Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume9 Stage3 (section)

===Part 2===

Research.

An experiment.

Shiroyama Kyousuke had repeated those words over and over again.

But Meinokawa Aoi looked puzzled when she stepped through the unlocked front door. What she found inside looked just like a normal home: a shoe shelf, a plastic tank of kerosene, a fire extinguisher, bundles of old newspapers, etc. There was no dust to be seen and that cleanliness was certainly unusual, but there were none of the mysterious beakers, test tubes, analysis computers, and monsters preserved in formaldehyde she had expected to see.

The only thing of real interest was the variety of shoes.

There were adult-sized leather shoes and pumps which likely belonged to Doctor S and his wife.

The athletic shoes smaller than her hand may have been Kyousuke’s from back then.

But what about the other pair?

Those small pink shoes did not look like something Kyousuke would have worn, so who did they belong to?

“This was his lab.”

But Shiroyama Kyousuke said something odd.

He pointed at the each ordinary item in turn.

“30 days of newspapers.”

“Huh?”

“The kerosene tank has 10.295 liters remaining. The fire extinguisher, shoehorn, and umbrella stand form an equilateral triangle with 120cm sides. The umbrella stand has 8 umbrellas, which have 10, 15, 8, 12, 14, 13, 7, and 7 ribs respectively. The angle of the shoes, using Doctor S’s right shoe as the center point, have a margin of error of +2, -3, +7, -15, -1, ±0, and -4 degrees. It all looks random at first, but it all carries meaning.”

“What good is memorizing all that?”

“Nothing really,” he readily admitted. “But if I tried to line the shoes up properly, he would get mad at me. He never told me what exactly he was hitting me for, so I had to memorize it all. He could turn anything into a weapon if he wanted to. When he grabbed something, I had to figure out how I could protect myself. I had to make sure I was hit hard enough to satisfy him but not enough to seriously injure me. But I couldn’t get carried away and fight back. If I did that, the beating would be two or three times worse than normal. The only way to survive was to make him feel like he had won.”

The words that followed were truly shocking.

But that had been the norm here. An unheard storm of abuse had wreaked havoc in that closed household. Based on the size of the shoes, Kyousuke would have been 5 or 6 at the time. Domestic violence came in many forms, but a fist could do much more damage to such a small body. It was entirely possible it could have killed him.

And Doctor S was not just human garbage who could not control his emotions.

It had all been calculated.

Getting on his good side to avoid the violence had not been an option.

“Everything here was a symbol related to the various forms of invitation, awakening, and communication that form the base of the Summoning Ceremony. The most obvious example is the equilateral triangle, but everything else is the same. It all mattered: color, shape, number, straight lines, curved lines, even numbers, odd numbers, a group in alignment, a group with one or more items sticking out, etc. Doctor S never taught us anything. We had none of the answers, so it was like navigating a minefield in the dead of night. He apparently felt we would not actually absorb any of the information if he gave us a textbook and provided lectures.”

Everything he had mentioned was just in the entranceway.

The living room would have a TV and stereo, the bath would have soap and a shampoo bottle, the kitchen would have knives and a cutting board, and the kid’s rooms would have a study desk and bed.

Doctor S could turn anything into a weapon.

So Kyousuke had to understand everything in advance.

Intense did not even begin to cover it.

And Shiroyama Kyousuke was not done speaking. It did not end here.

“At first, Doctor S would beat me,” he spat out the words. “But it didn’t take long for him to figure out a more effective method. He realized I wouldn’t cry even when he beat me. So every time I screwed up, he would beat my mom or my ''little sister'' instead. It didn’t matter what I grabbed to prepare myself.”

“…”

“I ''really and truly'' thought about killing him. Although I imagine he was trying to inspire those emotions in me so he could turn me into a precision-guided missile.”

He stopped speaking there.

Suddenly, Shrine Maiden Aoi looked up. She had sensed a small presence in the living room beyond the opened door.

Was it a boy or a girl?

“Nh, nhh, nhhhh.”

She peeked through the door and saw a small figure struggling with the lid of a clear bottle. It seemed to contain multicolored candies. She took a closer look. It was hard to tell with the bangs over their face, but it appeared to be a girl.

Someone else arrived from the dining room.

“Boy?”

“…”

The completed summoner did not respond.

This was not a physical presence, but Meinokawa Aoi did not even consider reaching out a hand to see if it would pass right through the young boy. But not because he was so obviously just an image. He seemed like a snow crystal. He was surrounded by an ephemerality that made her think he would melt away at a touch.

And having just heard that this boy had accepted being beaten as normal may have played a role.

“Hand it here, *****.”

“I can do it.”

“C’mon, I’ll open it for you.”

“No!! I can do it!”

This alone might have been a heartwarming scene. It made this feel like a lived-in place rather than a creepy ghost town or dungeon.

“Then place a handkerchief or something over the lid to help grip it.”

“Like this?”

“Ahh, not the chest of your clothing…well, I guess that’s fine. Now try turning it.”

“Nghhhhh…hyah!? Yes, it came off!!”

When the lid popped off, the candies nearly spilled out from the bottle, but she just barely managed to keep them inside.

The small girl reached into the bottle and pulled out a few round candies.

“Okay, you can have this one. It’s strawberry flavor. I got it out for you.”

“I see.”

“I’ll have strawberry too.”

“Keep that up and all the strawberry ones will be gone.”

“It’s fine because we match.”

Aoi spent a while just watching this meaningless but undeniably real scene. She saw them smiling and leaning against each other, so there must have been more than just despair here.

“Wah!”

She shrieked when the two of them dashed from the living room with the candies in their mouths and moved to the entranceway where she was. She had been hesitant to touch them because she did not know how it worked, but they came to her. She reflexively crouched down and held out her arms to catch them, but they passed right through her, put on their shoes, and left through the front door.

“So they’re only an illusion. Something like a 3D image.”

She sounded somehow relieved.

But Kyousuke’s response was different.

The information missing from his mind seemed to be pleading to him in some way.

For him, logic won out over sentimentality.

He viewed their surroundings instead of the small illusions themselves.

“The supernatural elements here are remnants of the White Queen, but does this mean those remnants just grew stronger?”

“Boy?”

“Be on your guard, Aoi. She must be nearby. If we defeat the Queen, we can stop the cocoon. And if we stop the cocoon, we can stop the Colorless Little Girl!!”