact, the person who heard about it—Arisu—was shocked.

No, that was wrong.

Once she heard Harukiyo’s idiotic dream, Arisu—had cried.

She never revealed the reason for her tears.

“I’m seriously sick of this…”

Recalling this silly moment, Harukiyo clicked his tongue.

An abnormal scene spread overhead.

A gigantic shrine appeared from between the clouds.

“…Ah… something’s coming…”

The moment Haruka muttered this, Harukiyo glared at the shrine floating in the sky.

A red-hot heatwave was emitted around Harukiyo. It scattered the abnormal presence that approached as though to engulf them.

“Did C try a mental attack just now? Is this Shinpu’s ability gained by absorbing him?”

“If she’s just attackin’ randomly, I don’t feel like playing along. Welp, that woman down there will surely take care of it.”

As the displeased Harukiyo spat this, Ume turned to look at him with a puzzled face.

“Say, Harukiyo. You want to fight powerful opponents, right? Isn’t C ideal for that, then? I do have some interest in this fight against C.”

“I don’t feel really excited about this… sure, strength-wise it fits, though. But I don’t think there’s any way for me to beat this alone.”

His answer was apparently unexpected. Ume looked surprised.

“Oh, so you are interested.”

“Not while working together with that lot down there, though. All the more if I fight seriously.”

“Although you can’t win alone… you won’t join forces with them…?”

Haruka also tilted her head. Harukiyo spoke calmly.

“No matter how you look at it—it’s a losing battle.”

Overhead, the shrine kept emitting a divine glow.

Having thought about ending all of this already, Harukiyo was now even angrier.

“Kakkou’s gone. Fuyuhotaru’s also missing. Dunno if they’ll be able to use Arisu. Their final hope’s that fake Lady Bird. There might be like maybe five or six other usable people? They’re just gonna get in my way if I join up with them.”

He could see a seven-spotted ladybug flying to the sky.

Along with an impact, the giant shrine was finally eliminated.

“Lady-san sure is strong. —Oh, but look.”

Ume, who was watching over the state of the battle, saw how things went on the surface and wore a bitter smile.

“Looks like she’s acting on her own. I guess she wants to help all those weaklings escape? She sure hasn’t changed a bit…”

“If she’s still the same even after getting revived, there’s really no savin’ her. She’s just gonna carry everything on her own, not rely on anyone and die along with all those weaklings.”

Harukiyo also knew a little about the Rank 1 called Lady Bird.

Most likely, this goddess bravely fighting for the sake of others was going to embrace that pure spirit of hers and die with her people again. Her remaining believers were going to then idolize her, praying for her to get revived again.

“Meaning, there’s no way for us to defeat C at this point. Picking up a fight against someone you can’t win against is plain suicide.”

While watching over Lady Bird and others who ran on the surface, he spat.

“I wanna live. For that sake—I’m goin’ around crushing all the ‘disasters’ that have the potential to kill me.”

Both looking resigned, Ume and Haruka exchanged glances.

“So, we’re heading back?”

“…Let’s leave…”

“Yeah. —First, though, there is a little something that’s been on my mind for a while now.”

Harukiyo rose up and looked at Ume.

To be more precise, he glared at the person standing between Ume and his mirror bug.

“Who the fuck are you?”

A business suit-wearing woman stood there completely still. She was a beauty who looked to be in her mid-twenties, but for some reason she hugged a teddy bear to her chest.

Ume and Haruka both turned to look at this suited beauty with a startled face.

“Eh! Harukiyo also saw her? She just went and jumped into my Mushi when we were moving and it did seem like she came with us… but since everyone just ignored her, I assumed I was hallucinating her!”

“…So she wasn’t a ghost… what a letdown…”

Having come up from the surface up to the top of the dome wasn’t just Harukiyo and his companions.

Yet another unrelated person had been there from the start.

“I do apologize for disappointing you. I am a live person, and I serve as the secretary to the Chairman of the Akasegawa Group, Miss Akasegawa Nanana.”

After she smoothly introduced herself, the woman made the teddy bear bow its head.

“And he is Septem Punctata-kun.”

“What business does the secretary of Akasegawa Nanana and her teddy bear have with us?”

Harukiyo didn’t care about the woman’s eccentricity. He was used to weird people.

“Harukiyo-sama. Chairman Akasegawa would like to offer you a job.”

Saying this, the woman introducing herself as a secretary spoke.

“Please secure a certain object and deliver it to a certain place.”

2.02 Harukiyo Part 2

It was easy for Harukiyo to summarize his life.

Everyone died except for me—

This sentence was all it took.

Each and every time, Harukiyo was assaulted by accidents and misfortune. And every time the people related to him were drawn into them and died. No matter how much Harukiyo tried saving them, it was useless.

Harukiyo called those events “disasters”.

His life was beaten down by these “disasters”, yet existed to celebrate this world.

Therefore, even him becoming a Mushitsuki was just par for the course. As he gained power in order to surpass even stronger “disasters”, he became stronger and enjoyed life even more.

Meaning, he didn’t have the slightest interest in the fights between Mushitsuki.

Although it just so happened that he got involved with Sleeping Beauty, he didn’t care about Mushi and Mushitsuki.

Even so, for some reason—

“Please secure a certain object and deliver it to a certain place.”

The woman introducing herself as Akasegawa Nanana’s secretary who was holding a teddy bear said this.

Although he had no interest in Mushitsuki, their secrets constantly came to him—

This seemed to be his fate.

Sometimes it was due to meeting up with key people by coincidence.

Sometimes it was information brought in by his friends, who were all weird but powerful.

Sometimes it was through cooperating with the SEPB in his search for Sleeping Beauty.

Harukiyo knew plenty of secrets about Mushitsuki. However, just because he knew about them it didn’t mean he was going to do something about it.

Why was it?

Until now—he’d been unable to find the reason.

“I would like to entrust you with securing of the primal Mushitsuki, Alpha, as well as his transport to a safe location.”

On top of the windy dome’s rooftop, the secretary spoke.

Alpha—

Harukiyo knew about his existence.

It was a product owned by Akasegawa Nanana that even the organization known as the Kanon Cult had once snatched away.

Akasegawa Nanana was a millionaire who served as the Chairman of the conglomerate called the Akasegawa Group. Since the period when she fought against the Round Table, the secret club serving as an authority in the business world, overlapped with the period she obtained Alpha—he had to imagine that Alpha’s origins were tied to the Round Table.

Harukiyo didn’t know as far as Alpha’s identity.

It didn’t interest him.

“This happened during the execution of Operation 3. C—not the one who became a Super Class Rank 1, but her original personality of Horiuchi Erii, tried using herself to eliminate Alpha.”

The secretary explained this dispassionately.

“Although the attempt had been just barely stopped, it later took our utmost efforts to keep him inside a vehicle equipped with a life-support system… and we were unable to move him from a certain place. Since the Mushibane and SEPB Mushitsuki who protected it also made a desperate retreat, they did not have the time to recover Alpha.”

Harukiyo and Ume exchanged glances. Haruka hurriedly lay down on the roof, sleeping.

“Akasegawa has invested a hefty sum into Alpha till now. We do not know why C would want to erase Alpha, but if C targets him again—we must do something to protect him. Because we have yet to make any profit out of Alpha.”

“…”

“Currently, Alpha is kept isolated to hide him from C, but the battery powering the life-support system will not hold out for long. We must move him to adequately furnished facilities as quickly as possible. As for the fighting forces required to do so… Akasegawa has judged you to be the only one capable of this, Harukiyo-sama.”

Ume, who until now remained silent and listened to the conversation, stepped in front of the secretary.

“Say, miss. Who’s Alpha?”

For a moment, she was silent at this question that struck at the very core.

“…I cannot give any further details other than saying he the first Mushitsuki who appeared in the world.”

“Ho. Is it really that important?”

“It could become a huge clue regarding what Mushi are. And as I have explained just now, since Horiuchi Erii had been willing to erase him even at the price of her life, we can reason out that he is hiding another important secret.”

“If he’s a clue, why not ask this Alpha guy? Like, ‘who are you, man?’”

“Alpha is in a constant loop of sleep and awakening. Also, he is missing parts of his body, making him weak, so he can’t withstand forceful awakening or questioning induced by medicine…”

“What do we have to gain from helping that Alpha guy?”

“We will pay you a suitable sum. Other than cash, we can even supply you hard-to-get items and the like after consultation.”

“Money, huh. But this country’s money’s about to go bust anyway, right? With how things are.”

“If you wish for it, we can pay with other country’s money. As long as the rich do not vanish from this world, the human called Akasegawa Nanana will never lose her funds again.”

“Wow, so confident. Hey, Harukiyo, this lady says she’ll give us money.”

“Wake up, Haruka. We’re going.”

Harukiyo held up Haruka with one hand, shaking her. He ignored the secretary right from about the middle, and Haruka didn’t wake up even after being shaken.

“Sorry. I don’t hate money, but I’m not feelin’ like it right now. This sorta thing happens, right? Times like when you really want ramen but can only find curry restaurants.”

“…There is something else we can supply to you.”

The secretary said. Although Akasegawa Nanana was an upstart who had nothing but money in her mind, she apparently didn’t actually think Harukiyo would be tempted by money.

“We will hold back nothing in support for the securing and subsequent full awakening of Sleeping Beauty.”

Harukiyo and the others froze in place.

It was an unexpected proposal in many different senses. Harukiyo spoke.

“Unless I’m mistaken, that woman’s also rich. Akasegawa doesn’t really need to butt in.”

“No, we are the only ones capable of that.”

The secretary spoke clearly.

“Before Sleeping Beauty went to sleep, she was on the cusp of Maturation. Some years passed since then and she seems to have physically grown, but… it’s impossible to estimate the rate of mental growth. Although she woke up, the possibility for her to Mature again is nonnegligible. Am I wrong?”

Harukiyo gave no answer.

“While retreating from Operation 3, Akasegawa Nanana had thought up several plans for our Group. Among them, the contract with the boy called Shiohara Shachito was included.”

“Shiohara Shachito? You know him, Harukiyo?”

“Nope.”

“He was the last disciple of the girl called Shishidou Inuko. When she was alive, she operated as a Mushitsuki in the SEPB under the codename Asagi, as an instructor.”

“Oh, I do know Wanko. When I lost against the Librarian in cards I had to go confess to her as a penalty game; it was my first time meeting her.”

“Oh, so that’s why you came back half-dead and in tears.”

“Asagi excels at analyzing the characteristics of Mushitsuki. Not only did she write manuals for retraining Mushitsuki as combatants, she analyzed the existing workforce and even tried giving suitable training for each and every member. —There’s the possibility that her last disciple Shiohara Shachito inherited something of her expertise.”

“Meaning, you’d let that brat train Arisu?”

Now realizing that she was trying to say this was an errand from Akasegawa Nanana, Harukiyo grinned.

“Train her—to stop any further Maturation.”

The secretary made a small nod.

“All the other Rank 1s like Kakkou, Fuyuhotaru and even that beautiful and perfect Rina-sama all rampaged shortly after becoming Mushitsuki. As long as one didn’t have a formidable mental strength from the very start, the power of a Rank 1 is too strong. However, after this they underwent training, gained experience and stabilized. And if you say that Sleeping Beauty has no time to gain experience—”

“Then you can just train her, you say.”

“Indeed.”

As expected from the shrewd Akasegawa Nanana. She knew what Operation 2 was about and was even convinced that Harukiyo’s goal was in Sleeping Beauty. And she hurried up to sit at the negotiation table.

Harukiyo had no complaints about this payment.

However—that was only if he hadn’t already fought Sleeping Beauty.

“Welp, sorry, miss. His business with Sleeping Beauty is actually done already.”

Ume spoke Harukiyo’s feelings for him.

“That’s too bad. It would’ve been great if Harukiyo hadn’t fought her yet.”

“Nah, Akasegawa’s offer wasn’t going to cut it in the first place.”

Harukiyo said.

“That woman was going to save Sleeping Beauty even without asking me, after all. —I know enough to at least say that even that miser wouldn’t support Sleeping Beauty just to gain money.”

The secretary might not have known this, but Harukiyo did.

Akasegawa Nanana had once cooperated with Sleeping Beauty. Their relationship was established not only based on the binary of profit and loss, but on Nanana’s personal feelings as well.

“No, Akasegawa Nanana will not help Sleeping Beauty.”

However, the secretary denied Harukiyo’s words.

“Besides, Harukiyo-sama—if you yourself claim your business is finished, why have you carried Sleeping Beauty all the way here?”

Apparently this stubborn negotiator wasn’t about to back down just yet.

Until now apathetic to it all, Harukiyo felt a small anger budding inside him.

“We finally fought and I settled things my way. I got even with her. After that, I settled things with Haji Keigo. Thanks to the liar that man sent me I was able to fight Sleeping Beauty without any interferences.”

The secretary looked back into Harukiyo’s eyes.

“Is that really the only reason?”

“You’re lookin’ kinda angry, what’re you tryna say?”

“If it’s just a Mushitsuki on a rampage, is it any different from a small fry undergoing Maturation? Has what you have been looking for been really nothing other than this sort of haphazard disaster?”

“Disaster”.

Flames lit up in Harukiyo’s eyes upon hearing that word. The surrounding air immediately started sizzling.

“Yeah. It’s just that. I wanted to beat the ‘disaster’.”

“Is that so? If you will allow me to borrow your own words, it also seemed to me like you were looking for Sleeping Beauty for reasons other than profit and loss, just like Akasegawa Nanana.”

“…”

“After all, if you were merely looking for ‘disasters’, you would have had plenty of chances until then. Fuyuhotaru’s birth, Lady Bird’s Maturation, as well as countless others, I’m sure. However, the one who stood against all those was Kakkou and not you.”

“…”

“You being so obsessed about looking for Sleeping Beauty wasn’t because just of her power as Mushitsuki… wasn’t it because you were waiting for her to wake up and give meaning to another kind of strength?”

As the secretary spoke emotionlessly, her bangs caught on fire.

“That’s creepy. Don’t start analyzing people with that know-it-all face.”

“This is no analysis. Akasegawa Nanana is determined. Sleeping Beauty might even be called her first friend—but she won’t save her.”

The secretary’s eyebrows, collar, and frill of her suit all started catching fire.

“Sleeping Beauty promised she’d win and sought Akasegawa Nanana’s assistance for the night of the meteor shower. However, as you’re fully aware—it ended up a loss. Akasegawa Nanana was definitely displeased to lose the one she invested into. That is her determination, and her way to finish things with the contract and promise.”

“…What a horrible human being. She doesn’t have any value as a friend.”

“In order to keep being Sleeping Beauty’s friend—Akasegawa Nanana needs to keep being Akasegawa Nanana.”

Harukiyo sneered.

I see, so that’s the real reward Akasegawa Nanana’s offering.

She was declaring that she would not save Sleeping Beauty.

Saying it was up to Harukiyo whether she’d save her or not wasn’t a deal, but actually a threat.

She used even her friends for a hostage deal—

That brazen, upstart girl really was in her element.

“Meaning that if I don’t help, Arisu’s fated to die from Maturation.”

“Haji Keigo will definitely use her and throw her away. I heard he’s that kind of person. Now that the SEPB has been disbanded, the only place that can train her is the group with access to Shiohara Shachito. And the one holding the decision on whether it will happen or not—is you, Harukiyo-sama.”

“…”

“What? Are you still expecting Arisu-san to do something, Harukiyo?”

His arm pulled by Ume, Harukiyo’s expression crumbled.

The fire engulfing the secretary vanished like a dream.

“No—I’m not interested.”

No matter what she told him, Harukiyo completed his goal.

—I believe… that his strength holds meaning.

How nostalgic.

That woman’s words that he already forgot passed through his mind.

“Right, if that Alpha’s a beautiful girl I might get excited!”

Ume spoke with a full smile, but the secretary shook her head.

“…He is a young man. Appearance-wise, at least.”

“Bummer. Let’s go.”

His back pushed by Ume, Harukiyo spun around.

He held no interest at all in Mushitsuki or the battles surrounding them. It simply came along with the other things he was pursuing.

It was the same with Sleeping Beauty.

The “disaster” that Harukiyo had attempted to make a preemptive attack on just so happened to be Mushitsuki. It just so happened she was an idiot who wished to save Mushitsuki.

“What a foolish man…”

Perhaps trying a sob story as her very last resort, the secretary’s words continued.

“He is already quite weakened… Even when he wakes up from time to time, he just says ‘let me sleep again’…”

“…”

He’d already settled matters with Sleeping Beauty after searching for her for so long.

This would also be his last time to get involved with the fights of Mushitsuki.

Harukiyo thought so and was about to leave all trouble behind, but—

Twitch.

His shoulders shook and he stopped on the spot.

Ume and the sleepy-eyed Haruka witnessed his expression, gasped and paled.

“He constantly groans, ‘just kill me already’…”

“—Where is he right now?”

Harukiyo inquired, not even turning around.

“Eh?”

He felt that the secretary, who was on the verge of giving up, was shaken by this.

“You’d better tell me quickly, lady. Otherwise I’ll burn ya.”

Stiff-faced Ume and Haruka hurriedly distanced themselves from Harukiyo.

“A-Alpha is currently at—”

The secretary gave Alpha’s location.

After this, Harukiyo made no attempt to restrain the impulse rising inside him.

His body engulfed by flames, he became a fireball and got down to the surface. He blew away the armored cars still loitering around and flew toward Akamaki City.

While riding the heatwave created by his ability, at times leaping over the roofs of buildings, knocking down power poles—and from time to time also blowing away the small fries known as the Revived—he advanced toward his destination in a straight line.

And several minutes later, he reached the suburbs of Akamaki City.

It was a warehouse district with a garage for freight trains.

Passing through the area filled with many containers, he came standing in front of a certain warehouse. Even the thick door of entry instantly melted by Harukiyo reaching to it.

“—!”

He soon heard many voices.

Several semi-trailers were parked inside the warehouse. Surrounding them were men holding violent firearms. They were probably mercenaries hired by Akasegawa Nanana.

“Eat shit.”

Blown away by Harukiyo’s heatwaves, the men all lost consciousness.

“Lemme say this first. —I’m not here to save you, so don’t get your hopes up. I just gotta say somethin’ to those who get on my nerves to get some peace of mind.”

Melting the semi-trailer’s cargo door, Harukiyo hopped inside.

The insides were a gate to a different world with sprawling, haphazard tubes and electron tubes. In the very center was a rectangular pool shaped like a bathtub—or perhaps a coffin.

A young man was sleeping inside this pool full of liquid.

“I just hate suicidal people like you to death.”

Being touched by the heat produced by Harukiyo, a cloud of steam rose from the water surface.

“Bastards like you suck up all the air for people like me who wanna do our best to live, eh?”

The primal Mushitsuki, Alpha, as well as the flame devil Harukiyo—

That was how this pair met.

2.03 Harukiyo Part 3

Harukiyo grabbed Alpha from inside the pool. He tore off the mask covering the youth’s face.

“Explain it to me so I can understand.”

He glared at the man’s face that was as pale as a wax doll’s from up close.

“You wanna get killed, right? Why you think so? Is there someone preventing you from living? Got a short lifespan or somethin’? So you need to kick your enemy’s asses to extend your life, right? But you want someone to kill you?”

After being yelled at from up close, Alpha opened his eyes thinly. Leaking a weak sigh, he moved his line of sight.

“Where’s… the girl…?”

“A girl? You blind or something? I’m the only one here. We’re alone.”

“She said… she’s like me… if she’s gone—”

Apparently Alpha’s life was leaking away with every soft yet long sigh of Alpha’s.

“I won’t talk anymore… let me sleep… that’s enough…”

“…”

It happened just as Harukiyo narrowed his burning eyes.

“He refers to Fuyuhotaru.”

He could hear a woman’s voice from outside the semi-trailer.

Another Harukiyo appeared there, carrying both Kusezaki Ume as well as Akasegawa Nanana’s secretary under his arms. After letting both get down, Harukiyo’s imitation melted to unveil Sakaki Haruka.

“Akasegawa Nanana was the one who bought him, but it was Fuyuhotaru who woke him up. He’d apparently been having some sort of sympathetic bond with her since then.”

“I don’t fucking care.”

Harukiyo spat, turning back to Alpha.

“I really don’t like you, bastard… you’re somewhat similar to those Original Three assholes. Since they’re self-aware about all sorta things they’re better, though.”

As Harukiyo spat this, he could sense some sort of nasty presence.

“Harukiyo! This is bad, this—”

Golden electrical discharge suddenly appeared at the ceiling. It took the shape of small C-butterflies that started fluttering around the warehouse.

“C found—”

Before Ume could finish his words, the air inside the warehouse changed.

The atmospheric pressure lowered as if the air itself was choked, and in the next moment there was an explosive roar and a gale.

“I’m currently busy—having fun talking with this son of a bitch.”

Harukiyo and Alpha’s hair was fanned by the wind.

In a position visible from the cargo, Ume, Haruka and the secretary looked around them, stunned.

Except for the semi-trailer Harukiyo and others were inside of, everything around them was turned to barren, flat ground. Everything around them simmered, with only the area where the collapsed mercenaries lay escaping the effects of the heatwave.

“You can’t go and blow up the entire warehouse just because you’re annoyed…”

Hearing Ume’s groan behind him, Harukiyo looked down coldly at Alpha.

“—Did C target me just now? Or were you the target? Well, at the very least it looks like there’re many people who’ll target you, so it’s got nothing to do with me.”

Alpha gave no answer. His slightly open eyes were listless and directed at Harukiyo’s chest.

“So many people target you, gang up on you and thoroughly bully you, eh? That wouldn’t happen unless you’re quite the bad guy, right? Have you killed hundreds of people? Or maybe you used some dirty means to squeeze money outta people? Or maybe you played with the hearts of innocent girls or trampled the dignity of weaklings and treated them like trash?”

Alpha gave no answer.

“You get what I’m saying, right? If a bastard like you feels anguished and tired and all—it’s a sort of punishment. You wouldn’t suffer so much if it wasn’t a punishment, right?”

“…”

“So you wouldn’t go all like… ‘I did nothing wrong, they just came up and started abusing me for no reason’ at this stage, right?”

Alpha finally closed his eyes.

“And if you still insist you did nothing—then your life itself is a sin.”

Harukiyo kept hurling abuse at him.

“Have you no shame, then, to be using all this machinery to keep living if it’s a sin? You’re causing so much trouble to people and you’re not even aware of it. You goddamn sinner, you shoulda died long ago. Aren’t you ashamed to still be alive?”

“…”

“Just so you know, it’s the worst of the worst criminals who don’t even know what they’ve done and yet look all like ‘I’m innocent, they are all just trying to kill me’, while you’re just chilling here, causing trouble for other people and trying to get punished for it. How much of a fucking coward are you?”

Alpha was speechless.

However—there was the smallest wrinkle formed in his brows.

“Oh? You mad? Am I being a bother? You’ve got some cheek, looking so uncomfortable at that. You wanna get killed, right? So isn’t me whispering some abuse to your ears a rather cute punishment, in comparison? Those who are content getting punished don’t resist, right? I won’t allow you talkin’ back to me, either. You’re spoiling the mood of all of us who wanna live, you living trashcan.”

Looking at the devices installed on the walls, the secretary warned Harukiyo.

“Alpha’s heartrate is rising. He is an important witness. He’s an irreplaceable person for Mushitsuki. Treating him so violently is—”

“Witness? I don’t give a fuck, I don’t need to ask him anything. —You said you’re a secretary, right? Just get behind the wheel and drive already.”

“Drive?” she asked with a tilted head.

Ume and Haruka came to the semi-trailer’s cargo.

“Uwah… Alpha-san, was it? Since Harukiyo loathes suicidal guys, he’s got his eyes on you. It’s way too early to find the next Sleeping Beauty.”

“…And now he’ll definitely not stop until you say ‘please, just let me live’…”

Golden electric discharges started forming around them again.

Understanding the situation, the secretary headed to the driver’s seat along with her teddy bear.

“I do not have license for large vehicles, though…”

“You can just pay a fine later, right?”

“…Just ignore it…”

“If you wanna die, you’re not gonna complain about whatever way you die, right? If you say you wanna get punished, keep cursing me till you run out of breath. Just as a mood cleanser.”

The large semi-trailer holding Alpha suddenly went in reverse.

Ume and Haruka rolled and bumped their head against the walls, but Harukiyo never let go of Alpha.

“If you say you wanna get punished, you gotta acknowledge your own sin, right? I’m not having a loser like you retort, and I don’t wanna hear any testimony comin’ from that dirty mouth of yours.”

Slapping Alpha’s mask back on his face, Harukiyo pushed his head into coffin-like bed again.

“Those pushing their sins on you aren’t gonna listen to you either, anyway.”

Changing directions, the semi-trailer flew out of the warehouse area.

“Therefore, your own means of resistance—are to keep living.”

Harukiyo felt like Alpha’s head twitched under his hand.

At the same time, the semi-trailer made a sudden brake, stopping in place.

“If you’re going to abandon even that and get punished, that’s quite the great sin in itself, right? Now I’m finally interested. I’m gonna watch your sin with my very own eyes and decide. I’ll be like Yama-sama down there in hell and give you my judgment. Don’t dare dream of an easy death if it ends up being something half-assed, though.”

The semi-trailer’s ceiling above Harukiyo’s head glowed dark red. The inner part was blown away as though from an explosion, opening up a circular hole.

He wrapped himself in heat and leapt. Landing on the semi-trailer’s roof, he scratched his chin.

The warehouse was being surrounded by multitudes of Revived.

“Hey, you bastards. You’re aimin’ for me? Or is for this living corpse?”

Harukiyo’s emitted heatwave instantly mowed down everything around. Containers and empty vehicles were all blown away, rails included, and the Revived were thrown backwards.

“Step on it, teddy bear lady. I dunno where to, though.”

He tapped the ceiling.

“I hit an idea on how to check this guy’s sin. And until then—I’ll keep him alive.”

The semi-trailer accelerated abruptly.

As they rushed out of the warehouse area and into the city proper, they came to a large road. There were some armored vehicles blocking the road, but Harukiyo just waved his hands to make these heavy cars flip over and clear the path.

Apparently, the secretary’s destination was distant. Passing through a great junction, the semi-trailer entered the highway connecting Akamaki City to other towns.

The semi-trailer broke through the toll gate’s bars.

As it rushed full speed on the empty highway, golden lights were formed around it.

They were countless C-butterflies. —Since Harukiyo weren’t running away or hiding, C wasn’t going to lose them.

The C-butterflies gathered in one spot and slid right beneath the semi-trailer.

“Haha!”

Harukiyo wrapped his body with a red fireball. Throwing himself midair, he grabbed the semi-trailer’s roof.

By Harukiyo yielding himself to the heatwave that struck from the side, he forced the semi-trailer to drift.

The next moment, huge lightning rose from below the semi-trailer.

Sliding on its side, the cargo box only just narrowly avoided direct impact.

“Fighting me from afar like that without showing yourself means you’re lookin’ down on me, C?!”

Following this, the second then third strike assaulted the trailer.

However, Harukiyo shook the vehicle to the side, avoiding each one.

“B-bleeeeh…! Harukiyo, is there no other way? I’m gonna hurl…!”

“…I hit my head and nose…”

He heard complaints from the cargo area, but didn’t let it bother him.

A barricade of armed vehicles and Revived blocked the path. However, the heatwave Harukiyo unleashed blew them away, opening the road again.

“That’s just not cutting it! Gimme your best shot, C! Since you’ve absorbed that disgusting Shinpu, there’s gotta be a better game you can play!”

The lightning stopped.

On the road ahead a human figure glowing in gold appeared on top of the noise barrier.

A young girl with a tiara on her head and cloak on her shoulders—C.

However, this wasn’t her real body. Her silhouette warped, the girl exchanged glances with Harukiyo as he passed by her.

“I must purge the Ark—”

C’s voice reached Harukiyo’s ears.

Another C appeared ahead.

“From the old generation of Mushitsuki—”

Not moving her mouth, C glared at Harukiyo as he passed.

“The Deluge will wash away all past Mushitsuki—”

Three Cs appeared and vanished behind Harukiyo’s semi-trailer while staring at him.

“And then I will release the Dove…”

While watching off the vanishing C, Harukiyo sneered.

“I don’t really get it—but I see now, so that’s the next ‘disaster’.”

Standing atop the cargo, Harukiyo calmly let the wind hit him.

“I’m not gonna die, though. Not even Sleeping Beauty managed to kill me.”

All lightning attacks stopped, and when C vanished—the overhead sky underwent a change.

A sublime radiance peeked from between the clouds, and something large was trying to show itself.

“Me or that suicidal guy below me… I dunno which of us this ‘disaster’ is meant for, but don’t lump us together. Unlike that guy, I’ll keep on living at any cost.”

A pure bell’s sound echoed on the highway.

A sweet sensation of drunkenness encroached his mind.

“Right, that’s the one.”

Smiling, he leapt inside the semi-trailer.

Ume and Haruka were collapsed on the floor. They were apparently downed rather quickly by C’s mental attack. They’d probably wake up on their own before long.

Forcing his increasingly heavier body to move, Harukiyo grabbed Alpha.

He raised the youth’s head from inside the tub once again.

“—I’ll never agree to this. As long as I’m alive, the fact of my life is no sin.”

Alpha frowned, opening narrow eyes.

“You’re formally invited, suicidal guy. I’m gonna show you the difference between us.”

He was purposely letting the bell noises affect him at this stage.

He grabbed Alpha’s head tightly. So he could take the suicidal guy in front of his eyes along for the ride.

“Once you’re on my level, you can even hijack a mental attack and take it over.”

Spitting this at his fellow sinner, the flame devil—

“Probably, anyway.”

Let C’s mental attack take over his body.

2.04 Harukiyo Part 4

Hot.

Suffocating.

Painful.

These were the feelings that came to be experienced during the birth of the one called Harukiyo.

“Haa… Haa…”

Painful breathing sounds and horrible shaking transmitted a sense of fear to him, engulfing him.

He heard that there were people who possessed memories from right after their birth.

Harukiyo was probably one of them.

The first person he ever knew wasn’t his own mother.

“…L-lower your heads and head to the emergency stairs!”

She was a middle-aged nurse holding the newborn Harukiyo. Her hair was disheveled and her face was dirtied with soot and sweat, but her arms made him feel both warmth and strength.

“T-there’s a sign on the wall that leads to the emergency stairs, so follow that…!”

The nurse was shouting that toward the wall of fire.

This was something he’d investigated later, but the hospital Harukiyo was born in had been burnt down due to a fire of an unknown cause. It went up in flames just as he was born, and coupled with the fact that the fire-extinguishing equipment also malfunctioned, it apparently turned into a huge incident with many victims.

“Cough! Cough! Quickly, evacuate…!”

From the other side of the fire came another scream. The nurse warned them, and yet she herself was late to escape with Harukiyo in her arms.

The nurse went back to the corridor with the fire at her back. Weaving through the black smoke, she arrived at the stairs—

“Ugh…!”

Flames had already reached all the way to the regular stairway. Knowing the fate of the others who went down a floor to look for a means of escape, the nurse’s face froze.

“…!”

Apparently, the fire had yet to reach the upper floors. The nurse rushed up the stairs. Black smoke was flowing upwards, but she had no way to resist that flow.

Just as expected, as she came out into the top floor, the corridor was completely filled with smoke.

“It’s fine… it’s completely fine…”

The nurse peeked at Harukiyo’s face as he cried loudly. —This was the first and last time Harukiyo cried like that.

Right.

Harukiyo cried like this in his desire to not die so soon after he was born.

Although he knew nothing about this world, he felt attached to life—despite him knowing no words yet, this nurse who wasn’t even blood related decided to hear his wish and put her life on the line.

“Uuh—haa—”

The nurse crawled on the floor to look for an escape through the snoke.

Her fingertips then touched the knob of a door. She desperately opened it and rushed inside.

It led to a narrow room that was apparently empty.

She hurriedly closed the door behind her, but was unable to block the smoke from invading through the gaps.

“Haa… haa…”

The nurse and Harukiyo were cornered by the closed windows.

Soon the room was going to be filled with smoke and there was the smell of the door burning.

While feeling the pursuing heat, the nurse became aware of her own fate.

“—”

Looking at the Harukiyo nestled in her arms—she wore a gentle smile.

Had he been able to do anything for her at the time, as a literal baby? He couldn’t even grab her hand and take her somewhere safe, and he had no special powers like a Mushitsuki.

There was only one thing he was able to do at the time.

As she tried encouraging him despite herself shaking in fear, as the minimal attempt for comfort—

He returned her smile.

“…Pff.”

She probably hadn’t thought that he was going to smile back at her.

Wearing a smile as though she was relieved—the nurse gave him a tight hug.

She threw herself backwards in that position from the window.

The sensation of floating from free falling was etched deep into Harukiyo at the time.

The impact following this and the warmth of the nurse that stopped moving as well.

After saving Harukiyo she’d been carried to the hospital, but apparently soon lost her life.

“—”

At the time, Harukiyo had watched the burning hospital from the nurse’s bosom.

He stopped crying, didn’t smile anymore, and just stayed still.

Doing nothing at all, he simply realized that the world he’d been born into was that kind of place.

A world filled with misfortune where people ran around frantically trying to escape it.

However—it was also a world where people were able to smile while sacrificing themselves for strangers.

He started wishing to live more in this harsh yet beautiful world—

“—It isn’t my fault, right?”

The baby’s mouth moved, putting together actual words.

“I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even hold my neck straight, so what the hell could I’ve done?”

Speaking with a mouth that didn’t even have teeth, Harukiyo turned his gaze to the side.

A lone youth was standing there.

That person shouldn’t have been there on the day Harukiyo was born.

“But apparently there’re those who’d call this the origin of my sin.”

The silent youth—Alpha—just stood in place.

His form was getting progressively younger, finally transforming into a baby.

“C’s using the Shinpu’s powers and she knows that bastard’s methods. In short, she’s apparently telling us to ‘repent’.”

Conversely, Harukiyo’s form started rapidly growing, and he became a boy not yet ten years of age.

“In the end, that mental pollution shit is just inside our memories and minds. Puttin’ just a little bit of effort allows me to control it. Well? Hasn’t it turned out quite interesting?”

The flame devil Harukiyo.

The primal Mushitsuki, Alpha.

They were two Mushitsuki with completely different positions and histories—

“Now it’s your turn. Can you show me a sin worthy of death?”

Now, the trial comparing their sins was in session.

2.05 Harukiyo Part 5

He was the most blessed in the world.

That was because he witnessed the most beautiful sight of all the moment he was born.

Namely, light—

Although his eyesight had yet to solidify, he felt it engulf him along with a blissful warmth.

As the light vanished, he started crying.

Losing this warmth-filled light made him hopelessly sad.

He realized on an instinctive level that he would never get to touch it again.

“—”

While he was crying his lungs out, a bearded man was watching over him.

From behind the bearded man appeared another man. Then another woman appeared, and another—one after the other, adults pressed together to see his face.

After all this time, he didn’t even know where he was born.

However, he did remember that he was born inside a dirty, small cabin. It was quite the shabby place, with its walls nearly ruined.

It was there that people pushed their way inside one after another to visit him.

Their eyes.

Eyes.

Eyes.

He remembered many, many eyes peeking at him.

They probably all came to see the light that wrapped him as he was born. As he tilted his head, he could see people on their knees, praying to him.

A blinding light and eyes that peeked at his face.

And the next thing that remained in his memories was a high-pitched sound of rupture that stimulated his ears.

It was a gunshot.

Coming from afar, this small sound was pregnant with misfortune. Even the newborn could instinctually understand that fact—but he couldn’t do anything.

As he cried loudly, he was purified and blessed.

The people surrounding him were also smiling, and they gently touched him one after another. Within this warmth that he felt for the first time, he could feel their wishes of happiness.

And they were most likely—wishes regarding their own happiness.

“This child—has been blessed by God—”

Everyone would say such things.

He couldn’t count on his childhood memories, but their expressions seemed to say this.

Hope.

It was all entrusted to him, who was just born.

Among the people living in a harsh environment, a child wreathed by light was born.

What else could they call it, if not a miracle?

They rejoiced, they caressed him gently, and they offered him a pledge-like blessing.

This was the first love he felt.

And also—his last piece of bliss.

“—”

It was the ominous sound.

Gunfire was approaching, and the celebrations of his birth changed.

The small hut became full of activity and the bearded man took him away from the cradle. He was yelling something at the other surrounding people as he leapt out of the narrow room.

After all this time, he didn’t even know what country this was.

He remembered the open air being full of dust and there being lines of shacks built directly into the ground. The sort of place a person from the outside would probably call a slum.

A beautiful light and the people celebrating his birth.

Right after witnessing those, the next scenery was in the form of countless black dots floating in the sky.

Following this, other smaller objects began falling like raindrops—

“—”

Explosions and screams.

After that, a violent shaking, making him completely lose his sense of direction.

The bearded man ran while hugging him. —Was this man his father? If so, he could understand why the man risked himself to protect him. If he wasn’t his father, he could respect this man trying to rescue someone who wasn’t even his child.

As he escaped from the explosions, the slum’s residents cleared the path.

The baby’s miraculous birth apparently already passed between them. Many of them even simply kneeled while seeing him, not looking at the destroyed houses or the carriers of misfortune dancing in the sky.

While receiving the gazes of the residents offering their prayers, the bearded man was focused only on running.

Escaping the slum, he kept running even through wild land—

And the man exhausted his strength.

Apparently he was already wounded, because the collapsed man’s back was dyed in red.

“—O light—I beseech you to guide us—”

The moment before he breathed his last, the bearded man was smiling.

It was a satisfied smile, looking like he believed he’d fulfilled his duty.

Remaining alone, the baby cried.

Although he was scared of being alone, he kept crying for the sake of the people who left him and left this world.

Hearing his cries, many unfamiliar people appeared.

They picked him up as he continued crying and left with him.

There was obviously no way for him to have understood who these were at the time.

And there was someone else other than those who took him—

Starting from the moment of his birth and until the bearded man dyed—there was someone who glared at him while watching the whole thing.

In this world where the line between past and future was vague and he didn’t know anyone, someone was always with him.

While watching the miracles and misfortune clinging to him, he wore an expression—that was very much like a sneering devil.

“—Not bad at all for a ‘disaster’.”

It was a creepy man, his face covered in tape.

He had hair that was as red as flames.

“Well, show me what happens next. Using C’s powers really is a piece of cake—”

He was about to say this, but the demon erased his smile.

A golden light was formed between the devil and the baby.

It instantly formed a fairy. Her nude body was clad with a fanciful cloak and she wore a tiara on her head instead of a crown.

The baby’s expression turned severe and between him and the devil—

The golden fairy emitted blinding light.

“—!”

Harukiyo opened his eyes in an instant.

He was locking gazes with someone.

With none other than him—Alpha, who was lying inside the life support system.

He also saw Harukiyo.

And his gaze—looked like he was trying to ask Harukiyo for something.

“Haha—”

As Harukiyo sneered, a fairy’s beautiful face appeared right in front of him without any advance warning.

Appearing upside down as though she was about to kiss him, C reached out with her slender arms.

“Tss—”

Receiving an electrical shock, Harukiyo was blown off from the opened door and outside the trailer.

“Harukiyo…!”

Ume, who had regained consciousness with a delay, extended his hand to Harukiyo, but he was too late.

As Harukiyo was flung out from the speeding trailer, he fell to the ground behind it. Immediately unleashing a heat wave, he stopped himself from crashing headlong with the asphalt.

Just as he tried catching up with the semi-trailer, he was surrounded by a swarm of C-butterflies.

“Tch—I still have business with that suicidal guy! Don’t hand him over to C, Ume and Haruka!”

He didn’t even know if his two companions were able to hear his voice. The distancing semi-trailer was heading to the highway entrance, and he could see it using the emergency brakes. The secretary had probably judged that she couldn’t break through the barrier on the highway without Harukiyo.

“Well, those two aren’t gonna get done in so easily… but more importantly.”

His hair fanned by his own heatwave, Harukiyo sneered.

Now the C-butterflies surrounding him were joined with fairies made of electricity—C’s body doubles.

“C… you little bitch, are you trying to—separate me from that suicidal bastard?”

They numbered four, one in each direction of the wind.

“C. I get you’re trying to pick up a fight with me. I also understand you’re targeting that Alpha guy, more or less. So normally—wouldn’t it be easier for you to kill us when we’re together?”

“I will wash away the failed Mushitsuki—and then release the Dove—”

“Yeah, whatever. I understand it’s the goal Miguruma put into you. And you’re waffling on and on about me being a failed Rank 1. If you wanna kill me because I’m an eyesore that makes two of us, but—”

All lights in the vicinity of Harukiyo were flickering.

Electricity was gathering at this spot. Creating four body doubles meant she wanted to defeat Harukiyo right there and then.

“But seems like that Alpha bastard’s different. Looks like you don’t wanna kill us together—meaning, you wanna catch him alive?”

“I will use the Deluge to wash out the old world—”

“You’ve made a little mistake though, stupid brat. It’s me finding out you’re giving the suicidal guy special treatment.”

He sneered at the fairy who kept repeating incomprehensible words expressionlessly.

“I’ve started to gradually—get interested in Alpha.”

His two eyes flaring red, Harukiyo leaned forward.

Responding to him assuming a battle position, the fairies and C-butterflies emitted a harsh light.

“I have no plan of how to catch up to the semi-trailer, though… I should’ve asked where we were going.”

It happened just as he grumbled and was about to try breaking through C’s encampment.

A light melody began playing.

“…”

It came from nearby.

Next to the highway’s noise barrier was a cute-looking pink cellphone. He heard the light melody from it.

Still glaring at C, Harukiyo waved a hand. He controlled a heatwave to blow the small device right into his hand. He then pressed the call button.

“The owner’s missing. If you lost it, you should give it up.”

He spat this and was about to hang the call.

“—I’ll be tracking the semi-trailer’s coordinates from here... don’t lose this cellphone.”

The voice of a young girl announced this. It was a voice that made him recall his anger.

“I can’t say who I am... but I’ll help you protect Alpha for now...”

Harukiyo narrowed his eyes.

An unknown person suddenly offered him help in this situation—

Harukiyo quickly deciphered what this meant.

“You can’t say who you are? —But I know about you. Because I know about practically all Mushitsuki of note. Didja really think I wouldn’t the high-ranking Mushitsuki from the SEPB?”

“…!”

He could hear the other party gulp.

“Never mind the SEPB, though. This isn’t being done on Haji Keigo’s orders, right? He should be too busy at the moment—and besides, this fossil of a phone hadn’t been there a moment ago. I don’t know any Mushitsuki who can just leave a cellphone over there without me noticing. Meaning, it’s neither the SEPB nor Mushibane.”

“—”

The other party said nothing. However, the breaths she barely leaked were tinged with impatience and tension.

“Konoha—what’re you scheming, going around with people I don’t know?”

The moment Harukiyo named the other party, the call was hanged up.

Being exposed within a few moments probably made her panic. Harukiyo clicked his tongue and put the cellphone in his pocket.

“Don’t hang up on me, you weakling. Can’t imagine this sort of small fish made this move on her own. —Konoha’s got some kinda boss in control of her.”

As he turned back to the front, he could see that C’s body doubles looked at empty air.

“But we’re against C here, y’know? She probably immediately bugged and identified the call, judging you were allied with me.”

Two of the fairies surrounding him suddenly vanished.

Heading to the distance, street lamps vanished one after another in a straight line.

“Huh? You chasin’ after someone? Is it the one who left the cellphone there? If you’re leaving even me here to go after them, they must be a Rank 1—nah, there’s no way.”

While mulling over this, Harukiyo turned back to the two remaining fairies.

Seeing the C-butterflies emitting light as though pulling themselves together, Harukiyo sneered.

“Dunno who you’re playing with—but you’ve hurt my pride. How dare you underestimate me like that, you stupid brat who doesn’t even show her true self.”

Harukiyo howled, his entire body engulfed in crimson flames.

2.06 Harukiyo Part 6

Golden lightnings blew from the surface toward the sky.

Having become a flaming ball of heat, Harukiyo leapt to the side to dodge the lightning. He also swung his arms toward the swarms of C-butterflies filling the highway.

“Hahaaa!”

Harukiyo’s Mushi—a Great Yama tiger beetle wreathed in raging flames—swallowed the highway. Asphalt instantly turned into liquid, and a storm of bright red, burning dust and steam blew.

Harukiyo landed on the edge of the bisected road.

The ground he’d been standing on until now was decimated, and the C-butterflies and body doubles also left.

However—

“Damn, so annoying.”

A golden surged gathered at the sneering Harukiyo’s feet.

Electric lines gathered from all directions like they were bomb fuses—and the new lightning attack tried piercing Harukiyo.

He leapt to the side to dodge, but the countless C-butterflies got in his way. By bursting and connecting to each other, they became a cage of surging electricity.

Harukiyo rode a heat wave, managing to escape from the cage a moment before it clamped down on him.

“Flames and electricity is a poor matchup, eh. My attacks just keep passing through.”

Falling safely and rising again, he ran on the highway while wrapping his body in flames.

Harukiyo aimed for the direction the semi-trailer went to, but the C-butterflies stubbornly blocked his path.

He nimbly leapt to the sides while dodging the cage of electricity and gold.

“That’s why this doesn’t feel like a proper matchup at all. How can I even fight this monster who’s thrown away her personality and uses her ability endlessly in a city where you can find electricity wherever you go?”

Harukiyo rounded his body. He transformed himself to a fireball and launched himself from the surface like a missile.

Leaping over the highway, he landed with both legs on the wall of a high-rise building on the side of the road. This impact caused the entire building’s glass to burst, melting it bright red and caused it to rain down on the surface.

C was chasing after Harukiyo.

Golden fuses surged from the surface to the building, unleashing lightning that possessed enough power to kill in one strike.

“I can do something as long as I find out where the real body is.”

Kicking at the wall, he dodged the lightning. This time he went straight through the shopping arcade’s roof like a meteor and alighted down the surface. The ground caved in from the impact of the landing, and all surrounding structures cracked with him at the center.

All the shopping arcade’s billboards flickered—and golden lightning pierced through the merchant district. Harukiyo dodged the strike by a hairsbreadth, leaping to the high-rise building’s side again.

A bright-red fireball being chased by golden fairies and C-butterflies.

The pair’s game of tag destroyed Akamaki City little by little.

“C’s real body should be somewhere next to a huge electricity source. It can’t be anything plain or it wouldn’t have been able to support the amount of power and information volume she has. Since she wasn’t in the SEPB’s Fort, had she taken over a civilian power plant?”

While flying all over town, Harukiyo thought rationally.

He heard a ringtone from his pocket. As he pulled out his cellphone, he saw he got mail.

“Head 12 kilometers to the southwest, then keep going south.”

This was probably the current location of the semi-trailer housing Alpha.

It being still on the move meant that it did not fall into C’s hands.

“Looking at it in reverse, C also doesn’t want her real body to be found. Therefore, she wants to kill both of her opponents together while they’re retreating. Since all of us just finished our big operations, none of the Mushitsuki are at full power right now.”

Including himself.

The damage inflicted to Harukiyo by his fight against Sleeping Beauty was by no means light.

Even now his breathing was slightly elevated. Normally he wouldn’t be this tired.

“Lemme just say it now, but this really feels like a losing battle. Could someone even inflict any damage to C at all in that state? Maybe someone who could take care of these masses of lightning that are her body doubles—”

Like Sleeping Beauty, Arisu.

Or perhaps—the one who destroyed everything she touched, Fuyuhotaru.

About to mumble this name, Harukiyo closed his mouth.

“Anywho, it’s meaningless unless you strike the real one. So it’s also meaningless for me to fight against C like this. —I won’t let you take advantage of my games, though.”

Although he cared nothing about Mushi and Mushitsuki—it felt far more important for him to cling to an opponent when he designated them as people he didn’t like.

“I only saw the very prologue. Your reason to want to die still looks to be far, suicidal guy.”

Chasing the semi-trailer that had Alpha, Harukiyo stood inside a vast park.

As he did, many Revived surrounded him as one.

“Haha, so you used your head a little and set up an ambush on me? But—you really are lookin’ down on me.”

Harukiyo attempted to just break through without minding them.

“Tired as I might be, it’s still not enough to let some small fries like you stop me.”

He was standing on a lawn where in normal times a father and son would be playing catch. Although they were smack dab in the middle of capital, there was no need to fear C’s lightning in places with no electrical conduction like this.

Harukiyo turned into a fireball and accelerated as the Revive charged at him.

And not their Mushi, but their actual physical bodies.

“What the hell are you doing? You wanna die?”

Harukiyo blew away those people leaping right at him with heat waves.

However, the Revived then came charging at him from behind without flinching at all.

“Tch—”

Turning around, Harukiyo tried waving them away again. And then he saw—

A golden flash surged.

Between the Revived leaping at Harukiyo—electrical discharges formed in air, preserved the bare minimal distance to be able to leap between them and through it make the line of lightning reach Harukiyo.

“GAAAAAAHHHHH!”

His sight was dyed in gold and Harukiyo’s entire body was engulfed by the impact.

Even so he was able to avoid a direct strike due to his experienced reflexes. Although he sensed danger and leapt back, the aftershock caused by the lightning erupting from the surface touched Harukiyo.

People’s bodies conducted electricity.

C gathered her Revived in a straight line and used them instead of wires.

“—…!”

With his hair raising smoke and his entire body becoming black with soot, Harukiyo tottered.

The remaining Revived tried leaping at him to finish him off.

However, they all stopped in place.

Their expressions—were filled with fear.

“—What an ugly way of fighting.”

Holding out the moment before collapsing, he glared at the Revived.

The flame demon’s blazing eyes paralyzed the controlled Revived.

“If you’re gonna come at me, use your own damn powers—”

The heat wave blowing with Harukiyo in its center threw all the Revived back.

“Don’t let yourselves get used like tools so easily! You pieces of shit!”

Howling, Harukiyo transformed into a flaming sphere yet again.

“Were all of you born just to be used as pawns by someone? Living such half-assed lives, all you’re doing is showing how pathetic you are!”

After turning the entire field to ashes and melting the fence and all electric lights around, he flew out of the park. While crushing parked cars and knocking down buildings, he was setting the entire urban jungle ablaze.

“You’re pissing me off even more than C…! If you seriously wanted to live for real, you can’t fucking surrender like that just because you became Fallen or died—”

Defeating further Revived coming to attack him, he was going after the semi-trailer—

He stumbled down.

As Harukiyo’s legs became numb, he crashed headlong into a mailbox.

“Guh…!”

C’s electric attack inflicted Harukiyo some hefty damage.

Although it hadn’t been a direct hit, his body was exposed to quite the high voltage. Even remaining conscious was a struggle, and he couldn’t shake off the remaining numbness of his body easily.

“—It’s finally gotten more like a ‘disaster’, eh? Haha!”

However, Harukiyo sprang to his legs, moving.

A moment later, C’s lightning assaulted the mailbox.

While the tattered remains of tape from his face and burnt hairs fell off, Harukiyo kept moving. If he didn’t, his body would turn into ashes the next time for sure.

“Oh, so you’re not broken. You’re as tough as me.”

Hearing a ringtone, he pulled the cellphone from his pocket.

“Five kilometers to the south.”

The semi-trailer’s current location was written on the cracked LCD screen.

The distance between the two was certainly shrinking.

However, rather than Harukiyo being fast—it was the semi-trailer being slow. He had a bad feeling about it.

“I wanna keep stringing C along like this and use her—but I can’t really say that, now can I. Should I blow her off for a while?”

There were C’s body double fairies, the C-butterflies, as well as the Revived coming at him in droves.

Leading all of those to the trailer would put it in danger.

Since the semi-trailer moved slowly, it meant that Ume and Haruka were fighting hard to protect Alpha. Drawing so many pursuers to them would amount to suicide.

“—Nah, I can’t do that. If I take a detour and Ume and Haruka are finished off in the meantime, that’d be seriously uncool. I’ll lose my chances to play with that suicidal little shit.”

While running on heat waves, he emitted heavy, painful breaths.

“Or actually… I don’t think I can shake ‘em off even if I try to.”

He was hit by C’s lightning while his injuries from his fight against Sleeping Beauty still remained.

In this situation, was there a reason for him to protect Alpha just because he didn’t like him?

“Doesn’t seem like C’s trying to kill that suicidal guy… should I just withdraw?”

If he just gracefully gave up and waited for his strength to recover, he could then look for Alpha again.

These thoughts went through his mind—but Harukiyo laughed them off.

“Meaning, I’m going to spend years searching for him again? —Just like with Arisu.”

Sparks of flames came spilling out from his twisted mouth.

“What a fucking joke. I’m not just stubborn, but also short-tempered.”

He resolved himself.

He’d catch up to the semi-trailer as quickly as possible, fend off C and the Revived, and have a blast fulfilling his original goal, comparing his sins against Alpha.

Even if he’d have to keep protecting Alpha for a long time until they reached the secretary’s safe location. Even then.

Because this was the path of the person called Harukiyo, who wanted to enjoy his life to the fullest.

And as for plans on how to accomplish all of this—

“I’m gonna do whatever I like and live to the fullest. So don’t fucking dare stand in my way—”

Nothing at all came to mind.

Having accrued damage and fatigue, his body was extremely heavy.

He was even dizzy, and for a moment his vision distorted.

In this situation where there wasn’t even a lone ray of hope, Harukiyo could do only one thing—laugh it off.

“I’ll burn ya.”

Harukiyo’s eyes were dyed crimson.

The tape covering his face was burnt off and his right cheek became a flickering flame. He also lost parts of his left arm and right foot, turning into lumps of bright red fire.

“Hahaaa!”

Becoming a literal flame devil in accordance to his alias, Harukiyo rushed through Akamaki City. He pierced through large buildings, made the ground under him cave and melted any and all obstacles that stood in his way during his mad rush.

Even C’s lightning couldn’t catch up with Harukiyo.

While turning everything in his path to molten lava, Harukiyo pushed forward.

He finally managed to catch up to the semi-trailer—

“Harukiyooo!”

Standing atop the cargo box, Ume was surrounded by multitudes of Revived.

If Harukiyo had arrived just a little later, he probably wouldn’t have made it in time.

No—you could say they were already in C’s grasp.

“You’re takin’ it real easy, aren’tcha, Ume? Already caught up to you?”

“Don’t be ridiculooous! We can’t go so fast in this narrow road! —Wait, Harukiyo, your face…!”

It was probably an escape route they had no choice but to take after getting cornered. The semi-trailer was parked in a small road sandwiched between apartment complexes, not even part of the main road.

“Welp, back into the fray.”

“Eh?”

Harukiyo spouted fire from his entire body. His thrust arm was wrapped by hellfire in the form of his Mushi, the Great Yama tiger beetle.

“This is mine. —Give it back.”

He swung his arm down toward the semi-trailer.

The large Great Yama tiger beetle of flames shot out of Harukiyo’s arm, crashing headlong against the semi-trailer. The surrounding Revived were blown away—and the flames kept going, swallowing the semi-trailer, including Ume on its roof.

“Gyaaaaah!”

Ume’s scream was drowned by the heatwave and impact.

Vast energy engulfed the semi-trailer, raised it up, and invited it to a world with no sense of up or down.

In this space where the entire vision was dyed in red, what passed through Harukiyo’s mind—

—I think… there’s meaning to this power.

Was this again.

This was Sleeping Beauty’s evaluation of Harukiyo that she had told him before.

“…There’s nothing like that at all.”

As Harukiyo sneered and muttered this, the flame in his cheek was extinguished. His tattoo patterned after flames was revealed, and even his limbs fused with flames restored their normal appearance.

Then, along with a large impact, Harukiyo landed—

“Gya!”

Right next to the screaming Ume. Meaning, on top of the semi-trailer’s roof.

And the trailer itself—landed atop the hard asphalt.

And that surface was—

“Huh? This is…”

On the highway again.

Harukiyo used a heatwave to carry both himself and the semi-trailer all the way here.

“Y-you carried us all this way? This is crazy!”

“Haha! I really am fucking tired! Hit the gas already, secretary woman! From here on, you can drive as recklessly as you’d like!”

Harukiyo kicked the roof and the semi-trailer suddenly accelerated.

A golden glow was formed overhead.

“Looks like you finally understand. You can’t finish me off with a mere chase.”

Harukiyo looked up the sky, grinning.

“So you’re left with your little favorite technique then, C.”

Appearing from between the clouds was a divine shrine.

Seeing its form, Harukiyo leapt into the cargo box from the hole in the roof.

Inside the car filled with unknown machinery, the guy was closing his eyes again.

“How about at least welcoming me back, you suicidal bastard? The great Yama’s back!”

Grabbing Alpha’s cuffs, Harukiyo flared his eyes red.

“Second round. I’m not gonna let you pretend you’re asleep, alright?”

2.07 Harukiyo Part 7

Harukiyo had never cursed his own life.

He was merely aware of the fact that this was how his life was.

He first understood it when he was little.

The fire caused at the time of his birth also erased his birth records. As his origin was a complete unknown, Harukiyo was taken in by a childcare facility. He grew up there until he was ten.

This facility was a remodeled old hotel that was used for children who had no relatives. He remembered there were much more children than employees there.

There were good and bad people among both the employees and the children. Harukiyo himself had nothing to complain about his living environment, and he knew it’d be the same no matter where he went to, anyway.

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

He had a friend who slept in the same room as him and repeated this subject every night as a matter of course.

He was about the same age as Harukiyo, and he also had a younger sister with the habit to sneak into their room. Both siblings had naturally curly hair as well as dark skin.

“Haru’s going be a president!”

Harukiyo was about to answer but the sister answered instead of him; yet another habit of hers.

“Right, he’s super strong in a fight, after all!”

“And smart! He’ll become really important and conquer the world!”

Even in the facility Harukiyo stood out, and the two curly-haired siblings spent every day along with him.

He saw his friend’s face distort—

When the ‘disaster’ finally arrived, just as expected.

“—Haru…! I can’t breathe…!”

It was an incident caused by a serial arsonist who did it on a whim.

Until then he was satisfied with small fires, but he just so happened to find that place.

A large building that looked like it could burn well.

“Haruuu…!”

Their childcare facility truly ended up burning well.

Flames spread all over the place in no time at all, and although it was the middle of the night the area became even brighter than during the day. Since it was an old building there wasn’t any satisfactory extinguishing equipment, and the flames that swallowed the first floor slowly encroached up the floors.

And while this happened, Harukiyo—

“Haru…!”

“Haru-kun!”

He was advancing through the scorching hell, leading not only children both below and above in age but even the staff.

Looking for places the fire hadn’t reached yet, he wandered between his house that he grew used to. While securing children who lost consciousness, calming down the panicking adults, shouting at those who froze in despair to rouse them, he kept looking for a way to escape.

“Haru… Haru…”

Next to him was also his curly-haired friend who carried his unconscious sister on his back. He’d probably never stop hearing the echo of his friend calling his name over and over like a curse.

More and more people joined Harukiyo who kept going without giving up—

But at a certain point, that number began falling.

Getting hit by a crumbling, burnt ceiling and engulfed by smoke, the people collapsed one after another.

Walking in the front, Harukiyo kept desperately looking for an exit and kept calling out toward his companions.

Finally, he found a lone ray of hope.

He made eye contact with a firefighter who just climbed the ladder and reached the window of the room Harukiyo managed to escape into.

Harukiyo turned around, shouting in joy—and his expression vanished.

He could only see a sea of fire there.

The firefighter in the window reached out toward the lone survivor.

“Hey, you…! Come here, quickly!”

So it happened like that—

Forgetting the heat of the flames and feeling his heart rapidly cool down, Harukiyo headed to the window.

In this world there were those with good and bad luck.

It was neither kind or harsh, but merely a world of possibilities. Some would have their lives end due to misfortune, and instead someone else would get visited by good luck.

So he would just live as a fortunate person.

Thinking like this, he was privileged with happiness.

Fortunately, he was taken to another facility, he was fortunately even enrolled to a school, and he even met a person of the opposite sex that he started fancying.

“Hey, you. You need to come to school more.”

She wasn’t some kind of exceptional beauty.

She went to the same class as him. Her most distinguishing features were her strong-willed eyebrows and braids. She was straitlaced and so exemplary that other people might have felt some revulsion on the inside.

“You’re making trouble for the others in your group. In cooking class, for example.”

She said this and gave a nasty kick to his desk. He remembered how this instantly changed his first impression of her. She probably wasn’t as serious as she looked.

“You were probably the one in charge of bringing potatoes, right? Your friends cried after having to eat curry without any potatoes, so how are you going to settle this? C’mon. —Eh, you weren’t crying? You had onions? That’s enough, just shut up. You can’t take it back anymore.”

On the other hand, Harukiyo was the kind of delinquent boy you could find anywhere.

Since he was so amiable, many vigorous boys gathered around him, and either won or ran away. Classes were boring, so whenever he’d gone looking for ‘disasters’—he didn’t mind playing the truant for the sake of his secret hobby. It was also around this period that he met Ume, who’d end up staying with him for a long time.

“It’s not just cooking class, either. Even when preparing for the school festival, don’t you feel bad for being the only one slacking off? …Oh, sorry for misunderstanding you… Everyone has cram school and clubs and things like that, right? So why are you the only one who—eh? I did apologize. It wasn’t half-assed at all. I-it’s fine, just shut up already! Am I saying anything wrong? What d’you mean, my ears are red? Is that even relevant to what we’re talking about? If he keeps going like that, then it might affect even our school trip—”

He began noticing her after that small event.

And he parted from her not long after that.

When Harukiyo parted from someone, it was always in a world dyed bright red.

“—”

A burning rectangular box.

Just minutes ago, it had been a large bus driving through the mountains.

According to the news later, an unlicensed driver on the other lane took his eyes off the road while driving and caused the accident. This tragedy hitting the students on their field trip shook the public with the absolute worst result. There were zero survivors.

The bus that drove between the mountains took a bad curve and fell off the cliff.

Gasoline ignited and the fire spread to the dry trees as well. Only one person—Harukiyo—had been able to escape from the upturned vehicle by himself.

Although he was covered in burns and his entire body was lacerated from the windows’ broken glass, Harukiyo never gave up.

The moment before the bus was fully engulfed by flames, he dragged out several of his classmates. He even tried giving them mouth to mouth resuscitation.

“—”

However, no matter what he did, the braids girl never opened her eyes again.

That was how it happened.

While standing there and looking at his completely silent classmates, Harukiyo came to realize.

In this world, life was decided by good and bad fortune.

Harukiyo had not been spared from this in the least. Even this time he did his best to remain alive, and tried saving those who were misfortunate.

As a result, all that happened was that a line got drawn between those who lived and those who didn’t.

Therefore, Harukiyo felt nothing.

However, even so—

As if to escape from the siren sounds coming from afar, he left the place.

Seeing on the news that he was being treated as one of the victims, he never again returned to any school, facility or community like that, and just kept living on his own.

It was just a simple, single fact.

Everyone around him always died and he alone survived.

Every time he overcame death, he felt himself growing stronger.

Just like—a flame.

Using the lives of his precious people as fuel, Harukiyo kept burning brighter.

And if he really was this sort of being.

Then his continued living—was a sin.

The simple act of him living burned everyone around him to cinders. He was the most sinful being of all.

However, Harukiyo wasn’t the kind of admirable person who’d just acknowledge it so easily, and he didn’t intend to act out the hero of a tragedy, either.

“Repent…”

In his mid-teens, Harukiyo became a Mushitsuki.

Even when that happened Harukiyo was, as a matter of course, in the middle of a “disaster”. His first friend who was able to overcome that “disaster” with him, Kusezaki Ume, was also there.

“You child who can become mine vessel… repent for thy sins…”

Apparently, the one who butted in that “disaster” was called Shinpu.

Shinpu, one of the Prototype Mushitsuki who gave birth to Mushitsuki, invited him into a foul church. As he did, he said that without any prelude.

“Repent…”

Harukiyo was on the verge of death, but he remembered himself flying into a rage when he heard those words.

“—Don’t fuck with me…!”

At the time he didn’t even properly know what a Mushi was, let alone the Original Three. He mistook him to be some god or demon and vent out on him.

“What’m I supposed to be repentin’ for? I was only staying alive! So you’re saying that those who died around me were my own fault? I did my best! I tried saving them, not slacking off in the least! Even so—you say that you’re gonna punish me?”

“However, thou doth wish for a punishment…”

Twitch.

Having shown this millimeter of agitation at the moment was the mistake of a lifetime for him.

“Thou, who burns all those around thee, wish for punishment much more than anyone…”

“—What a load of bull.”

He soon noticed that Shinpu was neither God nor anything like that.

He was something much inferior—a piece of trash that made one nauseous.

“Punishing yourself is just fancy suicide. I don’t want nothin’ like that. If I’m having fun living without caring in the least about any sin and then get crushed like an insect, that’s what you’d call a punishment!”

“…”

“I won’t die. No matter what happens… no matter what cowardly method is used, I’ll keep on living stubbornly. And if people still try to punish me for that—I’ll burn them all to the ground and keep living!”

As Harukiyo howled, Shinpu looked like he flinched for a moment.

“As long as I’m alive—my life’s no sin.”

Seeing Harukiyo’s blazing eyes, that thing sneered.

“—Dost thou wish for power?”

Harukiyo’s answer to that question—had already been set.

He swore that he’d keep living no matter what he did. He’d use both brains and brawns as much as needed, and use everything he could. Even if—it was the sort of trashy power that he never wished for.

“If thou wish for it, I shall give it to thee… since thou possess the possibility to become mine vessel, the aptitude of a king…”

Thus, Harukiyo became Mushitsuki.

Following this, he began looking for a being who could punish him by himself.

“Disasters” came down bearing on them, and before they could involve unrelated people—he kept looking for an opponent that could kill him.

All so he could live.

So he could prove that his life itself was no sin, as long as he didn’t die.

Even so, for some reason—

After his life changed by his becoming a Mushitsuki, he ended up getting dragged into the fights between Mushitsuki.

“I’d just… managed to run away from Hunter, and yet…”

The possibility of the next “disaster” he obtained from the Mushitsuki was also a Mushitsuki.

While looking for a Mushitsuki that could punish him, he met the Original Three again.

It was the incident where an entire small island was swallowed by flames, nearly all of its inhabitants massacred.

If he recalled, that island’s name—was Aoharima Island.

“Hunter’s… a Mushitsuki…”

The white coat-dressed youth who told him that—introduced himself as Sanbikime.

“She’s quite the beauty, too.”

Relying on this information, he looked for Hunter, the strongest Mushitsuki.

And while going around—he made friends, little by little.

Including Kusezaki Ume, they were all powerful Mushitsuki. They weren’t comrades who gathered for a so-called shared goal, but they were, without a doubt, friends who could live along with Harukiyo.

However, his journey to look for the “disaster” Mushi—ended in a half-assed manner.

“—You can’t die, you two, alright?”

The fight of the meteor shower that everyone already forgot about.

The girl who was the “disaster” he was looking for smiled at Harukiyo and Kakkou and fell asleep. Even in that fight many people perished, excluding Harukiyo.

“I don’t give a single fuck about the fights of Mushitsuki or those things called the Original Three.”

Harukiyo just kept looking for “disasters” and sought to make preemptive attacks.

“How dare you vanish like that after saying you’ll punish me? I’ll never forgive you, Arisu.”

In order to settle the score with the asleep “disaster”—Sleeping Beauty—he kept looking for her.

In that course, he also touched many secrets related to Mushi.

He never wished for any of it.

Although he didn’t care at all about the fights between Mushitsuki—he might be the one among Mushitsuki who knew the most.

“I need to beat Arisu and look for the next ‘disaster’…”

While mumbling to himself and searching for Sleeping Beauty, her words never left his mind.

—I believe… that strength holds meaning.

Harukiyo simply became stronger to keep living.

That was all that was—and yet he ended up reluctantly involved in fights between Mushitsuki.

If his strength truly had some meaning, was there any meaning for him to become Mushitsuki? Even the fact he came to know secrets he didn’t care about?

That miniscule doubt even now lingered uncomfortably in his heart—

“—Didja see it? Eh? Nothing’s here my fault, right?”

Standing within the flames, he raised his eyes.

Inside the roaring flames stood another person—a small boy.

“But it doesn’t seem like you think that. Since you’re tellin’ me you wanna die, you must’ve done something horrible. —Show me the rest.”

That boy wore tattered clothes.

“Alpha.”

In complete contrast to Harukiyo’s flaming eyes, the boy slowly closed his eyes.

2.08 Harukiyo Part 8

What was the light he’d seen when he was born?

He didn’t know its identity.

However, apparently more than one or two people had seen that moment.

A small community picked him up as an infant. The women all spent their times washing and preparing meals, while the men constantly carried firearms that were as old as their tattered clothes.

Since he was still a child then, he didn’t really understand who they were.

However, that place was constantly in conflict with someone, and they used child soldiers as a matter of course, giving children guns. At times they took in children of unknown origins, just like him.

“—”

For several years, after growing up in such a place, he came to hazily recognize the situation he found himself in.

It was a country shaken by civil war with many rebel groups. They were guerilla organizations, and before long they fought against other guerilla organizations competing for both resources and people—and he was taken in as a member as well.

When he grew up enough to be called a boy, a small secret was born in the village.

“—Please, bless me—”

Adult women began sneaking into the shack where more than ten children slept.

Hiding their faces, these women quietly began to worship him.

“Please allow sinners such as us that light of salvation—”

Light.

They all constantly mumbled this word.

Apparently, the miracle that happened during his birth was whispered all over the community.

He himself wasn’t particularly blessed with any special knowledge or physical abilities.

All he could do was “see” faraway events from time to time.

It felt as if he had another eye there.

However, at the time he hadn’t told anyone about it even once.

“Please save my soul—please show me the light that guides me to God—”

The secret worship continued every night, and finally even the men came to pray.

He was pretending to sleep just like always, but that night was different.

The visions that he had from time to time—his “Eyes” in distant places—found enemies lurking in the forest. Equipped with firearms, this group was slowly approaching their village.

He rose and warned the “worshippers”.

“O, child of miracles—”

His “Clairvoyance” saved the village, and from that day they kept on winning.

And as days and months passed—

“—Please—guide me—”

One day, the village was easily destroyed.

Without him having time to warn anyone, several communities colluded to assault their base.

The familiar shack was on fire and adults and children collapsed while gunfire echoed. While people who knew him cried and yelled, clinging to him, he was being restrained.

The ones who got him were a village who conducted the attack.

“—O light, please guide us to God—”

He was confined in a shack and worshipped again.

He was apparently blessed. Without him doing anything, with nothing but pure fortune, that group won against all opposing forces and prospered—

“O light—so we can go—to God—”

Even that community was then massacred by an even larger group.

With the burning village to his back, he was taken away to another village—and it was further crushed by another larger force.

This happened many times.

How many hundreds of people died just to snatch him?

How many people were going to die just to protect him?

By the time he was in his teens, he understood.

Without exception, everyone involved with him—always died.

While speaking of their hopes to him, while seeking salvation to him, while wishing for happiness, all of them died right in front of his eyes.

And as a result of the repeating death and despair—

“—Don’t be afraid of the light!”

Finally, the country made a move.

As the political authority of the time found itself disturbed by the guerrilla groups’ new faith, they sought to nip it in the bud.

He was easily captured by the country and thrown into prison.

He hoped that he would end up on the death row before long.

“—Please bestow light to our country—”

But in the end, nothing changed.

It was probably yet another divine protection. His living place transformed from a prison to an altar, and the statesman became a tyrant.

And several years later—the scenery he saw from beyond his cell window’s bars was engulfed in flames.

Apparently, the tyrant ruler had been too terrible. Witnessing him committing atrocities against humanity through his despotic rule, the international community moved their armies under the pretext of sanctions and talk of liberation.

Fighter aircrafts flew above, and anti-air missiles shot by the tyrant’s soldiers came from inside cities.

How many thousands of people lost their lives in the flames?

“—Light—a light of guidance—”

He was taken away by the tyrant’s aide who tried escaping abroad.

However, even that aide was soon killed by the army of liberation.

A bloody scramble began. The tyrant’s army and the liberation forces began exchanging gunfire in order to get a hold of him. Those who reached their hands to obtain him all died without exception.

When the final two keeled over in a simultaneous strike, he was left all alone.

While walking through the mountain of corpses, he lost his sanity. As the scent of blood and flesh filled the surroundings, he walked, dyed completely red in others’ blood—

He wasn’t a God of salvation. He wasn’t even human.

He was a grim reaper.

Because of him, tens of thousands of people died. Even so, he himself couldn’t die.

“Light—fall asleep.”

Along with this mumble from behind him, he lost consciousness.

Perhaps having been administered some medicine, he apparently slept for a long while.

He might have slept for several weeks or months.

His body weighed by lethargy, the sight that welcomed him as he woke up again—

“Nice to meet you.”

Was a girl. She was very cute and had a mole under her eye.

He had never seen before such a smile filled with gentle affection.

“Please, do not be afraid. There is no longer anyone who would do anything horrible to you.”

Saying this, the girl—

“I will give you my love.”

Wore an expression that would paralyze anyone who gazed upon it, a Smile of Shackles.

2.09 Harukiyo Part 9

It seemed to be a private laboratory on board of a large, remodeled transport ship.

Since they had samples of all living beings there, it was just like the Ark spoken of in the Old Testament.

Harukiyo was inside a room that had even stricter guard than anywhere else there. He saw the youth, who was restrained on top of a table that looked like an operation table, and the girl standing next to him.

“I will give you my love.”

The youth and the girl couldn’t see Harukiyo.

That was natural, since this scenery came from the youth’s memory—from Alpha, who was under C’s mental attack. It was his past.

“Why are you looking so relieved, you suicidal bastard?”

Harukiyo crossed his arms, glaring at the sight in front of him with a grin.

“This woman is, without a doubt, the worst shithead you’ve ever seen.”

So she really was involved in this right from the very beginning—

He had somewhat expected this, but now Alpha’s memories gave him evidence that turned it into conviction. The hatred he felt toward this girl multiplied many times over than it was before.

“My name is Miguruma Yaeko. Do you understand me? Mi-gu-ru-ma Ya-e-ko.”

“Mik…ko…?”

Alpha, who couldn’t understand Japanese, apparently only heard the very start and the very end of her name. Due to the breathing apparatus he wore, his mumble fogged it over.

“Mikko—well, that’s perfectly fine. I’ll teach you a little of our language.”

The smiling girl—Miguruma Yaeko—and the taciturn Alpha.

This was the worst encounter for all Mushitsuki who came later—no, perhaps in all of human history.

Rather than Alpha’s birth itself, it was his meeting with the girl that was the true miracle.

Two people who never should have met just happened to encounter each other beyond national borders.

This was—the moment everything began.

“Yaeko. I told you not to come inside here on your own.”

Appearing after saying this was a middle-aged man dressed in white. His nervous-looking wrinkles were prominent.

Next to the white coat-wearing man was another person. A youth, about twenty years old, dressed in a luxury suit. He had a playboy-like appearance and a severe face, so it looked unbalanced.

“Sorry, Father.”

As Miguruma Yaeko apologized obediently and was about to leave, the man wearing the white coat further yelled at her.

“And do stop entering my room without permission. It looks like you’ve been rummaging through my articles and papers, but it’s probably boring for you to look at such things that you can’t even understand.”

“Right, Father. For a person of my station—it was awfully boring.”

The playboy oversaw the girl obediently repeating her father’s words and leaving the room.

“Your daughter sure seems smart, Professor.”

“Not at all. She can’t even understand a single theory of mine or my underlings… she did receive some education, and yet… ah, what a waste… Well, but even this stupid daughter of mine can look after our specimens, including this one… since I want to use as little outside people as possible… she has to be at least that useful… yes…”

While glaring at Alpha, the white coat man mumbled to himself.

“Now, now, no need being humble. And she is a beauty. Her narrow eyes—her almond eyes are just like yours, Professor.”

The youth who gave this compliment looked familiar to Harukiyo.

Or, to be more precise, he’d seen a smile that resembled his before.

“Yup, I know who you are—the Chairman of the Round Table, Ichinokuro Ruisu.”

Saying this as if in a groan, Harukiyo glared at him.

However, none of the two people noticed this glare full of rage.

“Is this person... the one you’ve told me of?”

“Indeed... he is now under anaesthesia, so he won’t go wild... However, since you only told me very suddenly that you wanted to directly see the specimen, it should take a while more until this takes full effect, though...”

“It’s not me. It’s the members who agreed to put out funding. As for me, well, I’m the Chairman in name, but in the end I’m still a greenhorn who gets used for such errands...”

“No, without your business industry connections, not even the construction of this laboratory would have been possible, I’m sure... do you also hold an interest in the Undying...?”

Undying.

Hearing this word, Ichinokuro Ruisu kept silent. Neither denying nor affirming the professor’s words, he simply looked down at the silent Alpha on top of the operation table.

“’Everyone’s connected somewhere’.”

Harukiyo grimaced and groaned in a stifled voice.

A girl wielding a silver spear rose to his mind.

“It’s really like that. —So that’s how you were ‘connected’ to this from the very beginning…”

He cursed the girl who wasn’t there.

This youth called Ichinokuro Ruisu that was right in front of Harukiyo’s eyes…

He probably couldn’t have imagined the effect that his own actions would have.

Since he was no seer, that was natural. However—

“You shitty father. What you’ve done… took your daughter away from you.”

Not heeding Harukiyo’s verbal abuse in the least, Ichinokuro Ruisu removed his eyes from Alpha.

“Does this person—really hold the possibility of the Undying?”

“Yes, many people have died around him… and many times, at that… even as thousands fell victim, he kept living in the end… apparently, the locals referred to him as the child of miracles… in fact, those around him always increased their chances of survival, and I confirmed them even managing to flourish… well, people other than him have their limits so they still died in the end, though…”

“Just this is… well, how do I say it—if you’ll allow me to be direct, it sounds like a cock-and-bull story.”

“Have you seen the calculation regarding the chances of survival of the many ‘disasters’ that happened in his life thus far…? This is clearly past the limits of statistics…”

“The power to resist what’s known as death—the mental power wishing for life, affects the body and other related things, thereby raising one’s vitality. That’s your theory, Professor, right?”

“It’s not just a wish for life. It should be called a will to bet everything on your wish… you and the Round Table have given me the research funds and a place to conduct it because you believe, right?”

“Yes, it might sound masochistic, but the rich who tire of their position and honor are burning with desire for the Undying. —For some reason, it’s always like this from the olden days.”

“…”

“In every era, those with authority always sought it, but they were always deceived, and even while they knew they grabbed only fakes—this never changed.”

“…I beg your pardon, but is it possible you are hoping that the research you yourself had invested into, fails?”

“Perish the thought.”

Finally averting his eyes from Alpha, Ichinokuro Ruisu headed to the exit.

“No matter what you do here, neither the authorities nor any opposition will meddle here. —We all aim for the result, no matter what shape it takes.”

“Thank you very much…”

As Ichinokuro Ruisu and the white coat man exited the room, the surrounding scene started undergoing a dizzying change.

Events in this sealed laboratory area continued flowing like a video on fast forward. These were obviously the experiments Alpha had experienced.

“According to history, people searched for the Undying countless times—huh. What a load of bull.”

While Harukiyo watched those scenes, he spat this.

“Hey, suicidal shithead. So, after all those disasters you just found yourself involved with games played by the rich and swindlers throughout all of history?”

Alpha underwent torture under the pretext of research. At times he was wounded, at times he was psychologically abused, and at times they dangled items he wanted in front of his eyes while restraining him.

Exhausting both body and soul, his memories also became fuzzy. The scenes Harukiyo could see in front of his eyes had noise running through them from time to time, but there were also clear parts.

—Alpha… that’s how they called you. Despite there being no Beta or Gamma.

Only his meeting with Miguruma Yaeko—no, the girl called Mikko were carved into his memories, crystal clear.

Between his meetings with all the researchers, the girl visited him to take care of him and his surroundings. Every time she met Alpha, she “educated” him.

She kept whispering words to stimulate his survival instincts.

—Recall your birthplace.

Mikko’s whispers gouged into him deeper than any of the experiments made by her father.

Her Smile of Shackles that charmed all those who saw it did not allow Alpha to reject.

—You have nothing at all. And yet you still desire, right?

Every time Alpha heard her words, he would shed a single tear.

Recall your now gone place of birth.

A place where you have no father, mother, or any neighbor, a place no one even remembers the name of.

—Even so, until the day you return there… you can’t die, right?

The girl speaking to Alpha also spoke about other guinea pigs from time to time.

The several other guinea pigs apparently came from similar environments. Miguruma would sometimes stoke their hunger, their possessiveness, and at time she would stir up their nostalgia just like with Alpha.

Following this, Mikko unleashed a few of the guinea pigs and ran away from the lab.

—I am about to go release my other family… but I won’t let you go.

After leaving, Mikko announced her farewell to Alpha.

Wearing the smile of a saint, she whispered to him.

—Because you’re special.

Alpha bawled his eyes out.

He unleashed his feelings for his life and the people in it—he cursed, raged, hated, despaired and cried.

And something that had been restraining him until that point—cracked open.

“So even before the Original Three were created…”

Witnessing that moment, Harukiyo mumbled.

“You were a Mushitsuki?”

The thing that suddenly appeared there was trying to destroy the laboratory.

It was an object that looked like an enlarged human eyeball covered by a hard membrane.

“No—is this even a Mushi?”

Harukiyo knew about this object that floated in air while unleashing rays of light to burn the facility down.

“I did wonder about that during the meteor shower night as well. The Eye used by Oogui… it clearly looked like a human eyeball, and there were those Mushi that were only body parts. I’d never seen them until that point. But I just thought they were other Minion Types created by her—”

The laboratory taking form on the large ship was being demolished.

Even the in the white coat—Miguruma Yaeko’s father had been unable to escape this destruction, and he saw him expire.

“What came first, the chicken or the egg? Including me, everything thought it was the chicken—the Original Three.”

It wasn’t just Harukiyo.

There was no doubt that even Kakkou and the people relating to him thought that.

Therefore, they made defeating the Original Three into their ultimate goal. Therefore, they defeated multitudes of Mushitsuki.

However—

“The egg came first.”

The rampaging Alpha was thoroughly destroying the laboratory—

“—”

Light engulfed the world.

Everything mixed into one, and the light blinked as if forgiving all of them.

Harukiyo had never seen something so beautiful.

As the light vanished, they were on top of the boat.

Someone was battling someone.

“—How many thousands of years it had been, aiming for the Undying? And there it goes and happens by a complete fluke.”

Harukiyo somehow surmised who were those who were fighting.

The unleashed Original Three as well as the Mushitsuki who tried stopping their release.

“Dunno if it’s real or not, but it means you’ve dug out a complete unknown.”

Since Harukiyo hadn’t been there, he could only understand this.

However, through Alpha’s eyes and memories—

“Woa—AaaAaAAAAaah!”

Alpha was howling.

“Rui, it all happened just like you said. We must end everyone who remains here.”

The goggle-wearing boy was dying.

“—Indeed so.”

Ichinokuro Arisu lowered his gaze.

“This is all YOUR FAULT!!!”

“Let us part here.”

A familiar face parting away from Miguruma Yaeko—

He saw the moment the world changed.

It now became a world where the supernatural beings called Mushi would keep on being born inside boys and girls.

“I see—so it’s impossible to know who you are no matter how you think about it.”

While seeing Alpha get taken away by Ichinokuro Ruisu’s mercenaries, Harukiyo spoke.

“But as long as you exist, it means that the moment Mushitsuki were born might repeat itself.”

That was Alpha’s sin.

Harukiyo finally understood the reason he wanted to die.

“Yep, sure is a huge sin. You make so many people unhappy by your mere existence.”

And now that he understood, he was angry.

“If it was me though—I wouldn’t acknowledge that.”

Spitting this, Harukiyo noticed something strange at that moment.

“—WooAAAAAAH!”

The restrained Alpha howled, shaking off the mercenaries.

Behind him stood a small figure.

It looked like a small girl—who wore a tiara adorned with heart and crown symbols.

Harukiyo sneered and readied himself.

“How dare you do whatever you like in my own turf. —That’s what you’re tellin’ me, eh?”

The long journey to unveil Alpha’s sin.

C’s dark gaze told him enough to realize he hadn’t reached its end yet.

2.10 Harukiyo Part 10

The outskirts of Akamaki City in the past.

Alpha’s howling form was simply bizarre.

His flank had been gouged by the goggle-wearing Fusion-Type Mushitsuki boy—probably the first ever Fusion-Type. Even now, fresh blood was gushing out of Alpha’s wound.

Even so Alpha kept shouting at the top of his lungs, glaring at Harukiyo.

“—OOOOoooOOOOH!”

“…!”

Countless Eyes materialized all around Harukiyo as if to surround him. These strange objects, shaped like eyeballs covered by a tough membrane, all focused their gazes on Harukiyo while floating.

The moment after, all eyeballs simultaneously launched heat beams at Harukiyo.

“Is this also part of your past memories? —Obviously not.”

Harukiyo instantly surmised their trajectory and weaved through the net of heat rays.

“And that bleeding… you shoulda kicked the bucket already without any medical care!”

“Uh—Uuuh…!”

Alpha was tottering. Although this wasn’t reality, he apparently couldn’t ignore this wound.

Coming behind Alpha, C’s body double—the golden fairy was approaching.

As her small hand touched Alpha, a lightning strike pierced the man’s body.

“Gwah! —KwaaAAAAH!”

Alpha’s eyes changed, turning a crazed glare to Harukiyo again.

The number of Eyes doubled.

While flying and rotating all over the place, the Eyes unleashed a rain of heat rays. The large transport ship was cut into slices as though it was cake, and bottomless valleys formed in the wharf’s ground.

“You can stimulate the memories of the dead or Fallen Mushitsuki to forcibly Revive them—”

Harukiyo turned himself into a ball of flames, and kept dodging the rain of heat by a razor’s edge.

“That’s how the experiment at the Central Headquarters worked as well, right? What you’re doing amounts to continuing the experiments Miguruma started here, then! This is so awful you could laugh, eh C?!”

The experiment of the Undying originally started by Miguruma’s father was inherited by his daughter, Miguruma Yaeko.

No, it was wrong to say she inherited it.

Unlike her father who chose to conduct human experimentation and just so happened to draw the Miracle Child—Miguruma was trying to achieve that certainly by conducting experiments on the new kind of humanity called Mushitsuki.

As a result, she gave birth to a new generation of Mushitsuki, starting with C.

She was the chicken—able to absorb even the Original Three, as well as cause the born chicks that could be called Mushitsuki go back into their eggs and reuse them again and again. Those who died as Mushitsuki and became Fallen, or else died as humans. Because she could Revive all of them in this form, she was the Super Class Rank 1, C.

A being that kept birthing the Undying and denied death.

Among those who Harukiyo met thus far, she was the most repulsive Mushitsuki of all.

“…Tch.”

More and more heat rays grazed Harukiyo. The heat wave flow he used to protect himself was disturbed and he was pounded against the roof of a storage container. Harukiyo took a landing position and soon rose up.

“Is that fine, C? Is this suicidal bastard the ‘egg’?”

He looked down at Alpha and the fairy snuggling up to him on the surface and spoke.

“Meaning he’s something like an insurance to you.”

The fairy did not answer.

“Because both you and Miguruma want a world where Mushitsuki are born. No matter what happens, you can return the world to what it was again as long as you have the egg. That’s why you’re trying to kill me and secure this guy, right? Because I’m in your way. —Still, you really thought you could make us fight and that I’d lose? You’re lookin’ down on me, eh?”

The expressionless fairy moved her arms, spurring Alpha with electricity.

Alpha raised a scream of agony and summoned more Eyes again.

“—You look like you can revive even the Egg if it dies. Looks like you lost all your charm along with your personality, stupid brat.”

Harukiyo kept dodging the vast web of rays that looked like a casting net using his heat wave.

“What pisses me off most is you, though. —Suicidal bastard.”

Kicking the wall of the container, Harukiyo instantly came in front of Alpha. He grabbed the youth’s collar.

“How long will you let her play with you? Try resistin’ just a little, damn you.”

However, Alpha just mumbled incoherently while glaring at Harukiyo.

“…Kill me.”

“…”

“As long as I’m alive, people will die—thanks to me, many people will become unhappy…”

Unlike Alpha’s grimace, Harukiyo erased his expression.

He used all of his might to throw Alpha away. Harukiyo’s physical strength managed to fling the youth many meters away, and he was pounded against the collapsing container’s walls. Fresh blood gushing out of the youth’s body created a path of red from Harukiyo’s face to the wall.

“The fuck’s this? You pretending to be hurt?”

While Alpha twisted his face in agony, C’s body double instantly moved.

Hit by golden lightning, the youth controlled his Eyes to shoot heat rays at Harukiyo.

“Or are you playing the victim?”

Not minding it in the least, Harukiyo calmly walked to Alpha.

Receiving concentrated attacks on his wall of flames, there were violent sparks spread around. Harukiyo was unable to fully defend against the attack and his body was ripped by the aftershocks.

“You’ve seen it just now, right? You’ve remembered it right now, right? —We’re under the influence of C’s mental attack, yeah? You realize she’s just showing you all your suffering to gouge your wounds, yeah? You understand she’d been showing you all those who died around you so she can push the blame on you, yeah?”

Seeing the slowly approaching devil of flames, Alpha’s expression transformed to that of fear.

“Alright, so I get to decide too. —You are an angel of death. Your living ain’t gonna help anyone and you’re an eyesore. Die already, you piece of shit. Not a single person in this world wishes you to live. This is the combined opinion of the entire fucking humankind.”

“—”

“Will you—acknowledge that?”

Harukiyo’s arm grabbed Alpha’s chest again. This time he was really pushed by the force of the heat rays, and while he was shedding blood from his entire body, his blazing eyes glared deep into the youth’s as he shook in fear.

“If you can think that, you’re free to just go and die already. —‘I’ve just been unlucky’, ‘this only happened due to some mistake’… you can play the victim like this and just end yourself. Don’t fucking tempt people by telling them to kill you. Aren’t you trying to be a victim to the very end?”

Harukiyo’s vision was dyed in gold.

C’s fairy was unleashing lightning at Harukiyo.

“Or do you actually think someone died because of you? If you’re really playing the victim like that—then you’re not allowed to wish for death.”

Harukiyo did not stop, however. He put strength into his arm to grab Alpha’s collar.

“Saying something like ‘please grant my dying wish!’ at the very end is not what the perpetrator does, dammit. Why’d I have to listen to a fucking sinner and kill ‘em? What a spoiled piece of mass-murdering shit you are.”

Alpha’s face was distorting more and more as he looked at it.

Even while he recalled his own life, suffered, and was about to despair—in the end, all he did was glare back at Harukiyo.

“—What am I supposed to do, then.”

It was like a hoarse voice of a question, but also sounded like he was raising a tantrum.

“I don’t give a single fuck.”

Harukiyo spat.

“Stop relying on me. You’ve got no allies. ‘Cause everyone’s thinkin’ you’re bad, anyway. So many people hate your fucking guts, but not even a single weirdo would ever try saving you. Even fucking fate itself is your enemy.”

“—”

“But if it was me, I’d say this. —I don’t give a single fuck.”

Harukiyo released Alpha, raised both arms and declared.

“It’s my own fucking life! No matter what anyone tells me, I’ve done nothing wrong! I’m neither a victim or a preparator; all I’m doin’ is living my own damn life! Everyone around me blabs about nonsense! No matter what they tell me, I’ll just keep happily livin’ my life and do what I want!”

Once electricity was added to the clash between the wall of flames and the heat ways, it was as though the area was assaulted by a typhoon. The warehouse was blown away without a trace, leaving only Harukiyo, Alpha and the golden fairy standing on the cracked earth.

“What will you do? I don’t care! Do whatever you want! If you don’t know what, then just keep living your life being used by others just like always! Isn’t it easy, not needing to think?”

Furrowing his brows, Alpha closed his eyes.

“However, you bastard—if you’re really some kinda monster born from a miracle or whatever, and you insist that you have enough conscience to think you’ve done something bad… I’ll come and kill you at some point.”

“…!”

Alpha widened his eyes in surprise. He looked up Harukiyo’s face.

“If you try and ask yourself even a little… couldn’t you have done better at the time—when people died near you, couldn’t you have saved even a single one? If you start really thinking of it as a crime like an adult even a little bit… you gotta first wish to live or nothing’ll come out of it.”

Harukiyo spoke.

“Doing your best to live and then get squashed like a bug. —That’s what being punished is all about, right?”

“…”

“When guys who did nothin’ tell you to kill them, they’re bastards who don’t even acknowledge their crime. Just do whatever you fucking please.”

Alpha gritted his teeth. It looked like he was about to look at Harukiyo with a face ready to burst into tears, but he then curled up.

Just like a kid.

Or perhaps he was like a newborn, even at this point.

While hugging up his own shaking body, the youth spoke in a thin voice.

“Can a person like… even think—of living?”

“You obviously can’t, you angel of death. Everyone’s dying because of you.”

Alpha gave a large shudder as Harukiyo gave this immediate answer.

At some point—the heat beams assaulting Harukiyo stopped.

“—GwaaaAAAH!”

As if telling him to move, the fairy unleashed her electricity on Alpha.

However, the Eyes floating in air made no attempt to move.

“I-I could only hold out this far… because I thought I might as well die whenever… guh!”

As Alpha was struck by lightning, Harukiyo kept punching him away as though to rub salt into his wound.

“GAAAH!”

“Hurts, eh? Feels painful? —What is it, so suddenly you’re greedy for life? You really are a piece of absolute flaming shit. Did you feel no pain until now?”

“B-but if I still live—and receive punishment…”

Alpha finally raised his face. He wore a weak smile on it.

“I wonder if I can apologise to all those who died because of me in this world…”

“At the very least you might feel better, rather than apologizing to those who had easy deaths.”

The devil sneered.

The world reflected in his eyes distorted.

The ravaged wharf and the caved-in transport ship all lost their shape, starting to melt away.

Alpha tried closing both eyes again. Completely unlike how he was thus far, his face was permeated by the hue of anxiety and fear.

“Perhaps… the thing that’s called life is very hard…”

He said it as if he only just now noticed.

“Nah—”

Harukiyo sneered and spat out lightly.

“It’s a piece of cake.”

For a moment, the blood-covered Harukiyo’s consciousness flickered—

When he woke up again, he was in a space completely unlike the wharf.

He could see Kusezaki Ume and Sakaki Haruka.

As well as Alpha, who was asleep inside the life support system.

Harukiyo came back to himself inside the cargo of the semi-trailer still rushing on the highway.

“Oh, you’re finally back! Are you okay, Harukiyo?”

Ume immediately spoke to Harukiyo.

Alpha probably repelled C’s mental pollution attack. As he lay inside the mysterious liquid, Alpha’s face became calm.

Harukiyo made a huge huff and sat down.

Although it wasn’t in the real world, he received too much of C’s attacks. He received quite a lot of mental damage, and although his physical wounds weren’t gone—

“—”

Harukiyo touched his own body and froze.

The blood wasn’t gone. Nor the wounds.

As he raised his head, still covered in blood—

“We’re in a pinch here! Since you were so late, we’ve been killed!”

As Ume said this, a cut appeared from his shoulder to his waist, cutting him cleanly into two.

“I died… It’s your fault, Harukiyo…”

Haruka also had a gaping hole opened in her chest, and strings of blood dripped from the edges of her mouth.

However, Harukiyo was not flustered in the least.

He calmly analyzed his remaining powers and this abnormal situation—

“Ah, damn… so I’m the only one still stuck inside C’s territory.”

He wore a bold sneer.

2.11 Harukiyo Part 11

He came back half-dead from his fight against Sleeping Beauty in the SEPB’s underground facility.

Thinking back, he’d used up most of his stamina at the time.

From there they retreated to the surface, he protected the semi-trailer carrying Alpha, and was attacked by C.

He was once more affected by C’s mental pollution attack, and even in the world of the past he accrued a lot of damage.

Even if this was Harukiyo—it was his first time to be fighting for so long.

“Why didn’t you save me, Harukiyo! I don’t wanna die!”

“Harukiyo… you jerk…”

The bisected Ume and Haruka who shed tears of blood clung to Harukiyo.

“…”

Harukiyo grabbed Haruka’s head with flaming palms and struck Ume’s face.

“—GYAAAAAH!”

Watching them screaming from the corners of his eyes, Harukiyo leapt.

Exiting through the hole created in the ceiling, he stood on top of the cargo.

“Well, I doubt those two would actually die.”

The semi-trailer carrying Alpha ran on the highway. However, the flat road was dyed black, the buildings they went past were purple, and the vast sky was dyed green.

He knew at a glance that this wasn’t reality.

“With a normal Mushitsuki, I could just snap out of it… but I really played inside for too long. It’s my own damn mind, but it’s already been dyed by C’s colors.”

Around him there were no body doubles or Revived.

Had she intended to simply lock up the exhausted Harukiyo in this world and wait for him to exhaust himself?

“…!”

As he watched over this abnormal world, on the road ahead appeared a human figure.

From the fact her silhouette had a skirt, she appeared to be a girl.

The girl who seemed to be C’s new assassin leapt at him.

No, rather than saying she leapt, it was more like she rammed Harukiyo while flying.

“Wh—”

Harukiyo was about to sweep her off with flames, but he froze upon seeing her face.

She hugged his unmoving body. The momentum made both of them fall to the ground.

“Guh… you bitch—”

“Why didn’t you save me—”

As Harukiyo rolled on the asphalt, the girl ended up straddling him.

She was the braided girl who’d been his classmate. He had fancied her at the time, but she was supposed to have died during the bus accident.

“I died because you were there, and yet…”

As the girl hurled curses at him, sparks of flames began climbing her tattered uniform.

“Tch—”

Harukiyo clicked his tongue. He protected against the falling impact with a heatwave cushion, but the semi-trailer was driving away, leaving him behind.

“—You just had bad luck. I did what I could.”

Sneering, Harukiyo reached out with a hand toward the braided girl.

The Great Yama tiger beetle made of flames erupting from his arm annihilated the girl’s upper torso. Throwing her remaining lower torso aside, Harukiyo stood up.

His entire body wrapped in flames, he kicked the ground. He rode the heatwave to chase after the semi-trailer.

“A semi-trailer on the highway… since it’s somewhat similar to reality, seems like this means that my mind hadn’t been fully infected yet.”

Rushing after the trailer taking a huge curve, he tried leaping to it with one jump.

“If I can’t get out on my own, I’ll use whatever I can. If I use that suicidal bastard who’s already gotten out as an intermediary, I should be able to find the exit—”

However, the moment before he leapt, Harukiyo’s legs suddenly felt weighted down.

“Haru… why’d you abandon us…”

“Help… it’s so hot, Haru…”

The pair of brother and sister who grew up with him in the childcare facility clung to his legs.

However—

“—I didn’t abandon you at all. I was just a step too late.”

Increasing the vigor of the flames enveloping him, he instantly burnt away the siblings clinging to him.

“Haha!”

Along with this confident smile, he started running again.

Yet another person appeared in front of him to block his way.

“I wonder… why have I saved a child like you…?”

It was the nurse.

Although he was still a baby, her face had been etched and burned into his memory perfectly.

“There were other babies… so why did I have to save someone like you, who only spreads misfortune…”

“You just drew a bad lot, right?”

He started burning down the very woman who’d saved his life before.

All of it—was an illusion born from Harukiyo’s mind.

C was simply raising up the phantoms of dead people in order to corner him.

It was a stupid prank. The flame devil would never get affected by fakes like that.

“If you wanna kill me you’d better bring something far more interesting, C.”

“Why did all of us die, while you alone…”

“Waaaah, waaaah…”

Former classmates as well as babies in the same maternity ward, as well as fellow residents in the childcare facility.

As well as other people who lost their lives in “disasters”.

As many people as Harukiyo could remember were trying to block his path.

“I keep telling you it’s not gonna work—”

Without flinching in the least, he kept burning down all of them and ran after the semi-trailer.

He kept chasing it.

Although the other party was a vehicle driving full speed ahead, Harukiyo was a Mushitsuki referred to as the strongest. As he transformed into a flame sphere, he would catch up in no time—supposedly.

However, no matter how much he ran—

The distance to the semi-trailer didn’t shrink down in the least.

At some point, he heard whispers at his ears as the braided girl clung to his back again.

“Did you really think about saving me…? Haven’t you given up immediately?”

“Shuddup.”

Harukiyo’s single word made the girl at his back turn to cinders and crumble.

So even that semi-trailer was C’s illusion—

This doubt passed through Harukiyo’s mind.

If so, then the vehicle he saw ahead was a trap.

If he continued this game of tag like that, Harukiyo would only tire himself.

On the other hand, C probably wanted a war of attrition. Since she lost her personality, she couldn’t get mentally fatigued, and Akamaki City held enough of a supply for her source of power, electricity.

“Haru… back then you just wanted to save yourself, right…?”

“You thought of us as obstacles, right…?”

Since there were doubts in his mind, the dead kept their momentum.

“Well, you’re definitely obstacles now.”

Not minding this at all, Harukiyo burnt the wall of dead and kept going straight ahead.

The nurse crawling on the ground tried grabbing his legs.

“Do you begrudge me…? If I hadn’t saved you, you wouldn’t have to live like this…”

“I’m grateful to you. My life’s so fucking fun.”

Using his leg accompanied with an explosive wind to crush the nurse, he raised his speed.

It was natural to doubt. He’d have to focus on reaching the trailer first.

Although he was the one who called for C’s interreference, this was inside Harukiyo’s mind and memories.

This world was supposed to prioritize Harukiyo.

If he thought he would really catch up, there wasn’t any way he wouldn’t—

“Seriously—it’s a piece of cake.”

As Harukiyo wrapped himself in the most powerful flames, he ran toward the semi-trailer on the highway.

Victims of “disasters” clung to him one after another, but he burned all down.

Even so—he simply couldn’t catch up.

“Why do you think you can’t catch up…?”

How long had he been running for?

He even had the feeling like he spent hours or days chasing that semi-trailer.

“Shouldn’t you leave us behind…?”

How many of the dead had he buried already?

He had the feeling that he killed many, thousands of them, even.

“If it’s not your fault, you can just go ahead and leave us behind…”

Even so, he couldn’t shake off the dead.

His braided classmate put her arms around the running Harukiyo’s neck.

“I told you already—”

He glared at the girl with tired eyes with black bags under them.

“—This won’t wooooork!”

Howling, the Great Yama tiger beetle of flames boiled all the dead filling the highway.

Even as he ran through the empty road—he couldn’t catch up to the semi-trailer.

The nurse stood in his path again.

She did nothing, only stared at Harukiyo while shedding tears.

Harukiyo tried burning her off just like he did so far—

However, he simply couldn’t swing down his clenched fist.

The nurse smiled and hugged Harukiyo happily as he passed next to her.

“You’re finally… not able to kill us anymore…”

“Haru… you’re finally looking at us.”

“Obviously, because we all died because of you, Haru…”

Even the siblings from the facility clung to Harukiyo’s legs.

“—”

Both mind and body exhausted, Harukiyo had already spent his powers denying their words. He was deathly pale, but couldn’t allow himself to stop running.

“Of course you can’t shake us off, because you’re actually—”

The braided girl appeared on the road ahead. She spread her arms as though to invite him for a hug.

“A normal person.”

Harukiyo couldn’t dodge his classmate. She embraced him.

“Yes, you were also a normal baby when you were born…”

“Flame devil? Aha, what’s that! You’re just Haru!”

“You wanna apologize for killing us, right? You’re a good person, Haru!”

One after another, the dead people swarmed at him, increasing the weight on Harukiyo’s body.

Finally, his legs chasing after the semi-trailer—

Stopped in place.

“You do know that it’s your fault we’re all dead.”

His braided classmate caressed his chin with her fingers as he stopped in place, feeling faint.

“If you acknowledge your sin, you wouldn’t want to live anymore—so you’re just bluffing.”

As Harukiyo came to a stop, it felt as though his feelings and memories came spilling out of him.

His consciousness started fading and he didn’t even notice himself kneeling down.

He felt sleepy.

The nurse, the siblings and his classmate wrapped Harukiyo with a nostalgic warmth.

He wanted to surrender himself to the warmth of his first love, yielding to the impulse of falling asleep.

“There’s no need for you to pretend being a devil and live that sorta of painful life…”

Like a lullaby, his classmate’s whisper made Harukiyo’s eyelids feel heavier.

“—You’ve had this dream since you’re a normal person, right?”

A dream.

The dream he’d wished for before—

“You ‘want to get punished’.”

That was Harukiyo’s dream.

It was the shackling sense of guilt that continuously existed in his heart.

“Your mere existence in this world makes people around you die—that is your sin. You acknowledge your sin but never wish for forgiveness… you don’t want any sort of self-satisfaction, but merely want someone to punish you…”

“…”

“All so you could finally—stop pretending to be a devil and die as a normal person… just like those who died because of you.”

Harukiyo’s heart was on the verge of completely spilling out.

The final drop stopped inside him.

His dream, that he was on the verge of forgetting—remained inside him still.

“Yeah, that’s right. Thanks to you—I now remember.”

Harukiyo’s eyes lit up with a small fire.

However, with that very last scorch before it got extinguished—

“I wanted to receive punishment—”

He created a fiery carpet that swallowed the dead filling the highway.

The classmates, the nurse and the siblings clinging to Harukiyo all raised screams.

“So I’ll live—”

As Harukiyo sneered, his right eye, left arm, and right leg—fully became flames. He kicked the ground along with an explosive wind, rushing ahead while leaving a trail of flames in his path.

“As long as I’m alive, the fact I’m alive—is no fucking sin.”

Chasing after the semi-trailer that he already lost, he dashed through the highway.

Harukiyo’s left eye transformed to flames.

Following this other parts also transformed to masses of flames one another after; his shoulder and his back.

“If you’ve got any complaints, bring on anyone at all. Try and punish me—”

His body—his heart was becoming lighter.

He didn’t need to think of anything else.

It was fine for just granting his wish to remain in his head.

Right now, the cause of his running and what he was chasing—was completely irrelevant.

“And I’ll burn anyone and everyone who stands in my way—”

The flame devil madly dashing on the road couldn’t see the semi-trailer anywhere.

No matter how fast he went.

No matter how far he ran.

While being swallowed by flames, Harukiyo simply kept running forever and ever.

“If you’re not a normal person, then—you’re just flame.”

Without minding his classmate appearing ahead, flaming Harukiyo just burnt her to a crisp.

Next the nurse appeared.

“So this is your true form.”

The siblings appeared.

“You burn everyone who approaches…”

“And so you keep burning even stronger…”

“—”

Harukiyo howled.

This howl shook this other world’s space. Had he himself emitted it, or was it the raging Great Yama tiger beetle eating his dream? He couldn’t tell.

“—Confirmed signs of Maturation in Special Class Rank 1 Harukiyo.”

In front of him appeared a fairy wearing a golden tiara.

“There is no need to dispatch the Dove. I can just keep accelerating his own destruction—”

As if noticing something in the middle of the speech, the fairy turned—and her body broke to pieces.

“—”

Harukiyo also sensed that being and stopped in place.

Even the dead people surrounding him turned there with scared faces.

In front of Harukiyo—ahead of the large curve in the highway—stood an abnormal figure.

Standing atop a tall lamp was a person wielding a smoking automatic pistol.

Stimulating Harukiyo’s nearly lost memories, that person—looked as tattered as though he’d already experienced death, for some reason.

“So you—haven’t had enough of living, then.”

The boy looked down at the devil of flames and muttered so.

He was a Mushitsuki who was already supposedly gone, the one called a demon.

2.12 Harukiyo The Last

In this world based on his own mind, he didn’t find it strange for the boy to exist there.

Harukiyo’s lower torso became flames and his surrounding were also swallowed by hellfire. Those who died from the “disasters” coming down on him clung to him while cursing.

This was—hell itself.

And there were obviously going to be demons in hell.

He felt it was completely natural.

“…”

However, for some reason that demon was covered in wounds from head to toes.

The goggles worn on his head were cracked, his bristled hair and face were smeared with blood. Even his pitch-dark coat was dirtied with blood and dust, and his form while standing atop the light looked awfully insecure.

Had he already fought some beast somewhere?

Seeing the demon look like this in this situation—he felt abnormally angry.

Furthermore, the boy aimed the muzzle at him, and then intoned.

“So, are you just going to self-destruct without settling your score with me, Harukiyo?”

Another part of Harukiyo’s body—changed into flames.

Since his consciousness was muddying, he couldn’t currently recall who this demon in front of him was.

But he didn’t like him.

He felt a discomfort well up from deep inside him, like the bottom of his heart was seething—as if the boy saw through his heart, ridiculed him then beat him down.

“—”

A devil and a demon.

In this hellish pandemonium, they both glared at each other wordlessly—

The gunfire shot by the demon literally pulled the trigger on their fight.

“aaaHAaaaAAAAaaAAAH!”

Emitting a decidedly inhuman howl, Harukiyo stomped, using his entire body’s power.

A large explosion spread with him in the center. The asphalt cracked, blowing heat waves boiled the dead, and the highway and surrounding buildings were blown to smithereens.

Even the demon’s bullets were repelled by the heat, not reaching Harukiyo. However, since they held within them much more power than normal bullets, they pushed back the explosive wind and created a single path.

And the green glow pierced through that created path.

His face covered by a green pattern, the demon put his hands on the ground like a wild beast and closed the distance to Harukiyo instantly. He clenched his free hand in front of him, swinging it down at him.

“aaHAaaAAAH!”

His eyes literally blazing, Harukiyo formed a wall of heat.

The demon’s heat wave and the devil’s fist clashed. The shockwave gouged into the ground and created a deep valley between the two.

Harukiyo was the victor. The demon was blown away by the overwhelming energy, pounded against the ground, pierced through several destroyed buildings and vanished into the distance.

A normal person would have left no trace from that impact.

However, Harukiyo did not stop his attack.

“HaaAAAH!”

That eyesore of a demon would not die from this much—

Listening to the alarm bells ringing in his mind, he shot multiple Great Yama tiger beetles from his flaming body.

All of them possessing tusks of differing lengths, they were shot to the distance on after another. Crimson pillars connected heaven to earth, destroying the Akamaki City cityscape.

Large explosion sounds and gales arrived at Harukiyo with a delay.

Inside the dancing smoke, a great cavern was born.

Harukiyo swung his arms and shot a fireball. —The bullets shot toward him clashed with this fireball, the two cancelled each other and were gone.

The bullets were a feint. Using superhuman leg strength, the demon moved and appeared right next to Harukiyo. He was covered in more blood; as expected, it wasn’t like he remained completely unscathed.

“Hahaa!”

Once more, Harukiyo’s heat wave clashed with the demon’s fist.

As expected, the one to be defeated and get thrown back and roll on the ground was the demon. Harukiyo launched a rain of fireballs, but the demon soon stood up and dodged.

Taking advantage of an instant of an opening, once more the demon leapt within distance of Harukiyo. —Harukiyo was getting pissed off at how stubborn the demon was for close combat.

“HaaAAAH!”

Apparently, the demon had anticipated Harukiyo launching his Great Yama tiger beetle.

He vanished from before his eyes with frightening speed and got behind Harukiyo in an instant. A fist clad in a green brilliance struck his flank, which had yet to turn to flame.

He used his wall of heat to protect against the blow, but—

“—”

Harukiyo glared at the demon with eyes burning with rage.

The gap in their powers was evident.

While the demon was for some reason already hurt, Harukiyo was surging with power. Considering the compatibility between their abilities as well, the only way for the demon to win was to inflict damage on Harukiyo’s parts that had yet to turn to flames. On the other hand, Harukiyo simply needed to attack the demon.

Even so, he was unable to swipe him off, like an annoying fly buzzing around—

“—HaaaAHHH!”

He began a close-ranged mutual pummeling with the demon who so stubbornly clung to him.

Every time he launched fireballs or Great Yama tiger beetles, the demon managed to dodge them by a razor’s edge as if he’d foreseen them, ran around him and swung his fist. Every time, Harukiyo defended with a wall of heat.

Seeing through the monotone attacks repeated by Harukiyo, the demon toyed with him.

No, but I feel like I was the one who specialized in beating like that—

This suddenly came to his mind, but swallowed by the joy of wielding all this power welling inside him.

Right now, Harukiyo had no need for cheap tricks.

“Haa!”

Trying to throw him to the distance again, Harukiyo emitted another heatwave.

The demon had been prepared for that attack. He stepped hard on the ground, entirely in a defensive posture, and although the asphalt caved in, he kept standing there.

Receiving damage as he let the attack pass, the demon readied his muzzle.

Bullets assaulted Harukiyo from a very close range.

“aaaAAAH—”

He protected against the bullets shot one after another with his heatwave in a chain.

The demon should already be quite exhausted. He didn’t feel like he’d lose in a contest of strength, but being reduced to a defensive battle upset Harukiyo.

“HaaaAAAAAAHHH!”

Repelling the bullets by force, the demon leapt along with the surge of flames.

Apparently, although he’d tried evading, his body wouldn’t listen to him. For an instant his reaction was delayed and he was hit by Harukiyo’s swung arm, rolling on the ground.

Harukiyo stepped hard on the tumbled demon.

He assaulted the surface with both explosive wind and earth tremors. The demon’s body became buried.

“aaaaAAAAH!”

Harukiyo kept stomping.

As large explosions shook Akamaki City, the fissures appearing under his legs kept spreading.

And just as he stopped feeling any resistance from below his feet—

“—”

He noticed that his flaming leg was being grabbed by something from below.

By five fingers that belonged to a left hand.

However—they weren’t human. Their surface was covered by a hard shell, and it was several times larger than a human’s. It was scorched and raising smoke.

“—ooOOOOooooOOOOOH!”

An inhuman howl reverberated and Harukiyo was blown away.

Riding a heatwave, he soon fixed his posture and saw—

It really was a demon.

His left arm, as bulky as a crag, swelled so much that it ripped his left sleeve. His right foot was also similarly covered by a pattern glowing green. The large pistol fused with the right hand became even larger, transformed into a grotesque insect’s mouthpart, and spat fire.

Seeing the demon reveal its true identity, Harukiyo’s other self mumbled inside his heart.

Oh, so you’re at your limits, too—

The devil transforming into flames was glared by the demon who grew tusks from his left cheek.

“OooOOOooOOAAAAAAHHH!”

“HaaaAAaaAAAAaaaAAHHH!”

The devil and the demon clashed.

Bullets shot by the demon—or rather, these masses of destructive energy could be called cannonballs—clashed with the devil’s Great Yama tiger beetle, and they cancelled each other. Everything around them lost its shape, and the two approached one another as though to tackle each other, swinging down their fists.

The fist drawing a green afterimage was fended off by a heat wave, and the devil aimed for the demon with a flame-clad fist. His now grotesque-looking legs kicked the ground, allowing the demon to dodge the attack by a hairsbreadth. The fireball and Great Yama tiger beetle unleashed from the devil’s fist cutting through air turned the area around the demon to a sea of lava.

Fiery sparks colored crimson, as well as green trails shining in air.

Every time these two clashed, everything besides them was rendered null. The dead were annihilated, buildings and the ground were blown to pieces, and the world was remade to hold only these two alone.

The battle proceeded with the devil’s advantage.

He was slowly but surely accumulating damage on the already exhausted demon, however—

“—oooOOOOHHH!”

The demon’s fist finally blew through the defensive wall of several layers of heatwaves.

Still preserving a human shape, the devil’s chin was grazed at the very tip.

It was a glancing blow, but the devil’s head was shaken.

“—”

There was a blaze.

Leaving small smoke behind, the devil’s right eye became human.

There was no damage.

Therefore, the devil’s offensive continued, and he got pummeled by tens of fists in return.

However, another blow by the demon’s fist struck the devil’s stomach.

Although he hurriedly protected with his arm—

“—”

Another hiss.

The arm he used to protect with reverted to human again.

His counterattack managed to get through the heat waves one out of ten times—

And returned the devil to a human, little by little.

“—”

Every time he retrieved part of his human body, Harukiyo’s consciousness became clearer and clearer.

His emotions and memories that were dripping out.

Using the arms of his reason, he desperately scraped them together, unwilling to give up.

Finally, when his entire body other than his right became human again—

“…!”

The demon’s gigantic feast came right in front of the devil’s—Harukiyo’s eyes.

A direct touch would probably blow his head to smithereens.

Harukiyo leaned low. Realizing he needed so stoop so low to dodge such a simple attack, the very last flames vanished from his right eye, raising smoke.

“—Don’t you fucking look down on meeeeee!”

Leaping to the demon’s chest, he gave his strongest punch. He launched a heat wave at the same time, throwing the demon midair for a moment.

However, the demon was unmoving. He immediately turned the grotesque muzzle to Harukiyo.

“Who said we didn’t settle the score, eh?”

Harukiyo clung to the demon, haphazardly trying to push away the arm that did nothing but aim the gun.

Gunfire powerful enough to make the entirety of Akamaki City shake echoed. A huge crater was formed behind Harukiyo, but he put his own leg on the demon’s legs without minding it.

As the demon looked heavily unbalanced, this simple act made him tumble down.

“I won’t letcha be the only one to say that—”

Straddling the demon as he fell, he started pounding his face with fists clad in heatwaves.

Blood spurted from the demon’s green-patterned face.

“Kakkooou!”

Although the demon tried sweeping off Harukiyo, he wouldn’t allow him that.

He kept pounding the demon’s face and again and again.

“How dare you say that, as someone who made more Fallen than anyone! As someone who turned Fuyuhotaru into a Fallen and kept surviving all these battles! As someone who was by Arisu’s side and tried defeating the Original Three! As someone who could neither kill nor save Lady Bird!”

Every time Harukiyo struck him, the impact made his and the demon’s body rise in air.

The demon’s arms.

His legs.

His gun.

They were retrieving their forms as a human and an automatic pistol.

“As someone who’s trying to back out of all this without settling anything at all! So don’t you dare say thaaaaat!”

Harukiyo’s fist was no longer wrapped in heat.

Meanwhile, the demon already had his simple, blood-smeared, pathetic normal face back.

Kakkou.

He was a Rank 1 Mushitsuki just like Harukiyo, and as much as a sinful man.

“I did settle things.”

Harukiyo grabbed the unmoving Kakkou’s scruff. He didn’t even try to check whether his opponent was conscious.

“I woke up Arisu. Just like she wished for, to be waken up with the continuation of her dream.”

A lump of blood gushed out of Kakkou’s mouth. Apparently he was still alive.

“We both said it. And yet—what the fuck were you doing?”

Harukiyo was the devil of flames.

He was a Mushitsuki who felt nothing for his own life, living freely for his own wishes.

Therefore, he’d tell those he didn’t like that he didn’t like them to their faces.

And the one who pissed him off the most right now—was the boy in front of him.

“Arisu lost and you became a Fallen, forgetting all about her! Then what the fuck can you even tell me about settling the score! Even I’m losin’ interest with how much you keep losing! In the end this world is fucking boring, isn’t it?!”

He was the only one who survived, while all those around him were gone.

Nothing changed since the moment of his birth.

Next time for sure—

Even the voice whispering this inside Harukiyo’s heart was growing weaker and weaker.

The devil kept living without minding anything, not even feeling any guilt.

Although he was supposed to be like that—a small tremor was born in him.

“—Did you forget…?”

He thought Kakkou was dead, but he moved his mouth.

“When you get right down to it… Why have you joined forces with Arisu…?”

“Ah?”

“’Let’s make a world without any Mushitsuki’—”

Harukiyo widened his eyes.

“You were invited for that cause… and joined forces with her…”

While Kakkou spoke this, his lips looked like he was smiling. It was Harukiyo’s imagination—but since it looked like this to his eyes, he felt angry.

“That deal’s already done. She lost—and I settled the score.”

“Yeah, she lost…”

Kakkou leaked a soft breath and spoke.

“But—she’s woken up again, right?”

“…!”

Harukiyo’s arms grasping Kakkou twitched.

This time, the boy truly and clearly smiled.

“You started the ‘continuation’.”

“…”

“Since she’s awake, she’ll probably aim for a ‘world without Mushitsuki’ again. Even so, you feel like saying everything’s ended and cancel that first deal? And despite you being the one to wake her up… that’s not proper at all, isn’t it?”

How can you speak so selfishly—

He was about to retort with that, but no words came out.

Because the opponent that he’d made this deal with was truly a selfish person.

She’d clung to him and forced out his dream—and the girl even shed tears despite it having nothing to do with her.

She was selfish, naïve, and as a result she drew up the short lot and fell asleep.

And the one who decided to go along with that girl’s pipedreams—was none other than Harukiyo himself.

“If we assume what you’re saying is true—it’s the worst.”

He simply felt like going with her on a whim.

Even so he was forced into mortal combat. When that was over, he kept looking for her to get his “reward”. And that took years.

He somehow managed to find her and get his reward, so he thought he was done.

However, it seemed like that was another trap.

Because from that very moment he became part of the “continuation”—

“What a fucking bother—I feel like I’ve been caught hook, line and sinker.”

“…She was that kind of person from the very beginning…”

Kakkou groaned.

He thought his problems already ended, but in fact they hadn’t. If that wasn’t enough, they continued because of the actions he took in order to end them.

It really was a huge bother.

However—

“Stop acting like that and start making an actual effort… Harukiyo.”

In this state, there were certain emotions that welled up in his chest.

But whenever he advanced, they were suddenly cut off.

Harukiyo had never experienced a life where this repetition never occurred.

If what the demon said was true—this was the first time.

“This isn’t the kind of person you can just half-ass when dealing with…”

Was he talking about the girl he’d made a deal with?

Or was he speaking of the enemy that he had to fight to finish that deal?

He could agree either way, but Harukiyo hated the way the boy talked of this as if it had nothing to do with him.

“I’m tellin’ you, you’re the last person I wanna hear this from. It doesn’t sound convincing at all after you came after me like a rabid dog the moment we met. —The fuck are you? How did you show up inside me like that? Are you a fake created by C?”

Kakkou remained unanswering and silent. Instead, he could hear an electronic tone echoing from somewhere.

It was a familiar melody.

“Well, not that I care. What really annoys me is people putting off things, leaving them to other people—it looks like you’re tryna push everything to me.”

“…”

At some point Harukiyo could see the destroyed Akamaki City again.

The sky was a weird color as always, but he was on the highway and the large semi-trailer was parked ahead of him.

“I don’t think it’s just me. The one who started this ‘continuation’, I mean.”

As Harukiyo got inside the cargo, the engine turned on.

The melody he’d heard from before came from the cellphone in the pocket. It was the very one he’d received from the Mushitsuki called Konoha. He had no idea how come he was able to hear it in this world, but since he was still in the middle of the conversation, he ignored it.

“Even Fuyuhotaru coming back from the Fallen state and Arisu having that silly dream—probably happened because they met with you. As well as your chaotic fight after failing to save Lady. In the first place… C being tricked by Miguruma also happened through your influence.”

“…”

“And me having a deal with Arisu was because she wanted to gather the Rank 1s. If you’re sayin’ it’s continuing now, it doesn’t make a lick of sense for you to be the only one missing.”

The semitrailer took off.

Kakkou remained collapsed, not trying to move.

Kakkou stayed there while Harukiyo moved ahead.

As the distance between the two grew, he spat toward the fallen boy.

“You started it all. —Take responsibility and put a fucking end to this.”

Harukiyo left his voice behind as the semitrailer accelerated.

He had no idea what this boy growing smaller in his vision—Kakkou—was. He might have been a simple illusion constructed by C.

But as a result, he made Harukiyo wake up after nearly Maturing.

If he really was created by C, it completely backfired on her.

On the other hand, if this element had been induced by a person other than C—

“Damn, you’re so annoying.”

The ringtone kept going on for a while now.

As if guided by it, the scenery of Akamaki City dyed in bizarre colors…

Was, little by little…

“I’m tryna think real hard here and yet you just keep going…”

Regaining its proper colors.

The sky was dyed a faint blue, and the ground settled down to gray.

As everything reflected in his eyes regained their original colors—

“—Hey, that phone’s been really annoying for some time now! Just hang up on them if you’re not going to answer!”

An annoying, high-pitched voice familiar to him shook his eardrums.

Harukiyo was in the cargo box of the semi-trailer running through the highway.

It wasn’t the different space he’d seen until just now.

Kusezaki Ume was sitting on the floor while complaining to him, and he wasn’t bisected. Sakaki Haruka also wasn’t puking blood. However, both of them had their clothes ripped.

“Nah, I’ll answer it.”

Suddenly, as Harukiyo raised his face, Ume and Sakaki shuddered.

“Y-you’re awake? Took you long! Pfft, thinking you’ve had it this tough against C’s mental pollution… have you weakened, Harukiyo? More importantly, we’ve had it real bad since you were fast asleep! Haruka even used the power she borrowed three times and ran out!”

Immediately after coming back to the real world, Ume’s high-pitched voice kept prattling on and on.

“…My collection… is running out…”

Haruka also looked tired. Harukiyo had no idea how long he’d spent unconscious, but it seemed like Ume and Haruka protected the semi-trailer alone.

“Things are relaxed right now, but another assassin’s sure to come here! It’s your turn next, Harukiyo! I’m going to sleep! I’ll definitely have a nap! In the first place, why do we even have to go to these lengths to protect this guy?!”

“Ah, fuck it, shut up already!”

Pushing Ume back, he pressed the call button of the cellphone.

“What do you plan on doing with Alpha…?”

It was the same voice he’d heard on the phone before. The Mushitsuki girl called Konoha.

“You’re askin’ that just now? But it’s almost as if you’ve calculated the timing.”

“…”

“Is there a Mushi in this cellphone? Since you were able to pull me back from that world, it’s probably a mental pollution or a mental control type—so it’s not you, Konoha. Could even the user of ability see what happened in that world?”

Konoha gave no answer.

“Meaning, you’re confused about Alpha’s worth being unlike what you estimated.”

“…”

“As you know, since he’s alive, even if we defeat the Original Three and C, there’s still a possibility for us to return to a world with Mushitsuki. —Does it make you want to keep him safe all the more? Or maybe you want to kill him?”

“Eh?” Ume sounded shocked from his side.

There were probably only few people who understood the value of Alpha’s existence and the dangers behind him.

Excluding Miguruma Yaeko, who was the main culprit, as well as the past members of the Round Table who were at the center of this—it might be just Harukiyo and the one on the other side of the line.

“Can’t talk ‘bout this with you, Konoha. Bring out your master.”

Although Harukiyo threatened with a low voice, Konoha kept silent—

And hanged the call on him.

This probably wasn’t because Konoha got scared like before, but probably received orders from the person controlling her.

“What you mean, Harukiyo? Is this person actually someone outrageous?”

“I’ll explain it later. —I’ve also had it real tough. Haruka, got any abilities to get them off our trail?”

“…I can use Tamamo’s ability to make anyone not perceive us consciously… with the amount I’ve borrowed, I don’t think it’ll last even for an hour…”

“Eh, Tamamo-san’s a high-ranking member of the SEPB, isn’t she? How did you get it from her?”

“…We’re Lolita fashion friends…”

Harukiyo turned toward the driver’s seat, lightly waving his hand.

The wall of the cargo box melted red, revealing the back of the head of the woman sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Hey, secretary. How much longer to our goal?”

“Eh? Oh.”

Although the secretary was surprised at seeing the hole behind her, she soon answered.

“I believe it will take the whereabout of two hours.”

“Tch, no choice then. So I’ll hold out for about an hour or so. It’ll be a piece of cake, though.”

Rising up, he peeked at the face of Alpha sleeping inside the life support system.

The youth’s complexion was as bad as always, but his expression seemed to be quite calm. He was the only one who knew what he thought about and decided in the world created by C.

“You’re for the most part quite the sinner. I don’t give a flying fuck what you are, but this doesn’t change the fact you’d be the ‘egg’ for Mushitsuki. Meaning, as long as you’re alive, there’ll always be a chance for Mushitsuki to be born.”

“…? What does that mean, Harukiyo-sama?”

“I’m saying that Akasegawa also pulled out quite the card. You’ll understand one day. It seems quite important so you need to treat it with care, though…”

Chairman of the Akasegawa conglomerate, Akasegawa Nanana, cooperated with Mushibane.

Meaning, they were both people who wanted Mushi to go extinct.

Even so, after spending so much money to protect him, if she found out that his very being went against this goal, what reaction would that rich girl show?

“Say, aren’t these some Revived far back there? It’s your turn, Harukiyo!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

As he exited to the roof through the hole in the ceiling of the luggage, Harukiyo stopped thinking.

“Hey, secretary. I’ve been wondering since the start.”

“Hmm?”

“This guy is more or less a Mushitsuki as well… so you’ve done a great job to not get found out by the SEPB’s sensors thus far. Don’t you think it strange?”

Apparently, that question was within the secretary’s estimations.

“We are also in the midst of conducting research on him… but apparently, after going through fixed periods of awakening, he appears to be in deep slumber. His Mushi as well has an abnormally vague presence… there are times where his Mushi is out and yet it remains in a state of slumber…”

“…”

Harukiyo thought and inquired further.

“The Mushi’s asleep? Rather like Arisu’s ability, then. No, in the first place he’s the one who… can he do that out of his own will, then?”

“We cannot tell for sure at present. After all, he’d remained asleep for a long while ever since we made the bid on him, so we were unable to get any information… what about all of this?”

“Never mind—by the way, didja know? There’s a certain kind of vaccine that’s developed using chicken eggs.”

“…? I do not quite understand what you mean by this.”

“Harukiyo! They’re coming! Do something already!”

“Oh, you know. It’s a possibility of less than 1%—"

Urged by Ume, Harukiyo looked up the ceiling.

“Once you use all of your Akasegawa money to research him… then maybe one day you could create something that could put Mushitsuki’s Mushi to sleep for all eternity. That kinda pipe dream.”

Glancing at her, the secretary looked reactionless.

However, her not grabbing the wheel right before the curve in the road—was probably because she understood the importance behind what Harukiyo said and found herself shaken by it.

“Please drive safely.”

Spitting this, Harukiyo leapt up and danced atop the cargo box.

“I-indeed…!” he heard the agitated voice from his feet. The semi-trailer managed to brake right at the last moment.

“So my power has meaning—then.”

Why was it?

Harukiyo lived freely and intended on just doing as he pleased.

His life goal was to find enemies and defend against “disasters” through preemptive attacks.

However, that was all.

Although he never intended on getting involved with Mushitsuki and Mushi—

“And so, you can change the world into one without Mushitsuki, huh. —Will you lose today or tomorrow and end the story, or will you be able to gather all these small possibilities and make it a longer story?”

Harukiyo ended up involved in the fights of Mushitsuki regardless of his own will.

And without fail—he would always end up cornered to the point where he had to settle up the score by a contract that he himself had agreed to.

“So there’s one, this suicidal bastard—nah, I already made him graduate from that shit. One of them is this Alpha guy…”

This world would change to be one without Mushitsuki—

He couldn’t celebrate his life without settling this contract as well.

“As for the other—I finally have an idea about where you might be, C. Since you’re trying to kill me, you definitely are the ‘disaster’ aiming for me.”

However, the existence called Mushitsuki that got involved with him—

Seemed to be a huge problem, going past his own “disaster”.

Therefore, he had to settle matters.

“It looks like it’s going to be an itty bitty of a problem—”

Although he leaked sighs of fatigue, he—

The strongest Mushitsuki, called the devil of flames—

“But it’ll be a piece of cake.”

Wore a bold smile.

Notes

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